Sammy Hagar on the Bet He Made with Metallica in ’88 (And Who Still Owes Him Money)

Sammy Hagar shares some incredible gems on social media. A great example is a photo he shared yesterday (February 16) from 1988.

In the photo, you can spot Van Halen and some members of the supporting bands from VH's "Monsters of Rock" tour. Providing support on that tour were the Scorpions, Dokken, Kingdom Come and a tiny band out of San Francisco named Metallica. (Sarcasm FTW!)

"There's a lot of metal going on here," begins Hagar in the photo's caption. "This was the press conference for the Monsters of Rock stadium tour. I must admit we had a good time that day hanging out with all these guys. Metallica hadn't broke yet with 'Enter Sandman,' but they crushed it every night, put a big hurt on Dokken, who had to follow them, ouch!"

Hagar concluded, "I bet the members of Metallica $100 each that at the end of this tour their next record would go platinum. So far Lars [Ulrich] and Kirk [Hammett] are the only ones that paid up. Ha ha."

In other words: If James Hetfield and/or Jason Newsted are reading this right now, you owe the Red Rocker a benjamin.

Eddie Van Halen was the most influential guitarist of our generation.

Of course, flashy, fleet-fingered guitarists were a dime a dozen in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. Eddie was better than all of them, but he was more than that. A songwriter, a keyboardist, a studio wizard, ¼ of Van Halen’s four-part harmony team and a band leader that was able to guide VH through losing the most distinctive frontman of the ‘80s and led them to four chart-topping albums with Sammy Hagar.

Here, we take on the tough task of ranking their top 30 songs. (It was really, really tough to cut any of the songs on the first six albums from this list.)