In The Studio with Redbeard

Tag: Sammy Hagar

  • Van Halen- 5150 @40- Sammy Hagar, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony, the late Eddie Van Halen

    Van Halen- 5150 @40- Sammy Hagar, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony, the late Eddie Van Halen

     “To be honest with you, I was NOT interested in jumping into a band,” Sammy Hagar confided to me In the Studio, recalling the circumstances which led to him joining America’s most popular hard rock band then, Van Halen, for their March 1986 release 5150. “I had just gotten to where I’d wanted to be (with the VOA  multi-platinum sales and sold-out tour) …When Dave (Roth) left, I’d told my wife at the time, ‘They’re probably going to call me up and ask me to join the band’. And I swear it wasn’t two weeks later, they did.”

    In 1985, the shock of David Lee Roth’s announcement that he was leaving the lead singer slot of America’s most popular band, Van Halen, was equaled (but not eclipsed, interestingly) by the band’s announcement that multi-platinum rocker Sammy Hagar had agreed to fill the role. How did that musical merger happen? Why did Hagar, already a platinum-selling solo artist, even consider it? What were the risks/rewards for both? Find out In The Studio  in my classic rock interview about 5150   with the late Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, original bass player/backing singer Michael Anthony, and the Red Rocker himself for their bold multi-million seller, which rapidly rose to the top-selling album in the US because of “Good Enough”, “Hot Summer Nights”,”Why Can’t This Be Love?”,”Best of Both Both Worlds”, and two songs that the original Van Halen could never have pulled off, “Dreams” and “Love Walks In”.

    Ever since Eddie Van Halen passed away in October 2020 after fighting cancer for many years, I have been asked by media and fans alike about what Eddie was really like off stage. The answers are revealed here in these incredibly revealing series of interviews from brother Alex, from original Van Halen bass player/singer Michael Anthony, powerfully and honestly from Sammy Hagar, and from Eddie Van Halen himself. (Special thanks to Tommy Nast for additional interview audio). –Redbeard

  • Sammy Hagar- Best, Round 2

    Sammy Hagar- Best, Round 2

    After years of struggle as the undercard rock palooka who could take a punch and never go down, in 1982 Sammy Hagar answered the bell  and came out swinging, scoring a technical knockout with his first mainstream hit, “Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy” from his seventh solo album, Three Lock Box. Then in 1987 Sammy won by a knockout with his solo album I Never Said Goodbye, at #14 his highest charting album ever, and that while being newly installed as Van Halen’s lead singer. Hagar reveals some deeply held intensely personal insights into what has driven him to this day as the leader of the superstar bands Chickenfoot  and now Sammy Hagar & the Circle.- Redbeard

    (Sammy Hagar at Las Vegas residency May 2025; photo Lee Palmer)

     

  • Montrose- Ronnie Montrose, Sammy Hagar, Ricky Phillips

    Montrose- Ronnie Montrose, Sammy Hagar, Ricky Phillips

    This “Ronnie Montrose Tribute” features my classic rock interviews with the late guitarist Ronnie Montrose, plus original Montrose band singer/songwriter Sammy Hagar. Sammy  takes a personal look back at the first Montrose album released in October 1973, widely cited by members of Van Halen to Def Leppard as the all-important missing link in the evolution of hard rock.

    That album and the follow-up, Paper Money, have been remastered  and now frame the,  sadly, final  Ronnie Montrose swan song album 10×10  featuring a galaxy of stars. Cameos include Gregg Rolie of Santana and Journey, Tommy Shaw and Lawrence Gowan of Styx, Sammy Hagar, Steve Lukather, Edgar Winter, Rick Derringer, Joe Bonamassa, Phil Collen of Def Leppard, Brad Whitford of Aerosmith, Mark Farner, Glenn Hughes, drummer Eric Singer, and veteran Styx bass player/tribute producer Ricky Phillips, who joins us here In the Studio as well.
    Guitarist namesake Ronnie Montrose’s credentials as a sideman were impressive, versatile enough to play tasty acoustic guitar on Van Morrison’s seminal Tupelo Honey and then turn around to power chord Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein” into rock history as the only #1 rock instrumental ever. We would later hear echoes of that first 1973 Montrose  album in the 1978 Van Halen debut. Even though commercial success eluded them, their influence was indelible, and that first RonMon album would be the linchpin for much of the modern hard rock sound that would follow. Ronnie Montrose, who passed in 2013, shared with In The Studio   host Redbeard Ronnie’s  theory on why his early work is still cited almost fifty years later, while Ricky Phillps details the fifteen year odyssey of this 2017   10×10   project. –Redbeard Photo Credit: DJ Photography

