The first song Sammy Hagar wrote with Van Halen: “This guy can sing”
Every band will have some raw nerves bringing a stranger into the mix. There’s already a good sense of camaraderie among everyone, so why try to throw everything out of whack by jamming with someone that you’ve never played music with before? Van Halen didn’t really have a choice in the matter when David Lee Roth left, though, and when they first jammed with Sammy Hagar on a handful of riffs, they came through with a classic right out of the gate.
If you really think about it, Van Halen may have been one of the few bands that could have gone completely instrumental after letting go of their lead singer. Sure, ‘Diamond Dave’ had some of the greatest stage charisma of all time, but if Eddie Van Halen could engage an audience just through his guitar solos, what was there to worry about on the touring circuit?
Well, touring is one thing, but it’s a tougher sell trying to get an instrumental on the radio. Hagar was already a superstar in his own right on rock radio, and after a recommendation from his mechanic, of all people, ‘The Red Rocker’ decided to come down to the band’s 5150 studio for a jam session.
Although no one would have scoffed at the idea of jamming with Van Halen today, try to understand where Hagar was at the time. You already have hits on the charts after leaving your first band, and now, all of a sudden, you find yourself right next to Eddie Van Halen, who expects you to have the same kind of charisma as one of the great cartoon characters of rock. Shaking yet?
Then again, Hagar didn’t really have anything to be worried about. He came in level-headed just to see what the band was working on, and the minute he opened his mouth to sing, the basis of the song ‘Summer Nights’ was already forming.
As Hagar told Louder, “I started singing to it, making up words, and right off the bat I sang, ‘Summer nights and my radio…’ They all got excited. ‘Oh man, this guy can sing!’ And [Eddie’s father] Jan [Van Halen] was diggin’ that I could scat like a jazz singer.” The jazz singer comparison may have made sense then, but Hagar was no Billie Holiday. He was a rock juggernaut, and with him, Van Halen entered the next phase of their development.
Whereas Roth’s bluesy range fit better with Eddie’s hard rock licks, Hagar’s versatility gave them much more room to spread out. Sure, they could still rock when they wanted to on tracks like ‘Good Enough’ and ‘Get Up’, but there’s a good chance that even Roth couldn’t sing a song like ‘Dreams’ or ‘Love Walks In’, what with the former’s amazing vocal leaps and the latter’s focus on the sentimental side of love.
The only problem is that from 5150 onward, Van Halen takes a bit of a more serious tone. For those looking for a nonstop party when listening to one of their records, their emphasis on serious themes on tracks like ‘When It’s Love’ and ‘Right Now’ made them sound a lot more mature than most were willing to hear. Looking back on it, it might have been closer to standard dad rock, but who says that rock and roll can’t grow up a little bit?
