Sammy Hagar caught up with Billboard's Tetris Kelly at Stagecoach 2025.
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00:00So, encore, thank you, good night.
00:02That kind of says it all, don't it?
00:04Doesn't it?
00:05So tell me about that song and the inspiration.
00:07It came out of a dream.
00:09About a year after Eddie Van Halen passed,
00:11I dreamt that he came to me in a dream.
00:14And it wasn't like he had died or anything.
00:16Like we were just seeing each other again.
00:18And it was so joyful and wonderful.
00:20And, you know, he's saying,
00:22let's write a new song, man.
00:23You know, I miss you so much.
00:25And we started writing this song in the dream.
00:27And I mean, I dream about people that pass all the time.
00:30I dream about Elvis Presley.
00:31I'm hanging out with John Lennon, Jimmy, all of them.
00:33All right.
00:34I'm really, I'm a big dreamer.
00:36And so all of a sudden when you,
00:38when I'm having a dream about someone that's passed,
00:40when you acknowledge that,
00:42the second I go, oh, wait a minute, Eddie's dead.
00:45Boom, the dream's over like that.
00:47And we were right.
00:48I was right in the middle of singing.
00:50So when I woke up, I remembered what I was singing.
00:53And this is two years ago.
00:56Wow.
00:57It was a year after he died, you know.
00:58So it's been almost three years since.
00:59But anyway, long story short.
01:01So I started trying to play what he was kind of playing.
01:04And I remembered my melody.
01:05And I just kind of made up some stuff.
01:07And I remember this kind of a riff that he used,
01:09that Eddie showed me one time, but it wasn't,
01:11we never wrote a song with it.
01:12It was just like this harmony goes ching, ching, ching.
01:15It has a nice sound to it.
01:17It rings out.
01:18So I don't know.
01:19I got with Joe Satriani.
01:20I finally, I just said, you know, I got to do this.
01:22And I wrote the lyrics about the dream.
01:24Wow.
01:25I mean, you say, what's it about?
01:26It's about the dream.
01:27It's about the dream.
01:28And then, I mean, you're going to premiere the video, right?
01:30Yeah, after we finished our show tonight,
01:31we're going to play it on the screen.
01:34And that's really cool.
01:35I mean, to get your fans' reaction immediately.
01:37Are you excited for that?
01:38Oh, I'm totally excited about this whole thing.
01:39You know, we're not going to play the song tonight.
01:41We're going to add it to the residency in Vegas,
01:43which starts Wednesday at Park MGM.
01:46But the reason I'm not going to play it,
01:48because all these people have been here all weekend,
01:50and the song just came out.
01:51So they ain't heard it.
01:52You know, they've been listening to the stuff they would come here to see.
01:55Yeah, they're going to come excited to hear the hits.
01:56So, yeah, I want them to, when they hear it,
01:58I want them to have already heard it so that they go,
02:00oh, great, you know.
02:01So, anyway, but that's it.
02:02And we only got an hour, anyway.
02:03You don't want to debut a new song.
02:05Only an hour.
02:06That's a long time to be on the stage rocking it out.
02:08600 songs I've written in my life,
02:10and you try to squeeze only 12 or 13 of them into one night.
02:13Well, you don't have to squeeze a lot of songs into this Vegas residency,
02:15so let's talk about that.
02:16How is it to prepare that?
02:17And what made you want to go to Vegas?
02:19So I don't have to go on the road.
02:21You know, honestly, Rick Nelson from Cheap Trick,
02:29I heard him say one time, he goes,
02:31I play music for free.
02:33I charge to go on the road.
02:35And I'm telling you, that's a good, that's a damn good thing.
02:39That's the way we all feel.
02:40I don't like getting in a hotel room and sitting around
02:43like a prisoner in a town where you're playing,
02:45and you just got to get there, and you hurry up,
02:47eating bad food because you don't have time,
02:49sleeping in a bad bed sometimes,
02:51you're traveling, traveling, trying to go out on stage
02:53to do a great show.
02:54You know, you wake up in Vegas in a beautiful hotel suite
02:56and eating room service of really great food.
02:59Yeah, and then go do a great show.
03:01And then, so that's what I'm hoping I can dig this.
03:04And if I can dig it, I can continue with my career.
03:07Love that.
03:08And then you've had a great career.
03:09You've had a lot of big moments.
03:10Like, I was thinking about Willie Nelson
03:11and performing with him.
03:12What's a bucket list thing that you haven't done yet
03:14that you think you'd want to check off?
03:16Right now?
03:17Yeah.
03:18Play stagecoach and kill him.
03:21There you go.
03:22Kick ass.
03:23That's the bucket list.
03:24That's my bucket list.
03:25You're going to do it tonight, man.
03:26The first time we've played this venue.
03:27So, yeah.
03:28I'm really looking forward to it.
03:29I'm glad to see the show, man.
03:30Thank you so much for hanging out with us.