When it comes to the relationship between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar, the usual question is “Why can’t this be love?” However, it looks like there may be a truce among the long-feuding Van Halen frontmen, as Diamond Dave has seemingly accepted the Red Rocker’s invite to join him onstage.
Hagar recently announced the 2024 “Best of All Worlds Tour” (tickets available here), featuring an all-star backing band of Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani, and Jason Bonham. The summer outing will see Hagar and company focusing largely on Van Halen material.
Following the tour announcement, Hagar told Howard Stern, “We’re gonna invite every musician in every town. … Other guitar players, we’ll get them involved; other singers, get ’em involved. If Alex Van Halen wants to jump out — if David Lee Roth wants to come out and join us, come on motherf**ker, you are welcome. This is about Van Halen.”
Well, it appears as if DLR is on board. When pressed for comment by the Van Halen News Desk about Hagar’s remarks, Diamond Dave responded, “I’m ready to go. Let’s do this.”
Following Roth’s statement, Hagar has been bombarded with messages on Instagram, with one fan asking, “Diamond says he’s ready to go on tour with you! What do you think about that?” The Red Rocker responded, “He can come out and sing a song on a show or two if he can remember the words.”
In another comment, Hagar clarified, “He’s not invited on the tour. NOOOO F***king way. It was to sing a song with us somewhere like a lot of singers, guitarist etc are going to do on this tour. I know better than to have him on tour again. Been there done that.”
Hagar and Roth infamously teamed up for the “Song for Song: The Heavyweight Champs of Rock ‘n’ Roll Tour” in 2002, during a time when they were both out of Van Halen. The outing featured the two singers constantly bickering and bad-mouthing each other.
There’s been no love lost since then, with Hagar even dissing Roth earlier this year by telling the Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast, “[Roth] doesn’t care about singing. If he did, he’d take care of his voice or he’d take voice lessons and get warmed up and do something. ‘Cause the guy sang so bad last time he was doing shows, it was embarrassing.”
“The Best of All Worlds Tour” kicks off July 13th in West Palm Beach, Florida, and wraps up August 31st in St. Louis. It remains to be seen whether David Lee Roth will jump onstage during any of the outing’s 28 gigs, but if you wanna find out, you can pick up tickets here.