Despite what you may have heard, Van Halen has not reunited.
"This is less of a reunion than it is a continuation." That's the word from singer Sammy Hagar.
But whether it's a continuation or a reunion, that's not what's important. What matters is for the first time in eight years, the four men who made up Van Halen from 1984 to '96—Hagar, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen and bassist Michael Anthony—are making music, touring, and perhaps most importantly, enjoying the same creative and personal chemistry that ignited the group when Hagar replaced departed vocalist David Lee Roth.
The first fruits of the reunited—that word just sounds so much smoother than "continued" —Van Halen, have now surfaced in the form of three new tracks on a greatest-hits collection, Best Of Both Worlds, which spans both the Hagar and Roth eras in the band.
"These [new] songs came out as pure, spontaneous inspiration, and I think they speak for themselves," Hagar says. "You say 'Hey, are you guys up to par, what you were before or anything like that? Listen to the three new tracks and I think it just will give you every answer you need."
Alex Van Halen says the current tour features the band's largest stage production, while Hagar promises that the shows will be better than ever, in part because he has come to terms with singing songs from the Age of Roth.
"This set we're playing right now is better than any set we ever played before because I used to be a little sensitive to the old material. Everyone knows that," Hagar says. "And [before] we only did two or three [Roth-era songs]. And I'm not now. It's like we have a whole different outlook on everything. It's like, 'Let's make this the greatest songs that the Van Halen fans have ever heard.'"
The time before the reunion had its share of setbacks and extended gaps where the public had little idea if anything was moving forward on the Van Halen front. Hagar, who joined forces in 2002 for a co-billed solo tour with Roth, and did additional solo dates last summer (with Anthony joining him on some dates), said last summer that no one, not even Anthony, had spoken with the Van Halens recently. As far as Hagar was concerned, Van Halen simply no longer existed.
That all changed when Hagar was in California last year.
"I made the call to Al, but it was not in any business sense. It wasn't like 'Hey, let's get back together,'" Hagar says. "I happened to be in Southern California with my family vacationing at a resort, at the beach. And I was talking to somebody else, and they said 'Hey, do you ever talk to those guys and this and that.' And I'm going, 'You know, I've been saying this for a hundred years. I'm going to give Alex a call one of these days.' And then I finally did.
"And when I did, we talked for so long, it was like, 'Hey, why don't you just come on down here?'" Hagar says. "And we hung out with our families and it was just awesome. Like I said, there was no business. It was not that at all. It was about, 'Gee, I wonder what it would be like running into Ed or Al?' like if I ran into them on the street. There are two things that are going to happen. You're either going to hug and kiss and go 'It's so great to see you again' or you're going to get into a big fight. So you don't know until you go head on. And we went head on. It was like a complete love fest. It was just, 'Wow, I really miss this friendship.'"
Soon after that Hagar called Eddie and arranged to get together with the guitarist, a visit that quickly led to a jam session at Eddie's home studio. At that point, it was obvious Van Halen would again be a band.
"We jammed for like five or six hours until my voice was completely worn out, "Hagar said. "It was the four of us getting together that inspires everything. The chemistry between the four of us is very, very special, and even as long as we did it, you kind of start taking it for granted. Then you come back and you know, you forget about it and you walk in and you go, 'Oh wow, this is exactly like it always was.'"
Hagar and Alex both say that any lingering issues from Hagar's split with Van Halen were swept aside once the band members got together, and any hard feelings are completely in the past.
"The whole point of being older and time going by and water going under the bridge, whatever it is, you kind of forget even what happened or why you were mad to begin with or what all you said," Hagar says. "We were together for a long time, you know, 11 years.
"So when you spend that much time with somebody, you really do have a deep friendship," he says. "And all of a sudden you realize, after time, 'Hey, forget it.' We decided rather than go to therapy like some of these other bands, and dig up the dirt, we said, 'No, no, here's what we're going to do. We're going to pretend like it never happened. We're going to like rise above it.' And that's really what we did."