During a recent interview with Brazil’s “Inside With Paulo Baron,” talked about his 2011 biography, Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock, if there were any things that he left out or any stories that he included that he later wished he hadn’t.
He said: “I forgot so many really fun little things, and every now and then I’ll wake up in the morning and have a dream and I’ll wake up and it makes me remember something in the childhood, and I think, ‘Oh, I should have put that in the book. But the f*cking book would have been this big. [Holds hands wide apart.]'”
“But more than anything, because of the untimely and tragic death of Eddie Van Halen, I apologize from the bottom of my heart for exposing his dark side to where I don’t think anyone wants to hear that now, and, unfortunately, it’s in the book,” Hagar continued. “And it’s true — it’s all true. It’s not like I have to say, ‘Oh, I was lying’ — no, no, no.
“If I wrote the book today, I would only put the good of Eddie Van Halen, because he was such a brilliant, genius guitar player and such a great friend and a great partner — until everything went wrong, like everything else. Anybody’s that’s been divorced or broke up with your girlfriend or your boyfriend, you know how it goes. Happy endings aren’t always the case in a relationship. [Eddie and I] had a happy ending — thank God — but before that, it wasn’t a happy ending of the band. But thank God we got it back together.”
When host pointed out that it’s important to expose the dark side sometimes because it’s “reality,” Sammy said: “No one knew a lot of that about Eddie, but they’d see him on stage and they would think, ‘Why is he acting like that?’ And I would say, ‘Well, you should have seen what happened backstage. Holy f*ck!’ If we’d have known he was sick then, then I would have understood and I would have been a little more, ‘Hey, Ed, come on,’ try to reel him in. But he was impossible. He was on a track of just wild. It was tough.”
“He was the sweetest guy in the world when I met him,” Hagar added. “When Eddie Van Halen walked into my dressing room in that show in Anaheim Stadium with BOSTON and BLACK SABBATH, that was one of the sweetest people, most humble human beings I’ve ever met in my life. I thought, ‘How can this guy play so badass and be that humble?’ I thought, ‘It’s impossible. He must have a fire inside of him that he’s not showing.’ And when that fire came out, it was quite the fire — a freakin’ volcano.”
Eddie died on October 6 at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Guitarist died from complications due to cancer, his son confirmed.
Eddie and Alex Van Halen formed VAN HALEN in 1974 in Pasadena, California, with David Lee Roth on lead vocals and Michael Anthony on bass. Credited with “restoring hard rock to the forefront of the music scene,” VAN HALEN was known for its energetic live shows and for the virtuosic talent of its prodigy lead-guitarist, Eddie Van Halen. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
