Alex Van Halen Has ‘No Respect’ for Sammy Hagar After He ‘Exposed’ Brother Eddie’s Addiction Issues

Alex Van Halen‘s latest comments about former bandmate Sammy Hagar have done little to put their 20-year feud to rest.

“It’s been so many decades since they had their falling out, but Alex hasn’t let an ounce of the bitterness go,” a source tells Examiner. “He and Sammy were never great friends. They always clashed and Alex has always made it clear he has no respect for Sammy.”

When asked about Hagar’s 2011 memoir Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, the Van Halen drummer, 73, told music journalist Marcelo Vieira, per Page Six, that the band’s former frontman, 78, is “a complete idiot” and said that he didn’t want to know what he wrote.

Hagar “has tried time and again to rise above the ugliness, but Alex is just never open to it,” admits the source. “Most people think Alex’s real issue is how much Sammy exposed [Eddie Van Halen‘s] addiction in his memoir.”

In Red, Hagar revealed, according to excerpts published by Rolling Stone, that Eddie would walk “around all day drinking cheap shiraz straight out of the bottle” and that the band’s manager, Irving Azoff, attempted to hold an intervention before Van Halen’s 2004 reunion tour.

“He smashed the bottle. ‘[Expletive] you,’ he said,” Hagar recalled. “I will kill the first [expletive] that tries to take this bottle away from me.”

After Eddie died of a stroke in 2020, Hagar apologized in an interview with Inside with Paulo Baron and Regis Tadeu for “exposing” the 65-year-old guitarist’s “dark side” in his memoir.

The damage, however, was already done.

Alex is “punishing him for that, so it runs very deep because he’s still not over Eddie’s death,” says Examiner‘s source. “In some ways, holding on to this anger towards Sammy is almost a protection method for Alex. It’s a way of still keeping Eddie’s memory alive, even if it’s in this misguided vengeance.”