CD Review: Sammy Hagar – Sammy Hagar & Friends

CD Review: Sammy Hagar – Sammy Hagar & Friends

Frontiers Records

All Access Review: B-

Sammy Hagar - Sammy Hagar & Friends 2013

The Van Halen brothers, Eddie and Alex, are reportedly not too fond of their old band mate SammyHagar. A tell-all biography that shines a not-so-flattering light on certain unsavory aspects of their time together in Van Halen tends to have that effect, although to be fair, their relationship was frosty well before “Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock” saw the light of day.

That said, the affable Hagar is not without friends, as the new album of hard-rocking, bluesy, country-flavored collaborations Sammy Hagar & Friends points out. Taj Mahal, Kid Rock, Nancy Wilson of Heart, Journey’s Neal Schon, Ronnie Dunn and Toby Keith, Montrose pals Denny Carmassi and Bill Church, and, of course, his boys in Chickenfoot – the cast is a who’s who of musical heavyweights. In typically raucous and rowdy fashion, Hagar presides over what should be a 10-song soundtrack for a week-long drunken bender, but by the end, there’s a sense that the hangover has come early, thanks to some strangely reinterpreted covers and an overall sense of malaise.

An uneven set of ballsy, rough-and-tumble, metal-tinged originals like “Knockdown Dragout” and the slow-burning, fuzz-toned “Not Going Down,” penned by Jay Buchanan of the Rival Sons, Sammy Hagar & Friends also features the red-hot, tires-squealing, rock ‘n’ roll thrill ride “Bad on Fords and Chevrolets” – a Hagar-Dunn duet that drives recklessly like a bootlegger being chased through gravelly back roads by the Feds. By far the most exciting and infectious track on Sammy Hagar & Friends, Jerry Lee Lewis would approve of it and probably join in, although he might not be so complimentary towards the lazy, lethargic and surprisingly stiff treatment of “Margaritaville” Sammy and company sleep through here.

Given his taste for tequila and fondness for the laid-back island fun, everyone knew the day would come when Hagar would try his hand at “Margaritaville,” and it’s an utter failure, almost completely devoid of any of the sunny charm of Jimmy Buffett’s version. Turning Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” into a mid-tempo blues holy roller – complete with soulful backing singers – might not seem like such a bad idea, but in execution, it seems awkwardly arranged and anything but a religious experience, sucking the hypnotic creepiness out of the original version and transforming it into a bland, insipid Vegas-style lounge number, instead of a fiery, organic sermon. Not all of the covers chosen by Hagar are treated so shabbily, as Bob Seger’s “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” is a vibrant revival tailor-made for his loud monster-truck vocal pipes.

“Father Sun” and “Winding Down” come off as much more inspired works, with the bright mandolin and acoustic guitar strumming of the former drenched in Southern down-home charm and the slinky slide-guitar meanness of the latter slipping and sliding around a lyrical laundry list of societal and political ills. Recorded live in the studio, the brawny, crawling “Going Down” finds Hagar, Schon, Michael Anthony and Chad Smith grinding and tenderizing the song’s body with bruising rhythmic blows, making a big drill out of it that could tunnel through bedrock.

Sammy Hagar & Friends runs hot and cold, its country-pop warmth and heavy rock statements made all the more powerful through the instrumental prowess of articulate players like Schon and Joe Satriani, even if they feel like as if they’re saving themselves for something for more challenging than this off-the-cuff experience. What should be a colorful rock ‘n’ roll fiesta has too many grey spaces, too many periods of lifeless fist-shaking at enemies real or imagined that lack real conviction. When Hagar should be the cheery drunk wearing a lampshade on his head, he expresses halfhearted defiance, as if the beating he’s taken over the years by faceless critics has finally gotten to him. For once, the shaggy-haired Hagar shies away from being the life of the party, and that grinning, laughing personality of his is missed. http://www.frontiers.it/
– Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Various Artists - Re-Machined - A Tribute to Deep Purple's Machine Head

CD Review: Various Artists – Re-Machined – A Tribute to Deep Purple’s Machine Head

Eagle Records

All Access Review: B+

Re-Machined - A Tribute to Deep Purple's Machine Head 2012

“Why in the world would anybody bring a flare gun to a Frank Zappa concert, let alone shoot it off inside the venue?” Even after all these years, isn’t that the question that springs to mind every time “Smoke on the Water” and that swinging sledgehammer of a riff, seemingly plucked out of thin air by that six-string magician Ritchie Blackmore, comes crashing through the speakers?

Whatever the reasons for such a brain-dead decision, it certainly had far-reaching consequences for Deep Purple. As related through the oral history of “Smoke on the Water,” Blackmore and company went to Montreux, Switzerland to make a record. They’d rented the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio and were all set to head into the Montreux Casino to record their archetypal heavy-metal manifesto, Machine Head, an album with all the driving horsepower of the finest Mustangs Ford ever manufactured. Then, that infamous “stupid with a flare gun” got trigger-happy and set off a blaze that burned the entire complex to ash, forcing a rather desperate Deep Purple to find other another place to make history. Through the ice and snow, the Mark II lineup hauled that mobile to an almost completely vacant hotel, where the band, working under severe time constraints and less-than-ideal conditions, somehow managed to forge a masterpiece.

The stakes, of course, were not nearly as high, but in some ways, this was rock music’s Apollo 13 moment – a small crew a long ways from home, their master plans derailed by a fire and other acts of God, forced to scramble and improvise on the fly to accomplish what they’d set out to do. On some level, what Deep Purple did was heroic, all the more so considering the incredible results produced by their perseverance and ingenuity. And so, with 2012 being the 40th anniversary of their groundbreaking accomplishment, it’s hard to imagine an album more deserving of a mostly sincere, star-studded homage as Re-Machined – A Tribute to Deep Purple’s Machine Head, which has taken on greater significance with the fairly recent passing of legendary Purple keyboardist Jon Lord and news of the band's nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Getting behind the wheel of “Highway Star,” Chickenfoot and the thrown-together combination of Glenn Hughes, Steve Vai and Chad Smith open up the throttle on differing, frenzied versions of one of the greatest car songs of all-time, with Chickenfoot’s thundering, hot-wired live test-drive of the original wildly pushing into the red and Smith-Hughes-Vai’s take smoking its tires and leaving terra firma to soar into the stratosphere on Hughes’ prayerful wail. On their earthy funk workout of “Maybe I’m a Leo,” Smith and Hughes, a one-time member of Deep Purple’s Mark III crew, lock into the kind of chunky, soulful rock grooves that thicken and add organic, savory flavor to what was somewhat of a thin, starry-eyed stew cooked up by Purple so long ago, while “Lazy” gets a smoldering, bluesy makeover by guitarist Joe Bonamassa and screaming singer Jimmy Barnes.

Less inspired, Metallica’s surprisingly atrophied reworking of “When A Blind Man Cries” – not included on Machine Head initially, as it was a B-side of the “Never Before” single – doesn’t gnash its teeth or exhibit the kind of dynamic energy one would expect of them. Worse yet, the Flaming Lips disappointingly choose to take the piss out of “Smoke on the Water” and robotically dance with this sacred cow, much as Devo did in deconstructing the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.” Arty and interesting in its own way, it also seems a waste of the Lips’ prodigious talent and even more proof that they’ve lost their way, whereas Iron Maiden simply plow through an explosive and gripping, if perhaps a bit too faithful, cover of “Space Truckin’” – recorded in 2006 as a B-side while making A Matter of Life and Death, and it’s sat on the shelf ever since.

What better time for it to find new life, and what better time for Joe Elliot, Steve Stevens, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum to come together as Kings of Chaos and vigorously shake some glam action out of “Never Before,” or for Carlos Santana and Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix to smoothly maneuver through “Smoke on the Water,” with Santana playing off Blackmore’s riffage and making the track a multi-cultural experience. And then there’s Black Label Society, these hairy metal barbarians storming the gates of “Never Before,” with Zakk Wylde’s wah-wah guitar supernovas barely shining through nests of grungy folk. Diverse, with examples of incredible musicianship, Re-Machined takes some liberties with Machine Head, and more often than not, they’re worth the gamble. Maybe now everyone will forget about that damned flare gun.

-            Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth

CD Review: Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth
Interscope Records
All Access Review:  A-

When it comes to anything and everything related to Van Halen, the truth is always subjective. The first time around, when David Lee Roth exited stage left, what exactly happened between him and the rest of that band that caused their very public and nasty divorce? Then there was the whole Sammy Hagar debacle. Did he leave of his own volition or was he canned by Eddie and Alex? On the heels of that messy split came the aborted 1996 reunion with Roth and the MTV Music Awards fiasco that led Eddie to say something to the effect of, if Roth ever addressed him in a certain way again, “ … he’d better wear a cup.” If ever anyone was to attempt to write a rock and roll soap opera, they might as well abandon the idea right now, because chances are, no writer could, in his wildest dreams, concoct the kind of drama that has already unfolded within Van Halen.

