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September 1, 2009
A Little Bit of Chickenfoot And A Little Bit of Van Halen
Gibson, maker of some of the most-recognized guitars in the world of rock, recently interviewed Chickenfoot frontman Sammy Hagar. In addition to the guitar talk that would be expected, Hagar was asked some questions about his thoughts in the differences between his experience with Van Halen and his experience with Chickenfoot.
Hagar has gained himself a reputation as someone who does not hold back when it comes to his opinions, and this interview was no different. Regarding his motivation to start up a new band, the most influential factor seems to be that he wanted to “to play with the best players in the business.” He then goes on to refer to each other individual member of Chickenfoot as “the best” at what they do.
Those kinds of comments are somewhat reminiscent of his infamous statement made during the lead up to the group’s public debut when he said they could “rival Zep.” A statement Hagar later blamed on the consumption of a little to much tequila.
Everyone has their preference, but referring to to his band mates as “the best” comes across more like bravado and less like reality. Has Hagar never heard of Neil Peart, Terry Bozzio, Geddy Lee, Jack Bruce or Stevie Ray Vaughan? That’s partly a rhetorical question since he actually mentions Jack Bruce and Stevie Ray Vaughan during the interview.
No Hagar interview would be complete without a few words about Eddie Van Halen, whom Hagar refers to as slow compared to guitarist Joe Satriani when it comes to writing. Although he regards both Satriani and Van Halen as “phenomenal” players, in the end he says he thinks Satriani comes out on top when it comes to “a straight-up player, who can play anything, and plays perfect every time.”
You can read part one of the interview at the Gibson website.
Van Halen is in the news again for reasons that may not please them very much – to say nothing of their fans. According to the Wall Street Journal, the group became involved in Ticketmaster’s efforts during 2007 to increase their profits by teaming up with ticket brokers (also known as “scalpers”) . It was also reported to be an effort by Ticketmaster to thwart concert prompter Live Nation’s plans to enter the ticket business.
Ticketmaster’s CEO, Irving Azoff, also happened to be managing Van Halen, which created an opportunity for Ticketmaster to test their new strategy. During the fall of 2007, as many as 500 of the best seats for 20 Van Halen shows were not offered on the Ticketmaster system and were passed on to the brokers for sale to the public.
The brokers were able to keep 30% of the inflated price of the tickets they were allotted while the remaining 70% was shared between Ticketmaster, Van Halen, and their organization. The band reportedly netted at least an extra $1 million as a result. There was nobody available for comment from the Van Halen camp.
Since then Ticketmaster has decided they didn’t care to share a bed with the brokers and have decided to go to war against them instead, using new software that it hopes will make life difficult for them by blocking automated processes that some brokers use to obtain tickets in the highly competitive online grab for tickets the second they are made available for sale.
May 7, 2009
Sammy Hagar Talks Up Chickenfoot Bandmate Satriani
Having played alongside the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Ronnie Montrose and Neal Schon, you have to wonder if Sammy Hagar may be testing to see how much praise guitarist Joe Satriani can take before his head swells up beyond its capacity to accommodate his often-worn hat.
While talking with Reno Gazette-Journal not long ago, Hagar called his new guitarist, Joe Satriani, the “the best guitarist I have ever played with.” That’s mighty high praise, when you consider that Hagar spent some significant time alongside guitarist Eddie Van Halen during his years with the group. For many, Van Halen is considered a guitar God and is held up as the greatest rock guitarist of all time. 
Hagar’s admiration for Satriani seems to be influenced by his ability to play so many types of music so well. “He can play anything and everything — folk, blues, jazz, hard rock, soft rock, fusion, you name it. As a guitar technician, Joe is the best guy I’ve ever stood in the same room with on any instrument. And he’s so soulful when he solos. He puts more feeling into a solo than any other player I’ve been with,” Hagar says.
As some may remember, Hagar dared to evoke the name of Led Zeppelin a while back while talking about the new group he has put together with Satriani, ex-Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame. At the time he went as far as saying the new supergroup “could rival Led Zeppelin.”
This time, when Hagar was asked how he might describe the group’s sound his comments were not quite so bold, but he does bring up Zeppelin again. “It’s like early Led Zeppelin with a little Deep Purple and Montrose. With Mike and I in there and me co-writing all the songs with Joe, you’re also going to get a little Van Halen — Van Hagar, you might say. But every band we ever loved, from the Stones to Cream, is in there. We even get funky every now and then.”
According to Hagar, Chickenfoot will be kicking off a tour of Europe this summer after which they are planning to return to tour here in the U.S.
For the full story, check out the Reno Gazette-Journal
December 11, 2008
CD Review: Sammy Hagar’s Cosmic Universal Fashion
To me, Sammy Hagar has always typified a straight-up rock and roll kind of guy. He’s never found a place on my list off all-time favorites, but as I have said here before, I think Van Halen’s best years were during the time Hagar was with them. Besides preferring Hagar’s voice over Diamond Dave’s, I’ve never cared much for big egos. Maybe those old VH videos with Roth throwing his blond locks around and casting those“come hither” looks towards the camera just creeped me out a bit too much to ever take the guy seriously. Some footage from the most recent Van Halen tour with Roth riding a giant inflatable microphone around the stage surely didn’t help.
As far as being a straight-up rock and roll kind of guy goes, this latest effort is a bit of a departure, and some if it can definitely be classified as music with a message. Awareness about the environment seems to be a key part of the message Hagar is trying to convey with Cosmic Universal Fashion.
The CD is packaged in a cardboard case that is described right on it as being “Printed on 40% recycled paperboard,” as
well as “Environmentally friendly package: No booklet, no waste.” Indeed, there is no booklet accompanying the CD as you would normally expect, which is really not a big deal for me and the cardboard packaging certainly was easier to open than that shrink-wrapped plastic fortress that CDs are usually encased in. You can however, visit Hagar’s website and view or download the booklet if you choose.
