Written by We’ve been talking for half an hour when the California sun finally gets too much for Sammy Hagar. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it,” he says, squinting as the light hits his face. “But my eyes don’t.”
He leans back in his chair and grabs a pair of sunglasses, which he pops on. “Now this is what you were expecting, right?” he booms, beaming a million-watt rock-star smile
It certainly is. Shades or not, the Red Rocker is the good life made flesh. The 78-year-old has lived the life us mere mortals can only dream of. He’s had wild success both as a solo artist and as a member of Montrose, Van Halen and Chickenfoot. Then there’s his insanely lucrative side-gig as a tequila magnate. But as far as super-rich, mega-successful rock stars go, they don’t get any more approachable than Sammy Hagar.
“If you see guys like Bob Dylan, you go: ‘Fuck, I ain’t going over there,’” says Hagar. “Some rock stars aren’t very user-friendly. Me, I’m very user-friendly. I want to be loved by all.”
Make it up as you go along
“The only plan I’ve ever had was to be rich and famous. A beautiful house and money in the bank and a couple of Ferraris and people recognising me going down the street – that’s all I really wanted. And I got that pretty early, and that’s when I started running without a plan.”
Don’t be a cocky fucker
“When I was a kid I was kind of quiet, I wasn’t a loudmouth at all. I’d just sit listening while all the other guys were talking all this shit about themselves, being braggarts. But after I made it, I became that guy. I started beating my chest. I started saying I can run faster, jump higher, sing louder and play faster than any motherfucker on the planet, I’ll kick your ass. I look back now and it was so stupid. It was pure insecurity. Now, I’d sit that guy down and tell him: ‘Relax, you’re turning people off. You want people to like you.’”
You can make something from nothing
“That’s something I got from my mom. She had to raise four kids, and without her ingenuity we’d have been in trouble. We had no money, so she did ironing, she picked fruits, she did yard work, anything to make sure we were okay. And even though we had nothing, she’d always come up with something. I’d open the refrigerator and go: ‘Mom, I’m starving, but there’s nothing to eat.’ All of sudden there’d be this beautiful meal, this pasta with tomatoes from somebody’s garden, or oranges she’d picked herself. I got that ingenuity and that ability to make something out of nothing from her.”
I wanted to be Mick and Keith at the same time
“I saw the Rolling Stones’ very first American performance, at a place called the Shrine Auditorium in San Bernadino, and I said: ‘I’m gonna sing like Mick Jagger and I’m gonna play guitar like Keith Richards, but I’ll just be one guy.’ That’s how I started. Then Ronnie Montrose calls me to join Montrose and tells me he just needs a singer, so I put the guitar down. I leave that band and start playing guitar and singing again and everything’s great. Then Eddie Van Halen calls and said: ‘We need a singer, but not a guitar player.’ I just went: ‘I ain’t playing guitar with you, I ain’t that fucking dumb!’”
The music industry isn’t tough. Real life is tough.
“I have never felt a hardship in my life in the music industry, because I came from such a hard childhood. When you don’t have money for new clothes, or you can’t meet your girlfriend at the movies – that shit’s fucking hard. Seeing your dad walking down the street drunk when you’re with your buddies – that’s hard. Getting thrown out of a band like Montrose? Fuck, that wasn’t hard. I just went: ‘Fuck you, I’ll show you.’ I’m just one of those guys. There’s no quit in me.”
Ronnie Montrose was a strange cookie
“Ronnie was an asshole from day one. He never let you get close to him, he wouldn’t talk about things personally. The second you’d get into a conversation that was maybe deep and start talking about how you felt, he’d say: ‘Hey man, I gotta go!’ ‘Okay, Ronnie, jeez…’ He quit any band he was in and fired everyone that was good for him. He was miserable. I don’t know what happened with Ronnie. I wish I did.”
But Eddie Van Halen was the sweetest guy in the world
“Eddie was the sweetest person I ever met when I first joined that band. He was a superstar, there wasn’t anybody who didn’t look up to him and go: ‘Wow, fucking Eddie Van Halen’, but it never went to his head. He’d just drink too much – he had an addictive personality. I guess you could say drugs and alcohol and fame and fortune got to him, but that took a long time.”
![Van Halen - Dreams (Official Music Video) [HD] - YouTube](https://halloffans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/maxresdefault-59.jpg)
Drugs? Who needs ’em
“If I had to rank sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in order of importance, it would be rock’n’roll first, sex second and drugs nowhere. I don’t take drugs. I drink alcohol. I make tequila, for god’s sake. I make rum. I’ve made more riches off my booze than I have rock’n’roll, so maybe you should put it like this: booze, rock’n’roll and sex.”
