Van Halen icon, Sammy Hagar was interviewed on a new edition of Lance Armstrong’s show, The Forward Podcast. Here, the former Van Halen frontman shares a story about how one of the weirder conspiracies theories Van Halen founder, Eddie Van Halen had in regards to his tongue cancer. Alternative Nation transcribed Hagar and Armstong’s comments.
Armstrong: Let’s talk about Van Halen.
Hagar: Yeah, crazy fuckers.
Armstrong: You know, I actually never met him in person but when Eddie Van Halen was diagnosed, and for the listener or the viewer who doesn’t remember this [I’ll tell the story]. Eddie was diagnosed with tongue cancer.
Hagar: Yeah.
Armstrong: They wanted to cut off, either way it works is, they’ll cut off a little bit of your tongue and if they don’t get it they’ll go cut off more. Pretty soon, you know, they’ll take almost all of it. So he called me. It was interesting, he had all these theories about how he got tongue cancer.
[Laughter]
Armstrong: Did he every pass along these theories?
Hagar: Guitar pick and others, yeah.
Armstrong: He said:
“Lance, I always played with a copper guitar pick”
Armstrong: Or some kind of metal guitar pick.
“And parts of my solos I would put in my mouth and I’m just sure because of the electricity of the guitar through my body to that pick that was in my mouth, that’s why I got it.”
Armstrong: I’m like:
“Well, I’m not a doctor but I don’t know if that’s right.”
Hagar: There’s cigarettes, what about those cigarettes.
Armstrong: It was just, and then he had all these other little funny things he would talk about. You know, with Valerie and whatnot but anyways, he was interesting and quirky. Eddie was a quirky dude, we probably talked four or five times and that was it.
