Reaching Perfection: the Van Halen song Sammy Hagar considered “timeless”
Most artists usually try to write songs that will be remembered for years. Even though it’s one thing to tap into the zeitgeist for a minute and ride the trends that everyone else is pulling from, there are always going to be those pieces that don’t fit within any trend and yet still feel relevant years after you’re gone. Sammy Hagar had his ups and downs when working with Van Halen, but he admitted that every piece of ‘Right Now’ is a timeless piece of art.
When putting together the next incarnation of Van Halen, Hagar already had an uphill battle. He didn’t necessarily try to fill the shoes of David Lee Roth, and yet the amount of excellent work that he put together on 5150 made it feel like he could honour the band’s old material while putting a different spin on everything.
For a group that knocked it out of the park right out of the gate like that, OU812 did seem like a little bit of a step-down. There were still phenomenal songs on the record, but tracks like ‘Finish What Ya Started’ tended to sound more like a bunch of dads jamming in a garage than a rough-and-tumble rock and roll band.
While For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is already expected to be corny based on the title (just look at the first letters of each word), ‘Right Now’ is about as close to the bone as they ever got. During the Roth era, the band didn’t really have to concern themselves with writing anything deeper while the party was still rolling, but Hagar wanted to venture into different territory with this song.
He had already been through a few hard years with his wife, and ‘Right Now’ was the result of him just falling into a dream state right before going into the studio. Despite Eddie wanting something closer to the song ‘Feelin’ Alright’ by Joe Cocker, the massive piano intro remains one of the greatest musical passages from their catalogue.
Even after cutting ties with the group after the album Balance, Hagar said that ‘Right Now’ is still one of the highest points of his career, saying, “‘Right Now’ is a timeless song. It’ll be around forever. Sometimes, when you make something up, and you work on it here and there and find a clever line. For me, those aren’t really the songs that last forever.”
It’s easy to see where Hagar’s coming from, and it’s a lot better once you see the lyrics on paper. For someone whose biggest solo hit was about him complaining about the speed limit being too low, hearing lyrics about wanting to preserve the magic moment that you’re in and wanting to find some way of living in the here and now is much more profound than 90% of what the Roth era was talking about.
And despite having one of the greatest guitarists on the face of Earth at his disposal, Hagar may have turned in a more memorable performance here than Eddie did on his guitar. There are some fabulous moments where his guitar playing goes off the handle, but whenever Hagar reaches high up in his range to deliver that shrieking tone of voice, it feels like those words are coming from deep inside his soul.
