Sammy Hagar Reflects On End With Van Halen

K. Wiggins | 10-09-2019

Sammy Hagar recently discussed what it was like at the end of his time with Van Halen and how much better he likes his current situation with The Circle.

He was asked by Clay Marshall for an OC Weekly interview what the dynamics in The Circle are different than with Van Halen. He responded, "Being in a band is a full-time job. It's just like a marriage, it really is. It's even worse, because in a marriage, you can go to work and come back home, but in a band, you go to work with your partners and try to create together. It's so deep. It's really hard to say, but if you don't get along, it's stressful, and it makes the work harder.

"Van Halen, we got along great for so many years - it's just was toward the end where it became like, 'I want black.' 'No, I want white.' 'Okay, I'll go for white now.' 'No, I think I want black now just because you want white.' It was so much of that that it was really stressing me out. I didn't realize it at the time - I just thought, 'It's just another band. This is what bands do.'

After I left Van Halen, I said, 'I'll never play with people that I don't really love to play with again - that I don't like personally. If you're not getting along personally, I'm not going to play music with those kind of people, even if I have to take lesser musicians.'

"The Wabo years was all great - I just started having fun and created a lifestyle around my music that really made me happy. I love living the hell out of life. Get the most that you can. My philosophy is, 'Live each day like it's your first and live each night like it's your last, if you can, without hurting yourself.'

"You've got to have a little discipline to live that way, which I do. But I'm really so happy with The Circle. Now I have a band that the musicianship is like Van Halen - it's on that level - and we like to do the same things. We don't have to go out and play 150 shows a year. We just play as many as we want. It's just a perfect life."