In early May, Sammy Hagar spoke to Rolling Stone about his life in quarantine. He told us that he was respecting the lockdown measures and taking them very seriously, but was anxious to return to the stage as soon as it was safe.
“I’m not going to go around spreading the disease,” he said. “But there may be a time where we have to sacrifice. I mean, how many people die on the Earth every day? I have no idea. I’m sorry to say it, but we all gotta die, man.”
The comments didn’t generate much of a stir when we originally ran them, but they reappeared earlier this week in another article where we compiled statements about the quarantine by 14 artists. They were picked up HuffPost and then ricocheted all across the internet as if they were new. On Thursday afternoon, Hagar took to his Facebook account to put all of this in context. His complete letter is below:
Hey, Sammy here. Earlier in the week, Rolling Stone ran a compilation piece from their Quarantine Q&A series. I did that interview a month and a half ago, things change very fast right now, so I wanted to clarify and put a few things into context now.
I did that interview May 8th when we were already several weeks into the stay-at-home, which my family and I took very seriously, and things were starting to look up, the curve was beginning flattening. So when I was asked if I’d be comfortable enough to get back on stage before a vaccine was out, I was cautiously optimistic. I said, “Yeah, not too soon. I want to make sure it’s not escalating. When it’s declining and seems to be going away.”
Big picture, it’s about getting back to work in a safe and responsible way and getting this economy rolling again. I will do my part. I stand by that. I employ 200 people directly and when we tour even more. Like everything today, it’s a watch and see over the next few months but we remain cautiously optimistic that with the right improvements and safety measures in place, we might be able to play shows this year. That said, as things change, for the better or worse, we will appropriately adjust our plans.
