“It’s a statement”: Sammy Hagar reveals his proudest Van Halen song
Rock and roll has always been hit and miss when it comes to having great lyrics. Although there are many legacy acts like Bob Dylan and The Beatles who have created some of the greatest pieces that anyone has ever uttered, there are always a handful of others that make their songs sound like a random mad-lib game where they throw the most badass phrases they can think of into every single verse. While Sammy Hagar may have had big shoes to fill when taking over as singer and lyricist for Van Halen, he was able to rise to the occasion on the lyrical front more than a few times.
Then again, Van Halen were never the kind of band to have major messages in their tunes. They had their moments where they could get serious, but listening to a lot of the music from the David Lee Roth era, many of their best tunes were focused on them keeping the party going on every track.
‘The Red Rocker’ may have turned them into a more thoughtful band than before, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t catch a few strays along the way. The band were great for what they were, but there were also times when they started turning into the typical dad rock band for the masses, either writing songs about the greater problems with the world and tunes about sex that got more than a little bit goofy.
If the music kicked ass behind the lyrics, though, no one seemed to give a shit. Something like ‘Dreams’ could have come off as incredibly cheesy in the wrong context, but with the fantastic melody and Eddie playing some of the best keyboard lines that he ever played in his career, it felt like the kind of awe-inspiring anthem that was made for the inspirational sports movies that the 1980s couldn’t get enough of.
“I wrote the best lyric I’ve ever written in Van Halen, I’m trying to upgrade this band’s image with lyrics.”
Sammy Hagar
But no one can make songs that are about blind inspiration forever. As much as someone might want to put positivity into the world, there’s only so many times you can do that before you start sounding like you’re shooting sunshine out of every single orifice, and when Hagar came back to the studio in the early 1990s with the makings of the song ‘Right Now’, he knew he had hit the peak of his lyrical prowess.
Even when making the video, Hagar was pissed at having random platitudes plastered onscreen as the song played, saying, “I said, ‘I wrote the best lyric I’ve ever written in Van Halen, I’m trying to upgrade this band’s image with lyrics to where we’re finally not just a party band that can play instruments, and they wanna put words underneath? Why don’t they use the words I wrote? They’re great words. It’s a statement. It’s gonna be confusing!’”
Any lyricist would have been justifiably pissed off, but there are many times where the words onscreen perfect complement Hagar’s lyrics. The whole tune is about someone trying their best to appreciate the moment, and while some of the lines about safe sex and disturbing world statistics may read like a buzzkill, it’s easy to look at them and appreciate where you are in life by seeing someone who has it worse off than you.
Despite being an inspirational song, ‘Right Now’ isn’t the same kind of optimistic song that Hagar wrote on ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’ or ‘Summer Nights’. This is a plea for someone to get off their ass and make something of themselves, and if it managed to make someone turn their life around a little bit, that would have been more than enough.
