Sammy Hagar has answered Alex Van Halen calling him “a complete idiot,” and the reply came in about as low-key a form as a rock feud allows: a few lines typed into an Instagram comment section, ending with a request that the whole thing stop.
The remark that set it off appeared in the Brazilian magazine Roadie Crew, in an interview with journalist Marcelo Vieira — the man who translated Alex’s memoir Brothers into Portuguese. Asked about the other books written by people who had passed through Van Halen, Alex was generous about David Lee Roth’s 1997 autobiography Crazy From The Heat, calling it “quite fun” and an accurate reflection of Roth’s sense of humor, if a little abstract in places. Asked about Hagar’s 2011 memoir Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock, he had nothing of the kind to offer. “I don’t know what he wrote, and I don’t wanna know,” the drummer said, as translated from the Portuguese. “In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot.”
That interview was conducted earlier this year. The quote only reached an English-speaking audience over the past few days, and when the account Rock Celebrities posted it to Instagram on Saturday, Hagar turned up in the comments himself. “This comment and post is so unnecessary at this time in our lives, but I guess the truth hurts sometimes,” he wrote. “Peace already.”
The book at the center of it
Almost everything in this dispute runs back through Red. Hagar replaced Roth as Van Halen’s singer in 1985 and stayed for a decade, cutting four studio albums — 5150, OU812, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance — every one of which went to No. 1 in the United States. The band regrouped with him for a US tour in 2004, and by Hagar’s own account it went badly. He described it in 2012 as “some of the most miserable, back-stabbing dark crap I’ve ever been involved with my whole life.”
When Red arrived in 2011, it put Eddie Van Halen’s drinking on the page in detail, describing the guitarist as unkempt, alarmingly thin and drinking wine straight from the bottle. Alex was reportedly furious. Eddie himself pushed back publicly, telling Rolling Stone in 2015 that a portion of the book was “embellished” in painting him as an angry drunk on that tour.
Hagar’s position on all this has shifted in a way worth noting, because it complicates the simple version of the story. In a 2021 interview he apologized “from the bottom of my heart for exposing his dark side,” saying that if he wrote the book today he would include only the good. In the same breath he refused to retract any of it: “It’s all true. It’s not like I have to say, ‘Oh, I was lying’ — no, no, no.” He has also said he mended things with Eddie in the months before the guitarist’s death in October 2020.
Twenty-five years of one-way phone calls
What makes the “complete idiot” line land is that Hagar has spent years publicly asking for the opposite. He told Howard Stern he had been reaching out to Alex “about once a month for about five years” — calls, texts, emails, no reply. In 2024 he told Ultimate Classic Rock it was “on my bucket list that I will not take this to my grave, and I don’t want Al taking it to his grave,” adding that he had “put the olive branch out there many times.” He invited Alex, and Roth, to join his Best of All Worlds shows. Neither came.
The two men’s accounts of why diverge sharply. In an April 2025 Rolling Stone interview, Hagar floated theories he had been given by others — including one he said he hoped was wrong: that Alex resented how profitable Hagar’s Cabo Wabo tequila business became after the band signed it over to him. He also speculated that Alex is unhappy that Hagar and bassist Michael Anthony are still touring the material while he is not. Those are Hagar’s own readings of another man’s motives, not established facts, and Alex has never confirmed any of them. When the interviewer noted that Alex has had genuine health problems and reasons to feel bitter, Hagar agreed and softened: “Al, you’re fine. Just leave me alone. I’ll leave you alone.”
Alex’s stated reason is different and consistent. Brothers stops in 1984, and he has repeatedly said that is where the band he cared about ended. “For me, the spirit of the band ended in 1984,” he told USA Today in 2024. “We did good work after that, but the primary spiritual aspect, the magic, the potential — that’s what made Van Halen.” The book leaves out Hagar’s decade entirely, along with Gary Cherone’s stint and the 2007 Roth reunion; the Van Hagar years reportedly get one line about having had “a lot of other singers over the years.” Asked by Billboard why he would not take part in Best of All Worlds in any form, Alex said: “I’m not interested. They’re not doing the band justice.”
Hagar has called that omission “blasphemy to his brother’s musicianship, songwriting and legacy,” on the grounds that the No. 1 albums in question were written by Eddie and Hagar rather than by Alex.
What happens now
Probably nothing, which may be the point of “peace already.” Hagar continues to tour the catalog with the Best of All Worlds band — Anthony, Joe Satriani, Kenny Aronoff and Greg Phillinganes — including his Las Vegas residency at Dolby Live. Alex, knighted in the Netherlands earlier this month, has given no sign he intends to respond, and has spent two decades not responding.
Which leaves the odd shape this feud has settled into: one man who keeps saying he wants it over, one who will not engage except to insult him in a magazine most of the audience will never read, and a decade of No. 1 records only one of them will talk about.
