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There's a hilarious moment in that documentary about the Sam and Dave tour - what's it called 'Rage off the Stage'? - they are switching headliner status each night, and on one particular night they are in LA. Dave happens to be the headlining act. He has a HUGE dressing room, and it is full of scantily-clad babes, deluxe leathur couches etc, and Hagar is running around complaining cuz he has a little room with just a table. And he says - 'I've got 70 guests coming! How can I entertain them in this shitty little room? I've sold 70 million albums.' Later Dave is in his bus or something, and Sammy is banging at the door for him to come out and have a drink. Surrounded by fine young ladies, Dave says - 'There's Sammy. Every night he's banging on the door with a bottle of tequila in one hand and his dick in the other'. Dave just ignores him. LMAO.
Sammy always threw those numbers out as if it meant something. But if you check RIAA I think he has three platinum albums outside of Van Halen (none multi-platinum), and one of them is Montrose - which took more than ten years to sell a million.
Now - who knows, he might be counting up things like songs he wrote that other people had hits with. Rick Springfield had a number one - I think - with a Hagar tune. Better Midler (ahem, Sam in disguise???) recorded one of his songs. But even if you allow all that, he's just making it up - this whole 'I sold 65, 70 million'.
I still think, though, aside from sales he probably made - or I should say, managed to get paid - more CASH than Van Halen did in the Roth-era. I think VH got a crappy royalty / publishing deal. That Ed Leffler was a crafty businessman, arranging for Sammy to get a million bucks her and there to do crappy songs on mediocre film sountracks. VH only really made cash, Mike Anthony said, after Hagar and Leffler joined. Not 'cos they SOLD more, but because they had a proper fuckin manager for the first time.
Noel Monk was just some dude that was the brother of the Rolling Stones' road crew guy, Chip Monk, and he had road managed the Sex Pistols one and only tour of the US - I think that's how he got the gig with VH.
Remember Dave complaining around 2000 about the royalties he was on - 15cents per album or something, and even Mike Anthony was getting 2,3 dollars per album sold. All because Leffler, and then Ray Danniels, renegotiated huge advances / royalty rates against THE ENTIRE back catalog. No wonder it all fell to bits with Dave and VH when they had almost done that album in 2000.
If anybody has not read those bits of Hagar's biography, 'Red Storm Rising' that were floating around on the internet a few years ago, you should. All the business stuff makes very interesting reading. And you realise that Hagar has always been a shrewd businessman. He was buying up rare, fine wines as INVESTMENTS in the seventies, FFS. But, but - he took out an injunction against the book. I have bits of it. If anyone wants me to post it, I'll see what I can do.
Sammy always threw those numbers out as if it meant something. But if you check RIAA I think he has three platinum albums outside of Van Halen (none multi-platinum), and one of them is Montrose - which took more than ten years to sell a million.
Now - who knows, he might be counting up things like songs he wrote that other people had hits with. Rick Springfield had a number one - I think - with a Hagar tune. Better Midler (ahem, Sam in disguise???) recorded one of his songs. But even if you allow all that, he's just making it up - this whole 'I sold 65, 70 million'.
I still think, though, aside from sales he probably made - or I should say, managed to get paid - more CASH than Van Halen did in the Roth-era. I think VH got a crappy royalty / publishing deal. That Ed Leffler was a crafty businessman, arranging for Sammy to get a million bucks her and there to do crappy songs on mediocre film sountracks. VH only really made cash, Mike Anthony said, after Hagar and Leffler joined. Not 'cos they SOLD more, but because they had a proper fuckin manager for the first time.
Noel Monk was just some dude that was the brother of the Rolling Stones' road crew guy, Chip Monk, and he had road managed the Sex Pistols one and only tour of the US - I think that's how he got the gig with VH.
Remember Dave complaining around 2000 about the royalties he was on - 15cents per album or something, and even Mike Anthony was getting 2,3 dollars per album sold. All because Leffler, and then Ray Danniels, renegotiated huge advances / royalty rates against THE ENTIRE back catalog. No wonder it all fell to bits with Dave and VH when they had almost done that album in 2000.
If anybody has not read those bits of Hagar's biography, 'Red Storm Rising' that were floating around on the internet a few years ago, you should. All the business stuff makes very interesting reading. And you realise that Hagar has always been a shrewd businessman. He was buying up rare, fine wines as INVESTMENTS in the seventies, FFS. But, but - he took out an injunction against the book. I have bits of it. If anyone wants me to post it, I'll see what I can do.
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