CHICKENFOOT Dedicates Song To Late Manager

According to The Pulse Of Radio, a song on the new CHICKENFOOT album, called "Up Next", is dedicated to the band's manager, John Carter, who died of cancer halfway through the recording the new disc. In a new podcast, vocalist Sammy Hagar said, "Carter was the guy who signed me to my first record contract when I was thrown out of MONTROSE, and produced my first four albums. Carter, dear friend, became our co-manager, and he got cancer: last minute, got it diagnosed, got operated on immediately and died. It was horrible."

Hagar told us how Carter inspired the song: "He's going, 'You need to incorporate your lifestyle into CHICKENFOOT.' He goes, 'You know, why do you have to, why does it have to be separate?' So he was really hammering me on this, to write some lyrics about myself, you know, and my lifestyle. Then he gets sick and we realize that he's gonna die. So that's where the lyric came from you just never know who's next, you know, who would have thought Carter? This is for Carter, this song, 'cause I threw my lifestyle into that song for him."

"Chickenfoot III" comes out on September 27 and follows up the band's 2009 self-titled debut.

The band will hold a live webcast that night and perform tracks from the disc at 9:00 p.m. ET from TRI Studios in California, followed by a 30-minute question-and-answer session at the band's official web site. Fans can submit questions through the site.

CHICKENFOOT will hit the road sometime later in the fall to promote the new record, with veteran drummer Kenny Aronoff behind the kit for the band on tour while Chad Smith hits the road with his main act, the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS.

Hagar told American Rock Scene that his memoir, "Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock", will contain an additional chapter when it comes out in paperback. The book debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times non-fiction best seller list when it arrived in hardcover last March.