The Red Rocker will again play a Van Halen-heavy set alongside bassist Michael Anthony, guitarist Joe Satriani, and drummer Kenny Aronoff
Sammy Hagar‘s Best of All Worlds tour is coming to Las Vegas for a nine-show residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM between April 30 and May 17, 2025. He’ll once again be joined by bassist Michael Anthony, guitarist Joe Satriani, drummer Kenny Aronoff, and keyboardist Rai Thistlethwayte for a show that leans heavily into the Van Halen catalog, but also touches on Hagar and Satriani solo tunes. Ticket sales begin on Friday, November 22.
The song selection was relatively static throughout the summer, but that won’t be the case in Vegas. “Every night the setlist will be a little different,” Hagar tells Rolling Stone. “I think the fans are going to go, ‘Oh, my God, he played that on Friday night? Oh, man, I should have went Friday!’ There’s going to be a lot of that kind of stuff, which gets people excited, and it keeps me excited. I hate doing the same set every night.”
He hasn’t made any definitive selections yet, but he hopes to break out “Love Walks In” from 5150, “Human Being” from the Twister soundtrack, “Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do),” and “Can’t Stop Lovin’ You) from Balance, and “Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy” from his 1982 LP Three Lock Box. He also hopes to go back to the Montrose days with “Bad Motor Scooter,” “Space Station #5,” and “Rock Candy.”
Jason Bonham played drums on the first half of the summer tour, but he left to be with his mother when she came down with health issues. Aronoff flew in to join the tour with little advanced notice. “Kenny is one of the greatest drummers on the planet,” says Hagar. “The biggest surprise in my life as a musician is that we pulled off that change midway through the tour since these songs have cray breaks in them. The way Eddie writes music doesn’t make any sense. It makes the drummer’s job so difficult, but Kenny killed it. He crushed it.”
Satriani had an even tougher job replicating the parts of one of the most acclaimed guitarists to ever live. Before the start of the tour, he spoke with Rolling Stone about the magnitude of the challenge in front of him. “Eddie played the songs one way on the album, and then every night, he played them live,” he said. “As far as I can tell, he changed them every night…He just kept reinventing the parts and the chords and how he would embellish it and how he would solo over it. If you’ve been tasked with the job of imitating him, it’s like, ‘Well, which moment?'”
Trending Stories
Editor’s picks
Hagar was very pleased with the results. “Joe took it seriously and really brought it,” he tells Rolling Stone. “He blew my mind. “Every night, I’m sitting there watching him do his long solos and stuff in a song like ‘5150,’ and I’m watching the fans and they’re checking him out, man. Their jaws are dropping, like, ‘Holy shit, he’s doing it.’ But he didn’t play every part note for note. He brought his own thing to them.”
There are just nine shows on the books for right now, and Hagar doesn’t know if more will be added. “I might not like being in the same place every night,” he says. “I only did it one other time at a much smaller place in Vegas. This is a bigger room with a bigger production, and it might feel strange. It might start fuckin’ with me, but we’ll see. I love Vegas, man. Vegas is awesome.”