Latest Bass Player Interview

[PETE'S BROTHER]

he probly does

[chefcraig]

God-damned Taco Bell.

Pardon me folks, I have to go take a Hagar...

[Zing!]

Ok, 16.5 to 17 feet. Feel better? Idiot.

There's got to be a math whiz around here that can do some kind of triangulation on that pic to figure out the exact distance between the floor and Dave's ass.

[vandeleur]

It's called the rock n roll equation

DLR is > spammy , Hagar's. -a (circumference ) + s.a (surface area) = shit jump

[PETE'S BROTHER]

it's called the rock n roll equation

dlr is > spammy , hagar's. -a (circumference ) + s.a (surface area) = shit jump

jimi's sig

Fuckyeah-LOL-dj-2012RESIZESMALL-sharpened.jpg

[ZahZoo]

There's got to be a math whiz around here that can do some kind of triangulation on that pic to figure out the exact distance between the floor and Dave's ass.

Not too hard to estimate... Note the speakers on Ed's side. Each black hole is about 12 inches in diameter. Adding casters and the stage supports... lets say each layer is about 3 feet tall. Note: Al's platform appears to be about at Ed's shoulder height. So let's say 5 feet.

Dave's ass appears to be about 2 speakers above Alex's drum pedestal... So I'd estimate Dave's ass height at about 7.5 - 8 feet max...

[PETE'S BROTHER]

Not too hard to estimate... Note the speakers on Ed's side. Each black hole is about 12 inches in diameter. Adding casters and the stage supports... lets say each layer is about 3 feet tall. Note: Al's platform appears to be about at Ed's shoulder height. So let's say 5 feet.

Dave's ass appears to be about 2 speakers above Alex's drum pedestal... So I'd estimate Dave's ass height at about 7.5 - 8 feet max...

WHAT? what is the diameter of alex's bass drum?

[PETE'S BROTHER]

WHAT? what is the diameter of alex's bass drum?

he is at least 3 times that

[DONNIEP]

God-damned Taco Bell.

Heresy!!

[vandeleur]

8 foot , no way

[DONNIEP]

So I'd estimate Dave's ass height at about 7.5 - 8 feet max...

You're wrong. Dave is clearly 37 feet above the stage floor. And it's not the height that matters anyway - it's the hang time. Dave's hang time for this jump, at this show, was 1 minute and 27 seconds, a tour record that remains to this day.

[PETE'S BROTHER]

You're wrong. Dave is clearly 37 feet above the stage floor. And it's not the height that matters anyway - it's the hang time. Dave's hang time for this jump, at this show, was 1 minute and 27 seconds, a tour record that remains to this day.

sammy was up in the skies much longer than that

[vandeleur]

You're wrong. Dave is clearly 37 feet above the stage floor. And it's not the height that matters anyway - it's the hang time. Dave's hang time for this jump, at this show, was 1 minute and 27 seconds, a tour record that remains to this day.

[PETE'S BROTHER]

one of you must have a triangulation app on your phone...

[VHscraps]

Meh. It was in a $5 or less bargain shelf at Barnes and Noble. I started thumbing through it, then said fuck it, might as well buy it. Was interested in what he had to say about the 2004 tour, but read the whole thing.

Even beyond his vague relationship with the truth (re: sales stats), the thing that really emerged from his book was a really charmless series of rationalizations for anything in his life that went wrong, in that apparently nothing was ever Hagar's fault to the point where not even the slightest bit of blame rests at Hagar's feet.
Cheating on his wife? It was his wife's fault for being a head-case. If his wife wasn't so fucked up in the head, Sammy wouldn't have cheated on her.
Record sales not everything Sammy thought they should have been for any given album? It's completely the record companies fault.
Various members getting kicked out of Montrose/Hagar solo groups? It's all either Ronnie Montrose or the other band members shot themselves in the foot. Nothing to do with Hagar.
And on and on.
He also wrote how great Cabo Wabo was when he first went there because it was a small village with virtually no phones and no tourists, then without the slightest trace of irony says it's even better now that he opened up his cantina and turned the town into a tourist trap. Like, "wow this place is such a great place to get away from everything, and the people that live here like it that way, so I suppose the natural thing to do would be to turn it into a cross between Margaritaville and Disneyland!"

I read it and found it interesting for reasons alluded to by DLRBridge (know the enemy) and for the kind of reasons Terry outlines here. It is, indeed, a book of many boasts - but it does give you an insight into what makes Hagar tick.

The chapters on EVH's various meltdowns are worth reading, and - I gotta say - on that score, I tend to believe the picture Hagar paints of that.

But, the overwhelming thing I got from the book was the sense of just how consistent Hagar had been in viewing rock'n'roll as a series of business opportunities. A few that I can remember off the top of my head are:

- in '75 he's in London recording an album at Abbey Road studios, and meets up with one of his old high school teachers who lives in London. She introduces him to fine wines. He thereafter develops a passion for fine wines, but not as a drinker - no. As fucking investments!!

- in around 78-79, he and Leffler realise that they are paying hand over fist to get travel insurance when they are on tour (as did most rock bands, it seems). So, what do they do? Yup, they set up their own travel agency, which other bands then use to get around etc.

- at about the same time, he invests in some fire protection company that fits sprinklers. Makes a killing (so he says, but in this case, he probably did)

- the Cabo Wabo deal. He knows he's got something that could one day be a goldmine, but the Van Halens are too fucking rock'n'roll to think in terms of investment, so they bail out. It leads to the Tequila, etc., which he sells for $80m.

- the divorce is a shocking example of how he financially screwed his ex-wife who, as a resident of California, coulda had 50% of everything he owned I think. She gets virtually nothing, not even her own mother's crockery(!), because "she still loves him" and doesn't want to take advantage of him, because he might change his mind and come home ...

You also get the sense from the book that trouble was brewing with the Van Halens as far back as the late 80s. My guess is that they only held it together because his manager - Ed Leffler, who was obviously a wizard at financial deal-making compared to what VH were used to up to that point - had increased their income through renegotiations with Warners and also the deals he cut with concert promoters. For Ed and Al it probably seemed like the milk and honey would never stop flowing.

The truth is, Van Halen never really made much money until Leffler became their manager. They had the usual shitty starter record contract, for six albums, and it ran out just as Dave left - so, Dave probably never made the vast amounts of cash that the success merited.