The one song Sammy Hagar said most people can’t play: “I always play it”
In a world full of rock stars with inflated egos, Sammy Hagar is one of the few who can humble himself a lot more than people think.
‘The Red Rocker’ isn’t afraid to say that he’s had his fair share of hits, but if you put him next to someone like David Lee Roth, there’s a good chance that ‘Diamond Dave’ has the kind of head that wouldn’t even fit into the same room as his Van Halen successor. But before Roth even left the group, Hagar was already doing just fine, making a name for himself on his own.
In fact, that’s actually one of the reasons why people may have had some trepidation seeing him as one of the new leaders of the band. There’s no question that Eddie and Alex were the two leaders behind the scenes, but Roth was the ultimate showman whenever he got onstage, and bringing in someone like Hagar was definitely going to be different. But this wasn’t only going to be a retread of what ‘The Red Rocker’ had been doing on tunes like ‘Only One Way to Rock’ and ‘I Can’t Drive 55’.
No, they both had lessons to teach each other, and when they began work on tunes like ‘Good Enough’ and ‘Love Walks In’, there was a different mentality at work there. Eddie couldn’t believe that he had found someone who could hit notes that high, and now that they had a completely different voice, it was time for them to start exploring every single side of their sound that they didn’t know existed.
Then again, it should come as no surprise to longtime Hagar fans that he could have pulled this off. His voice was miles away from what Roth had been doing, but long before his solo career even started, the Van Halen brothers inadvertently idolised Hagar when they picked up the first Montrose record. Their future singer was still in his teens, but he was singing like he could take on someone like Robert Plant if he wanted to.
That entire debut Montrose record is one of the most underrated gems of the 1970s, but if there’s one song that Hagar had the most affection for, it was ‘Rock Candy’. ‘Rock the Nation’ and ‘Bad Motor Scooter’ are also both fantastic tunes with stellar vocals on both, but there’s something about the groove that the rest of the band get into that make the whole thing like a long-forgotten Zeppelin demo than anything else.
And for Hagar, no one else could play the song better than the original version of the band, saying, “We never even used to play it live because it was so slow. Now I’ve played it in probably 90% of the sets I’ve done since then. I always play it because that drum thing is so iconic. Denny was a big John Bonham freak, and that’s just pure Bonham right there. But a lot of guys can’t play that sparse and hold a groove back that long like Denny did.”
But learning the groove on a tune like this is one of the biggest lessons that any drummer can have. A lot of the time people might talk about making the fastest drum fills that anyone has ever seen whenever they play, but when someone is able to teach themselves how to lay back into a groove like this, they’re going to have the audience eating out of the palm of their hand every single time they play.
And while Jason Bonham has done an admirable job whenever he plays with Hagar, the reason why ‘Rock Candy’ was due to the magic of that original Montrose lineup. Not everything was meant to be right on the money or anything, but that kind of musical naivete is what made them one of the best bands of that time. You don’t necessarily hear all of their chops, but you can hear how hungry they are to succeed.
