by Sammy Hagar
The Track Factory hadn’t been the only option. There had been another guy, who wanted to sign me to Hollywood Records, the Disney label. He slept on my floor for four days, trying to get me to sign a record deal. He wrote up a deal on a cocktail napkin. It was big money, way more than the other guys, but I backed out at the last minute. He was too crazy. On the cover, he was going to have a van with HAGAR painted on the side. He was going to tour the van to every record store in the country, and give it away in a contest at the end.
I decided to put a band together. I wanted somebody the opposite of Eddie Van Halen. Every guy I auditioned would try to do Eddie’s five-finger tapping thing. Anytime somebody did that, they were done instantly. I wanted a black guy who played more like Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan. Somebody told me that Vic Johnson of the Bus Boys was a big Montrose freak. I brought him up from Los Angeles for an audition. I asked him, did he know “Three Lock Box.” “Hell, yeah,” he said and off he went. I hired him on the spot. I had David Lauser back on drums, and Jesse Harms played keyboards. Jesse was real important to my music during this period. He supported my songwriting, writing bridges and choruses, and he was a soulful singer, although we eventually had a head-butt and I fired him.
I wanted a girl bass player and they are hard to find. White Zombie had one. David Lauser found Mona Gnader. She was living way up in the sticks near Willits, California. She pulled up to my house on a Harley, with her bass strapped on the sissy bar. And she could play her ass off. One thing I loved about Mona is she’s like Michael Anthony’s twin. She’s left-handed but she plays right-handed. She’s a little fireplug, about the same size. They both have this high voice. They’re like sister and brother from another mother.
The second Mona started playing in my band, I became a better singer. Most bass players play really hard, like Michael Anthony, banging it until he’s knocking it out of tune. Singers get their note from the bass, whether they know it or not. You may think you’re listening to the piano or the guitar, but the second that bass starts to play, you’re singing to the bass. Mona has tiny fingers and she plays like Paul McCartney, very soft. She cranks up the amplifier, but she hits the strings lightly. Suddenly I sing dead on-key. Kari had to spiff up Mona a bit. Mona never owned any clothes but a pair of shorts, a pair of jeans, motorcycle boots, and a T-shirt, and she never wore lipstick or makeup in her life.
I decided I wanted to dress like Janis Joplin, so I went to Haight Street before that tour, and bought crushed-velvet stretch pants. I was going to go hippie in this band with a biker chick and a black guy. I didn’t want a heavy metal, glamorous rock band. It took me a while to figure out exactly who we were, but I knew I had this great, quirky little band that I named the Waboritas—and later shortened to the Wabos—and we rehearsed every day.
We did 142 shows that year. I went to promoters named Louis Messina and Irv Zuckerman, out of St. Louis, the two guys most responsible for breaking me way back in the beginning, and arranged for them to coproduce the entire tour. I played three-thousand-seat theaters and did every city in the country, 142 shows that year and another 138 the next year. We went door-to-door. Everywhere we went, I was saying, “I am back. I am back.” It was the hardest I ever worked, twice as hard as Van Halen. I kept meaning to slow down, but instead I keep stepping it up. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I tried a bus for about the first two weeks of that tour. We were playing almost every night. I’d get back on the bus and I couldn’t sleep. I chartered an eight-seater turbo prop Beech 200. It was expensive for how much we were making in the theaters. I was carrying a pretty big production. I hired Jonathan Smeeton, who did all those great Peter Gabriel shows, and he knew how to take one truck’s worth of gear and make it look huge. He was also a great lighting designer, but all that was expensive. I didn’t really care about the money I was making on tour. I was just trying to get back in the game.
Kari loved our band and everybody loved little Kama. Vic Johnson would sit with Kama on his lap on the airplane. That’s how we rolled. We all jumped on this airplane, every seat taken, tour manager sitting on the toilet in the back, and we flew all over the damn country. We were trying to write songs for a second album while we were on the road. I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way. When we weren’t touring, we went down to Cabo. That’s where we started to find out who we were and invent the party.
