I just got done reading Sammy Hagar’s tell-all memoir, Red. I’m not particularly fascinated by Hagar himself, but I admit I read it for the Van Halen material. The book is largely what you would expect. Hagar being Hagar, it goes through his Montrose days, solo days and Van Halen days. It contains some sophomoric sexual braggadicio about how many groupies he could shag under the stage, and stuff like that, but it comes off as basically honest.
The stuff on Van Halen was brutal. He talks about being invited into the band, and everything seeming great at first, then actually going into the 5150 studio behind Eddie’s house and seeing what a sty it was, covered with cigarette butts and beer cans. it stunk it had never been cleaned. You had to blow cigarette ashes off the slides on the mixing boards to use them. Eddie’s guitars were randmly thrown or piled all over the floor with nothing on stands. There were cobwebs on the floor. The place was disgusting.
Basically, Hagar describes Eddie and Alex as raging, barely functional alcoholics with little to no work ethic. They basically couldn’t stay sober enough to work on anything, and Eddie declined more and more. Even after an attempt at rehab, Eddie still had whiskey bottles and bags of coke hidden in holes of the studio walls, and eventually, Hagar says, Eddie got to the point where he could barely play anymore. He couldn’t remember how to play his own songs, stumbled through solos on stage, etc.
The whole thing came off as really sad. It ended up costing Eddie his family, and though (last I heard) Eddie is supposedly currently sober, Hagar says that Eddie is “not a driven musician” and basically says he doubts he and Alex have the work ethic to finish another album.
There’s more, but that’s the crux of it. It was a very demystifyng and sad thing to read about. Has anybody elseread this book?
I only read the excerpts in the Rolling Stone an issue or two ago. I agree, it was sad, especially since he seemed to think Eddie was a real good guy at the start, normal and considerate. By the end, he was a real delusional psycho, and an absolute asshole to anyone who had to deal with him.
The piece in the Rolling Stone was intriguing enough that I was thinking about getting the audio book (I do a lot of long driving). Do you recommend it, now that you’ve read it? By the way, I would read it for basically the same reasons you mentioned, not for Hagar so much as for his interaction with such an iconic musician.
I guess I knew that EVH had been to rehab and that his alccoholism had played a role in his divorce (Hagar has only good things to say about Valerie, by the way), but I never knew how far gone he really was. For some reason Hagar’s description of 5150, which I had always imagined as some kind of rock star dream studio, as just this filthy little shithole surprised me too.
What does the book say about Michael Anthony, the bass player for Van Halen?
He used to live across the street from my sister and her husband (a really nice neighborhood, but not a crazy-rich, “Lifestyles Of The Rich & Famous” neighborhood) and they said he was polite, but not particularly friendly, which in an upscale Southern California suburb is probably not too surprising…
Hagar calls him a “loyal dog,” and basically paints him as a fairly decent and patient guy who put up with a lot for the band and ultimately got shafted for his efforts. Hagar essentially describes Mike Anthony as one more person who got screwed by Eddie and Alex. He has nothing bad to say about him. Musically he says that Anthony just played what Eddie told him to play on bass, but was a fantastic backup singer.
Incidentally, I should probably make it clear that Hagar describes Eddie as being completely different when he was sober than when drunk/coked up. Sober, Hagar describes him as sweet guy - basically a kid. But he just turned into an asshole when he was active in his alcoholism. Hagar also doesn’t deny Eddie’s talent (how could anyone), but seems to feel that he was squandering his talent instead of developing it.
Reading this thread, I googled him. I am absolutely flabbergasted that thesetwopictures are at most 18 years apart. He looks like he has aged 40 years.
Diogenes, what created the rift with Anthony, recognizing it was probably psycho delusion on Eddie’s part? I read elsewhere that EVH actually had his images clipped out of photos on their website until the fan base reacted with outrage. What offense did Eddie imagine that pissed him off so much?
Rock musicians doing copious amounts of drugs and alcohol? Weird personality changes caused by such usage. I am shocked, simply shocked.
I’m pretty sure that Ed Justice Jr, of “Road and Track” magazine/ Justice Brothers car products. has said he went to school with Michael Anthony and speaks highly of him.
Basically Eddie and Alex didn’t like it that Anthony was going out and touring with Hagar after he split with Van Halen. They didn’t want him doing any side projects at all, but his staying friends with Hagar and performing with him drove them up a wall. They saw it as disloyal. It really wasn’t. Anthony just wanted something to do with himself while he waited around for 5 or 6 years until Eddie was ready to record another album.
I caught Sammy on the Dan Patrick show… and then caught him on the Jim Rome show… its funny. the music part is soo much more interesting to me… and Rome just wanted the groupie low down…
Yeah Sammy wasn’t on fire when it came to ALex and Eddie… he said Alex was a lot easier to deal with than Ed… but he did say that Ed was pretty fucked up towards the end all of the time… and they really haven’t done shit in years…
I grab that at the library too… if u get a chance to hear Sammy interviewed its worth it…very engaging guy…
Non-songwriting members of any band usually have a minimal income when not touring - and Eddie had Michael’s name removed from the credits of 1984. Every talented musician I’ve met wants to play music, needs to play music, and if the royalty checks are not coming in they can’t afford to not be playing music.
I tried to read it, but it felt too much like listening to a rock & roll Trump. I’d recommend listening to Hagar’s interview with Adam Carolla. It’s free, about 90 minutes, and has the parts you want to hear without all the self-serving crap you don’t care about. Not that there isn’t a lot of that - there is no bigger Sammy Hagar fan than Sammy. But I got all I cared to hear about in that interview. I can’t link from the iPod, but PM me if you want a link.
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