Sammy Hagar was recently interviewed by SiriusXM’s Jose Mangin in the limo which was gifted to Jose from the estates of Pantera founders “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott and Vinnie Paul Abbott. Jose has worked hard to restore the car and plans to take it all across the country and have epic hangs and chats with all of his buddies to recall his dear friends. Sammy Hagar also revealed the time when Freddie Mercury got sick.
Sammy Hagar reveals being reached out to join Pantera
In an interview clip that was posted on December 8, which marked the 17th anniversary of Dimebag’s death, Sammy recalled a time when he was supposedly approached by Pantera’s then-manager about joining the band, apparently as the replacement for Philip Anselmo. The manager told the band that Hagar had turned down the offer.
“How about if I tell you something crazy. I don’t believe it; I don’t believe it’s true. But Pantera had a manager. This was before I actually became friends with Vinnie. And [the manager] said Pantera , that he said, want me to be the lead singer of the band. And he asked me, ‘Would you be interested?’ And I said, ‘No, not after [my split with] Van Halen [in 1996]. I’m not gonna join another band, especially covering for somebody else,’ and this and that. And I brought it up to Vinnie one time. He didn’t remember it. But I don’t know if there’s any truth to that.”
Back in 2015, in a Q&A session at the DFW Acura Performance Showroom in Dallas, Texas, Vinnie Paul said that Van Halen was “a huge influence” on him when he first started playing drums. “Eddie and Alex [Van Halen] inspired me and my brother [Dimebag] so much,” he said. “It was really just unbelievable the parallels that we had between ourselves.”
