Sammy Hagar's collaboration with bassist Michael Anthony, guitarist Vic Johnson, and drummer Jason Bonham - collectively known as The Circle - transformed Las Vegas’ newest music venue, the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center (DLV), into an epic belated Birthday Bash for The Red Rocker on October 18th; fan-filmed video from the event can be seen below.

During a recent interview with Matt Wardlaw of Ultimate Classic Rock, Hagar discussed his new musical outfit, The Circle; an excerpt follows:

"I’ve never had a band that I felt could play Van Halen as good as Van Halen, I’ve never had a band that I thought could play Montrose as good as Montrose. I’ve had bands that do my solo stuff and my solo bands, but when I go to pick on Chickenfoot, it’s a little bit scary, you know, you had some super players in that band. But The Circle serves our music, the music of my life — that’s why I call it the Circle, because it brought me full circle. Everything I’ve ever done, we can put it inside that circle and play it and serve it as good as it can possibly be served. You know, I don’t want to say 'better,' but just as good — you close your eyes up there, man, when we’re playing some of those tunes and you’re thinking, 'Fuck, I’m here, man'."

Do you have plans to do a lot of things with these guys?

"If I get offered a show, my first thing I’d find out is if The Circle is available before I say I will do it or not. Because I’m not sure that I would do it with any other people. I think The Circle is the band that I want to play with right now. It’s the band that I choose to play with over any band — even Chickenfoot is hard, because we only play Chickenfoot. So I miss playing ‘When It’s Love’ and ‘Right Now’ and ‘I Can’t Drive 55’ and ‘One Way To Rock’ and ‘Heavy Metal’ and ‘Rock Candy’. I miss doing that, as much as I love Chickenfoot. The Circle is so satisfying that I don’t even see a reason to make a record. We have so many great hits that we can choose from our catalog, all of those Van Halen hits, all of the Sammy solo, all of those Montrose hits, Chickenfoot hits, Led Zeppelin songs — we have that catalog to choose from for our shows, so to make a record would just be kind of a waste of time. I wouldn’t say never, but first I’d like to put together the greatest set list that ever existed in rock ‘n’ roll, and I think we’re pretty close to it right now with the one that we have, but it can even get better. There’s a frikkin’ goldmine to choose from of songs that I’ve written and sang in my life."