The “coolest guy on the frickin’ planet” according to Sammy Hagar
Sammy Hagar will always have a seat at the table of cool due to the badass way he joined Van Halen at their most popular and still took them to even newer heights.
When Van Halen first burst onto the scene, they did a good job in cementing themselves as one of the most exciting, must-see bands on the planet. The first thing that they had going for them was Eddie Van Halen on guitar, who cast away all the conventional methods of musicianship and ushered in a brand new age of rock, one filled with finger-tapping and playing speed.
What was so exciting about Eddie Van Halen was that he introduced a brand new playing technique, which allowed him to hit notes a lot quicker, but he implemented that style in a way that didn’t just take advantage of this newfound speed. Yes, he was playing quick, but there was also melody there. After all, while we all let our jaws drop to ‘Eruption’, you couldn’t listen to an album of that, and Eddie was aware of it.
So, you had this new age of rock music presented to you, but more than just the guitar-playing, the entire band was able to keep up and mould a sound of this age of innovation. David Lee Roth was on vocal duties, and he was the kind of frontman who could latch onto this unwavering sound and ride it for all its worth. The band unified and made something new, exciting and engaging.
As such, when Lee Roth left the band, Van Halen struggled with who they should replace him with. Eventually, they found Sammy Hagar, who walked right into Van Halen, turned the band on its head, but managed to make them even more successful by doing so.
“What I brought to Van Halen was just who and what I am,” recalled Hagar, “It was Sammy Hagar, who and what I was at that moment, but very inspired by Eddie Van Halen’s musicianship… He inspired me to write songs… Goosebump songs.”
Hagar refused to sing any of the songs that Lee Roth had previously written for the band, as he was insistent that if he was going to be a member of the group, he had to be an intrinsic part of it. This meant the band were only ever playing the songs that he helped write, and they went in a new direction that Hagaer helped steer them in. The public were very open to this sound. Lee Roth would be missed, but Van Halen had a perfect replacement that the public were going to love.
“Back then, Eddie and I were doing these crazy acrobatics where I would sing crazy lines, and he’d go nuts on the guitar,” said Hagar, “When I was in Van Halen, at least in the early days, it was all about having fun.”
Things didn’t work out in the long run between Sammy Hagar and the band, though, as Hagar’s developments within the band ended up going in a direction that the other members weren’t as open to. He wanted to get rid of the guitar solos, which had become an intrinsic part of the band’s sound, and there was another guitarist he was hoping the band could channel. Of course, what guitarist would you ever consider better than Eddie Van Halen? Well, for Sammy Hagar, it was Ronnie Montrose, who Hagar was drawn to and wanted to emulate the sound and style of.
“I thought he was the coolest guy on the frickin’ planet. And he was,” said Hagar, “I saw the last show he played with the Edgar Winter Band at Winterland in San Francisco. This was after those other guys told me they didn’t want to play the songs I’d written. I said: ‘That’s the kind of guitar player I want to have’. I got his number, and drove five miles in my battered truck and knocked on his door.”