  • Van Halen- OU812- Alex & Eddie, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony

    Van Halen- OU812- Alex & Eddie, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony

    OU812  by Van Halen topped the US sales chart in Summer 1988, the band’s second #1 with this line-up in what eventually would become a string of four Billboard #1 albums in a row. It was a boom time for Eighties hard rock popularity, and the period is captured like a Polaroid snapshot in my time capsule of a classic rock interview featuring the late Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony, and Sammy Hagar. Sam answered the bell for his second round with America’s most popular hard rock band then as lead singer/songwriter with Van Halen. A lot of tequila has run under the bridge since then, but even the wallop of thirty-five year old mescal can’t alter the fact that these guys were having too much fun at that point. Van Halen fans were selling out football stadiums coast to coast and gobbling up more than 4,000,000 copies of OU812,  containing “Black and Blue”; “Feels So Good”( suffering under a dated ’80s keyboard arrangement and begging now for a revisit); “AFU” (fabulous guitar licks from Eddie Van Halen, reminding me why we hold the late Van Halen sibling in such high regard ); “When It’s Love”; “Cabo Wabo”;”Finish What You’ve Started”, and “Mine All Mine”. –Redbeard 

  • Joe Satriani- Surfing With the Alien 35th anniversary

    Joe Satriani- Surfing With the Alien 35th anniversary

    From 1984 until 1990 it was a dismal time for Rolling Stones fans with the band on indefinite hiatus, but two great things emerged from Mick Jagger’s haunting of New York City’s rock clubs  looking for suitable replacements during that period. Jagger launched the careers of Vernon Reid and Living Colour, and separately, an unknown six stringer  Long Islander-by-way-of-San Francisco fret phenom named Joe Satriani.

    Growing up the youngest of five kids on Long Island in the late 1950s and through the Sixties, Joe Satriani credits his mother’s excellent record collection with exposing him to Wes Montgomery as well as Jimi Hendrix. Satch fans from Mick Jagger to Sammy Hagar & Chickenfoot owe a debt of gratitude to Joe’s oldest sister, Carol, who donated her first paycheck as an art teacher to buy little Joe his first guitar, a Hagstrom 3, for $126.

    Recorded for $13,000 which he financed on his personal credit card, the mult-million copy sales of Joe Satriani’s 1987 second all-guitar album, Surfing With the Alien , effectively closed an era in contemporary music where the rock “guitar god” had become self-consciously cliched, supplanted for the first time in rock music history by the versatile electronic keyboard. Joe Satriani’s Surfing with the Alien  didn’t merely open the door for the re-emergence of rock guitar, it kicked it in.  –Redbeard

  • Joe Satriani- Ceremony- Dallas 1998

    Joe Satriani- Ceremony- Dallas 1998

    Extraordinary guitarist Joe Satriani, whose monstrous virtuosity is matched only by his humility, performing “Ceremony” live In the Studio with me in 1998 on KTXQ-Q102 in Dallas/Ft.Worth Texas. –Redbeard

  • Sammy Hagar- I Never Said Goodbye

    Sammy Hagar- I Never Said Goodbye

    After years of struggle as the undercard rock palooka who could take a punch and never go down,  Sammy Hagar answered the bell  in 1984 and came out swinging, scoring a technical knockout with his mainstream hit “I Can’t Drive 55” from his eighth (!) solo album, VOA. Then in 1987 Sammy won by a knockout with his solo album I Never Said Goodbye, at #14 his highest charting album ever, and that while being newly installed as Van Halen’s lead singer.

