Sammy Hagar Recalls Talking Himself Into Trouble With Mick Jones
Sammy Hagar recalled the time his loudmouth methods landed him in hassle with Mick Jones.
The incident passed off when Hagar’s solo band opened for Foreigner in 1978, and led to their friendship taking a brief tumble. As Hagar advised Classic Rock in a brand new interview, the pair had met a number of years earlier when Montrose had toured with British rockers Spooky Tooth, which featured Jones on the time.
“We must have done a whole year – 150 shows with those guys,” Hagar mentioned simply after inducting Foreigner into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the weekend. “We just hit it off. I dug his guitar sound. I love Spooky Tooth; if you listen to Foreigner, you’ll hear Spooky Tooth in there.”
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Citing the instance of Foreigner hit “Feels Like the First Time,” the Red Rocker continued: “They always did the half-time choruses, so you hear a lot of Spooky Tooth in there, and I was a Spooky Tooth fan. When Mick quit, I kept in touch.”
He went on to say that he used to joke with Jones about changing Foreigner singer Lou Gramm. “I’m going, ‘I sing a lot like him – I’m broke off my ass, man!’” Jones’ reply was: “Me too. You were on the West Coast, I was on the East Coast. I couldn’t afford to fly you out for an audition!’”
But Hagar admitted he’d overdone his conventional big-mouth method throughout a radio interview whereas he was opening act on Foreigner’s Double Vision tour. “We bumped heads one time,” the previous Van Halen frontman recalled. “They were starting to get big, and I opened for them, and I killed it. I went on to do an encore and they turned the [house] lights on on me…
Sammy Hagar Talked Trash on Radio While Mick Jones Listened
“I said, ‘Hey, fuck it – I’m doing it anyway.’ And we stayed out and did an encore and really got the people [going] like, ‘Now we gotta get behind Sammy ‘cause he got robbed!’”
He continued: “The next day I’m at a radio station in Detroit because we were there the next night. I’m sitting there talking shit – Sammy ’78, beating my chest. ‘Yeah man, we blew ‘em off the stage. They turned the lights on and we did it anyway…’
“I come walking out of the room and Mick Jones is sitting right there, getting ready to go on next. And he looked at me and just put his head down, and I said, ‘Aw, man. Aw, Mick, y’know…’
“But we patched it up – he ended up producing Van Halen’s 5150 – that’s the only time we had a little rub, really.”
