Sammy Hagar knows the precise time and day Eddie Van Halen rang him up to fire him from Van Halen. Naturally, Eddie has a different recollection of that June 16 phone call. Pay no mind; the realization that original Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth would return to finish what he started was enough to put the blame game on the backburner.

\\So while Roth ventured back into obscurity after the short-lived reunion, Hagar quietly stewed before resuming the solo career he left behind eleven years earlier. Summoning an all-star cast of baby boomer musicians that included Huey Lewis, Mickey Hart, Roy Rogers and former bandmate Ronnie Montrose, Hagar returned to the studio to ease his pain, deal with the demise of Van Halen Mark II and record "Marching to Mars."

\\Rolling Stone.com: What was it like recording a solo record after such a long time? Even the last one you did had Eddie Van Halen on it.

\\Sammy Hagar: When the devastation of the Van Halen breakup really hit me I was like, 'What am I going to do?' So my wife and I decided to go to Hawaii, and on the plane is Mickey Hart [of the Grateful Dead]. He wasn't a good friend or anything, I just kind of met him a couple of times. He says to me, "Man, when Jerry [Garcia] died, I didn't know what to do, so I jumped back into the music and it really pulled me through it and I found myself again." So, he basically just conned me into jumping into the studio with him and jamming, and for eight hours we just played and played and played. The song "Marching From Mars" is written from that jam session and I thought, 'Man, he's right,' and I just started writing music, and the next thing I knew, I was feeling really free ... I got all excited and I haven't come up from air since back in July, after that 9 a.m. phone call on Father's Day, June 16.

\\The infamous phone call. What happened?

\\What led up to this could [fill] five books; it's just too complex. It got ugly when [original Van Halen manager] Ed Leffler died in 1993. I swear that was the end of the Van Halen I knew. Alex [Van Halen]'s brother in-law [Ray Danniels] comes in and manages the band and starts sending everyone down the river and fishes me out. It just got really weird. I can't explain it, but I wasn't happy with what was going down. I kept telling them that I didn't want to do a greatest hits record. Why would we want to do that when every album we ever made went to number one and every concert we ever put on sale sold out? I said, "Let's make another record and tour first before we do that -- at least one more record."

\\So Ed calls me June 16 and says, "I am so frustrated I went out and got David Lee Roth and we've been working together for a few weeks. We're going to do a reunion tour, a couple of videos and a couple songs for the album, so you go back to being a solo artist because that's all you ever wanted to be anyway." I go, "What the fuck?" I almost hit the floor. It was the biggest surprise in my entire career.

\\The last song you ever recorded together was "Humans Being" from the "Twister" soundtrack. Was it really tense?

\\Yeah, it was. I was told we were doing two songs for that movie. The other song was kind of an acoustic thing that turned into a rock track that was really good called "Between Us Two," which we finished. But I was told they were both in the movie and I was reluctantly willing to do it. When we finished them, they said that they were only going to use the rock track for the movie and the other one was for the greatest hits record. And I was like, "You motherfuckers." They were always trying to get me to do things behind my back.

\\How were they able to do that ? Was there an agreement that they had the last word?

\\We were a democracy but when it's two against one ... Mike [Anthony]'s vote never counted, never did. Mike's my friend [and] I don't mean this in a derogatory way. It didn't matter that he was my buddy and would stand up for me, because it was Ed, Al and the management deciding. It was never like that [before], but after the first of the year it seemed like this was the new regime and they were going to do whatever they wanted to do, and they knew that they had to trick me.

\\So they decided to drop your song from the greatest hits album and add the Roth songs?

\\Well there's a contract for a "Greatest Hits, Vol. Two."

\\Is that right?

\\That was the other thing I wouldn't budge on. They wanted to do this one and another studio album and then another greatest hits album ... eventually I would have quit the band. The milk ad would have threw me over the edge.

\\I was going to ask you about that. [The tag line of Eddie and Alex Van Halen's "Milk: Where's Your Mustache?" ad reads: "Of all the lead singers we've had, most never got enough calcium. But not for Alex and me. Because every time we change singers, we have an extra glass of milk."]

\\I was in the band with these guys for eleven years and I never once saw them drink a glass of milk. So what's that all about? I wrote a song called, "Would You Do It For Free?" asking them that question.

\\It's about the milk ad?

\\Fuck yeah, that's what its about. Not the milk commercial specifically, but about the greatest hits package. Alex asked me if I would do a solo record for free. I was going retro because they were going retro with the greatest hits thing and Alex said, "You just want to do it for the money." And I said, "Bullshit." And he said, "Would you do it for free?" And I said, "Absolutely." And he said, "Go out and do it and give us the money." I thought to myself that after the Nissan commercial [featuring music from Van Halen's version of "You Really Got Me"], the greatest hits thing and the milk commercial that they should be asking themselves the question about doing it for nothing.

\\When was the last time you spoke to them?

\\At a funeral, about late August, early September. Our attorney's wife died, but it was actually a good place to see them because there couldn't be any bad vibes because we were there for a different reason. Eddie couldn't look me in the eye and he was like, 'Oh man, this is embarrassing.' I didn't know what to say and I was like, 'You don't have to say nothing.'

\\So there were no words spoken?

\\No. We hugged, but he [Eddie] was a little stiff. He just showed a lot of guilt and Mike was scared to be my buddy too much because Eddie and Al were between him. I sat through the whole service with Alex and we had a very warm conversation and I said at the end, "Al, we're grown men. Let's just keep it clean." And he said, "Absolutely. You got a deal," and we shook hands. About a week later I start reading, "They are going to kick my ass because I quit and fucked them." And I'm going, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa!'

\\Is there any chance of a reconciliation?

\\The only reason I would do the Van Halen thing is for money and I don't need that. I am fine. If I needed money, I might do it. I am happy doing what I want to