And so, here we are in 2012, and pigs now evidently can fly. Roth is back in the Van Halen fold and a new album has arrived, the blessed event preceded by the release of an unsatisfying first single, “Tattoo,” that led to much head-scratching and quizzical expressions. Betrayed by a weak, lazy chorus, Eddie’s “going through the motions” solo and a sort of forced attempt to bring back that cheeky fun the boys exuded on smash hits like “Hot For Teacher” and “Jump,” “Tattoo” received mixed reviews – to put it charitably – and torpedoed expectations for A Different Kind of Truth, Van Halen’s first album with Roth since 1984. The bar lowered well below where it was set for Guns ‘N Roses’ Chinese Democracy, it turns out Van Halen was sandbagging us all along. Supposedly working off bits and scraps of material the band had left over from the good old days Van Halen has transformed this pile of ephemera into a powerhouse album engorged with Roth’s circus-barker vocals, Alex’s brawny, wrecking-ball drumming and the kind of molten riffs and high-flying, supersonic solos that made Eddie Van Halen a legend.

A Different Kind of Truth washes out the bad taste of “Tattoo,” the opening track, almost immediately with the rampaging stampede of “She’s The Woman.” As if circling high above a freshly killed carcass, in buzzard-like fashion, Eddie whips up a dazzling, intricate intro to the track that rushes headlong into a prison break of heavy, unbridled riffs and tenderizing rhythms. What should have been the initial single, “You and Your Blues,” is more darkly melodic, chugging tantalizingly ahead before giving way to a deceptively simple, cascading chorus that’s disarming, instantly memorable and becomes even more rewarding with repeated listens. Clearly, Eddie is reinvigorated and out to prove that he’s still the champ, as the dizzying flurry of knockout blows he delivers in the thundering blitzkrieg that is “China Town” – the closest Van Halen has ever come to sounding punk, although the raging, speed-addicted “Bullethead” that crops up two songs later would be a close second – so exquisitely proves, especially with the blindingly fast, Yngwie Malmsteen-like fretwork that turns the ignition on this hard-working engine.

A truly great guitar record, with scorching leads and contorted figures strategically placed throughout its burning landscape like claymore mines and Eddie effortlessly executing the kind of hairpin twists and turns that would cause other guitarists to crash and burn, A Different Kind of Truth gnashes its teeth and wails at a world that had begun to see Van Halen as a joke. It’s no party album; actually, it’s more of a thrill ride, a fast, frenzied rollercoaster that speeds through some of the darker territory Van Halen once traversed in “Runnin’ With the Devil,” “And the Cradle will Rock” and “Mean Streets” – “Honeybabysweetiedoll,” with its mad-dog growl and exotic Middle Eastern overtones, and “As Is” matching, chord for explosive chord, their surging power.

Uncharacteristically, though as slyly charming and as entertaining as ever, Roth seems comfortable taking a backseat to Eddie on A Different Kind of Truth, except on “Outta Space,” the philosophical “The Trouble with Never” and “Stay Frosty.” Roth’s trademark swagger and that comedic charisma he has are in full effect on the bluesy, gleefully entertaining “Stay Frosty,” which carries on the acoustic tradition and vaudevillian soft shoe of “Ice Cream Man” and “Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now).” Propelled by the propulsive, pounding bass lines and Eddie’s stop-start dynamics that drive the humorous “Outta Space” forward, Roth lets it all hang out, singing as if he’s fighting for his career, dipping low and then rising to wrestle with Eddie’s guitar for the spotlight. Every grunt, yelp and excited utterance is emitted in the moment and without preconception, and for the first time in a long while, Roth, though never a great singer, doesn’t come off as self-serving or clownish.

Although there really isn’t a clear radio hit – even “You and Your Blues” is bereft of that mysterious “it” factor that pushes a song up the charts – and it could do with a little more refinement as far as song construction goes, A Different Kind of Truth leaves you breathless by the end, its energy and intensity almost overwhelming. Less generous with those big, juicy hooks of theirs than one would expect and missing those vocal harmonies that Michael Anthony used to supply in spades, A Different Kind of Truth is, nonetheless, a tour de force for Eddie, a chance for him to showcase all the new tricks he’s learned. Despite its clunky title, the album is a sonic whirlwind, and when everybody was asking what kind of response Van Halen had for Chickenfoot, nobody imagined that this was what Eddie and the gang had in mind. In its quest for truth, Van Halen has rediscovered much of what made them great in the first place.

- Peter Lindblad

VH Interview 

(direct from the Van Halen website) 

VH Interviews from Van Halen on Vimeo.

Joe Satriani: Class is in Session

An interview with one of the greatest guitar players ever

By Peter Lindblad

Some of the greatest rock guitarists of this generation have been taught by Joe Satriani, and with 1987’s Surfing with the Alien, he defied the conventional wisdom that said an instrumental album could never be a commercial and critical hit. Satriani, who has won multiple Grammys for his work, has certainly taken the road less travelled to fame and fortune as a musician. 

Lesser known projects, like his revolving-door touring trio G3, have satisfied his thirst for musical adventure and exploration, while his 1988 stint as lead guitarist on Mick Jagger’s first solo tour provided a showcase for his technically flawless and emotionally transcendent guitar playing. Many feel that Satriani is the greatest guitar player ever, and even though some may argue that Eddie Van Halen has established himself as the pre-eminent shredder of his generation, a strong case can be made that Satriani has passed him by.

Nowadays, Satriani is plying his trade with the supergroup Chickenfoot, which includes veteran singer Sammy Hagar, ex-Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith. Not only is Satriani sparking the group’s dynamic musicianship with his mind-blowing fretwork, but also, Satriani is lending a hand with the writing. Chickenfoot III, the band’s second LP, has been out for a while now, and the band has been on the road with Kenny Aronoff serving as a replacement for Smith. In this interview, Satriani shares his experiences with Chickenfoot and his memories of playing with Jagger and how he was completely dumbfounded by the success of Surfing with the Alien.

Just from initial impressions, Chickenfoot III seems like a heavier album, maybe ‘70s inspired. Was that something you were going for?

Joe Satriani: I think we recognized that that’s what was happening as we were doing it. We never really plan things out. We record ourselves sort of bouncing off each other. That’s kind of like the way we operate, and every time somebody picks up on something like that, you just laugh and smile and say, “Oh, ’72 … you know.” (laughs) That’s just the way we are. That’s part of why stuck together, because we thought it was exciting but curious that we didn’t do like “Satch Boogie,” “Give It Away Now,” and a whole series of Van Halen songs put together. We just sort of … we make this other thing, and so we’ve respected it by not sort of analyzing it. We just let it happen.

From the beginning of Chickenfoot, it being a supergroup, everybody was wondering how the different styles would mesh. Was that a concern when you began?

JS: I’m sure that those guys … you know, Sammy, Mike and Chad were probably thinking about that for a while, because as the last guy to join the unit, I hadn’t spent any time with them, when they, for six months, were jamming down at the Cabo club, and they had a number of guitar players join them onstage. I don’t know at what point it got into their minds that they wanted to make a record, but at some point, they called me and they must have thought, “Boy, that guy’s weird, but maybe it’ll work.” (laughs) So, I’m just happy that they did call me because it turns out I just had a lot of music in my background that was perfect for this band. It’s so natural for me because it was like I was 14 years old again in my high school band. This is exactly the kind of music I dreamt about playing. It didn’t take any extra effort, it was just … I was just so excited I just wanted to make sure we had enough time to devote to the project with our crazy schedules.

I was going to ask you if Chickenfoot allowed you to come full circle in your career, because you started out really loving that music of the ’70s?

JS: It’s funny how that is. I mean, a lot of the music that I’m allowed to write, let’s say, or I’m inspired to write when I’m thinking about Sammy, me, Mike and Chad, I wouldn’t normally be able to pull it off in a solo situation. It would just be so difficult because that style of music is built around a singer being really expressive and charismatic. I mean, Sammy Hagar is just … he’s got an amazing voice. The sound quality of it is huge. He can literally dominate any mix that you bring his voice up in. Wow, it’s just a force of nature. And of course, that style of music really wants the singer to be slightly unusual, slightly dangerous, somewhere on the edge between making a point and just blurting out rock and roll-isms. I don’t know what that is about rock music, but sometimes you like it when they’re being vague, you know, and just sort of being who they are. It adds a certain quality to the music, and so, those are the kinds of things you can’t really do instrumentally. It sounds kind of corny. So I’ve always approached instrumental music that it’s got to be fully, 100 percent, totally inspired by something that means something to me, something that I’ve lived through, somebody that I know, and that’s my guide to making it totally truthful and from the heart. But it’s different when I’m writing, at least for Chickenfoot, I’m really thinking about trying to bring out those things that I’ve picked up on while touring with the band, which I think is why this record sounds just better than the first one we did, because it’s obvious we know each other a lot more. We’ve been able to bring more of our personalities out on this record.

