Sammy Hagar says Alex Van Halen won't return his calls regarding an Eddie Van Halen tribute show

In the past year, rumors have swirled relating to a potential tribute concert or tour honoring late electric guitar legend Eddie Van Halen. 

Back in April, former Metallica bass guitar player Jason Newsted revealed that he had been approached by Alex Van Halen and Joe Satriani about a proposed tribute tour – with discussions even going far enough that Newsted traveled to California to jam with Van Halen and Satch – though the idea eventually “fizzled."

And last month, Satriani recalled his misgivings about signing on to play guitar on such a tour, adding that if anyone were to fill six-string duties it should be Eddie Van Halen's son, Wolfgang.

Now, former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar has offered an update regarding a potential reunion, although it's not looking promising, because as he says, Alex Van Halen isn't returning his calls.

In a new interview with Eddie Trunk, who said back in July that it was David Lee Roth holding up any Van Halen tribute project, Hagar said [via Blabbermouth]: “It ain't just one guy. Alex Van Halen and I don't talk. I reached out to Alex. I'm going to tell you right now – I reached out to Alex again recently. Mikey [Michael Anthony] had a sad thing happen in his family, and I reached out to Al, and he wouldn't return my call or my email.

“And so I said, 'You know what? Fuck it.' It's not on the top of my list, my agenda. I think Eddie deserves, definitely, a tribute… And the whole world would show up and the whole world would do it.

“Like I said, if Alex came to me and wanted to do it, I'm in,” he continues, “Absolutely – let's go [and] do it somehow. But Alex has got a stick up his ass about something with me still, and he's going to take it to his grave, I guess. [I made peace with Eddie before he died but] I don't think I made peace with Al. And I don't think I'm going to unless he reaches back out to me. I've done it about five times now.”

Hagar adds that he's “not trying to start a feud between the two of us” with his comments.

“He is tough to [break] down and to let go,” he says. “Nope – he's holding on to something. And I just wish he wasn't like that. I love the guy.

“Like I've said a million times, Alex and I actually got along better than Ed and I at times. Through the hard times, Alex and I still got along. But I don't know what happened. Somebody poisoned him. Somebody told him something. Maybe he still doesn't like my book, which was the most honest thing I've ever done in my life. Some people just don't think that that should have been done.”

Wolfgang Van Halen – who's currently busy recording the second Mammoth WVH album – has said, for his part, that he's in no rush to convene a tribute show or tour for his father, saying that his performance of Van Halen classics at the two Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts in September already gave him a sense of closure.

“I think I already did it [a salute to his father] with the Taylor Hawkins tributes," he told Classic Rock in an interview earlier this fall. "I feel a lot of closure because my part of the show was a tribute to my father... If the Taylor concerts are all that happens then I’m happy with that.”