(Credits: YouTube Still)
Sat 28 February 2026 19:00, UK
Sammy Hagar was going to come by everything as honestly as he could when he entered the music industry.
There are hardly any musicians in the rock and roll world that can be labelled as truly “down to Earth”, but aside from people like Dave Grohl, ‘The Red Rocker’ has built up a legacy as someone who truly cares about his fans and will do everything he can to put on the greatest party that anyone has ever seen. But there were more than a few times where he didn’t mince words about some of his greatest adversaries as well.
But let’s get one thing off the table: Hagar has never been much of a fan of David Lee Roth. There was no rule that said that he had to have warm feelings about his predecessor in Van Halen, but when looking at how they approach the stage, they couldn’t have been more different. Hagar was far more natural as a musician, and all that he saw in Roth was a guy trying his best to put on a circus act while slightly singing in between twirling swords or soaking in as much applause as possible.
That’s not what he was looking for in rock and roll, which is probably why his iteration of Van Halen sounded so different. They were far more tuneful than anything ‘Diamond Dave’ had to work with, but it’s not like Hagar couldn’t still deliver a show. He had grown up looking at the greatest rock and roll stars of his time, but Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart could never compare to him hearing the greatest soul vocalists of his time, either.
Because if there was one genre that dominated the musical conversation when he started, it was R&B. He had grown up idolising people like James Browne when he first started performing, so when he saw people like Sly and the Family Stone working in the same studio that he was when he was starting his solo career, that would have been a great place for him to hone his performance style.
Or at least, so he thought. Sly Stone was one of the most electrifying band leaders of all time on records like There’s a Riot Goin’ On, but since Hagar was just starting in the business, he wasn’t exactly on Stone’s radar when he first walked into the studio. But beyond not caring so much for Hagar’s music, ‘The Red Rocker’ remembered Stone being nothing but rude to him when all he wanted was a little bit of effort from him.
He might have only seen him once in passing when he was waiting for an elevator, but Hagar said that Stone was more than a little bit of a dick to him, saying, “Sly looked right at me and let the door slam shut. I was pissed. I was in a bad mood about something anyway. I went off. ‘You motherfucker’, I said, ‘You could have held that door open. It’s raining outside.’ [He said], ‘People hold doors open for me, motherfucker.’ His big bodyguards swung around and pushed me against a wall and Sly walked off. What a prick.”
But it’s not like Hagar was ever tied to Stone’s music as intimately as he was with people like James Brown. He wanted to make music with people that were actually looking to have a good time, and even if Stone was strictly business that day, it wasn’t exactly promoting the kind of sentiment that he was talking about in songs like ‘Everyday People’.
If Hagar didn’t get the kind of decent interaction that he deserved from Stone, though, he wasn’t going to let it show. He was on his way to becoming one of the biggest stars in the world, and being able to play to sold-out shows every single night was a lot better for him than having to deal with a bunch of musicians who thought that they were God’s gift to the music business every time they walked past him.