Have you ever been more hipster than Billie Eilish and listened to 80’s era Van Halen, but found the keyboards and synths in Dreams and Jump a little too much to handle?
Well, former frontman Sammy Hagar wants you to know that he’s not the one to blame.
Speaking on the ever revealing Sirius XFM Trunk Nation show,
Hagar jumped at the chance to “get my soapbox” and chat about the more commercial era of the band, claiming that “Everyone blamed me for the freakin’ keyboard playing on the ‘Van Hagar’ era, starting with [1986’s] 5150.
“That’s what Eddie did. Eddie wanted to do that. He liked playing keyboards, and he was freakin’ good at it. He wrote these beautiful songs like When It’s Love’and Why Can’t This Be Love, it’s such a cool lick…”
Hagar doubled down on his non-keyboard stance, noting that “I’m a damn guitar player!”
“Every time I would pick up — like for Finish What Ya Started‘ or something like that — when I would instigate a song, it was a guitar song, ’cause I don’t play keyboards.
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“I just went along with what we had, and if it wouldn’t have been good, I wouldn’t have gone along with it. I would have said, ‘This sucks.’ But it didn’t.”
The Van-Hagar era, which spanned 4 LP’s, saw enormous success for Van Halen, with four straight no.1 LP’s in the US and millions of record sales.
The return of the enigmatic David Lee Roth (who loves quoting his own lyrics if his Joe Rogan appearance is anything to go by) saw the shredding of Eddie return too – but it was for an all too short period of time, with Eddie’s failing health and Roth’s claim that the band is ‘finished’ effectively putting the future of Van Halen on ice.
At least we know who to blame every time someone busts out the intro for Jump….
Watch: Hagar strut his stuff with the band, keyboards and all
