Sammy Hagar is releasing a new single this Friday (April 25) that has quite the origin story involving Eddie Van Halen.
The single is titled “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight,” and the Red Rocker shared in a social media post that the song was inspired by a dream he once had with EVH in it. He said in a personal statement, “I can’t wait for the world to hear this very special song Joe [Satriani] and I wrote as a long overdue thank you to Eddie Van Halen for the music, the good times, and the dream that inspired this track, ‘Encore, Thank You, Goodnight.’”
In addition to Hagar and Satriani, the track also features bassist Michael Anthony and drummer Kenny Aronoff.
“Encore, Thank You, Goodnight” is available for pre-save here.
Hagar first talked about this unique song involving the late Van Halen back in August 2022. At that time, Hagar told Ultimate Classic Rock, “About two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie came. We were in a room like this, [with] a bunch of people around. It was just like he’d been gone. It was not like he was passed, but he had just been out of my life and we hadn’t seen each other for a while. He’s going, ‘Man, let’s write some music!’ I said, ‘Yeah, f— it, man. Here, let’s go!’”
The Red Rocker says EVH played a riff in the dream that reminded him of one the guitarist played for him around the 2004 Van Halen reunion tour. Then, Sammy and Eddie wrote a song with that riff in the dream. After he woke up, Sammy remembered the song, and then he wrote it down.