    For five decades, Sammy Hagar has punched way above his weight, from co-writing and belting out the songs on that first classic Montrose album in 1973, to a decade of undercard matches night after night as a solo bandleader. Finally breaking through to an arena headliner in the mid-Eighties with million sellers Three Lock Box  and VOA in 1984, Hagar got the high risk/high reward job of fronting one of America’s biggest bands then, Van Halen. But Sammy Hagar had to provide a new solo album to his former record company to make the deal palatable. Simply titled Sammy Hagar upon release that Summer 1987, it has since been re-titled I Never Said Goodbye,  but the songs remain the same: the plea for the Red Rocker’s Golden Rule,  “Give to Live”; Top Gun training soundtrack “Eagles Fly”; and the affirmation of “Returning Home”. Hagar reveals some deeply held, intensely personal insights into what has driven him to this day as the leader of the superstar bands Chickenfoot and now Sammy Hagar & the Circle.- Redbeard

  • Sammy Hagar- I Can’t Drive 55- Dallas 12-4-91 (w/Van Halen)

    Sammy Hagar- I Can’t Drive 55- Dallas 12-4-91 (w/Van Halen)

    “It took me sixteen hours to get to Dallas Texas today!”, sings Sammy Hagar to the huge crowd near the end of this legendary free concert in the blocked off streets of downtown Dallas Texas that sunny December afternoon during the performance with Van Halen of his anthem, “I Can’t Drive 55”. But in actual fact, this covert free concert had been over three years in the making since Sammy Hagar, plagued not once but twice in mid-Eighties appearances by notorious North Texas pollen-induced laryngitis, promised a free make-up concert to a Texxas Jam audience. That magical day made it all seem worth it. –Redbeard

    (Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, still inseparable, in Nashville August 2024- photo Lee Palmer)

  • Sammy Hagar- Standing Hampton

    Sammy Hagar- Standing Hampton

    Like Cheap Trick during the second half of the Seventies, Sammy Hagar had been among the perennial  best support/opening acts in rock during the same period. Hagar became a stalwart under-card name after writing and singing on that first landmark Montrose debut, but never got a title shot until music label owner David Geffen premiered his new label with Sammy Hagar’s Standing Hampton in January 1982 (Geffen’s other initial signing was some piano player named Elton something ,who I understand is still working, if you can believe that). Sammy Hagar joins me here In the Studio to share the stories and some of his best recordings leading up to and including “There’s Only One Way to Rock”, “I’ll Fall in Love Again”, and “Heavy Metal” from Standing Hampton, the pivotal album in Sammy Hagar’s long career.

    With his first two rounds as a rookie co-writing and singing on the first two Montrose albums, things soured quickly between the eager but naive Sammy and the more experienced namesake, the late Ronnie Montrose. Going it alone in a solo career would appear to be the most difficult path that Sammy Hagar could have chosen. But even early on, for Hagar there was only one way to rock.

    “I didn’t have a choice,” Sammy explains here In the Studio. “It’s really funny because I never ever wanted to be a solo artist. I wanted to be the leader, sure, but in a band. I swore then that I would never again play with people I didn’t like.” That early professional lesson shaped his outlook as much as the heartbreaking loss of his father. “My father was a professional boxer, bantamweight, who fought for the title seven times against one of the greatest fighters in history, Manuel Ortiz… If it hadn’t been for him, my father would have been champion.” Clearly Sammy is proud of his father’s stature, learning never to quit, but the son saw how substance abuse could defeat his dad in a way no person ever could.

    “When you see your father at age 53 drink himself to death…He died under a park bench. I swore that would never happen to me. A blind man could see that drugs and alcohol can kill you,” Hagar confides.

    For over four decades, Sammy Hagar has answered the bell and come out swinging: from co-writing and belting out the songs on that first classic Montrose album in 1973, to a decade of undercard matches night after night as a solo bandleader. Finally breaking through to an arena headliner in the mid-Eighties, Hagar got the love/hate job of fronting one of America’s biggest bands then, Van Halen. After a decade of that soap opera, he resumed his solo career without missing a beat, ending up at the top of the New York Times best-seller booklist with his unvarnished autobiography. Here is round one of Sam the Man’s story as told by the “Red Rocker” himself In the Studio.- Redbeard

  • Sammy Hagar-Marching to Mars/One Way to Rock-Cabo San Lucas 5-97

    Sammy Hagar-Marching to Mars/One Way to Rock-Cabo San Lucas 5-97

    Here is a smoking medley of “Marching to Mars/ There’s Only One Way to Rock” from the Sammy Hagar  Cabo Wabo Cantina in May 1997. –Redbeard
    ( Sammy Hagar, Kenny Aronoff in Nashville 2024- photo Lee Palmer)