Sammy Hagar will celebrate the music of Van Halen with a new band featuring longtime bassist Michael Anthony on the Best of All Worlds Tour. The summer trek set to hit arenas and amphitheaters next summer will see the Red Rocker team up with guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Jason Bonham.
As Rolling Stone pointed out, this new venture is made up of pieces of previous Hagar/Anthony projects. The two have toured together for the better part of 20 years (since being let go from Van Halen) and previously collaborated with Satriani in the supergroup Chickenfoot which also featured Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. While Chickenfoot never played a Van Halen song across multiple world tours, Hagar and Anthony did touch on the VH catalog in their next project Sammy Hagar and the Circle with guitarist Vic Johnson and Jason Bonham on drums. For the Best of All Worlds Tour, Hagar and Anthony have essentially merged the lineups from their previous endeavors to focus on honoring Van Halen songs, among other selections from Hagar’s wider catalog.
“It’s crazy to think that it’ll be 20 years since Mikey and I played these songs with Van Halen on the 04’ Best of Both Worlds Tour,” Hagar said in a statement. “With Joe on board, we can take a deeper dive into those years. We’re going to touch on some hits from my entire career, but seeing fans old and new really embrace the new collection set off something in Mikey and I. We were at my Birthday Bash in Cabo for my 76th and looked at each other and high-fived, like, ‘Let’s do it.’ We pulled out a couple of them, and it was an instant lovefest with the fans from our first riffs. The music we created is going to outlive us all. They deserve to be heard, so it’s time we go out and serve the fans that music, while we still can.”
A press release states that the new band will play Van Hagar hitters “Finish What Ya Started”, “5150”, “Best of Both Worlds”, “Poundcake”, “One Way To Rock”, “Right Now”, and “Good Enough” on this tour. Hagar enlisted Australia’s Rai Thistlethwayte on keyboards and backing vocals, with Loverboy serving as the opening act.
This news comes three years after the death of guitar hero Eddie Van Halen whose supercharged playing powered the Van Halen machine for over 40 years. Though there has been plenty of talk of Van Halen reunions or tribute shows in the years since, the Best of All Worlds Tour is the closest thing to materialize. Satriani has publicly stated that he was approached for a tribute show with David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen in 2022 which never came to fruition. Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen, who leads his own original Mammoth WVH and toured with Van Halen for years, has remained adamant about not playing his dad’s songs live (other than at the Taylor Hawkins tribute in L.A.).
“That’s a big reason why I don’t ever want to play Van Halen songs,” Wolfgang told Today. “Because I only want to play with [my father]. And he’s not here to play it.”
Tickets for the Sammy Hagar Best of All Worlds Tour go on sale to the general public on Friday at 10 a.m. local time See below for a full list of tour dates. Watch the band perform on The Howard Stern Show in support of the tour announcement.
Sammy Hagar – “Right Now”
Sammy Hagar – “Best Of Both Worlds”
