Sammy Hagar has answered Alex Van Halen calling him “a complete idiot,” and his response isn’t a counter-insult — it’s a request. Speaking to Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation, Hagar asked the drummer to come clean and say publicly what the problem actually is, after 25 years of silence. He also accused Alex of damaging Van Halen’s legacy, pointed out that the Van Hagar era sold more than forty million records and produced four consecutive American number one albums, and raised an incident involving the band’s own photo archive that almost nobody has mentioned.
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What Hagar actually said
The first thing worth noting is the tone. Given what he was responding to, Hagar is remarkably measured.
He opens by declining the fight: he doesn’t know what Alex’s problem is, and if he wanted to get into a tug-of-war again there’s so much clickbait going around now that it turns on you every time.
On the book — 2011’s Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock, which most people assume is the cause of all this — he doesn’t retreat an inch. He says he’s always honest, that he never lied in it, that none of it was lies, and that all of those things happened whether or not the people involved are happy about it.
Then he makes the actual charge, and this is the paragraph that gives the story its headline.
Hagar says Alex acts as though there was never a Sammy Hagar. As though there was never a Van Hagar. His words: they sold forty-something million records and four number one albums, and Alex has scratched that off his own brother’s legacy by saying it never happened. That he won’t even acknowledge it.
His verdict on that: that’s deep, that’s weird, and it’s not right for Eddie, for him, for Mike Anthony, or for anybody.
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What he’s asking for
The part most coverage is going to skip is that Hagar isn’t demanding an apology. He’s asking a question.
His words, roughly: he wants to call Alex out and ask him why. Come clean. What’s the problem? Just say it. Is it the book? Say it. If it’s Cabo Wabo, say it. Because maybe if he knew what the problem actually was, he could fix it.
And the frustration underneath: right now Alex just acts like there isn’t a problem. Like it never happened.
That’s a specific and fairly reasonable request from a man who has been asking the same question for a quarter of a century. He’s previously put it to former Van Halen manager Irving Azoff and got nowhere.
The Photoshop story, which is the thing nobody’s talking about
Here’s the part of Hagar’s answer that deserves considerably more attention than it’s getting.
Making his case that Alex has a habit of editing history, Hagar brought up something from when Wolfgang Van Halen joined the band in 2006.
He says Alex took the entire back catalogue — all the records, all the photos on the band’s website — and had Wolfgang Photoshopped in and Michael Anthony taken out.
According to Hagar, that stayed up for around two weeks, until the reaction from fans was severe enough that it got reversed.
His point in raising it: this is as stupid as that. Don’t pretend like something never happened.
Alex has never publicly addressed that claim, and nobody has asked him to. But it’s the single most concrete example in Hagar’s entire argument — not an interpretation of a book or a grievance about a tour, but an alleged attempt to remove a former member from the band’s own visual record. If it happened as described, it makes everything else Hagar says about the legacy considerably harder to dismiss.
It also reframes what this feud is actually about. Not a falling-out between two men. A question about who gets to decide what Van Halen was.
And the archival releases
Hagar’s second complaint is about what Alex has been doing since Eddie’s death in October 2020.
He takes issue with the steady stream of archival material — old photographs, old artefacts — and specifically with charging people for it. His argument: these are pictures you can find on the internet anyway, and even if they’re his, he should be putting them out for free.
That’s the sentence the headline comes from. In Hagar’s view, all of it adds up to doing a lot of things wrong for the legacy of Van Halen.
He’s careful to separate what is and isn’t his business, though. Whether Alex ever wants to play drums again is Alex’s business. Whether he wants to keep selling old photographs is Alex’s business. The one part Hagar claims as his own business is the question of why.
“Oh, I’ve given up”
And then the exchange that’s the real news here.
Trunk asked whether it matters to Hagar to make peace with Alex while they’re both still alive, or whether he’s given up on it.
His answer: “Oh, I’ve given up. I don’t really care anymore.”
His reasoning is that Alex is the one with the problem, not him. He goes out, he’s capable of singing all those songs, he does it, Mike Anthony is with him, and they have a great band. His line: you couldn’t put a better version of Van Halen together than what they’ve got — other than having Alex play drums, and everybody knows that isn’t going to happen.
So he carries on with the songs he wrote.
And that’s the note he keeps returning to, which is the one thing in all of this nobody disputes: these are songs he wrote with Eddie. Eddie and Sammy wrote them together, and that’s why he can go out and play them.
Why the Roth comparison makes this strange
This is the context that makes the whole business look considerably odder, and it’s worth laying out properly.
