by Sammy Hagar
Kari was pregnant, and they hated me being so happy. I kept telling Kari I had to get out of the band, but I didn’t want to quit. I saw what they did to the other guy. They will lie. They will crucify me. They will kill me with the fans. The fans went against Roth. He died a quick death as a solo artist. Maybe not instantly—he had a brief moment when he first went solo—but it didn’t take long. I didn’t want that to happen to me.
It didn’t help that my ex-brother-in-law, Bucky, died about three weeks before the Balance Tour started in March 1995. It was a heartbreaker. Bucky and Joelle had divorced, and for a while he and his son, Ben, had been living together on a houseboat in Sausalito with Bucky’s new girlfriend, Penny, a great gal who used to be Jeff Beck’s old lady. Bucky lived for his kid, and when Ben died in a car crash—a bunch of kids riding in the back of a pickup truck on the way to Stimson Beach and Ben was the only one killed—the bottom fell out of Bucky’s life. My lawyer sued the city over the accident and came up with a fair-size settlement for Bucky. When Bucky died from an OD, they found the check crumpled in his fist.
By the time we went on tour that March, the Van Halen brothers were both in terrible shape. Al came out of the tour in a neck brace, because of a ruptured vertebrae. Al collapsed in the hotel lobby the day of our dress rehearsal in Pensacola, Florida. His hands went numb and down he goes. He started seeing neurosurgeons every day, getting these crazy adjustments. In Paris, the doctor put on rubber gloves and stuck his hand up Al’s ass to work the lower vertebrae. If that wasn’t enough, he and his wife were separated, the beginning of another divorce for Al. He was under a lot of pressure.
Eddie seemed like he was on painkillers most of the time and was facing a total hip replacement due to avascular necrosis, a bone disease often associated with alcoholism. Eddie walked with a cane—his hips were shot. He would walk up to the stage, put the cane down, and walk out. Every so often, he would sit on the drum riser or a stool to play a couple of songs, because his hips were killing him so bad.
On the final leg of the Balance Tour, Ray Danniels booked the band to open for Bon Jovi at football stadiums in Europe in May and June 1995. It was a total disaster. Van Halen had no place on a bill with Bon Jovi, who was huge over there. They did three nights at Wembley Stadium in London, eighty thousand people a night, and there were about ten thousand people in the front going nuts when we played, and about sixty thousand teenyboppers in the back waiting for Bon Jovi. As soon as we finished playing, our people left and the Bon Jovi kids came to the front of the stage. It was total oil and water. Nothing against Jon Bon Jovi. He and I went to dinner many times on this tour. But it was the worst idea ever for Van Halen. We got nowhere on that tour. I could feel the end coming.
Still, Van Halen rocked. We would play a killer show, walk offstage together, hugging and laughing at what a great show we just played, and the next day it would be back to the same shit.
We flew separately to Japan to do the last shows on that tour. We stayed in different hotels. About two o’clock in the morning, Eddie called. He had wiped out his minibar. Wasted on his ass. Clean and sober? These were almost the last shows. On the way home, we were stopping for four nights in Hawaii, but then we’d be done.
“What are you going to do when we get back?” he said.
The Ronnie Montrose story all over again.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Take some time off. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know. I’ve got some plans, but I’ll let you know if it involves you or not.”
“Okay,” I said. “Fuck you.” I hung up the phone.
We went to Hawaii to play the last shows. Kari and I decided on an impulse to buy a house. We’d been renting places every year for three months, from Thanksgiving through, like, January or February. We were on our way to the airport and I called a realtor. I told him I wanted something private, on the ocean, lots of acreage, a guest house, a pool, and total privacy. I want to be naked. I want fruit trees. He took us to see this place on a cliff on Maui. We bought the house on the spot, and decided that, when the tour was over, we would move to Hawaii to have the baby. We were going to have this baby through natural childbirth. I wanted to deliver it. I wanted to have the baby and take a long break from the band.
