The one band Sammy Hagar was always competing with: “We’re mad at them”
It was a miracle that Van Halen managed to survive once Sammy Hagar entered the fold.
Even though the band was one of the biggest names in the world around 1984, the thought of David Lee Roth leaving felt like the final death knell for the band before ‘The Red Rocker’ came storming in with tunes like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’. They were in a completely different musical league with Hagar, but that also meant dealing with a few musical rivals along the way whenever they hit the road.
Compared to Roth’s larger-than-life persona, Hagar wasn’t going to be striking as many poses or waving a sword around. He knew that the band could get the job done with purely music whenever they stepped out onstage, and when they made their first live record, Live: Right Here Right Now, you can really hear how powerful they had become. Roth was a virtual cartoon character, but Hagar’s presence gave them a shot of adrenaline when they started playing tunes like ‘Poundcake’ or taking a swing at a few covers like The Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
That’s because Hagar was cut from a different cloth than most entertainers. Roth may have been the one keeping everything exciting when they hit the road, but Hagar’s days in Montrose taught him to take no prisoners whenever he played live. He wanted to leave every other band in the dust when he played, and while he did go down swinging a few times on his own when he opened for Kiss, Aerosmith was already kicking ass and taking names right alongside them back in the day.
Admittedly, ‘The Bad Boys from Boston’ may have hit a lull by the time that ‘Van Hagar’ started making their rounds across the country, but by the time Permanent Vacation came out, they rediscovered their groove and then some. A few outside songwriters may have helped them along, but by the time the 1980s wrapped up, they were practically neck-and-neck with Van Halen on the touring circuit whenever they kicked off tunes like ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ and ‘Love in an Elevator’.
In fact, both bands were among the only groups that seemed to survive the transition to the 1990s virtually unscathed. They weren’t exactly going to fit in with the alternative kids by any means, but whenever you turned on rock radio, it felt a lot more natural going from Alice in Chains to Pearl Jam to something like ‘Right Now’ or ‘Livin’ on the Edge’ than it would have been learning the latest Warrant single.
And while Hagar had a deep respect for what Aerosmith did, he would be lying if he said that he wasn’t a bit resentful of what they could do when they announced they were leaving the road, saying, “We love those guys. We all grew up with those guys. You grew up with them, we grew up with them, Mike and I. They’ve been our competitors to Van Halen for f–king 10 years. You know what I’m saying? ‘F–k those guys.’ No, no, no, but we really do like them. It’s just that we’re mad at them.”
It might not have been easy working with those kinds of competitors, but it only served to make the music better half the time. Each group was the traditional party rock band for their time, and even if they had their moments where they were outmatched by the other, seeing them try to outdo their last album every time they went into the studio was only going to make both fanbases happy.
Because as much as Aerosmith may have been known as one of the most cutthroat bands of their time, there was always going to be people like Hagar reminding them that the next best thing was just around the corner. ‘The Red Rocker’ could admit defeat when he was outmatched, but it’s people like Steven Tyler that kept him working towards being the best artist he could be.