And a heavier record, too.

JS: I think so. I think everybody had a couple of things they were trying to get out of each other. As you said, it’s sort of … it culminated in just a stronger sound. I know Sam kept wanting me to just let loose, and I wanted him to sing in a lower register. I thought it would be more powerful and more intimate at the same time. I definitely wanted to write grooves where Mike, Chad and myself would sound like one big Mack truck coming right at you at a hundred miles per hour because you can write songs where you tell the drummer and bass player to play something repetitive, and you can do crazy stuff on top of it. That would be almost like a solo record type of thing, when you’re trying to give that feeling that the guitars are free and doing all sorts of stuff. You need somebody in the band to be more disciplined. But I wasn’t interested in that with these guys. I wanted to be part of the band, and I wanted Sam to be the thing floating on top. So that means I had to write, specifically, things where we naturally would sync into a backbeat together and sound like one unit. I think that contributes greatly to the heaviness, so we can do those songs like “Big Foot” – that’s a perfect example.

Yeah, that’s one of my favorites. You alluded to approaching Sammy about trying something new. What was that conversation like? Was it a tough conversation to have? Or was it easy to say, “Maybe we should try something different with your voice?”

JS: Oh, I think he was totally into it because I related to him this experience I had a few months before we started really … or I started really writing for this record, and we were hanging out and I’d just come from another local studio, and I said, “Sam, they were working on a song that you sang on. It was Sammy and Neil Schon and Michael Walden, and other local musicians doing a Sly Stone song for a local film. And I was totally blown away listening to Sam’s vocal performance. He just sounded like a stone-cold R&B singer. And the register was lower and his vibrato was beautiful, his voice was the usual, a thousand feet wide. And so I was saying, “Sam, that was like the greatest vocal I’ve ever heard. Why aren’t we doing that?” So, he was definitely excited about it, because he remembered that session. And he had a good time doing it, and he started telling me about all the soul music that he loves and how he’d love to do it. So I kind of took that back with me, and during my writing period for the band last August, 12 months ago, I just focused on that a couple of times to make sure that I could sort of count on that. You know, that I could sort of inspire him in that direction, so that we could get some of those beautiful vocal stylings out of him. Still, I’d love to hear all of it. I mean, he added kind of spoken word, but he’s on the other side of it as well, where he’s screaming like the best of them on this record, too. So I just think he gives, on this record, more of himself than on the first record, which is really cool.

Like you mentioned he was asking something different of you, too. Are there points on the album where you can hear you taking his advice to heart about just trying to lose it in the moment?

JS: Yeah, yeah, absolutely – I took everybody’s suggestions. I’ve got to say, it’s a good thing when we get together. Everybody listens to everybody. Everybody tries everybody’s ideas out. Because we figure, you know, I guess basically, the other guy might be right, so let’s just do it. Why not, you know? So sometimes that means any one of us changing our part just to see if it makes the other guy feel more comfortable with his part or a suggestion of a song. You just never know. A perfect example … well, you mentioned before about letting loose. When we finally got in the studio to do “Three and a Half Letters,” by then a lot of things had happened. I mean, the record was pretty much done and we had just this one last piece of music that Sam and I had written. And our good friend, co-manager and Sam’s personal manager, John Carter, had gotten ill and passed away during the making of the record. And we were back in the studio after he had just passed doing sessions, and so all of that, together with Sam’s earlier request of letting go, was definitely something that I was feeling at that moment. And that I think allowed everybody to let go, and everybody did on that particular one. It was just a very emotionally charged afternoon in the studio. There was another moment where we were working on a song that I brought in that turned into “Different Devil.” And I’d written this acoustic piece thinking it would be a funny, little, odd acoustic song, but everybody else wanted to turn it into a more commercially viable piece of music and I was totally bumming out about that idea. But eventually Chad came back the next day, he had borrowed my acoustic guitar and while he was back at the hotel room, he came up with another chord sequence to inject into the song that Sammy felt he could sing a chorus over. And so we re-did the song that afternoon, with this new piece of music in it, and I started to … slowly I had to pull myself out of, you know, my negative view of something that I had written and realize what they were hearing and I’m glad I did because it turned into one of my favorite pieces. But it was a bit of a cathartic experience – sort of leaving the spot that you were certain about and jumping over into another spot where everyone else was certain about. But I think that’s about trust. I mean, that’s what it’s all about when you get a good band together, there’s an element of trust there. So we will follow one another if the other one suggests it.

I suppose that stems from everybody’s previous successes. Maybe you’re more willing to listen to the other guys because you know they’ve experienced a lot of success on their own?

JS: You’re absolutely right. Yeah, I mean those guys have sold some records based on really good, commercially minded songs, and so, yeah, I’m going to listen (laughs) if Chad, or Mike, or Sammy says, “Hey, we can trim this, and the song would really pop.” I go, “Yeah, you probably know a lot more about that than I do.” (laughs) Get this, this is funny. I just got a text from Chad. That is funny. He’s in Rio, and he’s just saying that he is loving the podcasts. We’ve been putting out these podcasts on every song every day leading up to the release of the album.

That’s a new marketing tool for you. Are you enjoying doing that?

JS: Yeah, I think when I finally see them … of course, I can’t stand looking at myself, and I’m always explaining they’re using the wrong camera angle (laughs). I’m not necessarily ready for primetime, probably will never be, but yeah, after a while, I realized this is a very cool thing, and I wish that all the other artists that I like would do it, because I’d be eating it up, you know.

What kinds of artists do you like these days? You’ve worked with so many and taught so many.

JS: I think the last couple of things I’ve been getting into are not necessarily that new. I mean, I’m thinking about … whew, here’s a weird one. Animals As Leaders. Have you ever heard of them? Tosin Abasi, the guitar player, is just completely … it’s the craziest way of playing guitar that I’ve ever heard in my life. He’s really great. Believe it or not, I have been listening to a lot of Black Keys. I’ve always been into listening to the stuff that Jack White does. I like when guitar players go all the way, whether they’re forging brand new territory or they’re doing revival, throwback stuff, I do really love it. And I find it just stimulating to the heart I guess. I’m always picking up; if somebody finds me a new bootleg of an old James Gang thing, I’ll listen to that (laughs). I’m always looking for more stuff. You know, probably the next thing I’ll get is that new Hendrix compilation of live stuff. That just came out. I still just listen to Hendrix all the time.

Do you still teach?

JS: No, I recently had to put a lot of this into words because I gave a commencement speech at Musicians Institute down in L.A., and I had to remind myself the last time I taught an official lesson was actually Kirk Hammett, and it was back in January of ’88. And he was the last student I gave a lesson to. He was just about to start recording … And Justice for All, and I was just about to go out on my very first tour as a solo artist for the Surfing … record. That’s how long ago it was. Our lives have changed so dramatically since then, but yeah, it’s been a while.

Do you miss it at all?

JS: No. Teaching is very hard. It’s very hard to sit in a small room, and I was teaching privately, so that meant I was teaching over 40 hours a week. I had 60-plus students, all individual lessons, an hour and half hour. That’s intense. That was my day job. What I was really doing was playing in a rock band at night, and so … yeah, that was pretty tough.

In that way, your career and that of Randy Rhoades had parallels. I know he taught as well.

JS: I don’t know too many players out there who teach. I mean, it’s a good gig to have, because the guitar is in your hand all day long. You have the opportunity to continually think about technique, and it is nice to hang out with other guitar players, rather than … I don’t know, if you worked at the post office or something, driving yourself crazy. The danger is you’ve got the guitar in your hand too many hours a day. You have to be careful of over playing and repetitive stress, and probably mentally, you don’t want to get bitter about music by having to teach kids and professionals. Even though I had students like Charlie Hunter, Larry LaLonde and Kirk Hammett and Alex Skolnick, I also had people who were grammar school teachers, lawyers, doctors, race car drivers, cable car operators, and I had kids who used to bring in action figures and put them on the amp and then pick up the guitar (laughs). I had a diverse group of young and old, men and women, and when you’re a teacher, you have a job to do, which is to get them to play the music they want to play. It’s not about turning them into rock stars, unless they specifically asked you to. Unless they were your average 18-year-old kid who comes in and says, “Make me the greatest guitar player in the world. I’ll do whatever you say, you know.” But it’s not for the faint of heart as far as musicians go. For some people, it would rub them the wrong way with their creative mind, you know. They would rather be out painting or something where they could have their solitude.

What do you like best about working with Sammy?

