Sammy Hagar has publicly condemned Alex Van Halen for leaving out the “Van Hagar” period from his memoir Brothers. Sammy Hagar termed the exclusion a “blasphemy” to Eddie Van Halen’s musical legacy, and the debate among fans of the legendary rock band has begun.
The comments came when Sammy Hagar shared an Instagram post featuring a classic 1991 shot of himself and Eddie as they prepared for the stage. This light-hearted posting turned serious fast as fans went on to begin comparing the good old David Lee Roth years and the “Van Hagar” era. Responding to a comment about the band’s legacy, Hagar defended the success of his time with Van Halen. “We went on to sell over 50 million records for [a] No. 1 album [then] sold out every building and stadium in the world for a whole decade,” he wrote.
Sammy Hagar blamed Alex for failing to recognize the band’s accomplishments while he felt he was with the group: “Alex is not doing his brother’s musical legacy justice by not acknowledging all the No. 1 albums and some great music Eddie and I wrote together,” he said, adding that credit should be given to how things evolved.
In Brothers, Alex Van Halen concludes the book before Roth left in 1985 by stating that it was the first group that had the heart of the band. “The magic was in the first years when we didn’t know what we were doing; when we were willing to try anything,” Alex told interviews later on, insisting that the group sounded altogether different when Roth quit.
Again he professed admiration for the late Eddie’s legacy, a thing he said yesterday he wanted to bury the hatchet with his nemesis, Alex. “I just want to be friends again,” he said in the interview. This debate points to the fact that the gap created among the fans and members over the storied history of Van Halen seems to persist even now.
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