Over the past few years, Alex Van Halen has worked hard to avoid speaking about Sammy Hagar, not even mentioning him by name a single time in his 240-page memoir “Brothers: An Intimate Account of Brotherhood and Rock Music.”
But earlier this month, in an interview with the Brazilian magazine Roadie Crew, he fired back when asked about Hagar’s 2011 book “Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock.”
“I don’t know what he wrote, and I don’t want to know,” said Van Halen. “In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot.”
Unsurprisingly, Hagar had much to say about that characterization.
“Guilty as charged, first of all,” he said. “I’m probably the most successful idiot on the planet…I want to call Alex out and say dude, we all know, you act like there was never a Sammy Hagar. You act like there was never a ‘Van Hagar.’ We sold 40 some million records, [had] four Number One albums and you just scratch that off of your brother’s legacy, saying no, that never happened. You don’t even want to acknowledge it. That’s deep. That’s weird. That’s not right, for Eddie, for me, for Mikey [Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony], for anybody. I’m asking Alex, like why? Come clean, what’s your problem? Just come out and say it. Is it the book? Say it. Cabo Wabo? Say it. Maybe if I knew what your problem was, I could fix it. But right now he just acts like there’s not a problem, it just never happened.”