As soon as the tour ended, the brothers started calling every day. We’d just gotten off tour. We just did a record and a world tour, and these crazy bastards wanted to go in and do a song for the movie Twister. I was not down with it. All they wanted was to get me off the island. Ray Danniels would be on the phone saying things like, “If you’re not back tomorrow, we’re assuming that you’ve quit the band.”
I talked to the film director on the phone. He sent me the script. There were some key words—“drop down” was one phrase—that are used by twister-chasers. I wrote these great lyrics for a song called “Drop Down.” I cut a little demo over there and the director loved it, told me I told the whole story in three minutes.
They hated it. Al and Eddie told me it was stupid to write about the movie. I told them I had been working with the director.
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” they said. “We don’t like it. Get over here. If you’re not here tomorrow, we’re assuming you quit the band.”
Kari was so pregnant that she was ready to pop, and I was flying home. I flew my mom over and I flew back. This was about the fifth time I had to fly back to the mainland. I wrote new lyrics. Bruce Fairbairn was waiting for me. Eddie wanted to call the song “Human Beings.” I wrote all these belligerent lyrics—“lemmings breeding…There is just enough Christ in me to make me feel almost guilty…because we are humans, humans being.”
I was ready to fly back to Hawaii the next day, but they told me they wanted me to stay and work on another song for the greatest-hits record. I told them I wasn’t doing any songs for any greatest-hits record and split. I went back to my hotel room and changed my name at the front desk. I didn’t want to call Kari at four in the morning and tell her. Eddie was trying to call me all night. Security knocked on my door to tell me they had Eddie Van Halen on the phone and he wants to know what room I’m in. “What do you want us to do?” the guy asked.
“Tell him to go fuck himself,” I said.
That’s when they called Roth.
The greatest-hits album was Ray Danniels’s idea. They wanted some quick bucks. I thought if we’re going into the studio, let’s do a whole record, but they wanted the greatest-hits record. Then he gets another genius idea—let’s get David Lee Roth back, do two new songs with him, two new songs with Sammy, and we’ll be bigger than God. They did the whole thing behind my back. I was thrown out of the band for not going along with it.
I went back to Maui the next morning. Kari was way pregnant. We talked it over. In another few days, she wouldn’t be able to fly anymore. We agreed going back was the best thing to do. Back in Mill Valley, we went to see the pediatrician who delivered Aaron and Andrew and he told us the baby was breech and would have to be delivered by caesarian. Forget that I was going to deliver the baby in water and all that stuff we learned at Lamaze class in the church in Hawaii. She would have to have been helicoptered to a hospital. It turned out to be a good thing that we went back.
When my first son, Aaron, was born, I wasn’t even in the room, because we were on welfare. Dave Lauser and I were out in the park, eating fish and chips, and no one even told me. I finally went and checked. When Andrew was born, I was right there. He was such a surprise, because I was certain he was going to be a girl. We painted the room for a girl. We bought girl clothes. The baby shower was all girl presents. Even the doctor said it was probably a girl. I burst out laughing in joy. A child is a child and, when it’s your child, it changes your life. I think it was the most joyful moment in my life. Until Kama came. When Kama came, it was even more of a joy, because I actually took her out and cut the umbilical cord.
Kari came home with
our daughter from the hospital, and the next Sunday was Father’s Day 1996. We were lying in bed around nine in the morning, with the baby, when the phone rang. It was Eddie Van Halen. He had been up all night.
“You’ve never been a team player,” he said. “You never want to do things when we want to do them. You always wanted to be a solo artist. You can go back to being a solo artist. We’ve been working with Roth on the greatest-hits record and it’s going great.”
They’d been working with him behind my back while I was in the hospital with my wife having a baby. I went off.
“Fuck you, you fucking motherfuckers,” I said, and hung up.
