Cack Blabbath spoke with SAMMY HAGAR (CHICKENFOOT, ex-VAN HALEN, MONTROSE) on January 12 at the Academy in Manchester, England. When asked about his thoughts on the Van Halen reunion album with Roth he responded:

"Well, I’m not going to speculate why anyone does anything, but I’ll tell you what, they waited so long and they’re so not fan friendly, and as big as Van Halen was in the past…

That’s what we used to argue about when I was in the band, I got thrown out because I didn’t want to do a Greatest Hits record. I said 'Why the fuck, we’re the biggest band in the world, every album we’ve done since I’ve been in the band has been at number 1, we’ve sold out every arena on the planet, now why would you want to sell them the same old record again and give them two new tracks? Why do you want to do that to the fans?' And we got into it. They wanted to do it at that time for the money, a new manager came in and he thought we could make a whole bunch of money for doing nothing, and I’m going 'We’ve got a whole bunch of money, so why are we doing this?' you know. We really didn’t need to do it and it really caused problems in the band

Why they’re doing it now I have no idea, but I think it’s about time. I personally don’t think that what they have just released, what I have seen and heard, is great at all. It should be better than it is but hey, it is what it is and at least they got together and at least they came out with something, that’s all I can say, you know. God bless them but I was expecting a lot more."

Read the entire interview here.

Chickenfoot - who also feature guitarist Joe Satriani, drummer Kenny Aronoff (standing in for RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS drummer Chad Smith) and former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony - are in the midst of their European Road Test tour. Remaining dates include:

January

17 - Tilburg, Netherlands - O13
19 - Dusseldorf, Germany - Mitsubishi Electric Hall