I DECIDED I wanted to make my own tequila for the cantina. I’d first tasted real tequila when I was shopping for furniture for the cantina in Guadalajara. The 100 percent agave brands were not available in the States at the time, like they are now. I’d always loved the ritual of tequila—the salt, the hit, the lime. That’s fun when you’re partying with friends. But you don’t have to do that with good tequila. The salt is important for the first taste, to clear your palate, like having a salad before a steak. It just sets it right up. When I tasted real tequila, I flipped out.
Just finding agave growers to make it for me was difficult. Most of them sold their crops to the big manufacturers, and, if they kept any to make their own, they made small batches, like twenty cases, for their friends and families to drink. I finally found a farmer who would do it and deliver the tequila in brand-new five-gallon gas cans and plastic bottles. We transferred the tequila to oak barrels, real tequila-aging barrels that we bought, and served it right out of the barrel.
When I’d just started making the tequila, Kari and I were still going over to Maui every chance we could get, even though we were working so hard. I got reacquainted with Shep Gordon, Alice Cooper’s manager, who lived in Maui and owned one of the island’s great restaurants. I showed him the tequila and he liked it. He called Willie Nelson, who also has a place on the island, and Willie came over to Shep’s to taste the tequila. “That’s damn good tequila,” he said.
I had some porcelain bottles made and we started bottling the stuff. Shep Gordon found a distributor on Hawaii and we shipped a hundred cases as a test. The corks didn’t fit, the bottles cracked. Half the cases arrived upside-down. It was a mess. We started making bottles out of hand-blown glass and shipping over more cases, until we finally got it right. But our manufacturer landed in trouble with the Mexican government, who confiscated some of their property for back taxes, and they were demanding a million dollars to go ahead. We started looking for another grower.
That’s when we found the Rivera family, three generations of family, the grandfather, the father, and the son, all working together in the fields. They didn’t even have factories. They had mules pulling carts in the field. These guys would dig a hole in the ground, start a fire, and cook the agave right there. Their tequilas were really trippy, much smokier, but very inconsistent. Every batch was different. Every now and then, they would hit on something.
In 1999, Shep Gordon made a deal with Wilson Daniels, a high-end wine dealer. I knew who they were, since I’d been collecting fine wine since Capitol Records president Bhaskar Menon gave me a case of 1966 Pichon Lalande Bordeaux for Christmas. These guys dealt with the Échezeaux, La Tâche, Romanée-Conti, Richebourg, wines so fine and so limited in production, people are happy if they can buy a couple of bottles, never mind a couple of cases. They were interested in getting into the spirits business and ordered six thousand cases of Cabo Wabo. The Riveras had to step up to deliver. They were used to making twenty, maybe fifty cases a year, but they managed.
About this time, I ran into Narada Michael Walden, the Marin County record producer who’d made those big Whitney Houston hit records, “How Will I Know” and all that. He said he wanted to produce me and I asked him, if I let him produce me, what would he do. He told me to go out and find my favorite rock track, loop it, and write a new song. The rappers were all doing that—Tone Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina” had actually used “Rock Candy.” The first thing that popped into my head was “Rock and Roll Part Two” by Gary Glitter. I’m thinking, “Great fucking idea.”
I asked Jesse Harms to loop it, and I wrote “Mas Teq
uila.” We went into my little basement studio and Lauser played drums. Everybody at MCA got all excited. The Wabos and I made our second album, Red Voodoo, downstairs, crammed in, totally digging the small-time, basement studio vibe. I didn’t care if the drums sounded like crap and there was leakage. If it was a good take, that was the magic I wanted. It was the opposite of Marching to Mars.
Shep came down to Cabo. We went to the factory. He came to the cantina. He saw the band. I had this 100 percent agave tequila that was freaking out everybody who tasted it. He saw me onstage in a bathing suit, Mona wearing shorts and flip-flops. “Roll it all together,” he said.
It made sense. Take the lifestyle and bring it to the stage. It was who we were. We were getting ready to bring out the tequila. It all snapped together.
