SAMMY HAGAR: 'The Way I've Grown Is I've Become More And More Myself'

FMQB Retro-Active correspondent Ken Sharp recently conducted an interview with Sammy Hagar about his new CD, "Livin' It Up", the uniqueness of his live shows, and the secrets behind a "Three Lock Box". An excerpt from the chat follows:

Q: In recent years, your live shows have taken on a life of their own and become events ala shows by the GRATEFUL DEAD and PHISH.

Sammy Hagar: I think I've grown into that and I don't know how or why. I've never been influenced by THE DEAD or PHISH or JIMMY BUFFETT or those people that do the same thing. But I just fell into it myself. I've been friends with the guys in THE DEAD and have jammed with them two or three times. My shows go around the normal system. As long as I've been performing, if I was still doing a regular show and playing a specific set, I don't think I could do it anymore. As a performer you have to grow in some way and change. The way I've grown is I've become more and more myself. I've been living in Cabo St. Lucas since 1983. The way you do it down there is I'm sitting in a bathing suit. You go down to the Cabo Wabo and get something to eat, and the next thing you know you're onstage with no shoes and no shirt and wearin' a bathing suit. And you're going, "Hey, this is a gas!" (laughs) Eventually you start breaking down those barriers. I think I got brave enough to go out in front of 20,000 people in St. Louis the same way saying, "I'm here but on a casual level."

Q: Stylistically, your new CD, "Livin' It Up", shows off your versatility. It's not just hard rock. there's country, there's blues, and there's roots rock.

Sammy Hagar: This record is not an experiment. It's not something I thought over saying, "I think I'll do this or that." When I went out on the last tour with VAN HALEN, I moved the studio from my house. I did my last three or four studio albums at my house since the "Marching To Mars" record. So I moved the studio out of my house and built a real professional studio. My band got in there and just started getting really great sounds. To make a long story short, when I came off the road with VAN HALEN I was a little frustrated to say the least. I just went into the studio with my band and I wrote songs and recorded them one at a time. I was strictly letting out exactly who I was, what I felt, what I liked to do. It's like the manual for Sammy's lifestyle. (laughs) It's like, "beach all day and dance all night." It's pretty much what the whole record's all about.

The country side, the blues side, all of that stuff is totally my roots. If anything, throughout my whole career I've been distracted from my roots by the bands I'd been in. Long before I started MONTROSE I was in a hardcore funk band. We were playing songs by JAMES BROWN, OTIS REDDING, WILSON PICKETT, and TOWER OF POWER. Then I joined MONTROSE and we were a heavy metal band, so I just began singing like that to fit within the heavy metal format. I loved that band and when I left MONTROSE I was still hanging onto that style a little bit.

Then all of a sudden I'm in VAN HALEN. VAN HALEN was a pure Southern California metal band. As much as I loved being in those bands, I wasn't being a phony and I was totally lovin' what I was doing. It's a blast playing music like that. But I can do a lot of other things. Also, after the last VAN HALEN reunion, the pure onstage volume alone was enough to make somebody my age go, "You know what, I can't handle this anymore." (Laughs) I mean, why be onstage and wear ear plugs? Everybody in the band had ear plugs on except for me. I don't like wearing ear plugs because I like to communicate with the audience and I like to hear what they're doing and what the band's doing. My band plays loud too, but if you've gotta wear ear plugs, turn down, you're too loud. (laughs) It's as simple as that.

Read the entire interview at this location.