Sammy Hagar to release new single that he co-wrote with the late Eddie Van Halen in a dream
The track is entitled Thank You.
Image: Astrida Valigorsky / Getty
Sammy Hagar has announced that he has ‘co-written’ a song with late guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, who supposedly came to him in a dream to collaborate on a new track.
- READ MORE: Sammy Hagar On Rumoured Van Halen Tribute Event: “It’s Really Not Van Halen Without Eddie.”
Speaking as part of an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock yesterday (August 24), guitarist and ex-Van Halen vocalist Sammy Hagar has said that he is set to release a brand new single later this year – a track supposedly written with Eddie Van Halen in a dream.
“I shouldn’t be hyping it now [but] about two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie came,” he explains. “We were in a room like this, a bunch of people around. […] He’s going, ‘Man, let’s write some music!’ I said, ‘Yeah, fuck it, man. Here, let’s go!’ [So we] went over into a corner, in this room. He had a guitar and he played me this thing. It was like this lick — [it was similar to] the last lick that Eddie Van Halen showed me when I went back for the [2004] reunion tour.”
Set to be entitled Thank You, Hagar describes how he memorised the riffs that the legendary guitarist played to him in his dream and immediately wrote them down once he awoke, developing the event into a new track.
“He did this harmonic thing and he slid it up to a chord, like a slide guitar. We wrote a song with that lick,” he recalls. “I remembered it. I got up in the morning and I wrote the song. I’ve got goosebumps, head to toe, [just talking about it].”
Although no official release date has been announced for the upcoming single yet, Hagar is insistent that, when released, Thank You will list Eddie Van Halen as a co-writer and that a chunk of the profits made will be given to charity.
“I’m going to give him credit and then maybe we’ll donate the money to charity,” he says. “I feel so embarrassed about it because everyone’s going to say, ‘Oh, look at Sammy trying to capitalize on Eddie.’ No, I’m not. You don’t understand. This was a real fuckin’ dream!”
Find the full interview on Ultimate Classic Rock.