There is nothing like singing a song that 20,000 people know and are singing back to you.
Me and Eddie really hit it off as songwriters and also as just people. It lasted three years. I don't regret one moment. They were great to me.
We brought out the old catalog and the majority of the Van Halen fans did appreciate it, but in the end, they wanted their Dave.
Spitfire asked me if I had a problem talking about Van Halen or Extreme. I really don't. There are people who are just going to want to know what it was like to play with Eddie.
They hated Sammy Hagar for 12 years and they hate him to this day.
We didn't gel with Poison and the Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi was the best of the pop metal bands, but we never fit in with the hair metal stuff. We were never as hip as the Chili Peppers. We were in the middle.
There is no substitute for jamming and getting to know each other on the road.
It is not as easy as one would think finding the right people. Coming out of Van Halen, I knew I didn't want to put a three-piece together.
When I was singing Jamie's Cryin', people were going out of their mind because it was the first time they got to see Eddie, Michael and Alex play those songs. That was a thrill.
I did some research and tried to pull out some old, classic Van Halen that they had not played in 10 or 15 years. I think that was Sammy's mistake. I he didn't want to do the Dave stuff.
I could see the tension between Sam and Dave. Sammy had a career before Hagar and people hated him out of their loyalty to Dave.
People know my name and that can get me in the doo,r but on the same hand people know my name and that can have them shut the door.