“In Van Halen,” Sammy Hagar said while looking back at his tenure with the band, “If you want to get into what happened, there were a lot of drugs and alcohol in that band. I drink and I had my share of playing around with drugs. I was getting a divorce; I had a new wife. You know, some of them were getting divorced [laughs]. It was just a time that got dysfunctional. Ed Leffler, our fearless leader or manager, had died, and he ran that band.”
“Eddie wasn’t the leader,” Hagar argued. “I wasn’t the leader. I was a leader when I said, ‘Which time do you guys want to come tomorrow?’ ‘Hey, I can’t be there at two o’clock.’ ‘Why don’t we get together at two o’clock?’ ‘Okay, okay.’ I was that kind of a leader, but not like Ed Leffler.”
The Red Rocker continued, “[Ed would say] ‘You guys need a record; I need it about June 5. You guys need to get it today. You go shopping; you got to get some good clothes. We’ll bring some guys here. The record is coming out. You got to do the video.’ I mean, he ran the freaking band, and we loved it.”
“So when he died, [there was] nobody to run the band,” admitted Sammy and then explained his theory. “After ten years, we were in the tenth year – I have a theory, it’s for everything; marriage, a business, a band. Ten years, a decade; it’s time for regrouping.”
So, Sammy Hagar admitted that neither Eddie nor he was the leader of Van Halen. According to the singer, their then-manager Ed Leffler was the actual leader of the band who told them what they should do. When it was ten years since Leffler’s death, it made him realize that everything needs renewal.