Sammy Hagar Changes His Tune About Van Halen Reunion

(hennemusic) Just four months after saying he believed a reunion tour with Van Halen was "inevitable", Sammy Hagar now claims he's given up on the idea because his former bandmates failed to wish him a happy birthday this year as he recently reached the milestone of 70.

"People say, 'What's going on with Van Halen?' Okay, absolutely nothing," Hager told host Eddie Trunk during an appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation" (audio below). "I have no idea. I haven't heard from the guys. To me, they made a real strong statement by not wishing me a happy birthday for my seventieth, especially amongst the fact that so many people have died. I mean, a week before that Tom Petty died. Tom Petty's birthday was the next Thursday after mine, and he was still a young man, as far as I'm concerned.

"With all them people dying, if somebody turns seventy, that's a monumental thing," the Red Rocker continued. "It's, like, you would think if they ever wanted to be friends, it would be so easy. And even if they didn't wanna be friends, it's just something that would be the right thing to do."

Hagar has not had any real contact with his former group since a 2004 reunion tour ended poorly, outside of a Happy Birthday tweet from Eddie Van Halen in 2016.

The singer's on-again/off-again interest in, and passive-aggressive attempts to, rejoin the group has sent mixed messages to both the band and fans ever since his original departure in 1996, but things appeared to be settled somewhat last year when Hagar delivered what is believed to be his first ever public apology to Van Halen after two decades of bashing them in media interviews. Read more and stream the full interview here.

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