JS: Well, Sammy is Sammy, and that’s the best part about Sammy Hagar, just his basic personality. He’s one of the coolest guys you’ll ever meet. He’s got a golden heart, and you know, the music business is absolutely insane. If there’s something bad inside somebody, the music business brings it out. That’s the bad thing about it. So, there are just a lot of those guys you want to avoid. I’ve been through some crazy stuff with Sam, and he’s been the same golden-hearted guy, and that’s a great thing. And that’s why good things happen around him. It’s a testament to his nature. But beside all that, he’s a great singer, he’s prolific, he only does stuff that he truly believes in, which is really great – which can be really funny sometimes, because you can’t believe some of the stuff he believes in. You go, “What?” But he’s not calculating in any way. He just goes straight from the heart. And he gives it all he’s got. I’ve toured with the guy, and he just wants to make everybody feel great in the audience. It’s a very important thing. You’d think that would be … that every performer would feel that way, but they don’t. And you do sometimes find performers who are selfish or who could care less, and that’s really sad and you don’t want to work with them. But Sammy cares really hard. He reminds me of the year I spent working with Mick Jagger back in ’88. I was blown away with how much Mick cared about the audience and the show, and everybody that he worked with – you know, kind and generous, but still unpredictable and totally rock and roll. He was the first guy who told me those elements can actually be together in one human being. And Sam is very prolific. He’s great. He’s got a million ideas, and so to know him is to receive calls all during the day and night, with him being 100 percent enthusiastic about something. You never know what it’s going to be. He’s never like 50 percent into something. He’s always 100 percent or zero percent, which makes him an exciting friend.

What do you think is the future of Chickenfoot?

JS: Oh, I’m pretty confident that the core group – Sammy, Mike, Chad and myself – will make another couple of records. I truly believe that. I think that every time we finish a record, I think we all got the feeling like, “Wow, this is almost like a step to some new beginning.” And then, of course, reality steps in and then, it’s like, “Oh, that’s right. Chad’s in the Chili Peppers. Sam’s got a million things going on. I’ve got a solo career. And Mike’s on a permanent vacation, which he takes very seriously.” But, we kind of put that out of our minds, and we just move ahead one step at a time – that’s what I think. I really do think there’s so much more music to share between the four of us, we will make more records.

The music industry has changed so much since Surfing With the Alien and your other instrumental albums. Could you ever foresee an instrumental album being as popular as that one was?

JS: No, oh man. When we were finishing that record, me and my co-producer John Cuniberti, we were convinced that it was the last record that people would let us make, that we were going to get run out of town, so to speak, you know. It would be like, “Thank you very much. Now go away.” No, we did whatever we wanted, we remastered … you know, we just pushed and pushed and finally handed it over, and it was like, okay. And I literally handed the record in and went back to teaching guitar, and John went back to his studio work. We had no idea. When somebody told us that it landed on the Billboard charts, I remember, and they called up and said, “It’s 186.” And I said, “186 on what?” I just couldn’t believe it. I said, “Billboard? It’s on Billboard?” And I remember, it was a moment where I was in Australia touring with Mick, and it was sitting at 29 on the Billboard charts. It sat there for six weeks, and I remember it was higher than Mick’s solo record. And we were out to dinner, and I remember Mick coming over to me and saying, “Hey, Joe, that is like the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” and congratulating me and … you know, Mick always said, “Anything you need from this organization to promote the record, you got it. You need a room. You need a camera crew … whatever.” And he gave me a solo spot on the tour every night. I’d have 10 to 15 minutes to play whatever I wanted. He was very generous that way and excited about it, but it illustrated to me at that moment, this is like, I could never have imagined this. This is freaky, to have that success and have Mick Jagger say, “Congratulations, Joe. Anything I can do to help, you know.” It was just really cool.

What other things do you have on the horizon?

JS: Wow. Right now I’m juggling interviews. It’s all about Chickenfoot right now. I’m waiting to get some tracks from Jon Lord actually, because I’m going to be adding guitar to a record that Jon Lord is doing. So I’m excited about that. And the 3-D film of my last tour, the Wormhole tour, is coming out [soon].

  

5150: A Changing of the Guard

Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony reflect on 25th Anniversary of the chart-topping album, Hagar's first with Van Halen after the departure of David Lee Roth. 

By Peter Lindblad

Somebody had to go, and it wasn't going to be Eddie Van Halen. Not with his brother, Alex, on his side and the very name of the band at stake.Whether he left Van Halen of his own volition or was kicked to the curb by the two siblings, David Lee Roth found himself on his own in April of 1985, ready to eat them or anybody else and smile that 1,000-watt smile to the world. However, the future of Van Halen, this hard-partying, hard-rocking juggernaut from California that had vaulted up the pop charts, was in doubt - that is until Eddie made friends with fellow sports car lover Sammy Hagar while his Lamborghini was in the shop. But, at first, Hagar was apprehensive about joining Van Halen.

"My first reaction was, 'I don't want to be in that f**king band,' because Dave's image kind of overshadowed the band. It really did," said Hagar. "The general public, they heard the music on the radio, but me, I was in the industry. And I heard all the tales, and I would go into a building, the same arena where they had just played, and you hear all the horror stories, and I always thought, 'I don't want to be in no f**king band like that.' And so, I said, 'Well, I'll go down and check 'em out.' It's pretty much in the book [Hagar's best-seller "Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock"] about all this, but I thought I would check 'em out and maybe get Eddie to play on one of my records - not to be in the band or nothing, but I thought he was a really talented guitar player, and you know, I'm going to do a new record. I'll get him to play on the record, you know. And I went down and jammed with Ed, Al and Mike, and I went, 'Holy shit. This is f**king good.' And they went, 'Holy shit. This guy can sing.' And it was just magic from that moment on."

Hagar's arrival signaled a change in direction for Van Halen. More emphasis was placed on Eddie's shiny new toy, the synthesizer, and Hagar's sincerity as a songwriter starkly contrasted the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" sarcasm and unabashed hedonism boasted by Roth's lyrics. It was a marriage that later turned rocky, but in the beginning, the partnership between Hagar and Van Halen would produce the biggest selling album of the band's career, the chart-topping 5150, named after the California police code for a mentally deranged person. 5150 turned 25 years old in 2011, and the switch from Roth to Hagar was as controversial a lineup change as rock music has ever witnessed.

Tensions boil over

 1984, and the high-flying videos for "Jump" and "Panama" - not to mention the titillating "Hot for Teacher" schoolboy fantasy, rolling along on Alex's barreling drums, Anthony's howitzer bass, Roth's lascivious clowning and Eddie's hot-wired guitars  - that were all over MTV, had made the men of Van Halen giants. Only Michael Jackson, with the indomitable Thriller ruling the charts with an iron fist, was bigger. Onstage, every night was a party to end all parties, the greatest rock and roll show on earth. Eddie's dizzying, thermonuclear guitar fretwork dazzled, while Roth's outrageous showmanship, impossible gymnastics, cheeky humor and hairy-chested machismo made him a golden god.

Behind the scenes, however, during the 1984 tour, jealousy and personality clashes, issues that had dogged the band for years, were tearing Van Halen apart. Eddie could no longer stomach Roth's spotlighting-hogging ego, while Roth was becoming increasingly irritated by Eddie's substance abuse and moonlighting without the band's approval. Furthermore, there were creative differences, Roth becoming more insistent upon moving toward more of a pop-oriented sound, as opposed to Eddie's desire for increased musical complexity. There are two sides to every story, says the old saw, and the backbiting and accusations that have flown back and forth regarding Roth's departure are rivaled only by the litigious slings and arrows of the Mark Zuckerberg-versus-the Winklevoss twins Facebook saga.

Little did bassist Michael Anthony know then that a similar drama would play out when Roth's replacement, Sammy Hagar, was booted from Van Halen in 1996, before Anthony himself, in the mid-2000s, was exiled from the band he'd been in since 1974.

"In the latter days of Van Halen, before I was out of the band, you almost start to lose perspective on why we're doing this in the first place, because Van Halen became a pretty well-oiled machine - touring and everything, and of course, it all becomes big business and whatever," said Anthony. "It almost got to the point where we never got into the studio to really jam, like we do in Chickenfoot [the band he's in now with Hagar, Red Hot Chili Peppers' drummer Chad Smith and guitarist extraordinaire Joe Satriani]."

Chance of a lifetime

Things weren't always that way with what many refer - sarcastically or affectionately - to as the "Van Hagar" years. When Sammy Hagar entered the picture, stepping in for Roth as Van Halen's singer and rhythm guitarist in 1985, his arrival was a breath of fresh air. Introduced by a mechanic, of all people, sports car lovers Hagger and Eddie initially hit it off. But, before this fortunate happenstance, Van Halen had been foundering in its search for a new lead vocalist. As the story goes, Patty Smyth of Scandal was offered the role, but she nixed the idea. Jimmy Barnes was considered, too, but nothing ever came of it. Haggar, as it turned out, was the ideal replacement, even if news of his enlistment wasn't greeted with cheers and toasts from everyone.

