How Sammy Hagar Became The Everyman Of Rock

A funny thing happens in music when you stay around long enough, your role as an artist grows and evolves. It was near the end of his life that Leonard Cohen was finally recognized as the true songwriting giant he was. In the last decade Nick Cave has gone from cult artist to the sage rock god he is today. And Sammy Hagar has gone from rock star and “Van Hagar” to the everyman of rock. Who else but Hagar would be welcomed at the country festival Stagecoach and Black Sabbath’s farewell show to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne?

It makes sense if you know Hagar, who I have been fortunate to know for two decades. An easy-going, amiable rocker, Hagar enjoys the most out of everything and is well beyond rock star beefs. In fact, his superb new single, a tribute to late band mate Eddie Van Halen, is his way of saying goodbye in peace to a friend he loved. “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight.,” written with Joe Satriani, is a moving tribute that will give you chills when the chants of Eddie come in.

I spoke with Hagar about the song, his Vegas residency and more.

Steve Baltin: What are you loving at this moment?

Sammy Hagar: I love Alexa because I can tell her anything I want to hear. I’ve been listening to a lot of Ozzy Osbourne because I’m doing that show in Birmingham. I’m singing a couple of Ozzy songs, “Flying High Again.” So, I’ve been listening to him, trying to get his rhythm and his phrasing down. Very unique singer. I just listen to whatever I feel like listening to every day. Sometimes I’ll sit and listen to Miles Davis all f**king day because Siri will play what I want. I can say next song, I don’t have to go move the needle.

Baltin: I’ve known Ozzy as long as I’ve known you and he is an amazing dude. You say very unique singer. There’s no one like Ozzy.

Hagar: Really a great singer, when you sit there and you’re trying to sing his songs you realize the sound of his voice. I’m going to sound totally different; I’m not going to try to sound like Ozzy.

Baltin: Was it an emotional thing to once you started recording it and working on it? As you say, it’s saying goodbye to not only a friend but a chapter in your life.

Hagar: Yeah, and not just a chapter in my life, the musical chapter in my life. I don’t have any delusions of ever being that big of a rock star again. I don’t ever have any delusions of having number one records like that, selling millions and millions, it’s over. I enjoy what I do and I’m doing great out there, but it will never be the same. I say that in the song, without you it’s just not the same. It really isn’t and I really feel I got my heart and soul out of that dream. When you dream of dead people, horrible thing to say, but I dream about them all the time. I’ve hung out with John Lennon, and I’ve hung out with Elvis Presley in my dreams. The second you say in your head, “Wait a minute, they passed,” the dream is over for me. It blows up and I wake up out of the dream. I always have these wonderful feelings when I dream of Eddie and I bust myself saying, “Wait a minute, Eddie’s passed, because we’re having this love affair. It’s like nothing bad ever happened in my dreams with Eddie, and I love that. So, when I woke out of this dream and remembered what I was singing to some chords he was playing, I was saying, “The melody, I remembered it.” I took a pad and a pencil, and I wrote some stuff down, I got my guitar, and I found It was in the key of D. “Wow, what a trip.” I was right. The melody I was singing, magic, pure f**king magic. I woke out of that dream, and it was such a wonderful feeling, my heart was open in the middle of the night. I had an iPhone, I sang into it and then played my guitar into it in the middle of the night, four o ‘clock in the morning. When I played that for Joe, two years later, believe it or not, we had just finished a 33-city tour where he was playing 14 Van Halen songs and he had Eddie inside and out understanding what he was playing. Every night he would talk to me after the show saying, “I just can’t believe the way he approached the song ‘5150’ or ‘Summer Nights.’” He goes, “So unusual.” Then the keyboard player in the band would say, “The way he played keyboards was so unusual.” He’s like, “This guy’s a professional keyboardist.” And he said, “He thinks like no one else.” So, I said, “Joe, try to finish this song.” He channeled into it and put his new knowledge from all those shows into this song. And when Joe played me his parts, I choked up. I just basically broke down. I felt like I just wrote a song with Eddie Van Halen. And it was magic because that isn’t ever going to happen. It’s never going to happen. Like you said, it’s over, it’s the end of an era. But the great thing about having this song is that now we made the video and we put a dream sequence in it. We reenacted the dream and it’s so powerful. I don’t know if you’ve seen the video. If you don’t cry, you are a hard-hearted piece of s**t. Well, Steve, not quite that, but you know what I was saying. You are a jaded motherf**ker. It makes me cry today. I can’t watch the damn thing. My wife started crying. I started crying. I try to play it for my son, who’s a big fan of everything I do. And he’s crying. We’re crying together. I’m going, “It’s powerful because it’s real.” That’s the secret. It’s real. And most people don’t want to hear about your dreams. I wake up one time and I’m like, “Boy, I had a crazy dream.” Man, I start telling her, she goes, “Honey, I don’t want to hear about your f**king dream. Nobody wants to hear about your dreams.” But this one, you’re going to hear about it.

