When Sammy Hagar almost replaced Jerry Garcia in The Dead
The friendship between Bob Weir and Sammy Hagar is one of the stranger relationships in the world of music. Although they were both California born and bred (Weir in San Francisco and Hagar in Salinas, the town mentioned in one of Weir’s favourite covers, ‘Me and Bobby McGee’), the two were on alternative musical paths from the beginning. Weir had a fascination with folk, which eventually landed him in the Grateful Dead as a teenager. Hagar was more taken with hard rock, and it wouldn’t be until he was nearly 40 that he landed his biggest gig fronting Van Halen.
Weir and Hagar would become friends in the 1990s, at a time when both men found themselves outside of their most famous bands. The Grateful Dead had broken up following Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995, and a year later, Hagar would officially decamp from Van Halen after a decade of fronting the group. Hagar would befriend Weir and drummer Mickey Hart, eventually making inroads within the Dead’s extended family. Hagar was such a good friend that, at one point, he was even considered to fill Garcia’s shoes.
While talking to The Washington Post, Hagar was asked about a rumour that he was tapped to replace Robert Plant in Led Zeppelin after Plant declined to tour after the group’s 2007 reunion. “No, at one point, people were talking to me. Not Jimmy Page, Jimmy and I never had this conversation, but management people were talking to me about replacing [Aerosmith singer] Steven Tyler one time when he went off the deep end,” Hagar explained. “And people started talking, ‘Hey, man, you replaced one guy, you want to do it again?’ I’m going, ‘No…’”
Hagar then explained that a similar case almost happened with The Dead, the Grateful Dead offshoot formed in 2003. “I mean, even Bob Weir and the guys in the Grateful Dead back when they were first becoming the Dead without Jerry [Garcia], when they went back the first time as The Dead, they talked to me about maybe being the guitar-player singer.”
“I would kind of replace Jerry, and I was so tempted to do that because Bob’s my dear friend, and I’m going, ‘Oh, man, I just don’t want to get caught up in that bag…’ But then, now I look back at my life, I go, ‘Man, it would’ve been cool to do The Dead for a couple of years, then do Aerosmith for at least one tour…’ Maybe Queen… I could’ve been the most famous singer of all time who never made it on a solo record; I don’t know,” Hagar added. “I’m so open-minded, I love music, and I love every one of those bands. I go jam with the Dead all the time.”
You can check out one of those jams, with Mickey Hart and Bob Weir, down below.
