When I was thirteen, my mother taught at the same small christian school I was attending. In addition to teaching, she worked the after school care program, which had me waiting an extra couple hours until the last of the students were picked up by their parents. Since I wasn’t much of a dedicated student, and this was well before smart phones, I found myself just shooting hoops or sitting around to kill time before we went home.
It was around this time I met a gentleman named Scott, who owned a cleaning company and was contracted to clean the buildings at the school I attended. He offered to pay me to help with his cleaning duties, allowing him to get home sooner to his family. My job was to vacuum the classrooms and take out the trash while he wiped down the bathrooms.
When we had personal convos it was mostly about basketball, since he was a prior player and still a fan of the game like I was. After a couple months, I realized he was relaxed enough that I could listen to music on my portable cd player (stuffed awkwardly in the front pocket of my khakis) while completing my duties. This was the early 2000s, and I had just recently got more into music. I was mostly listening to post grunge stuff or whatever was on the radio. Scott wasn’t much up on the modern music scene when I told him who I was listening to, but he did ask me if I ever heard of a band called Van Halen. The answer was “no”, I had not. And I’m sure at the time I was not interested in listening to “old people music”. I think Scott was thirty-five at the time, and I’m thirty-six now writing this, which is surreal and funny in itself.
He began to educate me all about Van Halen, and that there were two eras of the band, each with their own lead singer that defined them. I was interested, but not enough to seek their music out on my own time. This was before Youtube or Spotify, and our dial up internet was too slow to even attempt Limewire. As we were finishing up one day, he handed me a cassette tape that read “5150”. He told me it was Van Halen’s best album, and his personal favorite, but probably best not to let my mother hear it.
I had just got a stereo for Christmas that year, which had a five disc CD changer and a double cassette deck. I hadn’t listened to many cassette tapes until that point, but I knew like VHS tapes you needed to rewind them to the beginning to get the full experience. However, I was unfamiliar with the silent delay that started the cassette whenever you played it from the beginning. I’ll never forget pressing play and hearing nothing, so I began to turn the volume up louder and louder to try and hear something. I had the volume to almost max when all of sudden, a voice shook the entire trailer home my mother and I lived in, and all I heard were the words…“HELLLLO BAAAAAAAABY!”.
That was my introduction to Sammy Hagar.
That moment initiated what would be a lifelong passion of all things rock and roll. I began collecting Van Halen albums, the “Van Hagar” era first of course, and got into other bands like Journey, Def Leppard, and Led Zeppelin, just to name a few. My freshman year in college I took a History of Rock and Roll course to fulfill a fine arts requirement. That same year I caught the Van Halen reunion tour in Greensboro, which I watched from the nosebleeds and still had the time of my life. I even dressed as Eddie Van Halen for halloween one year with a “Frankenstrat” shoe box I created as the body of my “guitar”, with a black painted yard stick as the neck. Many concerts were attended, I bought way too many CDs (until streaming took over), and stood out among my friend group as the guy who listened to all the classic rock. All stemming from that one moment in my bedroom as a thirteen year old hearing “Good Enough” for the first time.
In my senior year of college, Hagar released his autobiography RED: MY UNCENSORED LIFE IN ROCK, which furthered my distraction away from studying, but in hindsight, taught me a lot. He wasn’t born into wealth, he didn’t walk onstage and become an overnight sensation, but he worked at it. His story is one of challenge, persistence, and optimism. He had falling outs with producers, bandmates, family, and at one point he even had to pick up work as a dump truck driver to provide for his wife and son. But he always followed the dream, and once he got there he made the most of it.
One of the most impressive things about Sammy, other than his music catalog, is that he does not look his age. If you look at him, and hear him sing, you’d be shocked to know that he’ll be seventy eight years old this year. Compared to most others his age in the same industry (or in general), he looks like he should be twenty years younger. It’s truly amazing, especially for a guy who has toured as much as he has and the copious amounts of tequila consumed (Santo truly is good stuff).
I was watching an interview several years back when Sammy was on The Jenny McCarthy Show, and she asked him how he looks so young. His answer was simple: “I’m happy”. Immediately, I thought to myself “well of course he is! Millions of dollars, luxury homes and cars, why wouldn’t he be?” When he continued to explain, it wasn’t the answer I expected. He told a story of some advice he received years back, stating that whatever negativity you're harboring in your head eventually begins to show on your face, and not just by a lack of smiling. He talked about the importance of optimism, being aware of who he is, knowing what he wants, and the importance of positive self talk. He credits that as one of the reasons he was able to find success not only professionally, but personally as well.
The other point he made in regard to his youthful look, is that he chooses to look at only beautiful things if he can help it. So often we spend our time consuming negative/fear-mongering forms of media, inundating our minds with less than positive feelings. He uses the example of how different we feel when we look at a beautiful landscape like a mountain or a beach, opposed to taking part in negative conversations or activities. It’s simple advice, but makes a lot of sense when you think about it. While challenges are necessary to improve us, if we aren’t intentional about who/what we surround ourselves with, we risk corruption. And faster aging, apparently.
My wife and I went to see Hagar last year on his Best of All Worlds Tour in Nashville. Without much surprise, we were the only people at the venue I saw who looked to be under the age of forty. The tour title was chosen due to the set list, which consisted mostly of songs during his time with Van Halen. It was an incredible performance, and the packed crowd was into it. Even my wife, who sees all things from an energetic perspective, was impressed by the positive aura that Hagar carries.
It’s obvious people want to be around him. A lot of people who find success let it consume them with arrogance, making them unbearable to be around. Not Sammy. Every year for his birthday he has a bash at his Cabo Wabo bar down in Cabo San Lucas, where other musicians (and popular chefs) come by the droves to jam with him. They’re not getting paid to be onstage, they want to be there. When someone has a good energy about them, it often attracts the kind of people you want to be around.
His music has been a soundtrack to various points of my life, both in good times and challenging ones. I’ve heard it said in different ways that who we surround ourselves with define who we are. When I listen to his music now, I not only enjoy it from a technical perspective, but it makes for a better listening experience to know who is behind the vocals. That’s the best of both worlds.