David Lee Roth Sammy Hagar 's claim of having been visited by Eddie Van Halen in a dream.
Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth made mocking comments referring to Sammy Hagar's claim that a song was written after Eddie Van Halen appeared to him in a dream.
Then, David Lee Roth told the audience [via Louder ]: “One of my esteemed colleagues, he’s a contemporary, he has an incredible voice, he has an incredible repertoire. You all know Sammy Hagar, right? He has an incredible voice. And Sammy, out loud, described to the media, about six weeks ago, that the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited him and gifted him with a song that he memorized and then went home and recorded. It’s on the internet.”
"I don't know what the odds are, but last night the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited me in my hotel room. I was watching the weather forecast and he came in and was laughing. His ghost was laughing."
“I asked, ‘What did you do now?’ He replied, ‘Dave, Dave… Dave, you know that song I gave to Hagar?’ I asked, ‘And now?’ He replied, ‘Actually, it’s ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ [the 1968 Iron Butterfly ] backwards. Don’t tell him, damn it.’”
Sammy Hagar's music was inspired by a dream about Eddie Van Halen.
The song in question is "Encore, Thank You, Goodnight," released in April 2025, in collaboration with guitarist Joe Satriani .
In an interview with Rolling Stone , Hagar said he created “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight” after a dream he had in 2020, in which he reunited with his late bandmate , Eddie Van Halen : “He had a guitar around his neck,” Hagar , “and we were having a lot of fun, since we hadn’t seen each other in a long time. And he just started playing a riff, and I started singing.”
Recently, Sammy Hagar detailed to the Los Angeles Times how the process of reconciliation with Eddie Van Halen went before the guitarist passed away in October 2020 .
READ ALSO: Van Halen chose Sammy Hagar as vocalist in “approximately 10 minutes”, says Michael Anthony
