SAMMY HAGAR And EDDIE VAN HALEN Collaborate On New Song — In SAMMY's Dream

Sammy Hagar has revealed to Ultimate Classic Rock that he collaborated with Eddie Van Halen on a new song in a recent dream.

"I shouldn't be hyping it now," Hagar said. "Nobody knows this but [my CIRCLE bandmates] Michael Anthony, Jason [Bonham] and Vic [Johnson]. About two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie came. We were in a room like this, [with] a bunch of people around. It was just like he'd been gone. It was not like he was passed, but he had just been out of my life and we hadn't seen each other for a while. He's going, 'Man, let's write some music!' I said, 'Yeah, fuck it, man. Here, let's go!' [We] went over into a corner, in this room. He had a guitar and he played me this thing. It was like this lick — [just like] the last lick that Eddie Van Halen showed me, when I went back for the [2004] reunion tour and when he was a mess. I said, 'Eddie, show me your newest shit,' because every time I'd be around him I'd say, 'Show me your newest shit.' He'd say, 'Oh, check this out!'"

According to Sammy, Eddie "did this harmonic thing" in the dream "and he slid it up to a chord, like a slide guitar. We wrote a song with that lick. I remembered it. I got up in the morning and I wrote the song. It's called 'Thank You'. I used the fuckin' lick that he showed me in the song. I told Jason, 'I just really don't know what to say lyrically.' I've got goosebumps, head to toe, [talking about it]. So I wrote it [about that experience], and we'll do that song someday."

Hagar added that when "Thank You" does eventually see the light of day, Eddie Van Halen will be credited as a co-writer.

"Now, that's going to be an Eddie-influenced song, to the point that I'm going to co-write it with him," he explained. "I'm going to give him credit and then maybe we'll donate the money to charity, whatever. You see, I feel so embarrassed about it because everyone's going to say, 'Oh, look at Sammy trying to capitalize on Eddie.' No, I'm not. You don't understand. This was a real fuckin' dream, and I told you exactly what happened in it."

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

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 Van Halen and Michael Anthony 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 his autobiography, "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.

Sammy Hagar photo credit: Leah Steiger