If you’re a Sammy Hagar fan, there’s a fair chance that you will enjoy this new album. For someone like myself who is a bit more neutral where the Red Rocker is concerned, I found myself left with only one track that I really liked. I certainly don’t consider the other tracks “unlistenable,” but the one I found myself playing over and over a number of times was “Loud.” Now that’s straight-up rock and roll, and the kind of thing I would have liked to hear more of on a Sammy Hagar album.
Getting to the title track, “Cosmic Universal Fashion,” it is not your typical rock song, and it’s a difficult one for me to classify, although it has more of a machine-generated sound to it which is a bit too repetitive and certainly does not sound like any of the old classic Hagar I remember. Of all the tracks on the album, this was the one I liked the least. It’s creation is an interesting story however, since it was born out of a collaboration between Hagar and an Iraqi fan took place over the internet. Unfortunately, I found the story of the song’s creation more interesting than the song itself.
The whole album is somewhat of an odd collection, since some of the tracks don’t seem like they belong on the same CD and were made up of a collection of songs that Hagar did not know what else to do with. That’s confirmed to some degree by the credits where Hagar talks about a couple of songs he wrote with Neal Schon just before he signed on for the Van Hagar reunion and had to put his plans with Schon on hold. Those two tracks, “Psycho Vertigo” and “Peephole” are on this album, with “Psycho Vertigo” being the better track in my opinion. Deen Castronovo’s hard-driving drum work really provides a strong backbone to this guitar-driven track.
Although I have seen some criticism of Hagar’s singing on this album, I think he’s holding up pretty well at the age of 61, and to me he sounds pretty much like the Sammy Hagar I remember from the 80’s.
As someone whose favorite groups include Rush, Yes, Heart and Kansas, Hagar’s creative work, much of which has that party-inspired feel to it, has never been much of a draw for me. For Hagar fans however, this album may be worth checking out.
November 21, 2008
Classic Rock Briefs For November 21, 2008
Sammy Hagar Answers Questions From Boneheads
Well, that’s hw San Francisco radio station KSAN, “107.7 The Bone” refers to their listeners, many of whom were probably pleasantly surprised to hear a surprise visit from Sammy Hagar who dropped by the studios to talk about his current activities and answer call-in questions from fans.
In addition to getting his voice heard live on the Bay Area radio station, Hagar’s visit was also filmed by someone who is known, affectionately I presume, as “Baby Huey,” who wielded the “Huey Cam” to capture Hagar’s visit for fans to enjoy. You can check out the station’s website for the interview and video.
Roger Waters And Bon Jovi on Live Earth Roster
The city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the financial capital of India will host the Live Earth event next month with Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Bon Jovi scheduled to perform. Along with the veteran rockers, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Hritik Roshan are expected to be in attendance to lend their support to the effort.
Former U.S. Vice President and former Presidential candidate Al Gore, who is credited as the founder of the Live Earth events is also expected to be present. Full Story.
November 19, 2008
Michael Anthony And Sammy Hagar Let Loose on Van Halen
Until now, former Van Halen bass player Michael Anthony has been pretty kind to his former band mates by not sharing his true feelings about his experiences while he was with the group, and his more recent exclusion from the Van Halen reunion tour. At least not publicly. Although he still seems reluctant to say anything really nasty about Van Halen, he does reveal a little more about the process that led to his separation from the group.
Although Anthony concedes that he sees himself as the ultimate “sideman”, and not necessarily the guy in the spotlight, he stresses that the role of a sideman is vital, and holds things together when the guy who is in the spotlight plays a ten-minute solo.
Although Anthony has talked about his disappointment that resulted from his exclusion from the Van Halen reunion tour which featured the return of original vocalist David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang on bass, he is talking more about his feelings now and admitted that he would have loved to have been part of it.
Revealing some of the negative feelings and disappointment about his parting ways with Van Halen, Anthony sounds like he has it all behind him now and seems to be very excited about the new group he has been playing with, which is being called “Chickenfoot” for the time being.
You can read more from the interview Anthony did with Music Radar and even download the audio from the interview.
Sammy Hagar, on the other hand, is a lot more open about his feelings when he talks about his time spent with Van Halen – a period in the group’s history that resulted in some of the group’s best material in my personal opinion.
Hagar, talking with Classic Rock Revisited not long ago, was clearly not pleased about the way Michael Anthony was treated by Van Halen when he was excluded from the last tour. “He got f***ed and it was horrible. I am not going to go on about ‘why and what,’because I have no idea…(The fans) have been waiting for this reunion and they (Van Halen) did it wrong. It is one more strike against those guys. They are not healthy, mentally, and they make bad decisions. They don’t take the fans in mind for one second and it is not good."
Hagar also relates the story of how a drunken Eddie Van Halen tried to knock the window out of a plane the group was flying on during a tour, and almost left the group as a result. Although Hagar remained in order to finish up the tour, he insisted on flying in a separate airplane for the duration of the tour to avoid being exposed to Van Halen’s alleged dangerous drunken rampages.
Hagar has his own album that was released just yesterday called Cosmic Universal Fashion, and he is also heavily involved with Michael Anthony, guitarist Joe Satriani and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith in the aforementioned “Chickenfoot” project, something Hagar is no less excited about than Anthony and has described in the past as something that “could rival Led Zeppelin.” A bold claim to be sure, and it will certainly be interesting to hear this new material when it finally starts making its way out for us all to hear. They are hoping to complete the album they are working on sometime next summer.
For more on Hagar’s comments, check out KBS Radio.
