Rock legend Sammy Hagar, 78, shares his secret to staying young and active

Sammy Hagar isn’t slowing down.

the Rock The icon — who turned 78 on Monday — recently came off a major tour, has an upcoming Las Vegas residency and just released a new live album.

Hager told Fox News Digital that he decided to release the live album now because his band had the opportunity to play nine shows at Sin City’s Park MGM Theater last summer, and “No need to pack your bags and reset every night.”

He explained that the band recorded all 33 shows on their “The Best of All Worlds” tour last summer, and they ended up piecing the album together from a few different nights.

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Sammy Hagar at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Festival held at T-Mobile Arena on September 19, 2025 in Las Vegas. (Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty Images)

“The last couple of nights, we just started having a lot of fun, and we switched a lot of songs around just so it was magical again, you know? “And that’s what you want from a live album,” he told Fox News Digital. You want magic. You know, you can’t play songs better than the original recordings, but they can have more energy and more life because of the audience.

the “I can’t drive 55” The singer boasted that his audience is “amazing every night,” and no matter where he performs, it always seems like the same enthusiastic audience.

Hajar said that he cares about making the fans happy “more than I care about myself.”

“I’ve been so tired and exhausted before on tour where I didn’t even want to go out on stage, and then I go out there and the fans, you know, instantly rejuvenate you,” he explained.

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Sammy Hagar singing on stage in New York in 1977. (Michael Butland/Getty Images)

He said he performs so intensely at times that he feels like he’s about to collapse, but he keeps going “because I care about the fans.”

The “There’s Only One Way to Rock” singer also knows he’s lucky to have a successful career that’s lasted more than half a century.

He joked that he meant his 70s, not his age. “I’m very lucky to be in the position I’m in now in my life, and I’ve been in this position since I was in my 70s,” he said.

“I’ve been so tired and exhausted before on tour where I didn’t even want to go out on stage, and then I go out there and the fans, you know, instantly rejuvenate you.”

-Sami Hagar

the previous Van Halen The band leader continued: “Since then, I have been the luckiest man in the world. Everything I have done has been successful, and I must say I am very lucky, and I will never take that for granted.”

Hager said he feels like he owes it to everyone in his audience or anyone who goes to one of his restaurants. “And if I see them, I owe them the time of day. I stop, I’ll take a picture, I’ll shake your hand, I’ll sign something, you know, it’s just my job.”

When asked how he continues to work harder than ever at his age, Hajar joked: “This is not work. If it was work, I might have a different opinion.”

Sammy Hagar performs during the Toby Keith & Friends Golf Classic at Riverwind Casino on May 30, 2025, in Norman, Oklahoma. (Gary Miller/Getty Images)

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He said the tour felt like work, but the energy of the fans kept him going last summer “Because I was walking in front of 18 or 20 thousand people every night and saying, “Oh my God, I can’t believe these people still want to, you know, hear my music and see what I bring to the table,” and that was amazing in itself.

Because he wasn’t sure he wanted to do a big tour again, staying in Las Vegas seemed like a “dream come true” with a nice hotel room, without having to check out and hop on a plane every morning, then drive hours to another hotel room.

“this On the road“I don’t think I would be so driven to keep doing it if I had to keep doing it,” he said. So accommodation is very easy. I gotta tell you, all you have to do is go out there in a nice room and do your thing and then that’s the easiest part of my job is doing it, you know? When I get on stage, I know what I have to do.”

Hagar is also working with Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger on a song she wrote inspired by Hagar.

“He said he wrote it thinking of me, channeling my way of writing upbeat songs,” Hagar said of Kruger.

WATCH: Sammy Hagar explains how his new live album came together

Sammy Hagar with Van Halen in 1986. (Paul Natkin/Getty Images)

Kruger told Hager that he felt the song sounded like him, and showed Hager what he was imagining by playing an artificial intelligence version of himself singing.

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““So, I sang my voice and I did it, and I used AI and I used your voice,” he says. You made artificial intelligence sing [Hagar’s] part, and see what it would sound like when you sang this song, and he says it sounded amazing.”

Hagar joked that the AI ​​version of himself might sound better than his real voice, but he went into the studio to record it Tommy Lee On the drums of the song, ““And it exploded.”

““Who knows who,” he said. “I don’t know what Chad’s going to do. He’s a great songwriter, and he’s a smart, outgoing guy, you know, so we’ll see what happens with him.”

Hagar also reflected on the loss of Ozzy Osbourne over the summer, saying that it was ““Amazed and amazed” that the late rock singer was able to give his farewell concert just days before his death.

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Sammy Hagar’s career spans over 50 years as the rock singer is 78 years old. (Matt Winkelmeier/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)

“All my friends, we used to talk about it all the time. “Do you think Ozzy will make it?” None of us would have bet that Ozzy would make it to this show, but we knew the show would go on, the tribute. We thought this would end up being a great tribute, and we’d all end up singing with Black Sabbath, you know, or something.”

He continued: “He did it. He did it, he did it wonderfully. And what he did was amazing. It broke my heart that he did it, and then when he died it made me realize two weeks later… how truly amazing it was.”

Osbourne performed his final concert, “Back to the Beginning,” in Birmingham, England, on July 5. He died 17 days later, on July 22.

Hagar said the fact that Osbourne had died turned his performance “from amazing to unbelievable to impossible, which set the bar very high for any of us planning on doing any kind of crazy exit. You’re not going to top Ozzy. He did it.”

He said he still gets goosebumps from head to toe when he thinks about it.

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He added: “What a rock ‘n’ roll, what a master. He’s the master, period.”

The live album “Sammy Hagar and the Best in the World: Residency” was released on Friday. His residency will be at Park MGM “The Best of All Worlds” in Las Vegas on select dates in March and September of next year.