Everybody Wants Some (18 page)

When Sammy met with Eddie and Alex, they tried out some ideas for “Summer Nights,” one of the new songs they had already rehearsed with Roth. Engineer Donn Landee was on hand during the first jam sessions, and happily gave Hagar two thumbs up. After a few hours in 5150 the new band embraced one another—the Van Halen name would carry on.

Hagar had previously crossed paths with Van Halen several times. His early albums with Montrose were the testing ground for the production techniques of Ted Templeman and Landee, the team responsible for the first six Van Halen albums. The Hagar-penned “Make It Last” from the first Montrose album had been part of their set as a cover band in 1974. Van Halen had toured with Montrose, though only after Hagar’s departure.

Hagar was in the process of reconfiguring his solo act when Van Halen called. The thirty-seven-year old singer had recently ventured into the economy-wattage supergroup HSAS with session guitarist Neal Schon of Journey, drummer Michael Shrieve of Santana, and bassist Kenny Aaronson of Foghat. During his lengthy career, Hagar had made a lot of friends—not just among musicians but among the A&R reps, tour managers, and promotion men who kept the music business in action.

“My only saving grace replacing a guy like Roth,” Sammy said, “is that people know who I am.”

The first California native to join the ultimate sunshine hard rock band Van Halen, Samuel Roy Hagar was born in coastal Monterey on October 13, 1947. With two older sisters and a brother, he was the baby of the family. Before Sammy reached high school, the Hagars moved to Fontana, California, a dusty lower-middle-class industrial flatland in San Bernardino County outside Los Angeles, best known as the birthplace of the Hells Angels.

Sammy’s father, Robert, described as “alcoholic” and “scary violent” by family members, was a boxer who fought under the name Bobby Burns in the late 1930s. Initially known for his deadly punches, he ended his first eight fights with knockouts and fought Hall of Fame member Manuel Ortiz seven times. When the blows began taking their toll, however, Hagar became better known for his perseverance and stamina. The family always boasted that their father was never knocked down in a fight.

Robert left boxing briefly to fight in World War II, and his career never bounced back. He switched between bantamweight, feather-weight, and lightweight divisions looking for spots on local fight cards, anything to bring home some cash. Eventually he boxed in the tough border-towns between California and Mexico where rules and regulations went out the window—along with the furniture and the losers. Sammy later compared his dad to Robert De Niro in
Raging Bull
—a violent, erratic, and dangerous man with a persecution complex.

When Sammy was five, his dad strapped gloves on him and sent him into the garage to trade punches with his older brother. The bloody noses continued for the next twelve years, until Sammy discovered his own voice. Quitting his father’s footsteps after a few serious bouts, he took a cue from his new hero, Elvis Presley, and joined the local rock and roll scene in search of chicks and kicks.

In contrast to her headstrong, volatile husband, Gladys Hagar was a selfless caregiver. She slept with one ear open, ready to whisk her kids away when Daddy came home looking for a fight. She refused her youngest son drums, saying they were too expensive and too loud. When Sammy was eighteen, he asked her for a guitar to entertain his buddies down on the beach. “He wanted an instrument,” Gladys said. “I was supporting the kids all by myself, and it wasn’t easy. He said, ‘I am gonna be determined, and I am gonna show you.’ ”

Sammy claimed he stole his first electric guitar off a music store wall, and began playing in bands like Skinny, Big Bang, Dustcloud, and the Justice Brothers. “My first band, we could only play one song, but we played it all day—‘Miserlou’ by Dick Dale.” He became a journey-man on the local bar rock scene. Rare among his peers, however, Hagar was a virtual teetotaler who preferred outdoor activities to parties. “I was doing what everybody else was doing,” Sammy told
Hit Parader
. “But because of seeing my father and how liquor took hold of him and ruined him, I turned off the booze quick.” His father’s descent was especially harrowing—according to Sammy he died at age forty-five in 1970 in the back of a police car, riding to the drunk tank after being scooped off the ground in a public park.

Sammy’s big career break came in 1973, when former Van Morrison sideman Ronnie Montrose recruited him to sing for the band that bore his name. Hagar lasted with Montrose for two albums, penning the hard rock hit “Bad Motor Scooter” and cowriting “Rock Candy,” “Paper Money,” and “Space Station No. 5.” Sammy flew the coop for a solo career in 1975, but the first song he ever wrote, “Bad Motor Scooter” remained a Montrose standard.

