Sammy Hagar is back with a new instalment of his "Storytime With Sammy" video series. In the clip below he reflects on Van Halen's Dallas, Texas show in 1988, when he lost his voice and promised fans a free show.

Says Hagar: "Yep that's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me🖐️ but we got it done."

Watch the video below.

According to InTheStudio.net host Redbeard, the story’s beginning actually pre-dates Sammy Hagar   joining as Van Halen’s lead singer in 1985. The Red Rocker was a star in Texas bright enough to sell out Reunion Arena there back-to-back nights as a headliner in1984, but a particularly potent pollen season gave him partial laryngitis and Hagar apologized several times during both nights. Two years later and now lead singer with America’s premiere hard rock band Van Halen, Hagar returned with them this time to headline the legendary Texxas Jam at the massive Cotton Bowl, and again the notorious North Texas  climate and astronomical pollen count conspired to wreak havoc with Hagar’s platinum tonsils. And although few if any in the teeming crowd of 70,000 were disappointed, Sammy did make mention several times between songs that he was sorry for not being in his best voice that day.

But when Van Halen rolled back into the Dallas Cotton Bowl for their own rock’n’roll circus they branded as the “Monsters of Rock” July 3, 1988 , the third time was NOT the charm for Sammy Hagar. “The Monsters tour wore me down,” Hagar admitted to me. The Dallas performance was practically a repeat of the laryngitis nightmare that Sammy had experienced on his own there in 1984, only now he felt that he was committing the Unpardonable Sin: letting down his band AND letting down their fans.

He just had to do something to make it right. So between songs from the stage, Sammy Hagar promised everyone in the audience a free Van Halen concert. The loud gasp and then blood-curdling shriek of “Nooooooo!” heard from backstage was the cry of Van Halen manager, the late Ed Leffler. But it was too late. The crowd of 55,000 heard him promise it, the local reporters heard it, and we at Q102 broadcasting live from the concert had just aired it to all of North Texas as well. Ooops.

Now it did take three and a half years of  speculation which, as you can reasonably imagine, ran the gamut from Sammy Hagar insisting in subsequent interviews with reporters that he was dead serious and considered it a promise, to Van Halen’s manager and Hagar’s longtime mentor Ed Leffler wanting to strangle him because the logistics were impossible. Where? When? How do you verify who gets in? And who is going to pay the minimum $100,000 costs just to stage such a thing?