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Saturday, June 3, 2006
Who needs Van Halen? Not Sammy Hagar
For the Tribune
June 2, 2006
Sammy Hagar says he’s looking forward to touring alone this summer, because he’s hoping this trek turns out better than his 2004 tour fronting Van Halen, the platinum-selling group he led from 1985 to 1996.
“It wasn’t a great experience,” Hagar says of the muchhyped Van Halen reunion shows. “Onstage, the fans made it a wonderful experience by being so receptive and so overwhelming. They made us all just look at each other and go ‘Oh my God, this is the greatest thing in the world.’ So it took the edge off.
But the second we went and left the stage or certainly building up to going onstage, I couldn’t even go (near guitarist Eddie Van Halen).”
Hagar isn’t sitting around mourning the absence of Van Halen. He’s hitting the road with his regular band, the Wabos, and one of the year’s most elaborate productions. His stage set is modeled after his Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, only it’s bigger and better than past models.
But the Hagar concert experience will go far beyond that. The man known as the “Red Rocker” is bringing an entire village to venues that will open at 3 p.m. on concert days and feature Mexican food, drinks (margaritas being a favorite beverage) and volleyball.
“It’s really a Cabo Wabo festival,” he says. “It’s about what happens in Cabo. It’s about the lifestyle, the food, the music, the ambience of that.”
And once the music starts, fans can expect a typically extensive show from Hagar, beginning with an 80-minute opening set from Hagar and the Wabos.
Then Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony will join the festivities, and under the name The Other Half, they’ll launch into a set of Van Halen tunes.
“We’re playing some obscure songs,” Hagar says. “We’re really trying to make it for the hard-cores.”
After a short break, Hagar and the Wabos will return to wrap up the show on full throttle.
As part of the concert, audiences will get a sampling of new music. A new solo CD, “Living It Up,” is finished, and Hagar hopes to have a record deal in place shortly that will allow him get the CD in stores in the next few weeks.
The new CD centers on the fun-inthe-sun Cabo lifestyle set to Hagar’s patented good-time hard rock sound.
“It’s purely a lifestyle record,” Hagar says. “It’s still a Sammy Hagar record, it’s just totally aimed at my fans. There’s no anger on it because I’m in a whole different space in my head and in my life today.
“The best way to describe this record for my fans is it’s the manual for the way we live,” he says.
THE WAY WE WERE
Clearly, Hagar wasn’t in such a cheerful mood two years ago as Van Halen worked its way through an 80-date reunion tour.
Hagar has not closed the door on reuniting with Anthony and the Van Halen brothers — Eddie and drummer Alex. But he emphatically says no reunion will happen unless he sees some fundamental changes in Eddie Van Halen’s behavior and disposition.
“They had to keep us so separated. We were going to fist-fight,” Hagar says. “I’ve got my beliefs, and not to ego trip about how it should be done, but I believe you care about what you’re doing enough to go out there and play the damn songs right. And I mean, night after night that never happened. There were times where Alex, his brother, would be looking at me and I’d say, ‘What song is he playing?’ I don’t know. It just wasn’t fair, number one, to the players and everyone else, to come out in the condition that he was in 99 percent of the shows.”
More than that, Hagar says, Eddie Van Halen simply wasn’t a pleasant person to be around.
“I wouldn’t even want my children in the same room because of the attitude and the violence and just the miserable unhappiness that is the anti, the opposite, of what I am,” Hagar says. “I’m all about having fun. I’m all about being happy and giving love and treating people the way you want to be treated. I’m not about punching people out and throwing people out and yelling and calling people names and smashing things up and destroying other people’s property and being rude and obnoxious.”
Sammy Hagar
What: 7 p.m. Sunday (gates open at 3 p.m.) When: Cricket Pavilion, 2121 N. 83rd Ave., Phoenix Cost: $9 to $20 Information:
(602) 254-7200
-
Who needs Van Halen? Not Sammy Hagar
For the Tribune
June 2, 2006
Sammy Hagar says he’s looking forward to touring alone this summer, because he’s hoping this trek turns out better than his 2004 tour fronting Van Halen, the platinum-selling group he led from 1985 to 1996.
“It wasn’t a great experience,” Hagar says of the muchhyped Van Halen reunion shows. “Onstage, the fans made it a wonderful experience by being so receptive and so overwhelming. They made us all just look at each other and go ‘Oh my God, this is the greatest thing in the world.’ So it took the edge off.
But the second we went and left the stage or certainly building up to going onstage, I couldn’t even go (near guitarist Eddie Van Halen).”
Hagar isn’t sitting around mourning the absence of Van Halen. He’s hitting the road with his regular band, the Wabos, and one of the year’s most elaborate productions. His stage set is modeled after his Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, only it’s bigger and better than past models.
But the Hagar concert experience will go far beyond that. The man known as the “Red Rocker” is bringing an entire village to venues that will open at 3 p.m. on concert days and feature Mexican food, drinks (margaritas being a favorite beverage) and volleyball.
“It’s really a Cabo Wabo festival,” he says. “It’s about what happens in Cabo. It’s about the lifestyle, the food, the music, the ambience of that.”
And once the music starts, fans can expect a typically extensive show from Hagar, beginning with an 80-minute opening set from Hagar and the Wabos.
Then Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony will join the festivities, and under the name The Other Half, they’ll launch into a set of Van Halen tunes.
“We’re playing some obscure songs,” Hagar says. “We’re really trying to make it for the hard-cores.”
After a short break, Hagar and the Wabos will return to wrap up the show on full throttle.
As part of the concert, audiences will get a sampling of new music. A new solo CD, “Living It Up,” is finished, and Hagar hopes to have a record deal in place shortly that will allow him get the CD in stores in the next few weeks.
The new CD centers on the fun-inthe-sun Cabo lifestyle set to Hagar’s patented good-time hard rock sound.
“It’s purely a lifestyle record,” Hagar says. “It’s still a Sammy Hagar record, it’s just totally aimed at my fans. There’s no anger on it because I’m in a whole different space in my head and in my life today.
“The best way to describe this record for my fans is it’s the manual for the way we live,” he says.
THE WAY WE WERE
Clearly, Hagar wasn’t in such a cheerful mood two years ago as Van Halen worked its way through an 80-date reunion tour.
Hagar has not closed the door on reuniting with Anthony and the Van Halen brothers — Eddie and drummer Alex. But he emphatically says no reunion will happen unless he sees some fundamental changes in Eddie Van Halen’s behavior and disposition.
“They had to keep us so separated. We were going to fist-fight,” Hagar says. “I’ve got my beliefs, and not to ego trip about how it should be done, but I believe you care about what you’re doing enough to go out there and play the damn songs right. And I mean, night after night that never happened. There were times where Alex, his brother, would be looking at me and I’d say, ‘What song is he playing?’ I don’t know. It just wasn’t fair, number one, to the players and everyone else, to come out in the condition that he was in 99 percent of the shows.”
More than that, Hagar says, Eddie Van Halen simply wasn’t a pleasant person to be around.
“I wouldn’t even want my children in the same room because of the attitude and the violence and just the miserable unhappiness that is the anti, the opposite, of what I am,” Hagar says. “I’m all about having fun. I’m all about being happy and giving love and treating people the way you want to be treated. I’m not about punching people out and throwing people out and yelling and calling people names and smashing things up and destroying other people’s property and being rude and obnoxious.”
Sammy Hagar
What: 7 p.m. Sunday (gates open at 3 p.m.) When: Cricket Pavilion, 2121 N. 83rd Ave., Phoenix Cost: $9 to $20 Information:
(602) 254-7200
-
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