Eddie Van Halen (L) and Sammy Hagar of Van Halen speak at a press conference in Los Angeles, California.

(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Were you a Sammy Hagar fan? Or was David Lee Roth more your style? Either way, the common thread within Van Halen was always the one and only Eddie Van Halen.

Without Eddie, the band didn’t work. It’s pretty common knowledge that Sammy and Eddie hadn’t been on good terms for years, but finally talked it out and made up in early 2020. As you probably know, Eddie just passed away from cancer earlier this month. In an interview with Rock 105.5 Sammy admitted Eddie’s death “would’ve been way too much” to process, had the old friends not buried the hatchet.

He added, “When I called him, after years of not speaking, back in February, I think, or January, whatever it was — before COVID — he said: ‘What took you so long?’ It put the biggest smile on my face. I said: ‘Oh my God. Don’t ask me.’ That was just very touching to me: ‘Hey, I’ve been waitin’.’”

Hagar, aka The Red Rocker, replaced David Lee Roth as the lead singer of Van Halen in 1985, and left the band in 1996. Read the full article from NME here.