I-95 Drive Home Mystery Artist [VIDEO]

Tonight’s mystery artists will authorize cover bands to sing their songs but they are said to have banned the man who wrote them from doing the same.  Bet you can guess who they are and who our odd man out is.

If you said Van Halen and Sammy Hagar you are tight in one. During his time fronting for Van Halen he wrote several of their biggest hits.  But after leaving under less than amicable circumstances they forbade him to play them on his own according to what Sammy told Rolling Stone about a year ago.

He told the magazine:

Sammy: Yes, it's true. They wouldn't let me do them. I can hire an attorney and fight them and I'm going too, but I didn't have time to do that then. On the new Circle DVD we're making from the live album, Led Zeppelin agreed to let us use their music. And Van Halen said, "No." And then I said, "F*#k you." I don't need to do this to survive, and thank God, because otherwise, they would starve me out like I think they're trying to do.

It's the lowest, cheesiest thing ever. I wrote every lyric and every melody and I sang them in that band. Alex Van Halen played the f*#king drums and Michael Anthony played bass, and I wrote music and lyrics. When you're singing "Right Now" or "Why Can't This Be Love," that's my music. I wrote all the lyrics.

RS: Any cover band in a bar can play whatever they want, so certainly the guy that wrote the song...

Sammy:  Exactly. Wait a minute, they have licensed the songs to cover bands, but they won't allow me to do them. You ever watch that show on AXS, The World's Greatest Tribute Bands? There was a Van Halen tribute band that plays a little of mine and a little bit of theirs. They clear it for them, but not the guy who wrote that shit. It's just stupid. See, you got me. You really got me, because this is my soft spot; you found the chink in my armor. I gotta tell you, it's maybe the stupidest, lamest thing I've ever seen in this business.

Sammy has just recently apologized to the guys. No word if that means the ban on playing his songs has been lifted.

Here he is on his own with tonight's featured song.