Sammy Hagar + Michael Anthony Launch ‘Van Hagar’ Era Archive on Social Media

Former Van Halen members and current Sammy Hagar & The Circle rockers Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony have jointly launched an archival social media destination saluting their time together in Van Halen, the period known as the “Van Hagar” era to fans of the rock band co-founded by the late guitarist Eddie Van Halen.

The pair have already shared their first look back at those years with footage of a 1993 Van Halen performance of 5150‘s “Dreams” live from the San Francisco Bay Area’s Shoreline Amphitheatre. Anthony remarked that the moment to him was “one of the high points of the show. Sammy singing that high night after night blows my mind!”

Down toward the bottom of this page, watch Hagar’s and Anthony’s introduction videos to the new social media websites and see the vintage Van Halen clip.

“Hey everybody, I got some fresh news for you,” Hagar announced on the new Instagram and his own social media outpost simultaneously. “Mikey and I have been checking out all our old vintage footage of stuff we’ve been doing over the years with [the] ‘Van Hagar’ years and all that, and we’ve found some of the coolest stuff.”

The singer continued, “We’re digging and we’re digging, and we’re finding nuggets every day — and we’re gonna share them with you. We’re gonna start a brand new Instagram account — it’s called @vanhagarotherhalf.”

Anthony, the founding Van Halen bassist who sometimes goes by “Mad Anthony,” added, “Everyone keeps asking us, ‘Why don’t you post more of the ‘Van Hagar’ years stuff?’ Well, guess what? You got it. We’re gonna go through, dig through some of the archive stuff and try to find stuff you haven’t seen before — maybe some stuff that we haven’t seen in decades — and throw it up, maybe post a couple of comments to go along with it.”

Hagar’s last studio album with Van Halen was 1995’s Balance, although, for a few years in the mid-2000s, he did reunite with the group and contributed to the 2004 compilation The Best of Both Worlds. 1998’s Van Halen III was the last LP to feature Anthony before Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen (Mammoth WVH) replaced him on bass in 2006. Following Eddie’s death in 2020, Van Halen permanently disbanded, Wolf has confirmed.

Check out all the “Van Hagar”/”Other Half” nostalgia on Instagram and Facebook.