Sam Just Won't Stop

[Nitro Express]

A friend of Alex called into Eddie Trunk. Said he had dinner with Alex and his wife and Alex will never do anything with Hagar because of what he said about Eddie in his book. He said Alex is moving on.

[Nitro Express]

Roth is a loose cannon. Alex tried to do an Eddie tribute show with him. They were going to have the guy who played bass in Metallica in it. So clearly Alex didn’t want Sammy and Sauce Sowboleski involved. Anyways Dave was hard to work with and the thing fell apart.

[Nitro Express]

Yeah if the Van Halen’s wanted to slag Dave fine but it had nothing to do with Sam. But Sam has been trying to erase Dave since he joined that band. It didn’t take long for tension to form between Sammy and Eddie. Eddie said he saw Sammy for what he was when he sobered up. You can tell Sammy really didn’t care about Ed. Ed was someone to use to boost Sam’s exposure. Sam would have faded out with everyone else. If he wasn’t in Van Halen.

[Nitro Express]

The best way to describe Dave is he’s an eccentric artist. Ha! Ha!

[Silexxx]

https://www.vhnd.com/2013/02/12/david-lee-roth-on-michael-anthony/

Dave probably wanted Mike to be involved. He spoke highly about him before Eddie died. Already in 2013 he publicly wanted the original band to reunite and said Mike was "One of the Greatest High Tenors voices ever" (link) etc. Maybe Al didn't want that since he feared Mike would probably wanted Hagar to been involved too.

[Nitro Express]

Absolutely. Al didn’t want Mike because he’s Sammy’s buddy. Dave did say he talked with Al quite a bit. I really don’t blame Al for retiring and Sammy wants Al so bad because he wants to keep Van Halen going. He wants to smother Dave out. It’s quite delusional.

[Nitro Express]

I’m just looking at at what Sammy is doing and I’m going, man. Everything Eddie said about you was the truth. I’m glad Ed cleaned up and had one last good tour with Dave. Ed looked good. You could see he had spent time in the gym. I find Sam a discrace. Just a sleazy opportunist.

[Terry]

I don't disbelieve the general gist of what Hagar had to say in his book re: Eddie's state of mind in 2004. Ed looked dreadful and the proof was in his playing, which - even by the standards of the Van Hagar material in the setlist - was subpar.

And I can see where once the tour contracts were signed, the tickets were sold and the tour was underway, for Hagar to have quit could have potentially opened him up to financial liabilities/penalties. Hey, a buck is a buck, and that's true for Hagar, too.

Thing of it is, though, Hagar admits in his book that Eddie was fucked up from the get-go. According to Hagar, [Eddie] was fucked up during the recording of the new BOBW tracks and he was fucked up during the tour rehearsals. Hagar in his book writes that despite Ed's obvious condition, [Hagar] threw caution to the wind during the BOBW recording/tour rehearsals, hoped Eddie would pull it together for the tour and went ahead with the shows anyway.

Hagar made a choice to go ahead with the tour. It wasn't like Ed was functioning properly during the months leading up to the tour, had a relapse when the tour started and at that point Hagar had a choice of either bailing and opening himself up to potential lawsuits or going ahead with the shows. Nope, since according to Hagar it was obvious Ed wasn't in tip-top shape even before they started recording the BOBW tracks. One also notices that Hagar didn't insist that Ed get cleaned up when the band were working on the BOBW tracks and THAT wasn't working well. Hagar could have stopped the whole deal right then, had a sit-down with Alex (and Azoff or whoever was repping the band at that point) and said it would be in everybody's interests if Eddie got sober before the band undertook recording new material and touring.

Hagar went ahead with all of it. Those three BOBW tracks were underwhelming even by Van Hagar standards and the subsequent tour was considered Van Halen's worst.

I'll bet all of that WAS a miserable experience for Hagar.

And not only did Hagar NOT say jack shit about any of it publicly while it was happening, he took the money and did the shows all the while knowing he was a witting participant in fronting the band and charging premium ticket prices to perform when Ed - and, by extension, the band - wasn't capable of giving audiences their money's worth.

Then, three years later, Hagar puts out a book dishing all the dirt. So, Hagar got paid twice for participating in that 2004 sham. Once for the tour, and once again via writing the book.

If I were in Alex's shoes, I can't say I'd hold Hagar in high esteem in terms of loyalty after he provided a gander at what was going on behind the scenes. Now that Alex is no longer playing drums anyway, I tend to doubt he is all that anxious to reach out to Hagar, or Mike Anthony...like, for what purpose? Ed is gone, so there ain't gonna be another Van Hagar tour.

[Nitro Express]

Wolf’s story why that tour happened is Ed was so bad his family thought he was going to die. He became a drug addicted bum. They thought if they could get Ed doing shows his work ethic and professionalism would kick in and pull him out of the gutter. Sam was willing to do it. So Sam knew the situation and really, he should have kept it to himself but he wanted to sell the dirt and blame Eddie for the shitty shows.

[Terry]

Meh. The more I hear from Ed's kid, the less I want to hear from Ed's kid. Eddie Trunk would clearly listen to Ed's kid has to say all day every day. Me, not so much.

Bottom line is Hagar knew the situation going in re: late 2003/2004. Hagar went ahead, took the money, the situation predictably went to shit, then Hagar doubled back and got paid twice for selling the dirt.

Yeah, Ed's condition was primarily responsible for the shitty shows. Had Hagar not went ahead with the whole shebang, there wouldn't have been any shitty shows.

The one positive thing one COULD say about 2004 is that it happened under Hagar's frontage, not Roth's. At least come early 2007 someone (Azoff possibly responding to insistence from promoters, Roth, Ed's family) had the sense to look back at the lessons of 2004 and think that it would best serve everybody's interests if Eddie got cleaned up before the 2007 tour.

But, you know, that whole period of 1996 through 2007...just rough times to be a Van Halen fan. The Van Halen brothers definitely came across as charmless dickheads at points, but I personally derived no pleasure from watching the band devolve following Hagar's departure in 1996. Whereas circa 1986-1996, whatever one thought about Hagar, at least the band was functioning...then again, once it was announced that Roth had left in 1985, for me that was really when the band as I knew and loved it ended. Even when Roth finally came back and started touring and recording with the band again in the 2000's, it was never the same and never as good.

[Nitro Express]

It really ended in 84. After that it was a huge cheese fest that degraded into a mental break down.