The Van Halen song that destroyed Sammy Hagar’s voice
The importance of a good music video has changed slightly in recent decades. While previously, thanks to the rise of channels such as MTV, the music video was a quintessential part of a song’s rollout, now, it doesn’t play as pivotal a role. One band that was well aware of the importance of a music video was Van Halen, which is why they released so many.
When you see many musicians talk about their music videos, they cringe at the idea of them. These people found their passion in music instead of acting, so seeing themselves on the big screen makes their blood curdle. Sammy Hagar had a slightly different approach, though.
Hagar was always keen on learning how to play up to the camera better, which meant making his performances in music videos seem more realistic and like something he could be proud of. This meant that whenever it was time to film something else, he went in with an open mind and was willing to give his all to whatever the band would make.
One of the most obvious lessons that Hagar learnt almost immediately was that he could tell if he was pretending to sing. “The more you saw yourself on video, the more you realised when you were faking it,” he said, “And it looked really stupid. To me it did. So, I learned as I went. I love watching my videos and I’d just go, ‘Hey, I’m learning every moment’.”
Hagar had a specific approach to filming a music video. He would ask them to play the song extra loud onto the set, and he would have to sing along for real, word for word; otherwise, whenever he would watch the video back, he would be able to tell he wasn’t actually singing. Ever the frontman, Hagar didn’t like the idea of short-changing his audience.
This method usually worked well for him; however, there were some instances where things didn’t go according to plan. For example, on the set of ‘When It’s Love’, the video took so long for the band to complete that by the time they had finished shooting, Hagar’s voice had completely left him.
“The video for ‘When It’s Love’, I completely blew my voice out because we had to get back on a plane that night, we had to do a show the next day, and I couldn’t sing because I screamed the song over and over again,” he said. “10 hours of singing that song because I refused to [mime]. I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t fake it.”
Despite calls from his manager asking him to stop singing the song for real, Hagar couldn’t bring himself to mime as he knew it would make the video look less authentic. “He’s say, ‘Don’t sing!’ And I’d say, ‘Oh yeah, right, you stand up here in front of this camera and fake it!’”
