ALEX VAN HALEN Calls SAMMY HAGAR 'A Complete Idiot'

Legendary VAN HALEN drummer Alex Van Halen has called the band's former singer Sammy Hagar a "complete idiot".

The 73-year-old Alex made the comment earlier this year while speaking to Brazilian music journalist Marcelo Vieira, who translated Van Halen's "Brothers" memoir into Portuguese for the Brazilian market.

During Marcelo's chat with Alex, which was published in issue 293 of the long-running Brazilian magazine Roadie Crew, the drummer was asked about some of the other VAN HALEN-related books, such as David Lee Roth's 1997 autobiography "Crazy From The Heat" and Hagar's "Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock", which was released in 2011. About Roth's book, Alex said (as translated from Portuguese): "It's quite fun and accurately reflects [David's] sense of humor. Although the text is somewhat abstract and loses its train of thought at times, it's still a very interesting perspective on that era." Alex was less complimentary when it came to his opinion of Sammy, saying that he had no interest in reading "Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock". "I don't know what he wrote, and I don't wanna know," Alex said. "In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot."

Back in June 2021, Hagar was asked by Brazil's "Inside With Paulo Baron" Internet show if there were any things that he left out of "Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock" that he thinks he should have put it or any stories that he included that he later wished he hadn't. He responded in part: "More than anything, because of the untimely and tragic death of Eddie Van Halen, I apologize from the bottom of my heart for exposing his dark side to where I don't think anyone wants to hear that now, and, unfortunately, it's in the book. And it's true — it's all true. It's not like I have to say, 'Oh, I was lying' — no, no, no. If I wrote the book today, I would only put the good of Eddie Van Halen, because he was such a brilliant, genius guitar player and such a great friend and a great partner — until everything went wrong, like everything else. Anybody's that's been divorced or broke up with your girlfriend or your boyfriend, you know how it goes. Happy endings aren't always the case in a relationship. [Eddie and I] had a happy ending — thank God — but before that, it wasn't a happy ending of the band. But thank God we got it back together."

When journalist Regis Tadeu pointed out that it's important to expose the dark side sometimes because it's "reality," Sammy said: "No one knew a lot of that about Eddie, but they'd see him on stage and they would think, 'Why is he acting like that?' And I would say, 'Well, you should have seen what happened backstage. Holy fuck!' If we'd have known he was sick then, then I would have understood and I would have been a little more, 'Hey, Ed, come on,' try to reel him in. But he was impossible. He was on a track of just wild. It was tough."

Hagar added: "He was the sweetest guy in the world when I met him. When Eddie Van Halen walked into my dressing room in that show in Anaheim Stadium with BOSTON and BLACK SABBATH, that was one of the sweetest people, most humble human beings I've ever met in my life. I thought, 'How can this guy play so badass and be that humble?' I thought, 'It's impossible. He must have a fire inside of him that he's not showing.' And when that fire came out, it was quite the fire — a freakin' volcano."

Hagar replaced David Lee Roth in VAN HALEN in 1985 and recorded four studio albums with the band — "5150", "OU812", "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" and "Balance" — all of which topped the U.S. chart.

Sammy, Eddie, Alex and Michael last teamed up in 2004 for a U.S. summer tour. In exchange for taking part in the tour, Anthony reportedly had to agree to take a pay cut and sign away his rights to the band name and logo.

In "Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock", Hagar slammed Eddie, saying the guitarist was unkempt, hunched over, frighteningly skinny, drinking wine straight out of a bottle, missing part of his tongue (after a cancer scare) and several teeth. He told an interviewer in 2012: "What happened on that reunion tour in '04 was some of the most miserable, back-stabbing dark crap I've ever been involved with my whole life."

In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Eddie questioned an "embellished" portion of "Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock" that painted the guitarist as a "very angry drunk" during the group's 2004 reunion tour.

In an April 2025 interview with Rolling Stone, Hagar spoke about his relationship with Alex Van Halen, who hadn't spoken with Hagar in 25 years, and refused to even mention Sammy by name in "Brothers". Regarding why there has been no communication between the two in the last couple of decades, Sammy said: "I've had this conversation with a few people, including [former VAN HALEN manager] Irving Azoff. I've asked him, 'What's the problem?' And some people have said to me, 'Oh, Cabo Wabo. At one time, VAN HALEN, when you built it, you guys were all partners in that. And then they didn't want it anymore when it was losing money, and they gave it to you, and you turned it around and made hundreds of millions of dollars on it. And they're angry. Alex is angry about that.' To that I said, 'How the fuck could they be angry about that? They gave me the damn thing, they walked out on me, left me with it. And they made me indemnify them in case I got sued and lost everything. They made me sign off big time.' And I'm going, 'I hope it's not that.'"

Referencing "Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock", Sammy continued: "The book has been brought up. The book was honest. It was well documented that Eddie was a mess on that tour. But I don't want to drag Eddie through no coals now. That's just water under the bridge.