Money definitely can buy happiness
“I sold my tequila company [Cabo Wabo Tequila] for eighty million dollars. I’ll tell you what it feels like to wake up with eighty million in the bank. You wake up, you get out of bed, you lay on the floor and you roll around laughing for a couple of minutes. And then you get up and take a piss and have your coffee. And then you roll around on the floor laughing for a couple more minutes. And you think: ‘How the fuck did I do that?’ That money changed my life. With music you’re always insecure. You’re always thinking: ‘Well I’m rich now, but it could all end tomorrow.’ I grew up poor. I didn’t ever want to be poor again. I like Ferraris, I like a nice house and fine wines. I couldn’t live the way I’m still living right now if it hadn’t been for that.”
I really can’t drive 55
“Sure, I’ve been stopped by the cops for driving too fast, but they always let me off cos I’m Sammy Hagar. Well, nearly always. I’ve been stopped forty times, maybe more, and I’ve had two tickets. This one time, I was driving to Lake Tahoe and doing a hundred and sixty miles per hour in my LaFerrari, and there was this cop on the overpass waiting for me. I had to stop for gas, and this cop comes flying into the service station after me. But then she sees me and goes: ‘Oh my god, Sammy Hagar! Can you take a picture?!’ But I was driving back the next day and the cops got me again. I went: ‘Aw fuck’ and slammed on the brakes and pulled over. This asshole gave me a ticket. He went: ‘She let you off yesterday, but I’m not going to. You know how cool it’s gonna be when I walk in and say: ‘I just gave Sammy Hagar a fucking speeding ticket’?”
Impersonators drive me crazy
“You get people going round saying they’re you. I’ve met girls who say: ‘Don’t you remember me?’, and show me a photo of them with one of these fuckers. I’m looking at the guy and going: ‘You think that’s me?’ That bothers me. What if he’s a piece of shit? There was a guy who was arrested for impersonating not so long ago who looked nothing like me. I gotta tell you, I laughed but I cringed at that one. People who haven’t seen me for twenty years, they look at that guy and they go: ‘What the fuck happened to Sammy? He used to have all this hair! He used to look better than that!’ If that guy walked on stage, people would want their money back.”
I don’t get starstruck often
“It’s happened maybe twice in my life. Once was when I met George Harrison at a party in Maui. I was just so in awe: ‘Oh wow, George Harrison.’ I was too intimidated to speak to him. The other was Rod Stewart, back when I was in Montrose. Me and Denny Carmassi were watching Little Feat in London, and Rod Stewart walked in, dressed to the nines, leopardskin suit, hair spiked up. We just fucking backed up into the shadows, we were so awestruck. It’s funny, Rod and I are actually friends now. He tried to buy my LaFerrari from me, but he didn’t want to pay me what I wanted. He’s a frugal guy.”
There is a god. In the ninth dimension
“I believe in god completely, but not the traditional god. I believe we are part of an organic consciousness that goes on for dimension after dimension. We live in a third dimension with a fourth dimension consciousness. Someone like Jesus is in the fifth dimension. And our god – the thing we want to believe created us – is in the ninth dimension. And the ninth dimension is almost like a computer, and everything is created from that point down. This universe is full of life.”
Some of us can see the future
“Yeah, I’m a little bit clairvoyant. I mean, I can’t tell you tomorrow’s lottery numbers, but I definitely see the future a little bit. I wrote this song that’s on the Musical Chairs record [1977] called Crack In The World. I’m talking about the great divide, the division between the people on the planet, between the Left and the Right, the good and the band. And I say: ‘So let’s have a good time before the great divide, cos things will start separating come 2025.’ I was talking about exactly what’s going on right now. There’s a war going on right now everywhere on this planet, and I predicted it in that song.”
Hollywood? No thanks
“People have asked me about using my book [2011 autobiography Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock] as the basis of a movie, but they’ll say: ‘We need a little more drama. We want to make a big deal out of this thing with you and Eddie.’ And I’m going: ‘I don’t want it to be like that.’ My life is about making people happy, and that’s what I want it to be about. I’m not tormented, I’m not miserable. I’m the happiest fucking guy on the planet.”
Van Halen’s music deserves to be heard
“Since Eddie died and since Alex sold his drum kit, I feel more comfortable leaning into my era of Van Halen, and even playing a few of the old songs. Because frickin’ Mike Anthony’s in the band I feel good about playing a lot of Van Halen stuff, cos no one will ever hear it again. And that was the biggest part of my career, and everybody’s career, for god’s sake. It was the biggest band in the world.”
I don’t have time for negativity
“I’m the biggest Pink Floyd fan. I see David Gilmour say: ‘I will never play with Roger Waters again’, and I know what he means. I feel that way about Alex Van Halen. They’re negative people.”
Nobody’s gonna outwork me
“I’m still a driven guy even at seventy-eight years old. You might outsmart me, you might have more talent than me, but guess who’s gonna cross that finish line first?”
I’ll know when it’s time to quit
“When I can’t sing any more. When I walk up to that microphone and I sound like some of those other guys out there touring, that will be it. I can’t see that happening yet. I can hit a falsetto, I can sing low, I can do my screams, I can sing any song I’ve ever written. I’m still great at what I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this. And when I’m not, I won’t. But I still don’t have a plan.”
Sammy Hagar plays UK shows from July 4 to 9
