In early 1985, it seemed that the kings of American rock were finished. When it was announced that singer David Lee Roth had quit Van Halen, few believed that the multi-million selling Californian band could continue without him.
But the three guys he left behind – guitarist Eddie Van Halen, his elder brother and drummer Alex Van Halen, and bassist Michael Anthony – had no such doubts. And what they went on to achieve, following the acquisition of another superstar lead singer, was one of the greatest comebacks in the history of rock ’n’ roll.
For many fans, Roth was irreplaceable. A blond Adonis oozing sex appeal, funny and fast-talking, Diamond Dave was the best frontman since Freddie Mercury.
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But as the name implied, Van Halen was always Eddie’s band, defined by his genius as the most innovative, game-changing rock guitarist since Hendrix. And after Roth walked out to go solo – less than a year after Van Halen had their first US No 1 single with Jump – it was Eddie who decided that Sammy Hagar had the voice, the charisma and the balls to fill that huge void.
At that time, Hagar, California born-and-bred, was a big name in his own right, with three successive million-selling albums as a solo artist. Moreover, in the early ’70s, he had been the singer for Montrose, whose debut album had a profound influence on Van Halen.
Hagar turned out to be a perfect fit. With their backs to the wall, the new Van Halen – nicknamed Van Hagar – delivered a brilliant album, 5150, which became a multi-million selling smash and their first No 1 album.
In an interview with Rock Candy magazine, Sammy Hagar recalled how he joined Van Halen and how his influenced reshaped this legendary band.
He claimed he had no fears about replacing David Lee Roth, stating: “If I would have tried to dress up funny and try to replace Dave in that sense, first of all I wouldn’t have done it, second of all I would have felt, well, I’m not sure I can do this. But I wasn’t mimicking anyone. So I never made that comparison. And I was very confident in myself.”
He added: “Those guys [in Van Halen] took more from me than I ever got from them. Especially Dave. He started wearing bandannas way after I did it. I hate to admit it, but I invented that ugly-ass thing. And it was the same with the Jack Daniel’s thing. I was singing about JD in the backseat in ’76 with Cruisin’ And Boozin’ on my Red album. I was drinking Jack Daniel’s on stage, and then Dave started doing it.”
Hagar said he felt that Roth’s act was a little too showbiz.
“That was how he was. Everything he said on stage, like, ‘Look at all the people here tonight!’ If you saw the band twice you’d already seen this shit.”
He did, however, give some credit to Roth.
“You can’t ever rekindle the energy and the originality of a young band starting out,” Hagar said, “because that’s the golden era, man. Eddie was so innovative and they had such a unique sound and Dave was such a flamboyant frontman. It’s like the first Montrose record – that kind of energy, it can only happen once.”
He commented on other major rock bands that had changed lead singers.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work,” he said. “Deep Purple kind of had that when they got Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale. They made a great record with Burn, but for some reason they didn’t get any bigger. AC/DC’s singer died. They didn’t have a choice. But what happened to Mötley Crüe, when Vince Neil left and they made that record with that guy [John Corabi] and it stiffed, people just didn’t think that record was good enough. The fans didn’t buy into it.”
As Hagar understood it, there were no guarantees that Van Halen fans would buy into the band with him singing instead of Roth. “That,” he said, “was unpredictable.”
But he remembered with complete clarity the moment when he realised they could make great music together.
He recalled: “I knew it the first time we jammed together at Eddie’s place, up above LA in the Coldwater Canyon area. It was a small, country-style house, and he had a studio there.
“Alex was really drinking heavy at this time, and he was plastered. He said, ‘Hey, you gotta sign something before we play.’ He had a piece of paper and a pencil. It was pretty funny. Classic rock ’n’ roll shit. He was trying to be a lawyer on me. I said, ‘You gotta be kidding! Let’s just play some music.’
“They already had the music for two songs, Summer Nights and Good Enough. So we messed around with them and we continued playing for eight hours without a break. They got excited and I did too.”
Asked to paint a picture of 5150, Eddie Van Halen’s home studio, Hagar laughed and said: “Oh boy. You got some mud and brooms for brushes? You’d paint that picture with mud, dirt, ashes, old stale beer for liquid, and you’d have to do it with an old worn-out broom.”
He continued: “The studio was a two-car garage turned into a control room and a room. It was really tight in there, with all these Marshalls stacked up. There were beer cans all over the place and twenty cigarettes lit and just sitting in ashtrays…
“I told the assistant engineer, ‘Can you get this fucking place vacuumed up?’ So it was cleaned before we finally got going on the record, but it wasn’t long before it was pretty much back to its same old state. It was hilarious.”
The day after that first jam session at 5150, Hagar agreed to join the band. Although he had been riding high as a solo artist, it was an easy decision to make.
He explained: “I went home and listened to what we had on tape, and I thought, ‘Fuck, man, this is good! This is unique. This is not the old Van Halen but it has just enough of the sound with Mikey’s voice in there.’
“So I called my manager and said, ‘I’m doing it!’ Then we started rehearsing. I was living in Marin County, Southern California, so I rented a house in LA. And my manager started working on the deal between my record company, Geffen, and theirs, Warner Brothers.”
By the time this deal was finalised, the band were already deep into the writing for the 5150 album.
Hagar said of the songwriting process: “Eddie and Al would stay up all night trying to come up with musical ideas, and the next day Mikey and me would come in at noon. While they were honing down the beat and the chord changes and Eddie’s guitar solo, I’d be making up a melody and the phrasing, just scatting, grunting and groaning like a sax player. Then I would take it home and write lyrics, if they came.
“The two things that impressed me was that these guys were easily inspired and they showed their emotions. I was raised on soul music, and I didn’t think they had any R&B or blues roots. They had that song Ice Cream Man on their first album, and to me that was pretty white blues, it wasn’t very authentic. But when we played together, they were groovin’.”
Undoubtedly, Hagar’s prowess as a vocalist brought a whole new dimension to Van Halen’s music.
As Hagar put it: “Eddie would say, ‘Can you hit this note?’ I’d hit it and everybody would go, ‘Wow!’ And from there I could just see Eddie opening up as a musician and a songwriter.
“What I did was inspire Eddie to go, ‘Oh, I can do this and I can do that. I’ve got this musical idea that I would never show Roth. But with Sammy, I can play it.’ So it was pretty damn organic.
“We were exactly who and what we were, and the chemistry between Eddie and myself created a more sophisticated style of music and songwriting. It was very inspiring. We were elevated. The whole thing just went up.”
