The one artist Sammy Hagar said never made it as a solo star
Any artist like Sammy Hagar was going to have to tread lightly when balancing a solo career with being in a rock and roll band.
People might like the star power to only belong to them when they get onstage, but it’s going to be difficult for anyone to find their footing when they don’t have the security blanket of their bandmates behind them. And even though ‘The Red Rocker’ managed to make things work in his solo career, he knew that it was not going to be the best tightrope for any artist to walk.
Then again, Hagar had the good fortune of having that successful solo career before joining Van Halen. The biggest names in music may have understood the kind of vocal power that he had when working in Montrose, but if he was going to fill the shoes of David Lee Roth, it helped for him to have tunes like ‘I Can’t Drive 55’ under his belt rather than have to start from scratch all over again.
Because outside of a precious few bands, no one gets a completely new singer and becomes the next big thing in music. AC/DC managed it okay, but when looking at what Talking Heads tried to do without David Byrne or even what Van Halen did with Gary Cherone after Hagar left, it’s not like everyone was aching to take a chance on a record when they’re scratching their head about who’s at the front of the stage.
But the real challenge is knowing whether someone has anything to say as a solo artist. It’s clear that acts like The Beatles would work out alright as solo artists, but seeing the amount of failed solo careers after leaving a group tends to look like the boulevard of broken musical dreams after a while.
No one that wasn’t super-invested in their favourite band was going to wonder what the Vince Neil album sounded like, and if it was already difficult for people to care about the former frontman of a group, you can imagine the kind of uphill battle that would have been happening if the guitarist or the drummer tried to go solo. And while Hagar had the luxury of keeping things together, he couldn’t help but feel a little bit sad looking at how Mick Jagger tried to keep his solo career afloat.
Despite being one of the most iconic frontmen in rock history, Hagar couldn’t help but be a little bit disheartened at where Jagger went, saying, “I’m so fortunate that I had a solo career before I joined Van Halen, because even Mick Jagger and people will tell you, being in the biggest rock band in the world and then trying to go solo ain’t the easiest. [It didn’t go anywhere]. This is Mick fuckin’ Jagger!”
Then again, that kind of musical swerve was probably intentional. The last thing that any artist wants their solo career to be is a reminder of the band that they used to be in, and while Jagger did like switching things up on every Stones project to stay current, that’s not what people came to the show for. They knew the Stones could make great rock and roll, so hearing them incorporate electronic music into their sound was always going to ruffle some feathers both at the concerts and in the studio.
That might have been a hard lesson for Jagger to learn, but that’s also the reason why Hagar’s career has turned out so well. He knows what his audience wants out of him, and even if he has a few dips and the occasional detour now and again, he was never going to make a record that didn’t leave his fans satisfied.