I had heard of Jimmy Buffett, but didn’t really know what he was about. Kari drew the connection immediately and she took me to see a Jimmy Buffet concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. I asked Jonathan Smeeton, who’d been so great on the last tour, to design a set that looked like the Cabo Wabo. He went down for a week, took pictures, made drawings, and came back with a stage. He’s got the audience onstage. He’s got the palm trees, the palapa roof, everything.
“Mas Tequila” comes out and is a huge hit—most adds the first week, fastest rock radio track to the top of the charts, stayed there for weeks, one of the big hits of the year in 1999. (After the song came out, I ended up with only one-third of the songwriting credit, even though I took out the loop and reversed the chord change. MCA’s lawyers split the take with Gary Glitter and his songwriting partner.)
Shep Gordon talked the Hard Rock Cafe into hosting a promotional tour. He got MCA to pay. We did fourteen cities, free concerts, tied in with radio stations, the works, and we launched the tequila. We sold thirty-seven thousand cases the first year, instantly the second bestselling premium brand in the country. Something like Tanqueray gin only sells fifty thousand cases.
Looking back now, I can see I wanted to be a small-time band again, get far away from that gigantic Van Halen scale. I wanted to go back and be a club band, roll that whole Cabo Wabo vibe into everything. We loved playing down there. We’d go down there on our time off and have a blast. We’d play for free at the cantina. The place was always packed. Everybody was drunk. Nobody cared what we played. I was done with that big-time Van Halen thing.
When we went out on that tour, I opened the show by walking out in front of a closed curtain wearing shorts, shades, tank top, and flip-flops, house lights up. I’d introduce the Wabos and then I would have a waitress in a bikini bring me the fixings and make myself a cocktail. I’d finish with the tequila. “Here’s the way you do it,” I would say. “You put a little Cabo in there.” As soon as I said “cheers,” the band would break into an a cappella version of “Cabo Wabo.” It was something a little different for my crowd.
That was the invention of the Wabos. We became exactly who we are. This is the way I live. This is what I eat. This is what I drink. This is how I act. This is the way I play. These are the kind of songs I sing. We found ourselves and that’s when the whole birthday bash thing took off.
The Cabo Wabo became a place where anybody could come down and play. I never charged for my birthday bash. It was special to me. I brought my whole family, my brother and sisters and their families, everybody. People started showing up—Slash, Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, Mickey Hart, Bob Weir, Stephen Stills, drummer Matt Sorum and bassist Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses, Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains, Billy Duffy from the Cult, and, of course, Michael Anthony. Chad Smith, the Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer, started coming.
Toby Keith flies in every year for my birthday. Kenny Chesney came down one year with his whole band and played for three hours and forty minutes. He holds the record at the Cabo Wabo for how long he played. He wore my ass out playing “Eagles Fly,” “Fall in Love Again,” some of the Van Halen songs, his favorite stuff. He still claims the only reason he came off the stage was because he had to take a pee. He was drinking a lot of beer up there.
John Entwistle of the Who had a timeshare down there. His birthday was October 9, a day after my brother’s. He came down every year for my birthday party—my annual birthday celebration usually lasted two weeks or more. Entwistle loved to party. We probably played together there five years in a row. The last year before he died, he came over to my house. He was so deaf. He spoke really low because his hearing aids were turned up so loud. He took them out to change the batteries and the damn things were screeching louder than the waves crashing outside my deck. I couldn’t believe he didn’t hear it. He put them back in like nothing happened. What a sweet man. He was pretty high most of the time. John always had a drink and a cigarette in his hand. He didn’t walk around with his hands free. He wore his snakeskin boots, tight jeans and giant belt buckles with spiders on them, flashy shirts and big old shades.
I’d try to get him to sing “Boris the Spider” but he’d go, “Oh, man, I can’t sing.” We’d jam on Who tunes—“My Generation,” “Won’t Be Fooled Again,” “Summertime Blues.” I always played guitar when John was there. I loved playing the Who songs with John. He could really play. I never saw a set of fingers on anyone like his. He would take Mona’s amp or Mikey’s amp and blow them up. Every time. I’ve got good pictures on the cantina wall of John.
