“Singing this song was always difficult,” the singer wrote in his post, sharing a live version of Van Halen’s 1995 song, ‘Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do.’ “I wrote the lyrics about Kurt Cobain’s death.”
He continued, “I wanted the chorus to say ‘I wanna tell you what love can do,’ but Bruce Fairbank, Ed and Al wanted to make it more dark and negative. Technically it’s a brutal song to sing.”
“I painted myself in a corner, but we will be doing it at the residency in Vegas. I’m going to add it to the show. Today marks the 30th anniversary of ‘Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do’!” the Red Rocker added.
‘Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)’ appeared on Van Halen’s 1995 album ‘Balance.’ Hagar, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, and Alex Van Halen are among the songwriters.
Back in 2020, Sammy started the Lockdown Sessions video series on YouTube with his Circle bandmates, Michael Anthony, Vic Johnson, and Jason Bonham. Besides many other songs, they also performed, ‘Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)’ in August 2020.
Hagar wrote in the video description, “When I heard that Kurt Cobain had taken his own life, the first thing I thought of was I wish I were there and could have tried to save him. The original title for these lyrics were ‘I want to show you what love can do,’ but because it was such a dark horrible thing I just couldn’t shine a light on it.”
“So I changed the final line to ‘Don’t tell me what love can do.’ P.S. It was also the time of the breaking up of Van Halen, our last album and tour so it added a lot of emotion, negativity, and pain in the original vocal performance which surfaced the second I started singing this song for the first time since 1995,”
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