The one song Sammy Hagar said he should have never made: “It didn’t even work”
Sammy Hagar had said a long time ago that he was happy to play rock and roll music for the rest of his life.
He always fit best channelling his inner Mick Jagger whenever he hit the stage, and even if he wasn’t the greatest showman in the world like David Lee Roth was, he was more than capable of keeping the good times rolling once Van Halen went in a different direction. But even when he was at the top of his game, he admitted that more than a few of his songs should never have seen the light of day.
But when ‘The Red Rocker’ first embarked on his solo career, it wasn’t like he was trying to make the biggest hits in the world. He was already stung by getting the boot from Montrose, so the least he could do was make some songs that could try and outdo what he had done back when he was trying to make a name for himself on tunes like ‘Rock Candy’ and ‘Bad Motor Scooter’.
And it’s not like he didn’t have the voice to work things out on his own. Even if he wasn’t putting up all-star numbers every single time he went out on tour. A lot of his albums did reasonably well, but it seemed like he was cresting as a solo artist around the same time that he got the call to join Van Halen. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, but there are many undiscovered gems in his back catalogue that get forgotten far too often.
‘There’s Only One Way to Rock’ is still one of his finest moments, but some of the greatest parts of his discography are where he tried something a little bit different. Not everything worked out like it was supposed to, but seeing him reinvent a song like ‘Catch the Wind’ by Donovan was a lot more interesting than spending an entire album rattling through as many heavy songs as he could for the better part of half an hour.
There was only one caveat that he had when he was given advice: no cover songs. He needed to sink his teeth into something that he truly believed in, and while the Donovan song was a great way for him to compromise with his label, having to sing Otis Redding’s iconic ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’ was never going to work. First off, the song itself is already perfect the way it is, but Hagar felt his version of the tune was the one song in his catalogue that he wished had never been made.
Even with the help of some of the original players on the record, Hagar said that he compromised in all the wrong ways on that tune, saying, “When I’d finally bent over backwards and done ‘Dock of the Bay’, with guitarist Steve Cropper, who wrote the damn song, it didn’t even work. That was supposed to be a shot at a Top 40 thing, but even KFRC in my hometown would not touch it.” And it’s not like Hagar is wrong in saying that the song didn’t really come together like it should have.
Because as much as sings his heart out, the main problem with his version is that it ends up sounding far too similar to the original. Redding’s version of the song is still one of the most soulful vocal takes ever captured in the studio, so when you have someone doing the same thing in a rock and roll context, it just ends up sounding like a guy that’s doing amateur karaoke to the original.
There were still pieces of the song that work, but it’s probably for the best that Hagar kept his feet firmly planted in rock and roll half the time. He had a lot more to offer when he had the right idea, but if all he had to go on was a couple of half-decent imitations of soul artists, it’s not like he was going to be giving James Brown a run for his money or anything.