For Haggar, joining Van Halen was the chance of a lifetime. Though he'd had solo hits, including the ubiquitous "I Can't Drive 55" in, of all years, 1984, and AOR staples such as "There's Only One Way to Rock," "Three Lock Box" and 1982's "Your Love is Driving Me Crazy," which rose all the way to #13 on the Hot 100 chart, Van Halen was playing in a different league. And after the trials and tribulations the Red Rocker experienced earlier in his career with Montrose, Haggar was grateful for the reception he received in Van Halen.

"Montrose ... Montrose wasn't that much fun," admits Hagar. "You know, we were fun, but we were poor on our ass and we bombed at practically every show we played. (laughs) We got booed ... oh yes. I mean, we headlined Winterland in San Francisco, and we headlined Paris at the Olympia Theater - the only two cities in the world where Montrose was the headline act. The rest of the time, we were an opening act, and we got booed off whenever we opened for anybody. It was like, 'F**k. Why doesn't anyone like us?' (laughs) And then we went on to sell, over the years, four million albums of that first [Montrose] record and we never even made the Top 200. It was never even on the charts. So, you know, that wasn't that much fun (laughs). It was like being in the f**king infantry, on the front lines the whole time, you know (laughs)."

Hagar, though, had his detractors, even though his technical proficiency on guitar - something Roth never had - expanded Van Halen's capabilities, allowing Eddie more opportunities to play synthesizer live. Many of them would continue to deride Hagar long after 5150, Van Halen's first album with Hagar onboard, had fallen off the charts, but Hagar had the last laugh.

"Oh man, joining the band, having the same old thing that always happens with everything I do - the doubting Thomases [that say], 'Aw, this is never going to work. Sammy's a whole different guy. Nobody can replace Roth,'" recalls Hagar.

As the skeptics lined up to express their misgivings, Van Halen went in the studio with Hagar in November 1985 to bang out 5150 in short order. Wasting little time, the band assumed a bunker mentality during the recording sessions, which would quickly yield fruit.

"Just going in there while we were making the 5150 record, we were on fire," remembers Hagar. "You know, we locked everybody out. No one came in but our manager and our engineers and producer, [Foreigner's] Mick Jones, and so forth. And everybody in that room is going 'this is a fight to the f**king world, here's this.'"

For his part, Anthony wasn't quite sure what to make of Hagar when he first showed up to work. This wasn't the laidback California surfer dude and hippie philosopher Anthony had pictured. Any reservations he had, however, were quickly dismissed.

"I know Sammy was ... I think he was just starting to take a long break [just before he joined Van Halen]," says Anthony. "So, he comes walking into the studio and I was sitting in the control room and he came walking in, and here he is, his hair is all shaved off, pretty much. And I said, 'Whoa, that's Sammy Hagar? This ain't the guy we signed on to come play with us.' But yeah, we had a few ideas that were already written that we were kind of working on, before Sammy came in. One of 'em was 'Good Enough' ... I forget what the other one was, but we had a couple of ideas and we started playing, and Sammy just started singing off the top of his head, you know, just listening to this stuff. And there were a lot of lyrics that he actually ended up using in the songs. That's how well it clicked. I still have the cassette tape somewhere at home of that first time. We all had copies, and we were just blown. I mean, as soon as we started playing, as soon as we started playing ... we actually stopped and said, 'We've got a band.' That's how well it clicked. It was great."

What chemistry, what magic - Hagar couldn't believe how fast the record, released 25 years ago in 1986, and the promotion of it, came together. The salacious "Good Enough" was a powerhouse of an album opener, its rhythmic pistons pumping furiously from start to finish, while the triumphant "Best of Both Worlds" happily marched up a mountain of life-affirming riffs. The bruising "Inside," with its roiling guitars sounding as brutal as a gang initiation, was a cocky middle finger pointed straight at Van Halen's critics, and "Summer Nights" nostalgically pined for those  humid, sweaty evenings of misspent youth, when smoking joints, drinking beer and fouling around in the backseats of cars was all that mattered.

"5150 was actually recorded pretty quickly, because we had a lot of ideas already and then a lot of stuff, obviously, was written once Sammy entered the thing, but I think the band was on such a high at that point," said Anthony. "I mean, we were firing on 16 cylinders at that point, because it was new and fresh and Sammy really brought his own thing into the band full-on. Here was a guy who could vocally sing anything that Ed was coming up with, and he could play guitar. So from that standpoint, he could make suggestions musically and melodically there, and he could also pick up a guitar and jam with us in the studio, too. And I can't remember, but I think ... I can't say for sure, but it seemed like we did that album pretty quick - a month, a couple months."

A pristine palace of sonic grandeur, with its sparkling production, 5150 - that cocoa-buttered muscle man down on one knee holding up the world on the cover indicative of the band's ambition and the pressure they were under - wasn't your typical Van Halen record. For one thing, it had soaring ballads, earnest love songs like "Dreams," "Why Can't This Be Love" and "Love Walks In" that contained nary a hint of Roth's prurient penchant for sly sexual innuendo and bawdy jokes. Different too was the fact that Eddie's guitars, so prominent in the mix on Van Halen classic hard-rock rumbles like "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," "Everybody Wants Some," "Running with the Devil," "And the Cradle Will Rock," "Mean Street" and "Unchained," among others, had taken a step back, quite comfortable on equal footing with keyboards, Anthony's big, booming bass and Alex's thundering herd of drums. And then there was the stunning vocal interaction between Anthony and Hagar, a signature feature of Van Halen's sound with Hagar.

"I'll say one thing, after doing backgrounds to David Lee Roth, because his vocal range is a lot lower, all of a sudden, it was like, 'Whoa,'" says Anthony. "I mean, it really pushed me in the beginning, so I was all of a sudden singing in registers that I hadn't really sung in before. Not that I couldn't do it. But I never did it with Van Halen, and it was cool. And I think it really inspired me and the fact that I could sing those parts, I was really digging it. We really kind of took it to another level vocally with the backgrounds we were doing."

While the public waited with bated breath to hear the results of this unusual union, Hagar and company had every reason to be satisfied with what they had produced. And Warner Bros. was thrilled, too. To think, after Roth had left, the record company, nervous about its cash cow, had pushed the band to abandon the Van Halen name, or even change it, officially that is, to Van Hagar. Not only that, but the suits had put their foot down about allowing Van Halen complete control in the studio. Their ace in the hole, producer Ted Templeton, who captured all the vital energy and punishing intensity of Van Halen's live sound on record in the making of Van Halen I and II, and Fair Warning, Women and Children First and Diver Down, was out of the picture, and they weren't about to let the inmates run the asylum. Don Landee, the engineer on previous Van Halen records, initially assumed production duties, and later, Jones was recruited to provide production assistance.

Still, when all was said and done, Warner Bros. figured it had a monster hit on its hands with 5150. And they couldn't wait to cash that lottery ticket.  "Warner Bros., they shot us right out there on tour," said Anthony. "We didn't even know what happened. The album wasn't even out yet and boom, they had us out on the road. I guess they were all wanting new summer homes and stuff like that (laughs). But you know, for the first two, three albums that Sammy did, we'd tour and then we came right back in the studio and bam, we were going and then we were right back out on the road before we knew it. It was all happening really fast at the time, but like I said, the band ... we were really on a high right then."

Hagar's head was spinning, as well. "So then we go out and play the first show before the album was out, and the place knocked the f**king barricade down in Shreveport, La., and ripped the stage apart," says Hagar. "We damn near had to stop the show in the middle of it, because it was just ... you know, it's those kinds of things: the energy and enthusiasm and the success. The album goes to No. 1 the third week out, it stays there for three weeks. Everybody had their first No. 1 album. It was just one thing after another; it was just success, success, success."

Epilogue

Swept up in all the swirling madness that used to accompany a No. 1 record, Hagar and Van Halen, nevertheless, relished the spoils of their victory. And the backlash that came from longtime Van Halen fans that pledged their allegiance to Roth and gnashed their teeth over the new sound of the band didn't faze Hagar or the other members. Instead, when the 1986 Tour, so named as a not-so-veiled swipe at the doomed 1984 Tour that caused so much tumult within the band, ended and 5150's meteor had fallen to earth, this new Van Halen went back to work.

There was a concert movie, "Live Without A Net." OU812, 5150's follow-up, arrived two years later, and it contained the hits "When It's Love" and the countrified "Finish What Ya Started," with its light "aw shucks" pop manner and incredibly nimble guitar picking. 1991 saw Van Hagar release For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge - the acronym of which produced a certain F-word Hagar is found of using - and it reunited the band with producer Templeton. Unlike the first two albums, which generally received more positive reviews than scathing rebukes, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge was savaged by the critics as being unnecessarily fussy and devoid of fun, and it signaled the end of Van Hagar's first run. Then came 1995's Balance, and the tensions that had simmered between Hagar and the Van Halen brothers, who were breaking down physically with Eddie's hip problem and Alex's neck pain, began boiling over. Still, on a commercial level, everything Van Halen and Hagar touched seemed to turn to gold.

