Metal Anarchy

As previously reported, Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen recently made headlines after calling his former bandmate Sammy Hagar “a complete idiot.” The singer then responded, calling the comment “unnecessary.” Now, during a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk,” Hagar further addressed the situation, while also criticizing the way Alex has handled the band’s legacy.

Hagar said the following:

“I don’t know what Alex’s problem is. If I wanted to get into a tug-of-war again, but there’s so much clickbait going around now, it turns on you every time. And I’m always honest — I tell the truth. And I’d never lied in my book [Hagar’s autobiography ‘Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock’, which was released in 2011]. None of those were lies. Those are all truth. All those things happened, whether or not anyone’s happy about some of the stuff that they did that, that I’d brought up to the people in the book.”

He continued when asked if the book was the issue:

“I don’t know. This is what I’m saying, this is what I was getting to, is that my only question is… I wanna call Alex out and say, dude, we all know you act like there was never a Sammy Hagar. You act like there was never a VAN HAGAR. We sold 40-something million records, four No. 1 albums, and you just scratch that off of your brother’s [Eddie Van Halen] legacy, saying, ‘No, that never happened.’ You don’t even wanna acknowledge it. That’s deep. That’s weird. That’s not right for Eddie, for me, for Mike [Anthony], for anybody. All the things he does, it’s, like, why? So I’m asking Alex, like, why? Come clean. What’s your problem? Just come out and say it. Is it the book? Say it. If it’s Cabo Wabo, say it. Maybe if I knew what the problem was, I could fix it. But right now he just acts like there’s not a problem. It just never happened. It’s almost like… You remember when Wolfie [Wolfgang Van Halen] joined the band, Alex took all the old catalog, all the records, all the photos that were on their web site, and Photoshopped Wolfie in and took Mikey out. He did that for about two weeks, and then the people gave him so much shit, he fixed it. This is as stupid as that, to me. It’s, like, dude, don’t pretend like something never happened.”

He added:

“Something’s wrong. Like I said, it’s deeper. It shouldn’t be, that’s all. It just shouldn’t be. Like, just tell me why. So this is my thing… At least we can [try to] dig down and find out the real reason. And Alex needs to say it. Not from the fans. The fans got all kinds of reasons. Every time I get into that… It’s awesome, though. A lot of people say the right thing, a lot of people do know that it’s not right. But I’m not trying to cause a conflict; I’m trying to fix something. Whether Alex wants to play drums ever again is his business, whether he wants to just keep releasing all this old stuff with these photographs and all this stuff and charging people for old pictures that you can find on the Internet and stuff, even if they’re just his. It’s, like, he should be putting them out there for free. To me, he’s doing a lot of stuff wrong for the legacy of VAN HALEN, and the one that is my business is I just wanna know why. Just come clean. Tell the people. Tell me, make a public statement why, and then we can figure out whether you’re right or wrong, and whether we can fix it or not. And if we can’t fix it, then just go about my business. It’s all good. It’s not changing my life. And it doesn’t really even bother me anymore, ’cause I think the fans really know it’s wrong. They’re starting to… I see a lot of negative stuff on what he’s doing.”

He went on to say it’s too late to reconcile:

“Oh, I’ve given up. I don’t really care anymore. If he doesn’t wanna do it — he’s the one that has a problem. I don’t have a problem with it. I go out. I’m capable of singing all those songs, and I do it, and Mikey’s with me, and we got a great band. I mean, you can’t put a better version of VAN HALEN together than what we got, other than having Alex play drums, and we know that’s not gonna happen. So when I give up on that, that’s when I just say, ‘No, I’m just gonna go about my business, carry on as long as I can, carry on with the songs I’ve written.’ These are songs I wrote with Eddie. Eddie and I wrote these songs.”

[via Blabbermouth]