The music legend Sammy Hagar was too intimidated by: “The most charismatic superstar on the planet”
Sammy Hagar never claimed to play up the rockstar angle that much.
Whenever he got up onstage, he seemed to be having as much of a good time as everyone else in the audience, usually looking like the kind of person that anyone could meet after the show for a beer. ‘The Red Rocker’ may understand the ins and outs of what the music business is now, but that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t be rendered speechless when the right person walked into his life.
At the same time, Hagar seemed content with being one of the single luckiest singers in the music business. He already had the opportunity to join Van Halen, but even before he started writing tracks like ‘Love Walks In’ and ‘Right Now’, his solo career made him one of the greatest rock and roll singers of his generation. His voice could go in a million different directions, but he knew that he always felt at home with a blaring guitar beside his voice.
Because like all great singers from that time, Hagar practically cut his teeth listening to the best bluesy singers that came before. Everyone from his generation is pretty much obligated to follow in the footsteps of people like Mick Jagger and Robert Plant, but even by rock and roll standards, the grit that Hagar had in his delivery was what set him apart as early as his days working in Montrose.
While that style of singing would be an extremely mixed blessing when it practically birthed the hair metal model for frontmen, Hagar was only copying what Rod Stewart would have been doing a few years prior. Stewart had moved on to making synth-driven 1980s music by the time Hagar joined Van Halen, but if you listen to The Faces and some of the records he was making with Jeff Beck back in the day, you can hear the model for what someone like Hagar was going to sound like.
But when ‘The Red Rocker’ first began, he didn’t even think about getting into that league of singers. He only joined Montrose when he was in his teens, so he didn’t expect for his career to last forever, but after songs like ‘Rock Candy’ and ‘Bad Motor Scooter’ started to actually gain some traction, Hagar was completely starstruck when he saw Stewart turning up at a festival Montrose was playing at.
The chance was there for Stewart to meet the new school that was coming up behind him, but as far Hagar was concerned, he couldn’t say anything when a musical god walked into the room, saying, “I just remember I was always a Rod Stewart fan when I first started Montrose. I was playing in Europe, Montrose was on tour, and The Doobie Brothers were headlining Montrose’s opening. And in walks Rod Stewart in a yellow suit, shiny, hair all spiked up. [He] looked like the most charismatic superstar on the planet. I couldn’t even go up and introduce myself.”
Even if Hagar didn’t get to give Stewart his flowers that day, he didn’t really need to tell him the kind of fan he was, either. Looking through his discography, that Stewart-esque rasp comes through every time Hagar sings a ballad, and while that might be what drove people up the wall when he joined Van Halen, it was always going to be a welcome shake-up to David Lee Roth’s limited vocal range.
If nothing else, though, this subtle interaction is a good lesson for anyone that has dreams of becoming a massive star. Hagar was living out his dream and becoming one of the biggest rising stars in the industry, but from then up to the present day, he knew that he should never stop being a fan of music.
