SAMMY HAGAR Says His Reunion With VAN HALEN Is 'Inevitable'

Artisan News recently sat down with legendary rocker Sammy Hagar (see video below) to get his thoughts on why he feels it's inevitable that he will work with VAN HALEN again sometime in the future, just as long as it doesn't interfere with CHICKENFOOT, which is his No. 1 priority right now.

"Absolutely," he said when asked if he thinks he will play with VAN HALEN again. "I'm not predicting it. I just say... someday. We made too good of music together, with Eddie and I in VAN HALEN, we had such a great thing for a long time. When it went sour, it wasn't just because of us. There was a lot of outside forces. Our manager died and a new guy came in, and he just totally divided the band and conquered us, you know?! So I think there will come a time where Eddie's gonna wake up and go, 'Hey, man, I miss being friends with Sammy,' if nothing else, or, 'I would love to make that music again, or play those songs again.' 'Cause they have no choice they've got Sam or they've got Dave [Lee Roth] They can't find a new guy they already tried that and it didn't work. So it's inevitable. If Eddie and Al [drummer Alex Van Halen] want to play music for the rest of their lives, someday they're gonna have to come and deal with me. But right now I'm so happy with what I'm doing with CHICKENFOOT, I hope they don't call me next week, I hope they don't call me next month, because I would have to say, 'Gee, I'm busy right now; I'm not gonna drop CHICKENFOOT for anything.' It's my favorite thing I've ever done in my life; I love this band. Someday we're all gonna be sitting around or running into each other somewhere and going, 'You know, let's get back together and be friends and make that music again, just play it one time for the big time or whatever.' So I think it's inevitable."

Hagar's last album with VAN HALEN was 1996's "Balance", but he previously said that his relationship with Eddie was already crumbling at the time. "Ed needs somebody to make decisions and a leader, you know," he said. "He's not a natural born leader kind of guy. And his brother [was always the leader before or Roth was the leader before, and when Roth left, his brother and him bumped heads so much, when I walked in it was like, 'Well, what does Sam wanna do?' you know. So it became kind of like, yeah, I was making all the decisions, so then on 'Balance' all of a sudden he didn't like my decisions and it was like really weird."

VAN HALEN reunited with Roth in 2007 for a massively successful world tour, and announced in January that they were entering the studio to record the first album with Roth on the mic since 1984.