When asked what his favorite memories are of the Van Hagar period, Anthony said, "I think one was just seeing every album go to No. 1, and then enter at No. 1 in the charts with Sammy. It's funny because, it isn't until I can really sit back and look at what's happening, or somebody comes up to me, a friend or something, and says, 'Wow! Do you know how big you guys really are?' We never really realized it, because you're working so hard and you're there, and plus, it's great, you're playing for the big crowds and everything, but you don't have time to sit back and think of what happens. I think it would scare the shit out of me if I did. But, you know, we were just having so much fun doing it, there was a time when it was like, you know ... we called ourselves the four-headed monster. There was no stopping us. And I don't know, I just think ... you know, just the way Sammy entering the band just elevated the whole thing, it was like man, it almost seems like a dream now. You know, every now and then, I'll put on 'Live Without a Net' or see something live that I've got that the band did, and the energy that the band had, it was pretty cool. I sit back and kind of ... whoa, we were happening."

What was happening internally was not so pleasant. Hagar and Van Halen reached the point of no return with the recordings for the "Twister" movie soundtrack, which Hagar was dead-set against, and plans for a compilation album, which Hagar also resisted. And so, like Roth, Hagar exited in a storm of controversy, with Hagar saying he was fired and the Van Halen claiming that he quit. Some reports have said that Hagar did, indeed, quit, but it was because Van Halen was recording with Roth again behind his back.

Since then, of course, Van Halen has churned through a series of singers, chewing up and spitting out Gary Cherone before recycling Roth, not once but twice, and Hagar, whose reunion with the band lasted from 2003-2005. In 2011, Hagar put out an explosive tell-all autobiography that detailed, in no uncertain terms, his strained relationship with the Van Halen brothers and his wild times with the band, as well as hitting on other parts of his musical career.

About the book, Sammy says, "I just figured it was time for people to hear my story. I know it kind of sounds stupid, but I wanted to do it while I still remembered it. All this stuff, my memory is still pretty good, real good actually. It just ... I don't know, it was time, you know. I'm one of those guys who don't make decisions unless it just comes to me, and I think, 'Oh, I'm going to do that.' I'm really a knee-jerk f**ker. I'm kind of like an insect. If I'm cold, I move towards heat. If I'm hot, I move towards cold. If I'm hungry, I eat. If I'm tired, I sleep. So, somebody offers me the book ... I've been offered a book a hundred times, for the last 20 years. I even wrote a book already once and never released it. And I just said, 'Yeah, this is right.' I thought the Van Halen stuff ... I was just getting sick of doing interviews and going down the street and on the radio and people, fans, getting me letters saying, 'Why can't you and Eddie get it together? Why don't you give Eddie a call? Why don't you guys go back in the studio? Why can't you go on tour? Why didn't you guys play my town? How come you ...?' And I'm just going, 'F**k. I've got to tell these people why. It ain't me, damn it. It's not me. I'm not the problem here.' I've made 15 records and probably played a thousand shows since the last time they've shown their faces (laughs). It's not me. I really kind of wanted to get that out. And I feel real good about getting it out."

In some respects, despite their differences, Hagar feels bad for what's become of Van Halen, who, as rumor has it, is working on a new record with ... drum roll please: David Lee Roth.

"I think [Eddie] and Al, as much as I love Al, they over-think everything until it ain't no more, it ain't there no more," said Hagar. "By the time they finished going back and forth and back and forth, wake up in the middle of the night, changing their minds, it's pretty soon that that golden light just went to darkness. And it's no longer there. So, they go, 'Aw, f**k it. Yeah, we shouldn't have done it anyway. Yeah, it's probably better. Okay, next.' It's the way they function, and I don't know what their problem is with that, but you know, there's a lot of abuse going on in that in terms of personal stuff and everything else, and I just ... I feel bad for him. I feel bad for the fans ... Van Halen, one of the biggest, greatest bands in history, in rock history ... you know, we hold a lot of titles. And to just not give anything ... God, it's just such a waste. I couldn't live like that. If I was still in that band, and we had these long hiatuses, I would have just quit. I would have retired from music completely, and just said, 'No, I'm not going to wait seven or eight years,' and then say, 'Okay, let's make a record and go tour. Get the f**k out of here.' It's like an athlete, boxers, Muhammed Ali takes two or three years off from the Army thing that came down on him, and he was never the same fighter ever again, you know. And that's the way all athletes are. You know, musicians, rock musicians, are especially like athletes. You've got to keep your art, your hands and your voices, your body, everything, has to stay in that kind of condition - lubed up and ready to go. Otherwise, you lose it, and I'm sorry, but those guys are crazy."

As for Anthony, he and his Jack Daniels bottle-shaped bass began drifting apart from Van Halen after 1996 as well. Though he stayed on for various projects, despite various reports that he was no longer in the band, Anthony's role steadily diminished, until in 2006 Eddie revealed that Van Halen would carry on with his son Wolfgang replacing Anthony on bass. Since then, Hagar and Anthony have grown closer, having worked together on Planet Us with Satriani and others before touring as a member of the Other Half during part of the Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas tour. And now, Chickenfoot is a thriving enterprise, with two hit records to its credit.

"There was a time when Sammy was out of [Van Halen] that we actually lost touch," says Anthony. "We didn't really communicate too much, and obviously, Eddie and Al, that was my band. So, it was politically incorrect for me to have anything to do with Sammy, which I was kind of bummed out about that because Sammy and I became really good friends during the time he was in the band, and I think it was ... God, it had to have been a few years later, when ... I think I remember getting drunk on New Year's Eve, and I was with some friends, and I said, 'You know, I'm going to call Sammy.' And I called him and got his voicemail, and we actually played phone tag a couple of times like that. He called me back and he happened to be in the L.A. area doing something at one point, and he gave me a call and said, 'Hey, why don't you come on down and we'll hang out.' We actually became better friends the second time around than when he was in the band the first time. I think probably because it wasn't ... well, the first time he was kind of thrown into it: 'Here's your new lead singer,' and it started out like that. Whereas the second time, we just hung out, and really didn't even talk about anything musically or anything like that. It was just, 'What's been happening in your life? What are you doing' and we are better friends than we have been."

Looking back on it all, Hagar has no regrets about the time he spent with Van Halen, even with all the eventual hassle that came with it. We had nine incredible years, two horrible years, and then another reunion nine months of horror beyond horror, and you still look back, and the horror is pretty much the most recent things so I can recall things, thinking, 'I'll never play with that guy again. I would never be in the same room with Eddie Van Halen again, sober or anyway,' because anybody who was in as bad a shape as I saw, sober is still going to be crazy," explained Hagar. "So, I'm not going to deal with it. So, looking back, it's still too fresh from that reunion tour, but at the same time, I had some of the greatest times in the history of rock. For nine years, it was the greatest ride on the planet. I mean, I don't think life could be any better than that for any musician or artist. And then it went bad. But, too bad - the last couple of years ... everything written in my book, I put that in there because it was part of the deal. And everyone wrote about it and brought it up, and exploited it. But the truth of the matter is I had nine of the greatest years of my rock and roll life in Van Halen. It was one of the greatest things I'll ever do. And the only thing that rivals any of it is this Chickenfoot thing."

CD Review: Chickenfoot "Chickenfoot III"

CD Review: Chickenfoot "Chickenfoot III" 
eOne Music
All Access Review: B+

Now we know why Sammy Hagar can't drive 55. It's because he's got some hot little number waiting somewhere to give him the time of his life, and Hagar is hours away from a steamy rendezvous. With Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy blasting from the stereo, Hagar's going to drive all night at dangerous speeds to get there, state troopers be damned.

That's the gist of "Big Foot," the first single off the head-scratchingly titled III, the second LP from Chickenfoot, a much-ballyhooed supergroup of Hagar, guitar god Joe Satriani, ex-Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers' drummer Chad Smith. Another in the long line of car songs that have made Hagar the lead-footed hero of scofflaw drivers everywhere, it may be the best of the bunch. Rooted in Satriani's thick, meaty guitar grooves, "Big Foot" stomps and beats its chest like a testosterone-crazed Tarzan eyeing up a naked Jane.

A manly expression of heated desire and need for speed, "Big Foot" paces a strong set of heavy, skull-thumping rockers and occasional surprises — see the Nashville-flavored country stylings of "Different Devil" and the spoken-word, "all hell's breaking loose" fury of "Three and a Half Letters," which bemoans the dilapidated state of the U.S. economy. Pushed to the fore are the signature vocal harmonies of Hagar and Anthony — more muted in Van Halen — while bedrock riffs and crunching rhythms churn underneath such infectious brawlers as "Up Next" and "Lighten Up."