They couldn’t take me being happy for one more minute. They had to get rid of me. It irritated them so bad that I was so happy. I had my little girl, my wife, and was living the happiest life on the planet. I called Ray Danniels. “Eddie just called me and said you’ve been working with Roth,” I said.
“Oh, no,” Danniels said. “He didn’t make that call, did he?”
“Yes, he did, dude.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Go fuck yourself, for starters,” I said. “Second of all, congratulations. You just broke up the biggest band in the world. That’s going to be a big feather in your cap.”
I went off on his ass. “Let me talk to him first,” Danniels said. “Don’t take that attitude.”
“Fuck you. It’s over,” I said.
Eddie always said I quit, and maybe I did. His attitude was that I always wanted to be a solo artist. They even attacked my work ethic. He and Alex told Kurt Loder of MTV News that I didn’t want to work. I remember reading one article where Eddie said, “He was a lot older than us and I don’t think he really wanted to work like we did.”
I gave them their Van Halen rings trademark. They gave me my Cabo Wabo brand. I kept my royalties. I was a 30 percent partner in that band, since they’d already knocked Michael Anthony down to 10 percent.
Things that put a stick up my ass make me take action. I think sometimes I’m at my best when I have something to prove. When I joined Van Halen, I was burnt out and finished with the business. I didn’t even want to be creative at that point. When I replaced their first singer and was taking shit from everybody, putting myself on the spot, it lit a fire—I’ll show these motherfuckers. I became really driven in that band and we did some amazing things, even at the end. Even our last record, Balance, was a great record. I’m an adrenaline and inspiration junkie. If something inspires me, I will get up for it. With inspiration, I can do anything. When I was kicked out of Van Halen, I was determined to show those motherfuckers that they made the biggest mistake of their lives.
12
MAS TEQUILA
I was out of Van Halen. one side of me was angry, but the other was nothing but happy.
Kari and I got on a plane with our brand-new baby to go back to Maui. We had a little dog called Winchell that we snuck on board. You can’t take a dog to Hawaii. they quarantine the suckers for six months. We were planning to stay a good spell—I certainly didn’t have any big plans—so we pumped the little pooch full of doggie tranquilizers and stuffed him in a bag. Sitting across the aisle in the first-class cabin was Mickey Hart from the Grateful Dead. I knew who he was, but we’d never really met before. He and his wife, Caryl, were headed over to the islands for some downtime, which, it turns out, is something Mickey Hart knows nothing about.
Bill Cosby was also on the flight, about four rows behind us. It was an early-morning flight and we were snoozing as the plane was getting ready to land. out of the corner of my ear, I hear that famous Bill Cosby voice speak up: “oh, what a cute little dog.”
I turned around and looked. there was Winchell, staggering down the aisle, wobbling, tripping, falling like a drunk. He was a rat terrier and he dug his way out of his bag, unzipped the damn thing, and got loose. We were busted.
Mickey’s wife turned out to be a lawyer and she swung into action, schmoozing the stewardess. We had to stay behind on the plane. Bill Cosby walked by me, looking at his bag and going, “Woof…woof.” Mickey and Caryl stayed with us. We were there for a couple of hours. This was a serious deal. We were facing a possible $25,000 fine and even jail, but after a few $100 bills were passed around, a dog carrier was brought to the plane and Winchell went into the baggage compartment to fly home with the stewardess, who handed him off to some of our friends who were waiting for the dog in San Francisco.
When I got on that airplane to go to Hawaii, I had accepted that Van Halen was done. I was going to Hawaii because my place there is my sanctuary. If I went to Cabo, the press would have been all over me. What happened? What happened? I just wanted to lie back and figure out what to do. I was going to Hawaii to get my head together and decide what I really wanted. Did I really want to keep doing this? Financially, I certainly didn’t have to work. I’d been doing that tour/album, tour/album grind since Montrose. I was thinking I was going to lie back, do nothing until something came to me. I wasn’t looking to put a band together. I was going to hide out.
But Mickey Hart wouldn’t let me.