Baltin: I talked with everyone from Jimmy Cliff to Mike Stoller to Willie Nelson about the fact songwriting comes from the subconscious. It’s funny because you say I’m never going to write a song with Eddie again. The seed definitely came right from that dream.

Hagar: Lyrically I’ve been sitting on this thing for two years and I’m going, “What am I going to talk about?” Then I thought, “It’s so stupid.” I just thought, “God, what are you even considering?” Say exactly what happened, stand right there in front of me like he’s never been gone, over in a corner we wrote this song because that’s the way we used to write songs. Ed was one of those guys when he had an idea, he would take me over in a corner and he’d go, “Wait, no, check this out, check this out.” And he would put his foot on my foot to tap him so I could know where the one was cause his one was always backwards in my thing. He’d go, “No, no, here’s one.” He’s patting his foot on me and he’s playing, ♪ Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da ♪ Playing these songs. But he always took me over in a corner if there were other people in the room cause like every songwriter and every lyricist, you’re embarrassed about your first creativity until you can play it really well, until you can sing it really good. You don’t want to be around people and working out your stuff. So, he would just grab me in a corner, and we always wrote songs like that. And in his studio, at my house, at his house, it didn’t matter. So, I just verbatim wrote the lyrics about our relationship.

Baltin: For you, how important is it to be able to channel this into the song and be able to kind of let it go? Because as you say, in the dream, it’s like nothing happened.

Hagar: It’s perfect. When I went in to sing it, Joe went in and recorded all the drums and guitars, him and Kenny [Aronoff]. Then Mike [Anthony] and I went in to put the bass on and I was just going to sit there and listen to the song and sing in the control room. I was waiting for my turn because I didn’t have my lyrics 100 percent dialed in. I was nervous to go in and sing the damn thing. I didn’t know if I could sing it. When I walked in finally the guy goes Mikey’s finished his part and we did some background vocals together. That was good warm up and then the guy said, “Why don’t you just take a pass at it?” I said, “Just give me a demo. I did a pass, and I came out. My heart was pounding. I had goosebumps on my arms. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning. The energy that came through me was just phenomenal. That happens once in a while. Don’t get me wrong, but that don’t happen that very often. I was so shaken, and I said, “Hey, let’s do it again.” I did about four takes and it was done. It was a magical thing. So, yeah, I feel like we wrote that song. [But] for Joe, after doing that tour, Joe really feels good about this the same way I do. He feels like it’s closure. Joe’s a guitar player that came up in Eddie’s era. Are you kidding me? He loved Eddie Van Halen like every guitar player on the planet. And it’s his way of paying tribute to Eddie too. I think Joe is also very emotional and spiritual about this song. He feels like, “Wow, we did something really great.” And Joe’s a humble guy. He don’t say that too much, but he keeps saying to me, “I can’t wait till people hear this,”

Baltin: Tell me about Vegas.

Hagar: I can’t wait for the residency. I really can’t wait to see if they can extend my career. I’m not sure how long I can do this, as you well know, at my age it is hard to go on tour. That last tour was tough. I did it. I pulled it off, but I’m not sure I want to try that again. The last thing I want, Steve, is to stand up on stage one day and go, “I can’t do this. I can’t sing these songs. I can’t sing that or I can’t move. I don’t have it. I just don’t have it.” If I feel that, I will never step on stage again. So, I’m careful that I don’t push myself so far that that could happen. The residency feels like it’s the answer. I don’t have to travel. I don’t have to wake up in the morning, pack my bags. I’m staying in one place, get plenty of rest, eat well, and be fresh for every show. And if it works the way I hope it is, I will continue with that because I do want to do this forever and I don’t know how else I can do it.