The “enemy” Sammy Hagar said he was forced to hate
Rock and roll doesn’t exactly have to come from a place of love. Most artists are happy to use a lot of their resentments as rocket fuel half the time, and for as much as Sammy Hagar was about having a good time, he did have a dark side when he wanted to.
Then again, ‘The Red Rocker’ didn’t set out on his own with a fire in his belly or anything like that. Parting ways with the members of Montrose was never going to be fun for anyone to endure, but Hagar knew there were a lot more avenues for him to explore. He could embrace everything from singer-songwriter music to the most metallic hit songs possible, and while nothing hit the exact same way, he at least gained some traction before Van Halen came calling with songs like ‘I Can’t Drive 55’.
Hagar’s voice may have been what Eddie was looking for in the 1980s, but that wasn’t even the first time they crossed paths. Producer Ted Templeman had suggested Hagar for Van Halen before they even had a record out, but compared to what David Lee Roth could do behind the microphone, it’s not like they were hurting in the frontman department. Roth had charisma no one else could match, but as fate would have it, that may have been a bit TOO much charisma.
As far as Eddie could see, ‘Diamond Dave’ had turned all of their concerts into a sideshow, and with Hagar, he could at least have someone that he could relate to musically. Compared to Roth, Hagar wasn’t averse to them using keyboards on a few songs, and since he was a guitar player himself, it was easier for Eddie to speak the same language around the singer when he first started showing him his material.
But in the next few months, Hagar remembered getting a lowdown of how much Roth and Templeman were huge pains in the butt when he walked into the recording studio, saying, “We were the anti-Roth camp. He was the enemy of all enemies. Not to me – I didn’t even know the fucker. But I’m a team player, and he’s the enemy, right? So Ted Templeman was too.” Although Roth’s debut solo record was largely decent, it wasn’t hard to see why Eddie was pissed, either.
Roth had already been trying to show off his star power to the world, and now that he had his own token guitar hero, Steve Vai, in the group, Eddie could only view it as Roth trying to make him jealous. But when people heard songs like ‘Dreams’, Van Halen became a different animal. They no longer needed to play to the traditional rock and roll tropes the 1980s cultivated, and even when they entered the 1990s, they put up a much better fight than most when tunes like ‘Right Now’ became hits.
At the same time, Hagar did at least understand what the rest of the band was saying after a while. Roth wasn’t above taking a few shots at his old band in the press, and while they floated the idea of having both Roth and Hagar on a joint tour together playing all of their iconic songs with the band, Hagar remembered having to be separated from his co-frontman whenever they found themselves backstage.
While it’s easy to chalk this kind of thing up to a clash of egos, it also comes down to the fact that Roth and Hagar see music from a much different lens whenever they perform with the group. Hagar is more focused on the mechanics of every song, but Roth wants to make sure to leave everyone entertained, and somewhere in the middle there is what makes Van Halen work so well.