Mickey came over to my house in Maui every day. I told him I was through with the music business. He told me I had to get right back on the horse, that I was too talented to quit. He would come over, light up big fat joints, and get me to play guitar. He had all these cassettes of African music and would be constantly snapping tapes in the deck and telling me, “Listen to this.” He totally put me right back on the horse, that knucklehead.
Mickey’s the most energetic guy in the world. He has never taken off five minutes in his life. He reads six newspapers a day, writes a couple chapters in a book, knocks off a couple of songs, and goes to rehearsal.
“What do you mean you’re going to take some time off?” he wanted to know. For him, it wasn’t even about “You’ve got to show those guys.” It was simpler than that: “You’re a musician and a singer, so that’s what you do.”
He has this catalog of beats and world music that he’s collected over the years and carries around with him. He had Egyptian, African, South American, all these different styles of music. He kept playing all this music I’d never heard before. It was very inspiring. I picked up a guitar and started jamming and, in no time, we had written about four or five ideas. He was coming over every day, rolling up a fat one. They’ve got the good stuff over there, too. I didn’t smoke as much as he did, but he’d get pretty high and would get me worked up.
I turned around and came back to California. I went up to Mickey’s house, and the two of us would crank up this African music as loud as it would go. I played guitar and he sat down at the drums and we jammed for about three days. “Marching to Mars” was the only song that stuck, but I got interested in doing these other kinds of grooves. I was drawn back into making a record. I asked Mickey to coproduce it with me. I started thinking about putting a band together. I’d just gotten out of the damn frying pan, and Mickey dragged me right back into the fire. If he hadn’t been on that airplane, I probably would have stayed in Hawaii for months.
We went into the studio and Mickey went totally crazy. He never stopped. He piled up overdub after overdub until he needed to bring in another recorder. For one track we did, “Marching to Mars,” he brought in four twenty-four-track machines and used all ninety-six tracks. Hart was on the phone at four o’clock in the morning, trying to find another twenty-four-track, when engineer Mike Clink from the Guns N’ Roses sessions finally said, “That’s enough.”
This one song took more time and was turning out more expensive than the whole rest of the album. I made the mistake of telling Mickey to stop.
“You’ve wasted enough time and money on this one track,” I said. He got so insulted he went out and sat in his car, rolled up the windows, and lit a joint. Nobody could find him. I finally went out to the car and there he was, sulking. I apologized.
“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” I told him. “We’re all worn
out.” We finished the track, the last cut on the album, which had been finished for almost three months except for this one final track. I love the guy. He may be the most high-energy, hardest-working, most enthusiastic person I’ve ever met.
For the album Marching to Mars, the band included Denny Carmassi from Montrose on drums, Bootsy Collins on bass for a couple of tracks, and John Pierce from Huey Lewis and the News on the rest. Jesse Harms played keyboards, and the engineer Mike Clink also produced a bit. I went into the studio and made the best record I could possibly make, an artsy record, a sharp left turn from Van Halen. It was one of the best solo records I’ve ever made. Every song is great.
I paid for the record myself and didn’t want record companies involved until I was done. For the release of Marching to Mars, I signed a deal with a new label run by Sid Sheinberg, former head of MCA. He had retired and started this movie company called the Bubble Factory, and a new record company called the Track Factory. They gave me a large advance and big points. I was the only act on the label and they would do whatever I wanted. It was like a dream come true. We went to Hong Kong and did a press event. We went to Japan and played acoustic at a couple of in-stores.
The first week the record came out, it sold 44,000 copies—not chicken feed, but not millions. The next week, the company folded. They’d put out a big-budget movie starring Bette Midler, which bombed, my record, and that was it. They went out of business.
MCA took over, but the momentum was lost. The record was done. In the end, it sold pretty well, but it was a disappointment to me, because I came out of a band that was selling 5 to 7 million records. Marching to Mars sold about 400,000. I took a long fall. But it was a successful record in its own way.