One year, Stephen Stills came down. There were a bunch of people already there—Matt Sorum, Michael Anthony, Jerry Cantrell, and a couple of the guys from Metallica, drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist Kirk Hammet, along with my whole band.
Stephen’s tour manager called ahead. I told him we would be excited to see Stephen and was there anything he likes that I could get him.
“Stephen likes coke,” he said.
Stills showed up around midnight. We had already played a set—Lars Ulrich, Jerry Cantrell, and a bunch of us. He walks in wearing a tweed wool jacket. It’s 110 outside. He’s got long pants, boots, sweating like a maniac, dragging his overweight ass up the stairs. I’m a big fan, but this guy is fucked up. I take him in the bathroom and give him a gram of coke that I had somebody get. He opens it up, closes it back, throws it on the ground, reaches in his pocket, and pulls out a Bayer aspirin bottle full of coke. “I’ve got my own,” he said.
He tapped out a bottle-cap for each nostril, pow…pow. I did a little. It was powerful. A guy who tried some later told me it was so strong, you touched it and your face went numb. Everybody dug in.
We went out and Stephen started playing “Crossroads.” Matt Sorum played drums, Jerry Cantrell and I were playing guitar, and Michael Anthony was on bass. After a bit, Lars slid in behind the drum set and Stephen struck up “For What It’s Worth.” Lars didn’t know the song, so he just started beating on things. Stephen stopped the song. “Where’s that other drummer?” he said. “Get that other drummer down here.” Lars practically crawled offstage. But Stephen was cool. He didn’t care. He wanted the other drummer.
Then those guys got lost for three days. They disappeared. They went out that night, they went someplace and didn’t come back. I can’t hang like that. When they came back, I heard what happened. They all said Stephen took them down, all the young bucks, and showed them. “He put us all to shame,” Lars said. “We saw the sun come up three times.”
I tried to get with Stephen another night. I went over to this penthouse place where he was staying and took a couple of acoustic guitars. He is really a great acoustic guitar player and I wanted to learn something from him, some of his tunings, maybe cowrite a song. We got so high, by the time we picked up the guitars, it was useless. I tried to show him a song idea, and he couldn’t care less. Then he would try to show me something, and I’d be like, “Okay, well, maybe, no, next.” There was no connection. I love Stephen, but he’s a hard guy to communicate with.
“What’s with Steve?” I asked his tour manager. “He shines me on. You say something to him, he’ll turn around and walk away.”
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sp; “He can’t hear,” he said. “He probably doesn’t even know you said anything.”
I climbed aboard the airplane to go home—I was flying commercial—and looked across the tarmac. Here comes Stephen, limping his way to the plane, dragging his leg like the mummy. He’s still wearing the tweed sport coat—he probably hasn’t changed his clothes the whole time. He plopped down in the seat across the aisle, one row ahead in the first-class cabin. He didn’t even acknowledge me.
Finally, he recognized me and said hello, but he was shut down, not talking. His leg was obviously hurting. Then it occurred to me—all the seafood, the dehydration, the booze, the blow—this cat has gout. I’ve had it. I know what it’s like. He’d been eating shrimp and lobster, rock clams. I bring all that stuff into the dressing room. We have these wonderful seafood feasts. He was drinking tequila like a fish and wearing that jacket. He sweated his ass off, probably didn’t drink any water. He said he was in such agony on the plane, his leg was killing him. Gout, definitely. I left him alone. When we got to customs, I ditched him completely. I didn’t see myself going through customs with him. No telling what he had on him.
13
ENTER IRVING
My pal Johnny Barbis called me from lunch at a restaurant. “Sam, have you ever met Irving?” he said. “Let me put him on the phone.”
Irving Azoff was the notorious manager of the Eagles. He was one of the most powerful figures in the music business. Barbis handed Irving the phone and he wasted no time saying the right things. “You should be making a lot more money than you’re making,” he said.
He seemed like a really nice guy. He told me to give him a call if I ever needed a hand, and, shortly after that, I asked him to look into a record deal I was about to sign. He came back with everything buttoned up, some nice little perks included, and when I asked him what I owed him, he told me not to worry about it. Smart guy.