"I think Al's angry because I'm out doing it, and Mike [Anthony, former VAN HALEN bassist] and I are out doing it, and he can't," Hagar added. "He's not a singer. He's not a guitar player. He is not really a band leader. And he seems like he doesn't want to play drums or can't play drums anymore, and he can't go write a new record. Alex wasn't the songwriter in the band. He was the drummer. Eddie and I wrote the songs. Dave [Lee Roth] and Eddie wrote the songs, and so we can go out and do them. And I think that really bothers him that Mike and I are still out there doing it. I would feel bad. If I put myself in his shoes, I would feel terrible if I couldn't do it anymore. But I'm the happiest guy out of all of them. That pisses people off in itself. Being too happy, people don't like that."

When interviewer Andy Greene noted that Alex has had real health issues and has reasons to feel bitter, Sammy said: "Yeah, I'd say so. And I'm okay with it. Al, you're fine. Just leave me alone. I'll leave you alone. Everything's good. I'm making you money, by the way, Al. I'm out there selling VAN HALEN records and keeping the name alive, keeping the music alive."

In December 2024, Alex Van Halen was asked by Bringing It Back To The Beatles why he made "the conscientious decision" to end his book, "Brothers", in 1984 and not cover any of the band's later years. He responded: "Because the original band was the band that was the driving force. That was the connection between the disparate parts of the musical world, if you will. And we were young. The first record going platinum — it's incredible. That's something you can really never expect to happen again. Later on, it was different — that's for another book — but the excitement and the confusion and the groping in the dark, if you will, and all the mistakes that we made, and all the B.S. we had to endure, and then to recognize at the very end, maybe we had one more record in us, it was very… You can't take it back, but those are the things that are in the back of your head. The old expression of, if you don't go over the edge, then you can't come back. You have to go too far to come back in. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, we're human and we made some bad choices. The US Festival, for instance, was just a clusterfuck. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. All we said was, 'You make sure you have enough power, and we'll play.' That's it."

When the interviewer noted that this attitude is "true rock and roll," Alex concurred. "Bingo. That's exactly right," he said. "You just hit the nail on the head. After that, that's why the book ends in 1984, because that was true rock and roll. After that, it became much more — I don't know; I can't explain it. But it's not to say that it was not any good. We always did our best at whatever we were doing, but it wasn't the same."

He added earlier in the interview: "I think I picked up where Ed left off in terms of saying… His example was that we were actually happier playing in clubs than we were when we hit the so-called big time, because in the clubs you weren't quite sure what you were doing, you could, at the drop of a hat, change directions, you can play anything you want and there's nobody that holds you accountable or they have expectations of any sort. You just go on and you play. And it's intimate. You're right there, two feet away. People are right there in front of your face. And that kind of goes away when you get to the place where you have five lines of security people. And we always kept it to a minimum, but nonetheless, that was the soup du jour."

Two months earlier, Alex gave a slightly different answer to USA Today when asked about his decision to end the book when VAN HALEN's original singer David Lee Roth first quit the band 41 years ago.

"For me, the spirit of the band ended in 1984," Alex said. "We did good work after that, but the primary spiritual aspect, the magic, the potential, the looking to the future together, all of that stuff, our mutually strange backgrounds — that's what made VAN HALEN. Ed and I were outsiders. Dave was an outsider. Those kinds of intangible things make the fabric of how we were tied together."

"Brothers" ignores Sammy Hagar's stint with VAN HALEN, as well as that of EXTREME vocalist Gary Cherone, and even VAN HALEN's reunion with Roth that started in 2007.

"What happened after Dave left is not the same band," Alex told Billboard. "I'm not saying it was better or worse or any of that. The fact is Ed and I did our best work whenever we played. We always gave it our best shot. But the magic was in the first years, when we didn't know what we were doing, when we were willing to try anything."

Alex also explained his refusal to participate in the ongoing "The Best Of All Worlds" tour that focuses largely on the music of VAN HALEN. The trek features Hagar and former VAN HALEN bassist Michael Anthony, along with guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Kenny Aronoff.

"The Best Of All Worlds" initially came more than two years after Satriani revealed that he was approached about participating in a VAN HALEN tribute show with Alex and David Lee Roth. That project never got off the ground, reportedly because Roth was "holding up" getting everything approved.

In the Billboard interview, Alex said about why he was not responsive when Hagar and Anthony reached out about him taking part in some way in "The Best Of All Worlds": "I'm not interested. They're not doing the band justice. They can do what they want to do. That's not my business."

In a separate interview with Rolling Stone, Alex didn't even utter Hagar's name. "The heart and the soul and the creativity and the magic was Dave, Ed, Mike and me," he said. In the book, his only acknowledgment of the "Van Hagar" era reportedly came in the line, "We had a lot of other singers over the years."

Hagar mended his relationship with Eddie Van Halen months prior to the legendary VAN HALEN guitarist's October 2020 passing.

Sammy Hagar photo credit: Leah Steiger