When Marcelo Vieira interviewed Alex for Brazilian magazine Roadie Crew — the interview that produced the “complete idiot” line — he asked about the various Van Halen memoirs.
On David Lee Roth’s 1997 book Crazy From The Heat, Alex was generous. He called it quite fun, said it accurately reflects Roth’s sense of humour, and described it as a very interesting perspective on that era, even while noting the text is somewhat abstract.
On Hagar’s book, he said he had no interest in reading it. That he doesn’t know what’s in it and doesn’t want to know. And then: in his opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot.
Now put this month next to it. Alex Van Halen appeared on a TEDx stage in Fargo alongside Roth and the muralist Robert Vargas, talking about why great art requires risk. The two of them sat together in public for the first time in years and had a warm, expansive conversation about creativity.
And here’s the detail that makes it absurd. Joe Satriani revealed a couple of years ago that a Van Halen tribute show had been planned featuring Alex and Roth — and that it never got off the ground, reportedly because Roth was holding up the approvals.
So: the man who by that account scuppered Alex’s own tribute show gets the book praise and the TEDx panel. The man who sang on four consecutive Billboard number ones and wrote them with Eddie gets called a complete idiot and left out of the memoir entirely.
I’ve got no idea what’s behind that and neither, apparently, does Hagar. But it’s the clearest evidence that whatever this is about, it isn’t about the quality of anybody’s writing.
What Alex has actually said about ending the story in 1984
To be fair to him, Alex has given an explanation — just not one that answers Hagar’s question.
“Brothers” stops in 1984, when Roth first left. It omits the Hagar years, the Gary Cherone album, and even the 2007 reunion with Roth.
His reasoning, to USA Today: for him, the spirit of the band ended in 1984. They did good work after that, but the primary spiritual aspect, the magic, the potential, the looking to the future together — that’s what made Van Halen. He and Eddie were outsiders. Dave was an outsider.
To Billboard, more bluntly: what happened after Dave left is not the same band. He wasn’t saying it was better or worse — but the magic was in the first years, when they didn’t know what they were doing and were willing to try anything.
And on the Best Of All Worlds tour, which features Hagar, Michael Anthony, Satriani and Kenny Aronoff: “I’m not interested. They’re not doing the band justice. They can do what they want to do. That’s not my business.”
To Rolling Stone, he didn’t say Hagar’s name at all: the heart and the soul and the creativity and the magic was Dave, Ed, Mike and him. In the book, the only reported acknowledgment of the Van Hagar era is the line, “We had a lot of other singers over the years.”
That’s a coherent artistic position. You can absolutely argue the original lineup was the real band. What it isn’t is an answer to why Hagar specifically gets the insult while Roth gets the panel.
The Cabo Wabo theory, and Hagar’s response to it
The most-repeated explanation for all this is money, and Hagar addressed it with Rolling Stone in April 2025.
The theory: Van Halen were all partners in Cabo Wabo when Hagar built it. When it was losing money they didn’t want it and handed it to him. He then turned it around and made a fortune. And Alex has been angry ever since.
Hagar’s response is the most heated he’s been on any of this. How could they be angry about that? They gave him the thing. They walked out on him and left him with it. They made him indemnify them in case he got sued and lost everything. They made him sign off, in his words, big time.
And then: he hopes it isn’t that.
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What Hagar thinks the real reason is
He’s offered a theory, and it isn’t flattering — though he doesn’t present it as cruelty.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Hagar said he thinks Alex is angry because he and Mike Anthony are out doing it and Alex can’t. Alex isn’t a singer, isn’t a guitar player, isn’t really a band leader — and he seems not to want to play drums any more, or not to be able to. Alex wasn’t the songwriter in the band. He was the drummer.
Then, crucially, he added something that most coverage of that quote leaves out: he’d feel bad too. If he put himself in Alex’s shoes, he’d feel terrible if he couldn’t do it any more. And he acknowledged that being the happiest one out of all of them is its own irritant — people don’t like it when you’re too happy.
When interviewer Andy Greene noted that Alex has had genuine health issues and has reasons to feel bitter, Hagar agreed. His words: yeah, he’d say so, and he’s okay with it. Al, you’re fine. Just leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone, everything’s good.
And then, with the timing of a man who’s had 25 years to work on it: I’m making you money, by the way, Al. I’m out there selling Van Halen records and keeping the name alive.
The part everybody forgets
One last thing, because it’s the piece of this story that actually matters and it gets lost every time.
Hagar made peace with Eddie Van Halen months before Eddie died in October 2020.
Whatever is unresolved here is unresolved between Sammy and Alex. It was settled with Eddie while there was still time, and Hagar has been open about the cost of what he wrote.
