Sammy Hagar
Sammy Hagar
Samuel Roy "Sammy" Hagar, also known as The Red Rocker, is an American rock vocalist, guitarist, songwriter, musician and entrepreneur. Hagar came to prominence in the 1970s with the hard rock band Montrose. He afterwards launched a successful solo career, scoring an enduring hit in 1984 with "I Can't Drive 55". He enjoyed huge commercial success when he replaced David Lee Roth as the lead singer of Van Halen in 1985, but left the band in 1996. He returned to...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth13 October 1947
CitySalinas, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I've had my fill of "One Way To Rock" or "I Can't Drive 55." Those are guy songs to me, and I'm cool with that. But when you write a great love song and you start seeing that 50 percent of your audience is beautiful women, that's much more rewarding, than having a bunch of guys out there.
I've always been into writing love songs.
I'm writing my biography. It's my business. This is what happened in my life, and I'm writing about it.
I wasn't writing the music. Ed would write a piece of music. I'd listen to it and come up with a melody and then we would arrange it. We'd put it together and I would write lyrics to my melodies.
Overall, we had about 50 meetings where the brothers would say that I couldn't do any solo records, I couldn't write for other people, I couldn't do this and I couldn't do that. These guys were trying to nail my feet to the ground.
Write me up for 125, poster my face wanted dead or alive. Take my license all that jive, I can't drive 55.
It was a horrible way to end the whole thing, ... So, I just say, 'Man, that's it for me. I'm not playing with people like this.'
Seeing what kind of person Dave is, now I know why they have never been able to do the reunion with him because he is unreasonable, ... He's a complete nut. He is not an average bear. He's on the moon. He's unreasonable and he's shot.
Valerie is a pretty strong woman. She's not intimidated.
If they called me up, I would puke.
To stay a great singer or guitar player, you've got to do it 24/7. That's what I do.
When Eddie and Alex got wind of what was going down with my greatest hits record, they called my attorney. They thought something was up.
It's kind of a groovy record, ... It's almost a little retro. It's not '80s-type fist-in-the-air Sammy Hagar -- well, a couple of songs are always like that because that's where I came from -- but it's almost more '70s rock.
When they brought Roth back into the picture, obviously I didn't go along with that too well.