“Come on”: The song Sammy Hagar got sick of hearing
Playing songs day in and day out can be a major double-edged sword for any artist. There are moments where some songs capture a feeling that never gets old, but when the radio starts playing that one song into the ground, it’s easy for it to edge towards white noise for the people that have to sing them every single night. Although Sammy Hagar remained a consummate professional when playing with Van Halen and beyond, he realised that a handful of tunes didn’t quite hold up to the passage of time.
But that’s not always an artist’s fault. The whole point behind any great rock song is for it to have mass appeal, but once it leaves the studio and starts getting played on the radio, it’s not exactly up to the listener as to what gets played. Considering Hagar’s track record, though, you’d think he’d be more interested in what was happening on the charts most of the time.
He was a pop rocker in every sense of the word before he joined Van Halen, and even when he started writing over Eddie’s riffs, much of what he was doing fit within the realm of traditional Top 40 music. Before everyone starts chastising him for ruining Van Halen and taking them away from their roots, though, can we all admit that getting onto the charts isn’t necessarily a bad thing?
Everyone loves to call out their favourite acts when they start to sell out in their minds, but there’s hardly any point in trying to tell an artist to minimise their fanbase by playing to only a niche audience. It’s their career, and they should do it on their own terms, and when ‘The Red Rocker’ started working with his new band, tunes like ‘Right Now’ and ‘When It’s Love’ were as well-structured as any obscure B-side off of Fair Warning.
By the time Hagar reached the 1990s, though, he noticed something had started to change on the radio. Classic rock stations were more than happy to play the kind of music that he heard back in the day, but when looking at all the new and exciting bands coming out of hard rock, Hagar ended up having enough of whatever tired Eagles or Pink Floyd song that needed to be spun for the thousandth time.
“I’d rather that they play mostly new music personally. How many times do you want to hear ‘Stairway to Heaven’ you know, it’s like, come on, I can play it for you right now, sing every lyric.”
Sammy Hagar
Of all the tired tropes, though, none of them made him angrier than ‘Stairway to Heaven’, saying, “There’s stations that’ll play Sammy Hagar that won’t play, some band like Tool or something. I don’t know. It’s like, come on, man, this is rock music. It’s like, you’re either a rock band or you’re not. And I would change that. I’d say if you’re gonna play rock music, you play it all. And I’d rather that they play mostly new music personally. How many times do you want to hear ‘Stairway to Heaven’ you know, it’s like, come on, I can play it for you right now, sing every lyric.”
While Robert Plant would certainly agree that no one needs to hear ‘Stairway to Heaven’ for as long as they live, it’s still an impressive song to hear for the first time on the radio. Compared to other rock epics like ‘Hotel California’ or ‘Comfortably Numb’, Jimmy Page crafted a masterpiece that’s structured like any magical journey, to the point where you feel like you’ve been taken on a ride in less than ten minutes.
But the greater problem here is the radio choosing to play it safe rather than take a chance on anything new in the modern age. ‘Stairway to Heaven’ might earn its spot in rock history as one of the most innovative songs of all time, but the only reason it got there was because someone had the guts to play an eight-minute tune on the radio, so why should rock and roll be any different today?
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