In a 2021 interview he apologized from the bottom of his heart for exposing Eddie’s dark side — while refusing to claim he’d lied. His position: it’s all true, and he isn’t going to pretend otherwise. But if he wrote the book today, he’d only put in the good of Eddie Van Halen, because he was a brilliant, genius guitar player and a great friend and a great partner.
And then the memory he keeps returning to, which is the warmest thing in this entire archive. When Eddie walked into his dressing room at Anaheim Stadium — Hagar on a bill with Boston and Black Sabbath — he was one of the sweetest, most humble people Hagar had ever met. How can this guy play so badass and be that humble? He assumed there must be a fire inside that wasn’t showing.
When that fire came out, he said, it was quite the fire. A volcano.
The numbers, for the record
Because Hagar’s central claim rests on them.
He replaced David Lee Roth in 1985 and made four studio albums with Van Halen: 5150, OU812, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance.
All four went to number one in the United States. The Roth-era lineup never managed it once.
That era sold more than forty million records. It’s the commercial peak of one of the most important bands America produced, and it’s the period the band’s own drummer has written out of the history.
Sammy, Eddie, Alex and Michael last played together on the 2004 US summer tour — a run Hagar later described as some of the most miserable, back-stabbing material he’d ever been involved with. Michael Anthony reportedly had to accept a pay cut and sign away his rights to the band name and logo in order to take part.
Which, given what Hagar says happened to Anthony’s photographs two years later, is its own kind of pattern.
TL;DR
- Sammy Hagar has responded to Alex Van Halen calling him “a complete idiot,” telling SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation that he wants the drummer to “come clean” and say publicly what the problem is.
- His central charge: that Alex acts as though the Van Hagar era never happened, despite four consecutive US number one albums and more than forty million records sold — and that erasing it damages Eddie’s legacy, not just Sammy’s.
- The detail nobody’s covering: Hagar says that when Wolfgang Van Halen joined in 2006, Alex had the band’s entire photo archive edited to insert Wolfgang and remove Michael Anthony, and reversed it about two weeks later after fan backlash. Alex has never addressed the claim.
- He also criticises the archival releases, arguing Alex is charging for photographs that are freely available and should be released for nothing.
- Asked about making peace before they die: “Oh, I’ve given up. I don’t really care anymore.”
- The asymmetry: Alex praised David Lee Roth’s memoir as “quite fun,” refused to read Hagar’s, and appeared on a TEDx panel with Roth this month — despite Joe Satriani’s claim that a planned Alex-and-Roth tribute show collapsed because Roth held up approvals.
- Hagar acknowledges Alex’s health problems and says he understands the bitterness. He also made peace with Eddie months before his death in October 2020.
FAQ
What did Sammy Hagar say about Alex Van Halen?
Speaking on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation on September 17, 2026, Hagar said he wants Alex to “come clean” about what his problem is, and accused him of acting as though the Van Hagar era never happened — noting that period produced four consecutive US number one albums and over forty million records sold. He said Alex is “doing a lot of stuff wrong for the legacy of Van Halen.”
Why did Alex Van Halen call Sammy Hagar a complete idiot?
Alex made the remark to Brazilian journalist Marcelo Vieira in Roadie Crew magazine, when asked about Hagar’s 2011 memoir Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock. He said he had no interest in reading it and didn’t want to know what was in it, before adding that in his opinion Hagar is “a complete idiot.” He has not explained the remark further.
Why won’t Alex Van Halen acknowledge the Sammy Hagar era?
He has said that for him the spirit of Van Halen ended in 1984 when David Lee Roth first left, and that what followed “is not the same band.” His memoir Brothers stops in 1984 and omits the Hagar years, the Gary Cherone album and the 2007 Roth reunion. He has not directly explained why he singles out Hagar for criticism while speaking warmly of Roth.
Did Alex Van Halen remove Michael Anthony from Van Halen photos?
Hagar claims he did — saying that when Wolfgang Van Halen joined in 2006, the band’s back catalogue images and website photographs were edited to insert Wolfgang and remove Anthony, and that it was reversed roughly two weeks later after fan complaints. Alex Van Halen has never publicly addressed the claim.
How many number one albums did Van Halen have with Sammy Hagar?
Four, and all four of the albums he recorded with the band topped the US chart: 5150 (1986), OU812 (1988), For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (1991) and Balance (1995). The Roth-era lineup never reached number one.
Four number ones, forty million records, and a drummer who won’t say his name. Is Hagar right that this damages Eddie’s legacy, or is Alex entitled to draw the line wherever he wants? Tell me below. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
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