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Earlier this year, Sammy Hagar released the single “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight,” claiming that the ghost of Eddie Van Halen presented him the song in a dream.
Never one to let his fellow Van Halen frontman off the hook, David Lee Roth recalled of his own “encounter” with Eddie’s ghost in a mocking bit of between-song banter during a recent gig.
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Before launching into Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away” during the August 13th show in New Hampshire, DLR stopped to address the crowd at Hagar’s expense.
“One of my esteemed colleagues — he’s a contemporary, he’s got a great voice, he’s got a great catalog,” Roth said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “You all know Sammy Hagar, right? He’s got a great voice. And Sammy, aloud, he described to the media about six weeks ago that the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited him and graced him with a song that he memorized and then went home and recorded. It’s on the Internet.”
He continued: “I don’t know what the odds are, but last night the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited me at the fucking hotel room. I was watching the weather report and he came in and he was laughing. His fucking ghost was laughing. I said, ‘What did you do now?’ He said, ‘Dave, Dave…’ Actually, you want me to do his accent? [Adopts Eddie’s accent] ‘Hey, Dave.’ He said, ‘Dave, you know that song I gave Hagar?’ I said, ‘What now?’ He said, ‘It’s actually [Iron Butterfly’s] ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ backwards. Don’t fucking tell him.’ This all stays in this room, right? I laughed. We shared a ghost cigarette, a ghost Marlboro. Not one of those pussy-ass white ones, but the [Marlboro Reds]. And I hugged my brother Ed, and I said, ‘Man, do I fucking miss you.’ And he said, ‘I miss you too, Dave.’ He said, ‘But you know what? You should still go to hell.’ And I said, ‘Save me a seat.'”
Hagar’s been standing by the literal Eddie ghostwriting claims since 2022, when he spoke to Ultimate Classic Rock about a new song he was working on.
“About two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie [Van Halen] came,” Hagar said. “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!'”
Meanwhile, David Lee Roth’s summer tour rolls on with a stop in Gary, Indiana, on Monday (August 18th). Five gigs remain after that, with a final date on September 14th in Napa, California. Get tickets here.
Watch footage of Roth mocking Hagar’s Eddie Van Halen ghost story below.
English (US) · 