One Van Halen song still “haunts” Sammy Hagar
Every artist has a few songs they refuse to touch. Despite earning significant revenue from performing these songs for years with their bands, there comes a point where they never want to hear them again. Sammy Hagar, renowned for his classics both solo and with Van Halen, struggled with one particular song from the David Lee Roth era for years.
That tension isn’t unusual for musicians who inherit a catalogue built by someone else. Even when fans embrace the new line-up, the expectations attached to classic songs can linger, especially when those tracks are closely tied to the personality of a former frontman.
Then again, Hagar had the unenviable task of taking over for a glorified cartoon character on Van Halen’s stage. Whenever a frontman compares themselves to Roth, it’s easy to come off as doing a parody of what he did naturally, owning the stage and holding court like he was the emcee of one of the greatest parties in the world.
Once the band started to go in different directions following the release of 1984, Roth didn’t want to have to get into Eddie’s demands anymore. Not liking the synthesised elements of the band’s work, Roth felt that the best way to work was without Eddie breathing down his neck, moving on to a solo career and getting another guitar superstar by his side with fretboard master Steve Vai.
While any band would have been lost in the woods without a guy like Roth, Hagar fit like a glove after having a few jam sessions. Since Eddie was already looking to try out new sounds with his keyboards, Hagar’s searing high voice actually lent itself fairly well to the band’s new sound, creating songs that would become anthems for Van Halen Mk. II like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Love Walks In’.
At the same time, no new singer gets out of playing the songs of those that preceded them. When working on their first major live shows with Hagar, the ‘Red Rocker’ had to deliver Roth’s songs with his own brand of swagger, putting his own spin without mimicking Roth.
For Hagar, the challenge wasn’t just technical but also stylistic. Roth’s theatrical delivery and tongue-in-cheek bravado were such a defining part of Van Halen’s early identity that any attempt to perform those songs inevitably invited comparisons.
Despite Hagar having a far more refined range compared to Roth, he admitted that ‘Jump’ always gave him trouble. Since Roth was always known for his signature talkative demeanour, the track is a deceptively hard song to sing, especially getting into the verses where he borderline stops singing just to mug for the listener.
After sticking around for the same amount of time as Roth, Hagar admitted that ‘Jump’ would follow him around, telling Steve-O, “People meet me [and go] ‘Oh, you’re the singer of Van Halen,’ and for somebody don’t know sh*t, and they think I sing f*cking ‘Jump,’ and I’m going, ‘Damn!’ That thing haunts me”.
For all of the misconceptions that Hagar gets about his status in the Van Halen camp, though, he has still carved out his own niche in rock history, like winning the hearts of millions of Power Rangers fans when ‘Dreams’ was used in the feature film of the action TV show. Roth may get the praise for starting Van Halen on their course, but if it weren’t for Hagar, even songs like ‘Jump’ would have been known as the epitaph of the band rather than the start of a new era.
