Former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar revealed in a recent interview how the band's hit song "Dreams" was "the ultimate find of all time", after finding the synth riff on a cassette tape recorded by Eddie and they turned it into the full song.
Hagar spoke with Ultimate Classic Rock about how the band wrote material. He said that Eddie had boxes of cassette tapes of music ideas that he had recorded.
Some of the taps features music parts laid down by Eddie and his brother and band drummer Alex Van Halen, but most were, "Mainly [Eddie] by himself, going into the studio and just running a cassette tape and jamming. Playing piano, playing a synthesizer thing, and that's where half of our songs came from."
Sammy further explained: "When I joined the band, we were digging through cassette tapes more than Eddie was picking up a guitar and just writing together, like 'Finish What Ya Started' was. 'Why Can't This Be Love' was that kind of a thing, where we wrote it at the time. There were a lot of the songs that we just wrote. But there were songs like 'Dreams' that came out of that cassette tape box. I heard that synth and I just went, 'Holy sh*t, Ed! Whoa, whoa!'"
Hagar recalled, "[producer] Mick Jones was sitting there, I was sitting there. We put that thing on and both looked at each other and said, 'Oh yeah, this could be something'.
"It took me a long time to write the lyrics and find out how I was going to sing that song, but when I walked in there and put it down, it was magic. You know, it was gold."
David Lee Roth Accepts Sammy Hagar's Best Of All Worlds Tour Invitation
Sammy Hagar Invites David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen To Perform On New Tour
Sammy Hagar Reflects On Key Turning Points In Van Halen
Sammy Hagar Believes Dysfunction Preventing Eddie Van Halen Tribute Show
Holiday Gift Guide: Sammy's Beach Bar Platinum Rum and Beach Bar Cocktails, KURU Footwear, More
Caught In The Act: KISS Farewell at the Allstate Arena
Holiday Gift Guide: Concert Tickets
Everclear - Live at The Whisky a Go Go
Journey and Def Leppard Announce 2024 Stadium Tour
Guns N' Roses Releasing New Single This Friday
Iron Maiden Make History After Selling Out Stadium in 21 Minutes
Staind Frontman Aaron Lewis Postpones American Patriot Dates
Journey And The Story Of American Rock Book Coming Early Next Year
Megadeth Announce New Digital Collection
Jane's Addiction Announce First Euro Headline Tour In Over Eight Years
Singled Out: Hannah Cutt's Dirty Enough For Hardcore