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Although there has been no official word from either camp, it looks like a deal has been done for Sammy Hagar to rejoin Van Halen.

Van Halen have been on-hold since the departure of their third singer Gary Cherone and following Eddie Van Halen's cancer scare. Now it seems the way has been paved for the return of Van Halen as a recording and touring entity with their old singer.

A reformation with Hagar at one point seemed an impossible dream. In 1998, Sammy told Undercover how he found out he was out of the band the first time. Van Halen had been recording with David Lee Roth behind his back. Those sessions were used in part on their Best of Volume 1 album.

"It actually made it easier for me when they got David Lee Roth back in the band for me to go "well the hell with you guys". This is like really back stabbing. They were rehearsing with Roth for two weeks before I even found out about it. After 10 great years of camaraderie they turn on me like that" he said.

The sessions with Roth were meant to lead to a new album but that fell apart and former Extreme singer Gary Cherone came into the role. That line-up recorded the disastrous 'Three' album (which all VH fans agree really sucked).

The last we heard of Van Halen was a year ago with word of the return of David Lee Roth to the Front Man job. Roth announced to the media that he had accepted his old position back but then disaster struck again. This time it was the lawyers. Although both sides wanted to the reunion to happen, lawyers got involved and again the reunion fell in a heap.

Roth then did the unthinkable. He went out on tour with Sammy Hagar. The pair gave punters the entire Van Halen collection with the original lead singers in one tight set. While that may sound like a fan's dream come true, again problems arose. Hagar and Roth simply didn't get on well together. Tickets sales were in some cases poor and the tour disintegrated.

Now we hear Van Halen have signed a management deal with Irving Azoff. Azoff manages the affairs of The Eagles, Jewel and surprise, surprise Sammy Hagar!

The ducks are lined up. Now all we need to the official word so Irving can start working on the rider for the next tour. Now how did it go again? Was it three pounds of M&Ms with the brown ones removed? Don't forget the Six (6) liters of Jack Daniels (black label), Four (4) liters of Stolichnaya Silver Vodka (80 proof) and One (1) liter of Drambuie, either Irving. It's a rock and roll band after all. They need to keep up their fluids.

Just to clear the air, David explained the M&M (brown M&M) situation once as such:

Van Halen in the old days used to bring in 120+ tons of stage equipment to a show, and sometimes the floors they would set up on were not rated for that much weight. (They had a catastrophe once, and lost their entire stage). So Dave would put in all the engineering specs of the stage setup, with lbs.-per-square inch requirements, and voltage limits that needed to be met, and he would tuck in a spec of all brown M&M's backstage to be removed from the candy dish.

Without having to check off every engineering requirement they spec'd out, Dave would see if there were brown M&M's in the dish back stage, and if there were, that meant that the setup crew must have overlooked the entire contract. And he would order an engineering overview to make sure none of their crew got killed.