Van Halen icon, Sammy Hagar was interviewed on a new podcast. Here, the former Van Halen frontman shares an alleged story about one of the more bizarre drug meltdowns that Van Halen founder, Eddie Van Halen had on a plane during the band’s 2004 reunion tour. Eddie Van Halen is now clean and doing very well. Alternative Nation transcribed Hagar’s comments.
Hagar: Yeah, Eddie was rough in that era, that period, that was 2004 when he did that reunion? Eddie just had the cancer operation, just had a doctor that was tightening him up pretty good with a lot of interesting things. As far as I’m concerned, that’s when him and I, I couldn’t be around a guy like this.
Host: Way out of control.
Hagar: Way too out there, and I talked about it in my book and I swore I never do it again because it’s almost like, you know, the boys club. I threw him under the bus but I threw myself under with him. I didn’t say:
“Hey, he was doing cocaine, we were doing cocaine”
Hagar: He wasn’t f**king girls, we were f**king girls. So, I went under the bus with him but he was so gone during that thing that he did the craziest I’ve ever seen anyone do in my entire life. I probably shouldn’t of thrown him under so far because he’ll probably never speak to me again. I would love to be friends with him because that’s all I care about in my life is not taking an enemy to my grave or them not taking me as an enemy to their grave. That means a lot to me. So, I’ve tried to reach out a few times but he’s, you know, he’s okay now. I think he’s okay physically and I know he’s not whacked out the way he was. Eddie was drinking a fucking case of Smoking Loon red wine a day out of the bottle. All his teeth were gone because he had all the radiation and he had to take all the fillings and everything out. Eddie had about four teeth hanging in there, they were black and he wore a big overcoat filled with drugs and a couple of bottles [of wine] just to walk to the hotel room to the car.
Hagar continued:
Hagar: You know, he was just crazy. He was turning over tables, he was fucking kicking windshields out of every car we got in. We got in a G5 at forty-five thousand feet and he’s got a red wine bottle, empty. A rented G5 and bangin’ the fuckin’ window with the bottle, blasting red wine all over the nice white suits because he was so angry that everybody was so down on him because he couldn’t play since he was so wasted all the time. It was just horrible, I just hated to see him like that and I never spoke to him since then.
