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First official owner of ADKOT (Deluxe Version) -
http://vhfrance.activebb.net/ (1 er Site Francophone sur Van Halen)
http://www.youtube.com/user/VHFranceVideos (Our new Channel)Comment
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Hagar really took it personal with his attacks and I had always thought it was kind of an "unwritten rule" in Rock that some personal things are off limits. Hagar probably had reason to be pissed off but for a guy who claimed he still "loved" Ed even after that, to completely humiliate him by giving such detail about Ed's personal battle with addiction and health was sickening. To get in the detail about his appearance "rotting teeth", his "lisp from tongue being partially removed from cancer", bad hygiene " smelled and looked like he hadn't bathed for days" etc, etc, etc, is something a person would not do to a true friend who was battling addiction. Shit like that can do more damage and put the addict in a much worse state, not to mention what could have happened if he were at all suicidal like some addicts. Hagar is simply a fraud who was out for vengeance no matter what he did to another human being, not to mention one that he claimed he still cared about. As bad as the words got between Ed and Dave, it never got near as low as what Hagar did. That may be something Ed will never forget or forgive him for, who knows?
According to Valerie, the only reason Ed connected with Dave again is because Wolf was going through some of the classic Van Halen material in Ed's studio and loved the music from the Dave era. Maybe part of it may have been "no other option". It wouldn't surprise me if Hagar would agree to it for sure, we know he has no dignity. He would do it even after saying it would now be "hypocritical" etc. Only time will tell I guess.Comment
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Well, the whole 2004 section of Hagar's book came off more like a justification of why Sammy went forward with the tour and continued to do so (financial considerations/monetary penalties if he quit) even after it became quickly apparent that the shows sucked. And the one theme that was constant throughout the book (which I did read from start to finish) is that anything that went wrong in Hagar's life was always the fault of someone else and never Hagar's fault to the slightest degree. Even when describing his affairs with other women on the road while his wife was home due to illness, Hagar's take on that boiled down to "my wife and I weren't getting along in part because she was sick so I'm not to blame for starting an affair with some chick I met on the road". So it was only natural that Hagar placed 100% of the blame for the 2004 tour performances being as shitty as they were squarely on Eddie's shoulders. But Hagar doesn't even offer a caveat of saying maybe HE was partially to blame for signing the contract and going out on tour when he KNEW how fucked up Eddie was from the first meeting he had with the Van Halens in 2003 and throughout the recording process of the new tracks that ended up on BOBW as well as the REHEARSALS for the 2004 tour, where apparently Eddie couldn't even get through a rehearsal of the entire set. So, within the strict confines of the 2004 chapter of the book, Hagar comes off as charmless and vindictive. Within the context and "nothing bad was/is my fault" tone of the entire book, it's just a case of him merely being a consistently charmless douchebag on a personal level. Having said all that, despite Hagar's loose relationship with being truthful and his being prone to continual bouts of exaggeration what he had to say about the 2004 tour sounded accurate enough. And OF COURSE Hagar would reunite with the Van Halens again if asked to. In a fucking minute. The only way I could see Hagar refusing is if Mike wasn't invited.
However, THAT scenario would probably hit a snag in that the last 7 years of activity for the band have probably taken place in large part because Ed likes playing music with his kid. That statement isn't a slag, a slam or a dig. It's just a fact. And I don't doubt that Wolfgang was the one to suggest and push for Roth to get back in the band, just as Wolfgang has been the one that has shaped the setlists for the last 3 tours and suggested deep CVH tracks for the band to perform beyond the standard greatest hits tunes. Mostly because Wolfgang reads the blogs, knows the fans wanted to see Dave back with the band and doesn't have the history with Roth that his father and uncle did, thus getting Dave back was a conclusion the kid reached fairly easily. I mean, it seemingly was a no-brainer to begin with, and to the Van Halens credit they did try again with Roth after Cherone left the group. Plus, after the 2004 debacle, no promoter in their right mind would accept Van Halen with anybody OTHER than Roth and demonstrable proof that Ed had cleaned up his act.Scramby eggs and bacon.Comment
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I think some don't appreciate how significant it is that Ed gets to perform at "his" level with his son. Consider that for a good part of Wolfgang's life Ed was either in the bottle or not there at all. Ed's probably damn thankful for getting to know and spend time with his kid sober, present and mostly accounted for now. Pretty safe bet there's a lot of years with Dad missing in his kid's life. Most people don't get that 2nd, 3rd or 4th chance..."If you want to be a monk... you gotta cook a lot of rice...”Comment
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Terry, I completely agree with regards to his autobiography. I read it and could not believe (well... yeah. I could) how much the guy blamed on other people. He has zero accountability for anything! Correction, he said some of his lyrics on OU812 were shit and that he shouldn't have cussed up a storm at the Farm Aid gig. Eeeeeeverything else was someone else doing him wrong. What a panty waste.Comment
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Hats off to you for reading it but my problem is that if you have so many lies in the book that can be checked then when he says things that we can't check they don't mean anything because they are likely to be more lies.
That said he does have an astonishing lack of self awareness or in plain words he is such a prick he doesn't even realise when he is broadcasting it. His previous (unpublished) official biography which large parts ended up online here many years ago showed him to be pretty appalling to the women in his life without him even realizing. My guess is that the writer and he got into issues over factual accuracy i.e. the writer wished to include some more.
