Sammy Hagar says Eddie Van Halen came to him in a dream to help write new song

Sammy Hagar has said that Eddie Van Halen came to him in a dream and helped him to write a song.

• READ MORE: Eddie Van Halen, 1955 – 2020: a colossus who turned guitar solos into a firework display

Hagar’s new track ‘Encore, Thank You, Goodnight’ is due for release this Friday (April 25), and he’s shared that it includes a guitar lick that his former Van Halen bandmate showed him in a dream.

The musician first spoke about the song’s origins in a 2022 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock. “About two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie came,” he said at the time. “He’s going, ‘Man, let’s write some music!’ I said, ‘Yeah, fuck it, man. Here, let’s go!’”

He went on to explain that in the dream, “[Eddie] did this harmonic thing and he slid it up to a chord, like a slide guitar. We wrote a song with that lick,” Hagar continued. “I remembered it. I got up in the morning and I wrote the song. I used the fuckin’ lick that he showed me in the song.”

Hagar served as Van Halen‘s vocalist and guitarist during two stints (1985–1996, 2003–2005). The band broke up in 1996, and the subsequent 2004 reunion tour ended with the members on rocky terms.

Eddie passed away in 2020 at the age of 65 following a battle with cancer, and Hagar later revealed the two had patched up their relationship before his death. He went on to say that dealing with his loss would have been “way too much” for him to process had the two not settled their long-standing feud beforehand.

However, in 2022 he shared that he doesn’t talk to Eddie’s brother Alex Van Halen, and earlier this year, Hagar hit out at Alex for skipping the “Van Hagar” era of Van Halen in his recent memoir, Brothers.

Released in October, Brothers chronicles the famed Californian band’s first 12 years, ending before the departure of vocalist David Lee Roth. The memoir also omits Hagar’s time with the band, the temporary line-up with Gary Cherone and their eventual reunion with Roth.

Hagar responded to the memoir on Instagram, writing: “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 — not Alex — but Eddie and I wrote together. To not acknowledge [those] 10 years of music is blasphemy to his brother’s musicianship, songwriting and legacy.”

In other news, Hagar recently announced a Las Vegas residency after $1million of his and Guy Fieri’s tequila was hijacked in a heist.

Elsewhere, he’ll appear at Black Sabbath‘s final-ever live show, set to take place on July 5.  The event will see the band’s most iconic line-up – comprising frontman Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward – play live together for the first time in two decades.

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