The Waboritas: The “most versatile” band Sammy Hagar ever worked with
You’d think that if you could only say one positive thing about working with Van Halen, it would be that they were decent instrumentalists, right?
After all, Sammy Hagar was up there with a bona fide legend. A man whose genuinely visionary skill with his instrument didn’t just give their band their name but also completely changed the way said instrument was used in heavy metal and beyond. It’s true, he had Alex Van Halen on the drums, who could possibly ask for anything more?! And Alex’s brother on guitar, I guess.
Joking aside, there are a vast, vast number of rock singers who would have taken the gig of singing up front for Van Halen sight unseen, possibly without even signing up for royalties. That’s the level of prestige the guitar playing of Eddie Van Halen gave a musical project in the 1980s. Not for nothing did Michael Jackson himself tap up Eddie for the guitar solo on ‘Beat It‘. An offer so prestigious it caused a major rift in the band, as Eddie had promised them that the only way anyone could listen to his guitar work was on a Van Halen record or at one of their concerts.
This may sound like I’m devaluing the rest of the band, which is unfair. For all my snark up front, Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony were one of the best rhythm sections going in 1980s rock. The fact remains that Eddie wasn’t just the heart and soul of the band. In a slightly crass, yet very 1980s, way of putting it, he was the value of the band. It would take an egotistical moron to claim with any seriousness that any other member of the band was as valuable as Eddie, which was why David Lee Roth did just that.
Why did Sammy Hagar leave Van Halen?
Fed up with having to cede creative control to Eddie, original singer David Lee Roth quit Van Halen in a huff. After an interesting case of “what might have been” where the band considered hiring Scandal frontwoman Patty Smyth, the band decided on hiring ex-Montrose frontman and successful solo act Sammy Hagar to take over. This ended up being an inspired choice, and Hagar fronted Van Halen during their commercial prime, when they were one of the world’s biggest and most exciting rock bands.
However, all was still not well behind the scenes. Hagar, much like Roth before him, began to wonder why he wasn’t getting more creative control. After the early 1990s hit and Nirvana suddenly made it much harder for dinosaurs like Van Halen to stay relevant, Hagar left the band in 1996 to return to his solo career. Although if you ask him, it was also because Pantera were on the lookout for a new singer and wanted him for the role (sure, Sam).
After a couple of years playing under his own name, he formed his own band with drummer David Lauser, bassist Mona Gnader, keyboardist Jesse Harms and guitarist Vic Johnson. This new outfit, the strangely named The Waboritas, was a much looser, more fun one that played a lot more like a Dave Matthews-style jam band than the tight-knit heavy metal Hagar was known for. Case in point, the band played a famous show at the outdoor IC Light Amphitheatre in Pittsburgh, where a passing train disturbed the show. Hagar responded by leading the whole band through a note-perfect cover of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’.
This freedom was exactly what the man was looking for after the straight-jacketed nature of playing in Van Halen. In an interview with Chris McMahon conducted in 1998, shortly after he’d formed the band, Hagar went so far as to call The Waboritas “probably the most versatile band on the planet”. High praise indeed, and yet, by all accounts, Sammy Hagar was right on the money.
