Singer Sammy Hagar shared a new video on his YouTube channel where he recalled a story from 1988, where he almost left Van Halen broke, promising a ”free show” to the fans afterward, which cost the band quite a lot.
Here’s Hagar’s story:
“So, after about two weeks into the tour, we’re playing Dallas, Texas; two nights at the Cotton Bowl and I couldn’t sing a lick. I walked out on stage, opened my mouth, (and) I couldn’t sing one word. I panicked so bad, (that) I told the audience, ‘You’re going to sing all night. I’m just gonna be up here. And I promise we will come back and do a free show.’”
He went on:
“And we did (the free show). But it almost broke the band up; it cost us about $200,000 to come back and do a free show. It was called the Dallas Alley…
”There’s pictures of it all over the internet, we had 80,000 people there and we did it; we came back and we did it, but it almost broke Van Halen up.”