Tender is the soft tear-jerker "Come Closer" and Hager dips down into the lower registers in the smoky R&B-tinged winner "Dubai Blues," but make no mistake, Chickenfoot is throwing big, chunky right hooks of '70s-inspired hard rock on III. Your move, Van Halen ... and David Lee Roth.

-Peter Lindblad

Official Website:
Chickenfoot

Chickenfoot: Putting their ‘Big Foot’ on the Gas

Super group returns with a new album full of rock and roll bravado, and a November tour.
By Peter Lindblad

That commanding voice of his, a primal scream surging with adrenaline and horsepower, has taken Sammy Hagar far in life. It got him into Van Halen, when brothers Eddie and Alex needed someone to fill David Lee Roth’s spandex. Its full-throated roar sent “I Can’t Drive 55” crashing through police barricades and barreling up the charts before settling in as a pop culture touchstone. What more could anybody ask of Hagar’s ravaged vocal chords, so beaten up by the hundreds and hundreds of shows he’s played over the years?

Joe Satriani, his Chickenfoot soul mate, thought Hagar was capable of doing so much more with it. “I related to him this experience I had a few months before we started really … or I started really writing for this record, and we were hanging out and I’d just come from another local studio, and I said, ‘Sam, they were working on a song that you sang on,’” relates Satriani. “It was Sammy and Neil Schon and Michael Walden, and other local musicians doing a Sly Stone song for a local film. And I was totally blown away listening to Sam’s vocal performance. He just sounded like a stone-cold R&B singer. And the register was lower and his vibrato was beautiful – his voice was the usual, a thousand feet wide.”

Emboldened by what he’d heard, and knowing that Hagar has a soft spot for soul and R&B classics, Satriani approached Hagar with a proposition for Chickenfoot’s recently released sophomore record, the whimsically titled III. “So I was saying, ‘Sam, that was like the greatest vocal I’ve ever heard. Why aren’t we doing that?’” asked Satriani. “So, he was definitely excited about it, because he remembered that session. And he had a good time doing it, and he started telling me about all the soul music that he loves and how he’d love to do it.”

                But, Hagar figured that this stylistic shift was a two-way street and that Satriani was going to have to go outside of his comfort zone to help Hagar adapt to the idea. “This [record] we thought, ‘Well, what do you think, Joe? What would you like to see from me on this record?’ He said, ‘I would like to hear you sing in a way no one’s ever heard you sing before,’” remembers Hagar. “And I went, ‘Hey …’ And he goes, ‘What do you want from me?’ And I said, ‘I want you to write me a piece of music that makes me sing that way (laughs).’”

                Satriani did just that on the tender, smoky track “Come Closer.” But, first, Hagar had work to do, and he was nervous about it. “Joe said, ‘I wrote these songs … write some lyrics.’ He said, ‘What do you want to sing about?’ So I wrote ‘Come Closer,’” said Hagar. “And I gave it to Joe. I’ve never handed lyrics over to a musician and said, ‘Here, write music to these lyrics.” I wait for the musician to give me some music and I write lyrics and melody to that, and that’s been the way I’ve always done it. That’s the way we did it on Chickenfoot. So anyway, Joe comes back. He loved the lyrics. He came back with a little piano part, and it was just magic, I thought. So we transferred it to guitar and we did a demo of it, just him and I. And God, it was just f**king great. I’m just going, ‘Yeah, I’ve never really sung this R&B before.’ I’ve sung the blues, but I never quite sang like this. And the meaning, the lyrical meaning, is very personal and sensitive, and it’s not typical of Sammy Hagar – you know, yelling and screaming. I mean, I’ve written ‘Eagles Fly,’ and some nice songs, ‘Dreams,’ but nothing quite so personal about a relationship.” And that emotional connection made Hagar a little apprehensive about singing it live.

“I was afraid of that song,” admits Hagar. “As much as I wrote it, you know, those lyrics came to Joe. When he came back and the sensitivity and emotion of the music, and the openness of it, I’d walk up to the mic and go, ‘Rrrnt.’ I was f**king froze up. It took me a long time to get the courage to do a real vocal, because I was sick … when I did the demo. I had a really bad sore throat and I couldn’t sing at all, but I sang it anyway. It was kind of cool. I was kind of hoarse, and I had no range. But, it had a magic about it. It was like Teddy Pendergrass or something. You know, how his voice always sounded so raspy, and I didn’t. So then I got scared of it. I said, ‘F**k, I don’t know if I can outdo that.’”

Eventually, Hagar got over his fear, and now he croons it with confidence. Still, the trouble that Hagar experienced with “Come Closer” was emblematic of the difficulties he had penning lyrics for Chickenfoot III, a diverse, multi-faceted recording that has its moments of righteous rage (“Three and a Half Letters”), uplifting, emotional swells of pop-metal (“Different Devil”), writhing metallic-funk grooves (“Up Next”) and propulsive, accelerated rockers (“Big Foot” and “Last Temptation”) that swerve and careen like a runaway semi. 

“I really felt some pressure of the success of Chickenfoot I, because no one cared if it was going to be successful,” said Hagar. “No one thought it would be that successful.  I mean, I thought it was going to be successful, but I didn’t think it would go gold in every freaking country. And it was on the charts for a year. I haven’t had an album on the charts for a year my whole life. I have had some No. 1s, but … so that caused some pressure. It took a little bit of the casual, ‘we don’t care’ attitude out of it for me. And I thought, ‘I do care.’ And I really gotta out-do that last record. The first Chickenfoot record was pretty damn solid.”

Wringing his hands and obsessing over every detail took some of the fun out of recording Chickenfoot III for Hagar. Don’t think for a second, though, that Hagar isn’t having a blast with Satriani, his former Van Halen mate Michael Anthony, and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. For his part, Anthony found the making of Chickenfoot III thoroughly enjoyable.

“The reason why we even formed the band in the first place was because we didn’t want to have any kind of pressure,” said Anthony. “You know, everybody’s done their stuff in the past, in their respective bands and what they’ve done, so we wanted to do this purely to have fun and make music. In the beginning, even when we first went in the studio back in 2008, we had no intention of even doing an album back then. It was just so much fun getting together and jamming, we just wanted to see musically where it could take us or if anything could even come of it. And then all of a sudden, we’re working on an album, all of a sudden there’s a tour, and obviously, a second album. But we don’t want to have to feel that kind of pressure, because we just want to do it purely for the enjoyment of making music. But we are very proud of what we did. I think we have really evolved as a band, it’s more in-depth now. I think we’re finding our own niche and our own sound, and songwriting and everything else.”

While Anthony and everybody else were living the high life, Hagar was hunkered down trying to put down words that would match the intensity and drive of the music that was flowing out of the quartet in the studio. “For Sammy, I think it was a little more difficult because there were a lot of ideas coming out really quick, and when we actually got into the studio to start recording, jeez, like the first eight songs that we put down, we were like doing two basic tracks a day,” said Anthony. “I mean, we were on fire. And Sammy is going, ‘Hey, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. I’m still working on an idea for this song.’ And I think it was a little tougher for Sammy this time.”

Adding weight to Hagar’s burden was the sadness he was feeling over the passing of his longtime manager and confidante, John Carter. Closer than most managers and their clients, the Carter-Hagar bond was as strong as steel. Almost preternaturally, Carter seemed to know what was best for Hagar, and when there were calls for Hagar to go back in the studio with Chickenfoot while he was writing his book, “Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock,” Carter made sure his client didn’t spread himself thin.

“He was really just the greatest guy, and Carter wanted me to be great, and he insisted … he weeded out my bullshit, and he wasn’t always right, but most of the time, if he wasn’t right, he at least got my attention,” said Hagar. “I’ve got to tell you, he beat me up going into this record. ‘If you ain’t ready, we ain’t making a record. I don’t care,’ he goes. ‘I don’t care if it takes five years. I want you to be the best you’ve ever been.’ And I’m going, ‘F**k. Wow. That’s a big challenge.’ But he did. He postponed this record. We were supposed to do it last year. Chad had a little break. But I said, ‘Carter, I’m writing my book right now.’ And he goes, ‘No. Then forget it. I’m not going to allow you to do anything mediocre.’ He goes, ‘Until you are ready and inspired, then you’re not going in that f**king studio.’ I mean, what manager would tell you that? So, I don’t know. I love the guy. He really pushed me on this record.”