Hagar was always enthusiastic and outgoing, more like a featured performer than a flunky singer. He claimed he was fired in part for talking to the audience too much. “I was the figurehead of Montrose,” Sammy said in the early 1980s, “like David Lee Roth is in Van Halen. I was the one getting my picture in the magazines like David. People wanted to interview me. Before, Ronnie did everything on his own, and then it infuriated him when I became the center of attention. I was naive—I was as excited as a little puppy.”

His January 1976 solo debut,
Nine on a Ten Scale
, failed to produce a radio hit, so Hagar built his career one night at a time, bonding with fans on a likable eye-to-eye level. Drawing on a boxer’s idea of personal promotion, he first billed himself as Sammy Wild, and later the Red Rocker. He didn’t experience the kind of immediate success that could make him think he had a magnetic personality—he won his audience with his positive attitude and by working for them with every pluck of his guitar strings. “I feel more like a worker than a star,” Hagar said, frequently comparing his nightly job to mopping floors. “That’s how I was raised.”

Hagar rocked without much rage—he was energetic, but not usually angry or snotty. Yet his competitive approach to music continued. “Question my talent and I’ll probably kill you,” he told
Hit Parader
. “I’ve seen every group in this business play live and I can honestly say that I put out more in concert than any other performer. I would say I’m in the top three in the world in terms of performing.”

For one thing, Sammy liked to talk. His stage raps grew legendary—one audience address in the early eighties reportedly clocked in at twenty-seven minutes. Telling jokes, trying on clothes, and shooting off down-home political opinions, he was an animated young presence on the meat and potatoes rock circuit. He understood the regional nature of touring in the 1970s, and eventually played the down-and-dirty annual Texxas Jam at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, and the Astrodome in Houston more than anyone. Ripening as a solo artist, Hagar discovered the Red Rocker persona after penning the track “Red” for his 1977 self-titled third album, commonly called
The Red
Album
.

Married to his sweetheart, Betsy, early in his career, Hagar shunned the temptations of the road but offered a steady stream of blunt songs about sex. His lyrics were simple but honest, sometimes even corny. He described his own vocabulary as “pretty bad.” Depending on the ear of the beholder, songs like “Dick in the Dirt” would either speak straight to the heart or fall flat in empty clichés. He frequently cited “I Can’t Drive 55” as his best experience putting rhymes together.

Despite his self-professed shortcomings, he also experienced success as a songwriter. Bette Midler belted out his song “Keep On Rockin’ ” in her 1979 movie
The Rose
. Then soap opera idol Rick Springfield turned Sammy’s “I’ve Done Everything for You” into a Top 10 single in 1981. Though Hagar had nothing to do with leather and spikes, his upbeat “Heavy Metal” kicked off the soundtrack to the 1982 animated fantasy film
Heavy Metal
. His “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” theme also appeared in a lead spot on that movie soundtrack—a position the director had originally slotted for Van Halen.

Though down-to-earth about a lot of things, Hagar also had a loose-screw Californian side. In 1968 in Fontana, he claimed to have experienced the first of several visitations by space aliens. “Anyone who thinks we’re the only ones here, despite the vastness of the entire universe, is fucking crazy,” he told
Guitar World
. “I’m a firm believer. When I was about 19 or 20, they downloaded everything that was in my head. I don’t know who the fuck they are, but I’ve narrowed them down to a people called the Nine, who are called that because they’re from the ninth dimension.” He named his music publishing company Nine Music after the space invaders he claimed were watching over him.

In 1981, Hagar left Capitol and signed with David Geffen’s brand-new record company, Geffen Records. Cleaning up his act, he joined a reliable league of rockers like Billy Squier, Aldo Nova, the Greg Kihn Band, and Quarterflash—acts that seemed sensible compared to the outrages of heavy metal and the decadent alienation of new wave. FM radio was a business, not a social revolution, and it needed to rock steady to keep its advertisers happy. For guys like Hagar who could deliver tracks like “Rock ’N’ Roll Weekend,” there was plenty of money to be made.

