The album Sammy Hagar has always wanted to sound like: “Blew my mind and changed my life”
For many long-haired bandana-wearing classic rock enthusiasts, the landscape of hard rock excellence begins and ends with the enduring sounds of Van Halen, but it is worth remembering that the lineage of those wailing riffs and spectacular performances have their roots much earlier – a fact which has never escaped the grasp of Sammy Hagar.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to Hagar’s appointment as Van Halen’s lead vocalist back in 1985. On one hand, the Californian vocalist was handed an opportunity to make his mark with – arguably – the biggest hard rock outfit on the face of the Earth at that time (certainly the most commercially successful, anyway).
Conversely, Hagar was certainly given big shoes to fill in those vacated by David Lee Roth, and to this day, there are certain sects of Van Halen fanatics who choose only to recognise the Roth era, despite multiple musical highlights occurring under the tenure of Hagar.
Nevertheless, Hagar didn’t come into Van Halen totally blind. Alongside his many years flying under the radar of the mainstream, but creating a litany of cult hard rock records with Montrose, and his subsequently successful solo efforts just prior to joining the ranks of Van Halen, Hagar also came armed with an expansive knowledge of his hard rock forefathers from back in the 1960s.
Like many future musicians growing up surrounded by the cultural revolution of the swinging sixties, Hagar developed a deep adoration for the trailblazing sounds emerging from London at that time. From the endearing abrasion of mod rock outfits like The Who to the psychedelic innovations of Pink Floyd or Soft Machine, the streets of England’s capital were a particularly exciting place to be back then, so much so that their influence managed to stretch halfway across the globe, to Fontana, California, and the listening habits of a young Sammy Hagar.
Alongside the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, for which every rock and roll musician is endlessly indebted, Hagar also tended to lean more towards the darker, more abrasive sounds of the 1960s.
“I look at the Beatles and the Stones as coming out at the same time,” he told Classic Rock in 2015. “Same with Bob Dylan and Donovan, and Jeff Beck and Led Zeppelin. Music is kind of like that: There’s always a white-light band and a dark, edgy band.”
For Hagar, a particular stand-out of those dark and edgy outfits came in the form of The Jeff Beck Group, and their 1968 post-Yardbirds masterpiece, Truth. “This is almost like a Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart album,” the vocalist said of the record. More so than just being a great album, though, Truth also gave Hagar an unparalleled musical education. “When I heard the Truth album, I tried to be Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck at the same time. I learned every song on it,” he shared.
“I knew Beck from the Yardbirds, and I was a big fan, so I was primed to hear him doing his own thing,” Hagar concluded. “This record totally blew my mind and changed my life.” High praise indeed, but praise which Truth certainly earned.
As an album, it perfectly bridges the gap between the blues-psychedelia of Beck’s Yardbirds-era mastery and the expansive jazz-fueled explorations of his subsequent solo material. Although it is worlds apart from the sounds of Hagar-era Van Halen, the vocalist might never have gotten that far were it not for the inspirational quality of that 1968 LP.
