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Sammy Hagar Talks Vegas Residency, "Encore, Thank You, Goodnight" Inspo & More | Stagecoach 2025
Billboard
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5/1/2025
Sammy Hagar caught up with Billboard's Tetris Kelly at Stagecoach 2025.
Category
🎵
Music
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
So, encore, thank you, good night.
00:02
That kind of says it all, don't it?
00:04
Doesn't it?
00:05
So tell me about that song and the inspiration.
00:07
It came out of a dream.
00:09
About a year after Eddie Van Halen passed,
00:11
I dreamt that he came to me in a dream.
00:14
And it wasn't like he had died or anything.
00:16
Like we were just seeing each other again.
00:18
And it was so joyful and wonderful.
00:20
And, you know, he's saying,
00:22
let's write a new song, man.
00:23
You know, I miss you so much.
00:25
And we started writing this song in the dream.
00:27
And I mean, I dream about people that pass all the time.
00:30
I dream about Elvis Presley.
00:31
I'm hanging out with John Lennon, Jimmy, all of them.
00:33
All right.
00:34
I'm really, I'm a big dreamer.
00:36
And so all of a sudden when you,
00:38
when I'm having a dream about someone that's passed,
00:40
when you acknowledge that,
00:42
the second I go, oh, wait a minute, Eddie's dead.
00:45
Boom, the dream's over like that.
00:47
And we were right.
00:48
I was right in the middle of singing.
00:50
So when I woke up, I remembered what I was singing.
00:53
And this is two years ago.
00:56
Wow.
00:57
It was a year after he died, you know.
00:58
So it's been almost three years since.
00:59
But anyway, long story short.
01:01
So I started trying to play what he was kind of playing.
01:04
And I remembered my melody.
01:05
And I just kind of made up some stuff.
01:07
And I remember this kind of a riff that he used,
01:09
that Eddie showed me one time, but it wasn't,
01:11
we never wrote a song with it.
01:12
It was just like this harmony goes ching, ching, ching.
01:15
It has a nice sound to it.
01:17
It rings out.
01:18
So I don't know.
01:19
I got with Joe Satriani.
01:20
I finally, I just said, you know, I got to do this.
01:22
And I wrote the lyrics about the dream.
01:24
Wow.
01:25
I mean, you say, what's it about?
01:26
It's about the dream.
01:27
It's about the dream.
01:28
And then, I mean, you're going to premiere the video, right?
01:30
Yeah, after we finished our show tonight,
01:31
we're going to play it on the screen.
01:34
And that's really cool.
01:35
I mean, to get your fans' reaction immediately.
01:37
Are you excited for that?
01:38
Oh, I'm totally excited about this whole thing.
01:39
You know, we're not going to play the song tonight.
01:41
We're going to add it to the residency in Vegas,
01:43
which starts Wednesday at Park MGM.
01:46
But the reason I'm not going to play it,
01:48
because all these people have been here all weekend,
01:50
and the song just came out.
01:51
So they ain't heard it.
01:52
You know, they've been listening to the stuff they would come here to see.
01:55
Yeah, they're going to come excited to hear the hits.
01:56
So, yeah, I want them to, when they hear it,
01:58
I want them to have already heard it so that they go,
02:00
oh, great, you know.
02:01
So, anyway, but that's it.
02:02
And we only got an hour, anyway.
02:03
You don't want to debut a new song.
02:05
Only an hour.
02:06
That's a long time to be on the stage rocking it out.
02:08
600 songs I've written in my life,
02:10
and you try to squeeze only 12 or 13 of them into one night.
02:13
Well, you don't have to squeeze a lot of songs into this Vegas residency,
02:15
so let's talk about that.
02:16
How is it to prepare that?
02:17
And what made you want to go to Vegas?
02:19
So I don't have to go on the road.
02:21
You know, honestly, Rick Nelson from Cheap Trick,
02:29
I heard him say one time, he goes,
02:31
I play music for free.
02:33
I charge to go on the road.
02:35
And I'm telling you, that's a good, that's a damn good thing.
02:39
That's the way we all feel.
02:40
I don't like getting in a hotel room and sitting around
02:43
like a prisoner in a town where you're playing,
02:45
and you just got to get there, and you hurry up,
02:47
eating bad food because you don't have time,
02:49
sleeping in a bad bed sometimes,
02:51
you're traveling, traveling, trying to go out on stage
02:53
to do a great show.
02:54
You know, you wake up in Vegas in a beautiful hotel suite
02:56
and eating room service of really great food.
02:59
Yeah, and then go do a great show.
03:01
And then, so that's what I'm hoping I can dig this.
03:04
And if I can dig it, I can continue with my career.
03:07
Love that.
03:08
And then you've had a great career.
03:09
You've had a lot of big moments.
03:10
Like, I was thinking about Willie Nelson
03:11
and performing with him.
03:12
What's a bucket list thing that you haven't done yet
03:14
that you think you'd want to check off?
03:16
Right now?
03:17
Yeah.
03:18
Play stagecoach and kill him.
03:21
There you go.
03:22
Kick ass.
03:23
That's the bucket list.
03:24
That's my bucket list.
03:25
You're going to do it tonight, man.
03:26
The first time we've played this venue.
03:27
So, yeah.
03:28
I'm really looking forward to it.
03:29
I'm glad to see the show, man.
03:30
Thank you so much for hanging out with us.
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