Eddie Van Halen Helped Write My New Song in a Dream

Sammy Hagar is about to release a song that features a guitar lick he says Eddie Van Halen showed him in a dream.

“Encore, Thank You, Goodnight” will be released on Friday, April 25. It finds Hagar joined by three-quarters of his Best of All Worlds band: Guitarist Joe Satriani, bassist and fellow Van Halen alumni Michael Anthony and drummer Kenny Aronoff.

Hagar revealed the origins of the song to UCR nearly three years ago, in an August 2022 interview. “About two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie came,” he explained. “He’s going, ‘Man, let’s write some music!’ I said, ‘Yeah, fuck it, man. Here, let’s go!'”

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In the dream, “[Eddie] did this harmonic thing and he slid it up to a chord, like a slide guitar. We wrote a song with that lick,” Hagar continued. “I remembered it. I got up in the morning and I wrote the song. I used the fuckin’ lick that he showed me in the song.”

Hagar served for Van Halen’s lead singer for over a decade, fronting the band for four chart-topping albums: 1986’s 5150, 1988’s OU812, 1991’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and 1995’s Balance.

He and the band broke up in a highly acrimonious manner in 1996, and their 2004 reunion tour ended even more disastrously. But shortly before Eddie’s 2020 death, he and Hagar made peace, and last summer the singer mounted the Best of All Worlds tour to pay tribute to his time in Van Halen.

Two years later, Hagar had the dream that inspired the new “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight” single. “This song is my final bow to that part of my life,” he explains in a press release. “It’s not meant to be anything more than a thank-you – with love, with respect, and with one hell of a guitar solo.” 

He also shared that Satriani’s contribution to the track brought a unique emotional energy. “Joe was the perfect partner to help me shape the sound – he brought in that big, emotional, guitar-driven energy that feels like Eddie’s spirit but is entirely of Joe’s creation.”

Hagar and his bandmates have a busy April coming up. On Sunday April 27th they’ll headline the Palamino stage at Stagecoach festival, and three days later they launch their Best of All Worlds Las Vegas residency at Dolby Live, Park MGM.