With solo success came money for a fleet of beach cruisers, convertibles, and custom cars including a 1959 Ferrari Alpha 400i Spider and a 1955 Ford Thunderbird. But a black 1983 512 Boxer with a worn-out driver’s seat leather inspired his widely recognized “I Can’t Drive 55.” While Eddie Van Halen frequently admitted to coming up with riffs while diddling with a guitar in front of the TV, Hagar got his inspiration while alone behind the wheel. “I always drove like a complete asshole,” he added. “Cut people off, tailgate, you name it.”

By the time he reached Van Halen, Sammy had an impressive three gold albums under his belt:
Standing Hampton
,
Three Lock Box
, and 1985’s Ted Templeman–produced
VOA
—a patriotic potshot against the Soviet Union for boycotting the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The Red Rocker was anything but a commie. The
VOA
album cover pictured “Uncle Sam” Hagar parachuting onto the White House lawn to help Ronald Reagan manage the constant nuisance of foreign powers.
People
recommended the album to “rock fans who don’t demand a whole lot of subtlety.”

Sammy was a rebel who obeyed the rules and flourished. Where many rock musicians detested the music business, he created cameos in several music videos for his A&R man at Geffen, the celebrated rock swami John Kalodner. By 1985, he was an utterly commercial creature who remained deeply convinced of his own integrity. Following the news of Sammy joining Van Halen,
VOA
went platinum at the end of 1985. “If I wasn’t so dedicated to being true to myself, I could have been a platinum-selling artist five years ago,” he declared to
Hit
Parader
.

Before Van Halen and Hagar could make any moves, they still had to appease the moneymen. The merger of two platinum-selling entities was not as simple as slapping high fives at the rehearsal room. With millions of dollars now at stake, Hagar’s label Geffen Records prepared to go to war against Warner Bros. Geffen had only won Hagar after a protracted legal battle to free him from Capitol. Now, after his last solo album had finally gone platinum after years of work, he was already looking to change alliances. Hagar still owed Geffen three albums on his contract, and label executives were afraid they would be getting bupkiss—at least until this jaunt with Van Halen was done.

Eddie, Alex, and Mike kidded that they would tour with Hagar as his backing act, but that joke pleased their label Warner Bros. none. Several hundred hours of negotiation later, Geffen accepted the promise of one more solo album from Hagar, along with a cut of the proceeds from the next Van Halen album.

Since Van Halen were still operating without management, Sammy introduced his manager of the past nine years, Ed Leffler, to the brothers, and Leffler was soon signed on to take care of Van Halen’s business. This was an important alliance for Sammy to bring to the band, ensuring that in any future decision making he could count on having the brass understanding his point of view.

Eddie appeared onstage with Sammy’s band in September 1985 at the first annual Farm Aid charity concert for American farmers. Organized by Willie Nelson and John Cougar Mellencamp as a homegrown response to the Live Aid relief effort for Africa earlier that year, Farm Aid raised millions. Doing their part, Eddie and Hagar romped through Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll.” With Sammy all over the stage in yellow shoes and his headset microphone, Eddie tore up a guitar solo on a Frankenstrat. Their rendition of “Wild Thing” was cut from The Nashville Network broadcast after Hagar started joking about his dick. But after Eddie’s solo, Sammy announced the big news to the throng—he was the new lead singer of Van Halen.

While Roth and Eddie shared little in common outside the band, Hagar and Eddie became buddies fast. Sammy soon bought a beachfront house in Malibu two doors down from Eddie. Almost immediately, the band began flaunting its good fortune. “We had a toothache for about eleven years,” Alex Van Halen said about Roth, “and we finally went to the dentist and had it extracted, and got a crown with a gold cap.”

Even happy-go-lucky Michael Anthony breathed an acrimonious sigh of relief. “I would dread having to do a photo session with Roth, because I worried about how he would think I looked when I got there,” he told
Rolling Stone
. “I know Edward and Alex felt the same way, because Roth’s saying ‘You gotta dress this way. Go and buy some clothes. Why are you wearing that?’ ”

Though Hagar and Roth had traded insults in the press in the early 1980s, the two men appeared to preach similar if not compatible personal philosophies—everyone should follow their own path, listen to their own soul, and give not a damn what anyone else thinks. They clashed on musical styles, personal conduct, and fashion, but they both dressed themselves with bizarre gusto. Though not fond of Roth’s glittering capes and feather boas, Sammy packed his wardrobe with sleeveless yellow jumpsuits covered with red straps that could have been designed by Ronald McDonald.