Sammy Hagar wrote new song with late Eddie Van Halen in a dream

Sammy Hagar says his late bandmate Eddie Van Halen visited him in a dream and helped him write his new song, “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight.”

The “Give to Live” singer, who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Van Halen in 2007, says the pair’s rock-star reunion occurred about a year after the legendary guitarist died in 2020.

“He had a guitar around his neck and we were having a love fest since we hadn’t seen each other in a long time,” Hagar recalled to Rolling Stone. “And he just started playing this riff, and I started singing.”

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The moment was more than just a dream to Hagar. “This was 100 percent a communication from the beyond,” he told the outlet. “There is no question about it. I dream about Eddie all the time, quite honestly.”

Hagar explained that his dreams about Van Halen typically end once he remembers that his friend is dead. On this occasion, though, Hagar woke up from the dream with enough time to jot down the song they were working on together and record it onto his iPhone. 

“I just grabbed a pad and a pencil,” he said. “And I got my iPhone. My wife’s screaming, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Writing a song!’ It just kept coming and coming. When I got up the next day, I grabbed my guitar and started to figure out the chords.”

Hagar wound up sitting on the project for two years before deciding to revisit it with an assist from guitarist Joe Satriani. 

“I thought, ‘I’ll never write a song with Eddie again. This is the closest I can come to it,'” he recalled. “When I told Joe about the dream and played him the thing he went, ‘Oh man. Hell yeah. Let’s finish that. That’s a cool song.'”

In the nearly five-minute track, which features performances from drummer Kenny Aronoff and Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony, Hagar pays tribute to the late guitarist and the special moment they shared in that pivotal dream. 

“Thank you for the music / Thank you for the song / Thank you for the visit / What took so long?” Hagar sings. “All of them good times / Fortune and the fame / Since you been gone / Things don’t feel the same.”

The official video for “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight” will premiere during Hagar’s performance at the upcoming Stagecoach festival this weekend, per Rolling Stone. He will also reportedly play the track for the very first time when he kicks off his Las Vegas residency on April 30.

For now, you can listen to it above.