Van Halen 'Found' Classic Hit Says Sammy Hagar was a top 21 story from September 2021: 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."
Wolfgang Is Van Halen Now Says Sammy Hagar (2022 In Review)
Wolfgang Van Halen Wants To Widen The Breadth With New Album
Wolfgang Should Play Eddie Van Halen Tribute Concert Says Satriani (2022 In Review)
Sammy Hagar Approached To Do A Van Halen Residency (2022 In Review)
GETSOME! - Nothing Personal of Course
Heroes & Monsters - Heroes and Monsters
Jared James Nichols - Jared James Nichols
Root 66: Sicard Hollow - Brightest of Days
Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros. - Live in Colorado, Vol. 2
KISS Releasing Historic Live Recording
Luke Combs Shares 'Growin' Up and Gettin' Old' To Announce New Album
Walk off the Earth Deliver 'My Stupid Heart'
Atreyu Take A Swim With 'Drowning' Video
Queen Revisit Live Aid Rehearsals On The Greatest
Green Day Stream Expanded Nimrod 25th Anniversary Reissue
Young The Giant And Milky Chance Announce North American Tour
Singled Out: The Crystal Casino Band's City That Sleeps