In an extraordinary rant, Sammy Hagar has compared his old band Van Halen to the Mafia and has accused original lead vocalist David Lee Roth and the rest of the Van Halen family of trying to silence him.
Hagar fronted Van Halen between 1985 and 1996, which many David Lee Roth fans regard as the group’s wilderness years.
Now, with Roth back where he belongs, in the Van Halen driving seat and fronting the group on a successful tour, Hagar has been stomping around the place like something of a grizzly bear because Roth has refused to play any “Van Hagar” songs live.
Hagar has said that Diamond Dave doesn’t sing the songs because he is unable to do justice to their “quality,” but as Roth sagely put it, “This hamburger don’t need no helper.”
Like two old nasty broads still full of spit and vinegar, neither Roth nor Hagar appear willing to put down their handbags and call a truce to the vicious little cat fight the pair of ageing rockers have been engaged in for many a moon.
Some Van Halen fans, who have been mightily amused by Roth and Hagar’s perpetual feud, have compared the two egocentric eccentrics to modern day male equivalents of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
Now it would appear that Hagar has taken things one step further and seemingly compared Roth to Don Corleone and Van Halen to the Mafia. Hagar told Eddie Trunk that the hard rockers are trying to silence him.
“We sold 47 million records, whatever it was. We had all those number ones. Those are great songs – “Right Now”, “When It’s Love”, “Finish What You Started”. They need to be played for the people that supported it during the era.
“If you want to know the truth, Eddie and Alex Van Halen are trying to stop me from being to even play those songs. They’ve had attorneys and people say, ‘No, he can’t play them.’
“They will actually fight legally to try and stop me. I’m going crazy – I’m going, ‘I’m going to break these guys’ necks.’”
Hagar has stressed that Van Halen’s terror tactics won’t work on him, not even if Roth does put a horse’s head in his bed.
“I’m going to fight these guys to the end. Those are my songs. I wrote every lyric and every melody on every one of those songs.”
[Photo By Jason Merritt/Getty Images]