The problem then is when reading you only believe the negative things he says about himself while rejecting anything that puts him in a good light. That may be accurate 90% of the time but it still seemed like too much of a work of fatty fiction to be worth trying to Sherlock my way through.Last edited by Seshmeister; 12-22-2015, 09:36 PM.Comment
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There's the schadenfreude angle he comes in from that I find ultra-dickish. He completely reveled in the fact that the brothers bailed on the Cabo club deal before it took off. Lots of tales he told probably are based in some form of truth (there's an ADKOT joke in there somewhere) but it's his arrogant spin that is most off putting.Comment
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Well according to the folks at melodicrock.com Daves contract is up with the band [ I think we all knew that ] and according to sources its highly unlikely they will record or tour again.They also state that Hagar and VanHalen are not in any negotiations. I say its eat em and smile time !!Comment
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Well, I tend to think Hagar wouldn't bullshit too much about what transpired in 2004 for the simple fact that he had people like Azoff, Mike Anthony and the like around to contradict him if he flat-out lied about the substance of it (notice how the Van Halens haven't challenged Hagar on any of it), so even though Hagar is demonstrably full of shit often, even a broken clock will still be right twice a day. I wouldn't doubt he may have exaggerated some aspects of it, but when I recall how Ed looked and played on that tour what Hagar had to say was certainly on the whole believable.
I snagged the book a couple years after it was initially released, along with Tony Iommi's Iron Man autobiography. Got them both at Barnes and Noble in the bargain section for $5 each. With the Hagar book I was initially only interested in the stuff from the Van Halen years, but ended up reading the whole thing (it wasn't like I was trying to translate Olde English from a Chaucer poem or something like that in terms of difficulty - I think I blew through the book in a few hours).
And, yeah, when reading the book it was surprising how clueless the guy was in terms of how his actions might have affected other people around him, particularly the women in his life. Like, the moment various people in his life on a personal level don't put all of Sammy's wants and needs before their own, somehow Hagar equates this with those people being fucked up in some way. Basically, it never dawns on Hagar that other people he knew who weren't rock stars had their owns wants, needs and desires out of life that they valued equally with Hagar's. And that was surprising in that regardless of what I thought of Hagar's music, his general vibe in public seemed to be one of a fairly easygoing (if self-absorbed) guy. In the book (as in other interviews of his) he proves himself to be as petty and vindictive as anyone else.
You're spot-on about the 'fatty fiction' part of it, too. Many times it outpaces fiction and delves right into delusion. Hagar honestly seemed to think he was some massively successful solo act prior to joining Van Halen, to the point where he thought by the time 1984 rolled around he on his own was as popular as Van Halen.
The other thing about Hagar's book that struck me was how similar it was to Paul Stanley's book in the sense of having a large emphasis on the moneymaking aspects of the career as opposed to the musical parts. Odd in that both of these guys have made music for a living for the majority of their lives, but the way both of them describe their process made me think they look at their music more as commerce or product they churn out than creative expression, since the focus seems so concentrated on how many albums were sold/how much money was made much more so than how inspired either of them were writing a particular tune. I mean, when a rock musicians autobiography tends to focus more on finance than music, what else is one to make of that but the conclusions I drew? Hagar is slightly less egregious than Stanley in that regard when comparing their books side by side (Stanley looks at what he does strictly as product...he may as well have been making widgets in a factory for all the passion he wrote regarding the musical process), but Hagar speaks more lovingly about his tequila business and more intricately about the specifics of his record deals than he does his songs.Last edited by Terry; 12-22-2015, 10:55 PM.Scramby eggs and bacon.Comment
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The thing about Hagar's love of making money via the "music business" doesn't reflect a lack of integrity or anything else. It is the music business - the whole point is to make money. So Slappy trying to maximize his take home or using the bidness solely to make money doesn't bother me at all. Think about it - we grew up expecting rock stars to be rich as shit and have Ferraris and Lambos and big houses and we expected those guys to basically do nothing aside from cut a record, tour, party 24/7, rinse repeat. I certainly never wanted my "rock stars" to be broke and miserable.
I have not read Sam's book. So I'm going by what I've read online. But I don't see why using rock to get paid is a bad thing. It IS a product, it's a thing you can sell to people and the more people that buy it then the better for the "artist". And every single person here goes nuts when Sammy exaggerates his record sales with VH compared to Dave's sales. Why? Why does it matter how many records they sold? If money doesn't or shouldn't matter and the only thing that matters is the product then who cares how many records got sold? See - it does matter because we equate success with dollars. So I have no problem with Sam actively trying to maximize his profit. That's kinda what it's all about.
The idea that "rock stars" do it for the love of the music is kinda silly. Look at Dave, for example. The dude apparently owns a house and a low rider and some dogs and that's about it. Who knows what he's done with the money he's made, aside from dropping a mill plus on the BBQ video. What he did do is use the music bidness to fund his love of traveling the world. The guy appears to love living in hotel rooms and only wants to travel and the music bidness allows him to do so. That's no different than Slappy using the bidness to promote his liquor businesses and find whatever it is he does outside of show time.American by birth. Southern by the grace of God.
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While I agree that money plays a big roll in one's vision at some point and will often be a barometer of success one has had in rock and roll, the integrity of the creative process is greatly compromised once money is all one cares about. To counter your point, Donnie, I'd say that Dave was putting art before dollars in the time frame you spoke of (bbq era). He invested a lot of time in the studio that yielded very little coin. There are twice as many Diamond Dave CD-type songs that we only know of through the bbq video. Even though the bulk of his work were covers in this era, the guy produced some creative renditions and I don't think he was imaging them selling like hot cakes. That's a shit ton more respectable than Hagar trying like hell to be a ham-fisted Jimmy Buffet knock off.Comment
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There's a side of rock and roll that is all about money. Back in the days when people wanted to stick it to "The Man" it was cool to be some stoned, break of society's rules and get rich rock stars. In short making all the money without having to do what "The Man" told you to do was very rock and roll. Now it's politically incorrect to tell the man to fuck off. No. That's racist. Bend over and take it. Taking it up the ass is the new normal. Fly that rainbow flag high.No! You can't have the keys to the wine cellar!Comment
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