Sammy Hagar is looking forward to taking his Best of All Worlds tour back on the road next month — and showing fans how much it’s grown since he launched it two summers ago.
Since those initial 2024 dates in North America and Japan, Hagar has taken the show through a couple of Las Vegas residences in Dolby Live at Park MGM, and has made a few changes — Kenny Aronoff replacing Jason Bonham on drums last year and Nathan Mercado (aka Spider Cherry) taking over keyboards from Rai Thistlethwayte (now with Toto) and, briefly, Greg Phillinganes.
“He’s young and he’s good-looking — actually he’s too good-looking,” Hagar says of Mercado. “I won’t go near him; he’ll start calling me pops — ‘Hey, pops, do you mind if I…'” (laughs)
Meanwhile, the troupe — which still includes Joe Satriani on guitar and Van Halen co-founder Michael Anthony on bass — has also expanded the repertoire; in Vegas, Hagar and company brought Van Halen’s “Mine All Mine” and Chickenfoot’s “Soap on a Rope” back on stage for the first time in 10 and eight years, respectively.
“The band is firing on all cylinders,” the Red Rocker tells UCR via Zoom from his part-time home in Maui. “The first tour, we went out and we pretty much did a show, the same show every night — we always ad lib, but pretty much the same sit list. But then we went to Vegas for the residency and we stepped it up.
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“I got tired of seeing these Internet snipers saying, ‘Oh, are you gonna play the same set list every night again?’ I’m going, ‘We never play the f***in’ same set list…but I don’t like to get into it with them. So I said, ‘We’re going to blow their mind and open with different songs every night, and we’re gonna exchange five to seven songs every night. When we did that, it was so much fun; it was hit and miss, some nights were better than the others, but it was fun.”
Hagar says the latest residency during March allowed the group to hone in on what it wanted to put on the road this summer, but he predicts that “we’re gonna switch a couple songs out every now and then.” What’s guaranteed, however, is that every show will be dominated by the Van Halen repertoire, which was the inspiration for the concept in the first place.
“If Eddie was here, I wouldn’t be doing this,” Hagar explains. “Before Eddie died (in 2020), I would only play about five Van Halen songs in my two-hour show. I just felt like, ‘I’ll save that. Maybe there’ll be a Van Halen reunion’ or something like that. But then when Eddie passed and Alex sold his drums, Mike and I looked at each other and went, ‘Um, I guess it’s up to us,’ ’cause you can’t let this music die. There are people who grew up on this music, and to think of just deserting them and saying, ‘Nope, Eddie died, that’s it. You’re never gonna hear this music again,’ that doesn’t sound fair to me. I can still sing, Michael can still play, Joe Satriani can play f***in’ Eddie stuff really well.
“I think carrying on this legacy is so important now, because there really isn’t anybody else that can do it. You’ve got the tribute bands and stuff, but to have guys like Michael Anthony and myself, who can sing and hit every note and play this stuff … with a great band, and people want to see it, why wouldn’t we do that?”
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Hagar is, of course, well aware that Alex Van Halen doesn’t seem feel that way, but he’s ceased to care.
“Alex is making plenty of money off us being out there, selling records and keeping the catalog alive,” he notes. “They leave our show and they’re going, ‘Oh, man, I’m gonna go home and listen to 5150!’ I just don’t think Alex has recovered from his brother’s death. We don’t talk; I’ve reached out. I’ve tried. I’ve done all I could. It’s very strange. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. Alex is going to be Alex. He’s going to act like Dave (Lee Roth) and I were never in the band. He’s gonna act like they never needed a singer — it’s him and Ed that did everything, I guess. I guess now that Ed’s gone, he just thinks, ‘I’m Van Halen now. I control it. No one tells me what to do,’ blah, blah, blah. He’s not trying to share things.
“People want to know, ‘Why isn’t Alex out there playing with you guys?’ Well, he doesn’t want to play, I guess. As far as his blessings, I have no idea, and it doesn’t matter. I wrote every one of those songs with his brother, or … Dave and Eddie wrote those (other) songs. I have just as much right to sing those songs as anybody on this planet. They’re my songs, my melodies, partly my music, even. To not acknowledge that is kind of crazy. But we love playing ’em and we play ’em great, and the fans love to hear them. That’s good enough.”
This summer’s Best of All Worlds U.S. tour is a quick run — eight shows over two weeks, starting June 13 in the longtime Hagar hotbed of St. Louis. Rick Springfield, who had Top 10 hit in 1981 with the Hagar-written “I’ve Done Everything For You,” is opening all of the dates. Hagar and company then head overseas for dates in the U.K. before another Las Vegas residency run during September.
Right Now
Hagar released a live album, The Residency, last October from the first Vegas stand. He and Satriani also penned a new song, “Encore, Thank You and Good Night,” inspired by a dream Hagar had about Eddie Van Halen, as a stand-alone single the previous April. And he’s open to the prospect of more new songs as well.
“I’ve been writing lately, over here in Maui, because I’m relaxed,” Hagar says. “I don’t have a lot to do, so I pick up my guitar and goof around and dig on the ocean and…it’s a very inspiring environment here, so I’m kind of inspired lyrically, and I`ve been writing some pretty good songs, about three or four of them so far.
“I’m not trying to write an album. The only way I will write now is if a song comes to me, and there ‘a a reason why — like, ‘Oh, I have to write about this’ or ‘I have to use this piece of music, it’s too good. I’m a good enough artist, musician, songwriter that I can pick up a guitar and just write aa song, but I don’t want to make up songs any more. At my age now, I want everything I do to be…timeless. That’s the only kind of song I want to write now. If I record it, I want it to be valid in 10 years.
“Timeless songs have to be about an era that people can say, ‘Oh, that was about…’ ‘I Can’t Drive 55,’ believe it or not, that was a very inspired song. I wrote about an era that happened; they changed the speed limit, and I wrote about it so, that kinda gives it a longevity for kind of a corny song — I’m not saying it’s corny, but it doesn’t have the deep meaning like ‘Father Time’ or Right Now’ or ‘Give to Live’ do. Those are the kinds of songs I want to write, so I’m waiting or 12 of ’em, and then I’ll say, ‘OK, let’s make a record.'”
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Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening
