Hagar - Red My Uncensored Life in Rock

I first saw the Van Halen brothers play when I was going to Arcadia High School, on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. It was during a student fair held on the football field, and the band was called Mammoth. It was just Eddie Van Halen on guitar, his brother Alex Van Halen on drums, and a guy named Mark Stone playing bass. Eddie did all the vocals. They played Cream, Grand Funk railroad, and the Who. Eddie nailed every single note of every song, exactly like the records.

After high school, I belonged to a band called Snake. Pretty original name, I know. We opened a show for Van Halen at Pasadena High School. Now they had a vocalist. I remember sitting around the parking lot after the gig, talking with Eddie.

Fast forward to my second year at Pasadena City College, and through a mutual friend I got hooked up again with the Van Halen brothers. They wanted to get rid of their bass player and asked me to come and jam with the two of them. Thats when they asked me to join the band.

We played everywhere that we could. These guys were serious about working hard and taking the band somewhere. We did parties, clubs, you name it, anywhere that the gas money would take us. After playing all night, Id basically sleep in my car when I was supposed to be in class. I was getting ready to make the choiceschool or the bandwhen my dad kicked me out of the house.

The Van Halens were just normal guys. We all partied a lot and, being brothers, they fought a lot. They would always hug and make up later, but they would get into these disagreements and wed have to pull them apart. Didnt matter wheretheyd start pounding on each other, but before long theyd be crying and hugging, saying, I love you, man. Those two had a connection, not just brotherly but musically, too. Ed wanted to hear Al in his monitor. Al wanted to hear Ed in his monitor. They played off each other.

Before Sammy showed up, we were all pretty devastated. It looked like the band had possibly come to the end after Roth left. When wed first signed with Warner Bros., friends in the business told us that five years was a good life span for a rock group. We figured we may have had our run. The label wasnt very enthusiastic, either. They didnt even want us to continue to call the band Van Halen. Eddie and Al didnt know what to do. They tossed around names of singers and we did have a couple of unknown guys come in and sing with us because we thought that bringing in somebody already known would change the dynamic of the band. That didnt work, and nobody knew what to do until Claudio Zampoli, Eddies car mechanic, suggested that he call Sammy.

From the first moment I shook his hand on the day he came to Van Halens 5150 Studios, I knew this guy had a vibe. We had never met before, but I was a big fan: When wed worked with producer Ted Templeman recording the first Van Halen album, we told him to make us sound like Montrosewe wanted that big Rock Candy sound.

Sammy was a breath of fresh air. We went out to the studio to play him some music. We played and he started singing along. Whatever Eddie could play, he could sing. We all looked at the engineer, Donn Landee, and just went, Oh, fuck. It was like the clouds cleared, the skies opened up, the sun came out, the birds were singing, the animals were dancing. It was like, Amen! Weve got ourselves a band. He was the perfect missing piece of the puzzle.

We were blown away. We made cassettes and sat there with the engineer. I just remember saying, Weve got ourselves a band. Wed been all down and out and hadnt known what we were going to do. This was the answer to our prayers. This was the kick in the ass we needed. This wasfuck, this is it.

I played the cassette for my wife, Sue. It was just the lyric Sammy came up with off the top of his head, which later became Summer Nights. She went nuts over what she heard. She could tell. You can get together with guys and jam, and Ive done that many times in bands, and some of them are great, some of them you just go through the motions. But magic like that is once in a lifetime, if youre lucky.

All of a sudden were taking it to a new level. Not only do we have this guy who can really sing, but now weve got another guitar player, too. It was something new, something different, and Eddie was really into it. Sammy was the key. He was the guy who took us to a new, higher plateau with Van Halen.

Sam and I hit it off like a steam locomotive. We became friends in a way I had never been with anyone else in the band. The whole band caught the spirit. Nothing was going to get in our way. It was nothing less than a rebirth of Van Halen. There was a lot of energy flowing through that studio when we were working on the 5150 album, ideas coming left and right, all fresh and exciting.

With Sammy, we had real melody. He was just a great all-around musician. Eddie could say, Hey, Sam, I got this idea, and Sammy could pick up a guitar and go, Yes, but what about this? That was all new with us. We started to become a much more musical band.

With Sammy in the band, Van Halen went through the roof. The band scored a string of number one multiplatinum albums. We ruled the arena rock world and played before capacity crowds night after night for more than ten years. We were the world champion hard-rock band and Sammy took us there.

As everything started to fizzle with Sam, I stood by and watched it all happen. I had that comfort zone in Van Halen and I wasnt about to give it up. They were my band.

When Sammy was forced out of the band, and they were working on whatever the deal was for Sammy to leave, I wasnt really a part of those discussions. I just did what was politically correct. Im sure there were a lot of things that the Van Halen brothers were keeping from me at that point, things that they just went ahead and did.

Eddie Van Halen wanted to be in total control. Al was going along with everything Ed did. Ed took the reins and was just looking for a pawn or a puppet. After Sammy left the band, we didnt really do anything again for years until Gary Cherone joined in 1998.

When Sammy went out on the road with Roth, they thought it was a carnival. Eddie made it clear that he didnt want me to go out with them. I had jammed on some shows before with Sammy and he wasnt pleased about that. But I was just the bass player. My last names not Van Halen. I didnt feel I was doing anything wrong. I thought I was flying the Van Halen flag. Ed called me when he heard I might appear as a guest on some of the shows. I wasnt going to do the full tour, but Sammy asked me if Id come out and play a few dates. I was totally into it. I remember Ed saying, Youre not going to be part of that circus, are you?

When the idea of a Van Halen reunion tour came up, I wasnt in any of those discussions, either. I do know that Eddie didnt want me to be a part of it. I was the traitor because I went over to Sams camp. He couldnt understand why I couldnt sit home and do nothing until he decided that we were going to do something.

He wanted to put me on salary, and eventually Sammy, Alex, and even our manager gave up some of their percentage to get me something like 13 percent. It wasnt like I needed the money. The only reason I did that tour was because Sammy was doing it. To do that tour, I signed away pretty much any future rights I might have had to anything Van Halen. If Sammy wasnt there, I wouldnt have even considered it because, by then, I felt like an outsider to the brothers. Somehow I played the shows.

Some nights Eddie would hug me and go, Mikes back. Youre playing so good, man. Other nights onstage, hed look at me like he was looking right through me, like I wasnt even there. I spent a lot of time keeping my eyes on Alex during those shows, just trying to keep it together. Eddie would say to me, Look at me all the time.