The track “Three and a Half Letters” is a perfect example of Hagar’s ambition. Inspired by Carter, with his manager’s words still ringing in his ears, Hagar took on the challenge of writing a song that would evoke the desperation and anxiety of these times, what with the troubled economy and the still-burning ember of war in Afghanistan glowing red hot. With Hagar intent on writing something with meaning for Chickenfoot listeners, he had a request for Satriani, and that was that the technically brilliant guitarist let loose and go wild. In recording “Three and a Half Letters,” everyone let out any pent-up energy they had left.

“When we finally got in the studio to do ‘Three and a Half Letters,’ by then a lot of things had happened,” said Satriani. “I mean, the record was pretty much done and we had just this one last piece of music that Sam and I had written. And our good friend, co-manager and Sam’s personal manager, John Carter, had gotten ill and passed away during the making of the record. And we were back in the studio after he had just passed doing sessions, and so all of that, together with Sam’s earlier request of letting go, was definitely something that I was feeling at that moment. And that I think allowed everybody to let go, and everybody did on that particular one. It was just a very emotionally charged afternoon in the studio.”

A spoken-word piece in which Hagar reads letters that speak of the hardships people are going through presently in America, “Three and a Half Letters” explodes out of the speakers, sending shards of disenchantment and anger flying in all directions. As impactful and surprising as “Three and a Half Letters” is, perhaps the most memorable track off Chickenfoot III is “Big Foot.” The first single – a driving song, of course – from the new LP is a stomping, hook-filled, heaving beast of a song, and for Hagar, it’s the one where all the pieces fit together almost immediately.

“That was the easiest one. That was the most fun,” said Hagar. “Out of all the songs on the album, that was the most fun to record and it came the easiest. Some of the other songs we worked real hard on. But [with] ‘Big Foot’ we went in that day, Joe presented us with that riff, and I had the title ‘Big Foot’ in my head ‘cause actually Joe called it ‘Big Foot’ before I even had lyrics. But what is Big Foot? I don’t know, but that is it. So, I didn’t want to sing about Sasquatch, about the Abominable Snowman or some shit. So what else are you gonna talk about? My big foot? Where is it going to be? Is it going to be up your ass? Or is it going to be on the gas, you know. So the guys thought, well, let’s go with the gas on this. Here’s a Sammy cartoon. I’ve made a career out of these kinds of songs. And by the time the band had learned the song and recorded it, which took two or three hours, I had the lyrics written and I did the vocal and that song was done. And we all said, ‘This has to be the first song the fans hear from Chickenfoot,’ because this is all-out Chickenfoot. This is the way we work. This is the way we roll. This is the way we did the first album. It was done in no time. And the rest of the CD didn’t come that easy.”

Hopefully, the North American road-test tour Chickenfoot embarks on in November to try out the new stuff onstage will go more smoothly for Hagar and company. However, Smith won’t be joining the rest of Chickenfoot this time around. Touring commitments to the Red Hot Chili Peppers will keep him from going out on the road with Chickenfoot this time around. In his place will be another legendary drummer, Kenny Aronoff. So far, the transition with Aronoff has been seamless, although Anthony was surprised at how Aronoff prepared for his mission.

“Actually when Kenny came in, and he’s got some … well not big shoes, because Kenny, he’s very talented in his own right, but Chad’s so unorthodox the way he plays in this band, and you know, Kenny came in like trying to play it like how Chad did, and we knew as soon as Kenny started getting comfortable with the songs, he’d just kind of make them his own,” said Anthony. “Especially, only having rehearsed a couple of days, all of a sudden it was just really clicking. He was just throwing in a lot of his own fills and making it his tune, which he should, stepping in a live situation. So I think it’s a pretty smooth transition. I think he’s going to do really well. But, you know, when he first came in – he played with us probably about a month ago now – he came up and he goes, ‘Well, yeah, I’ve been listening to these songs …’ and he pulled out … he charted them. He says that’s what does when he plays other people’s stuff, when he comes into … like with John Fogerty, who he’s been playing with recently, that he’ll chart it all out so he knows the song. And I said, ‘Okay, okay, Kenny. You look at those charts, but once you’ve got it down, you throw those charts away. You don’t need them anymore. Do your own thing, man.’ So that was a little strange right at first, but he’s slipped into it really well.”

                As did Hagar when he joined Van Halen, a time of incredible creativity for him and Eddie, Alex and Michael Anthony, when they answered the critics who doubted they’d be able to carry out without David Lee Roth. Hagar recalls the band being “on fire” in the studio during the sessions for the first Van Halen with Roth, 1986’s 5150. Eventually, Anthony and Hagar, in particular, were able to develop some amazing, signature harmonies that made Van Halen soar higher than ever. “It was pretty much an instant mesh, but I’ll say one thing, after doing backgrounds to David Lee Roth, because his vocal range is a lot lower, all of a sudden, it was like, ‘Whoa,’” said Anthony. “I mean, it really pushed me in the beginning, so I was all of a sudden singing in registers that I hadn’t really sung in before. Not that I couldn’t do it. But I never did it with Van Halen, and it was cool. And I think it really inspired me and the fact that I could sing those parts, I was really digging it. We really kind of took it to another level vocally with the backgrounds we were doing.”

                Hagar and Anthony are bringing that same intricate vocal knitting to Chickenfoot, putting more emphasis than ever before on their unique harmonies and bringing them to the forefront in a way Van Halen never did.

“Singing with him, he’s the only guy that I know that could just go above – I don’t care if I’m at the peak of my range; he can get up above me, just squeeze his nuts and get on up there – and right on key, he can mimic my phrasing,” said Hagar. “He’s just … he’s so fast. That’s the thing that people don’t understand about Mike. He learns faster than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. Joe Satriani, Eddie Van Halen … guys come up with riffs, and come on. I can’t f**king play them. I’m sitting here with an acoustic guitar around the house still trying to learn these riffs on this record, and I ain’t got ‘em down yet. Like Joe goes to Mike, [scats a line] and Mike goes [scats the same line] second times he’s done it. Okay, go. I mean, he does that with my lyrics and my phrasing … you know, I’ll go, ‘No, Mike. I’m going [sings a line].’ And he’s just right with me. You know, third take. And I just want to do anything but work. Having a guy like him, to be able to learn Joe’s parts and my parts and get out of the studio to get down to the beach as quick as we can, is like a f**king dream come true. I think that pretty much sums Mike up, right? (laughs)”

With Chickenfoot III out and the band ready to hit the road, the guys are content with how this Chickenfoot project has taken off. Though it wasn’t meant to set the world on fire, in a way, it has, breathing new life into the careers of Hagar, Anthony and Satriani. The music of Chickenfoot is straight out of the ‘70s, influenced by such legends as Cream, Led Zeppelin and The Who – bands that inspired all of the members to become musicians in the first place. And the rest of the world is responding.

“I’ve met tons of people going on the Internet, fans, younger people, that don’t even necessarily know where we come from,” said Anthony. “But they hear of this band Chickenfoot and they like the music, and that’s great. It’s like, wow. It’s not like we’re not just bringing the fans that we have out; hopefully, we’re gaining some of those new fans.”

When asked what he thought the future of Chickenfoot is, Anthony joked, “We can’t even map out what we’re doing a day in advance (laughs).” Turning only slightly more serious, the affable Anthony remarked, “Well, right now the future is getting this album out and going on tour. Unfortunately, Chad can’t be with us. Chad’s still in the band. I know he has a big commitment with his other band now, and he’ll probably be out on the road for quite a while now. And so, what’ll even happen at that point, once we’ve been out on tour, I don’t know. But I mean, right now we just want to get this album out because for me, personally, it’s one of the best albums I’ve ever been involved with in my career. And I really, in my heart … I mean, I listen to this album when I’m at home, and I’m like, man … from the harmonies to the songs and the way everybody’s playing, I just can’t wait to get out on tour and play this. We are going to afford ourselves the time now, or we can, to go out and do a tour and tour as much as we can, or we want. The last time, we go to Europe, we can only play here, here and here. We’ve got to get back to the States, and the whole time, we’re kind of like crossing our fingers that Chad doesn’t have to be called back in to do anything. So we just kind of … we had to look at everyone’s schedules and this time out, I think, everybody’s schedules are going to be on the same track so that we can go out and play.”

To the men of Chickenfoot, getting together to play is what matters most. And as long as everybody is enjoying themselves, Chickenfoot could go on for many years. Or, it could end very quickly.

“I’m pretty confident that the core group – Sammy, Mike, Chad and myself – will make another couple of records,” said Satriani. “I truly believe that. I think that every time we finish a record, I think we all got the feeling like, ‘Wow, this is almost like a step to some new beginning.’ And then, of course, reality steps in and then it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s right. Chad’s in the Chili Peppers. Sam’s got a million things going on. I’ve got a solo career. And Mike’s on a permanent vacation, which he takes very seriously.’ But, we kind of just put that out of our minds, and we just move ahead, one step at a time. That’s what I think. I really do think there’s so much more music to share between the four of us, we will make more records.”