Sammy Hagar never really learned how to whisper. Even on Zoom, the Red Rocker sounds like he’s shouting from a mountaintop somewhere in Cabo. “I can scream anytime,” he says, grinning. “I grew up on James Brown, man.” Then, without prompting, he lets out a blood-curdling yell so pure it’s practically a time machine. “That’s for you,” he says.
The scream is the centerpiece of his pandemic project Lockdown 2020, a scrappy iPhone-made covers album that turned a housebound moment into a glorified jam session. “We didn’t even know we were making a record,” Hagar says. “We were just sending each other clips. Michael [Anthony]’s playing loud in a room, I’m holding my phone up and singing into it. Then our guy mixes it, boom—done.” He laughs. “Normally I’m in a studio for months, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. This time? Zero. I’d sing each song three times, send it off, tell him, ‘Pick the best one.’”
The thing sounds, against all odds, great—partly because it doesn’t care to. “That’s the magic,” he says. “We didn’t give a shit about perfection. You can hear the room, the air, the life. It’s real.”
It’s also unexpectedly emotional. In between James Brown workouts and Little Richard tributes are songs that hit hard for 2020: Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” Bowie’s “Heroes,” and his own Van Halen anthem “Right Now.” “At first we were just having fun,” he says, “then I realized people needed to feel good. That’s when I thought of ‘Three Little Birds.’ I listened to that song a hundred times and thought, man, this is the message—everything’s gonna be all right.”
Later came Bowie. “Heroes” wasn’t easy. “I didn’t think I could sing that low,” Hagar admits. “I felt like fuckin’ Elvis. No fun. But when I heard it back—it was soulful. Sometimes you do something that feels wrong, then realize it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done.”
His old bandmate Eddie Van Halen wasn’t around to hear the full thing, though Hagar did send him a track or two before Eddie’s passing. “We were talking again, just checking in. Not about music—about life. I told him I’d drive over and cook him spaghetti. That was the vibe.” They even toyed with the idea of one last reunion. “He said, ‘Let’s not tell anyone yet.’ Man, it would’ve been great. But at least we got to be friends again.”
When the news hit, Hagar was scheduled to perform a livestream for his birthday. “Mike and I were like, how do we do this now?” he says. “Then I thought—Right Now. That song says it all. We can’t change what happened, but we can play. Music’s what carries on. Eddie would’ve liked that.”
Written decades ago during Van Halen’s party-band era, “Right Now” was his attempt to get serious. “We took a lot of crap for having fun,” he says. “But that song—man, that was a turn. I’d been reading some Zen philosophy, all about being in the now. That’s where it came from. It’s funny, you try something like that once and it becomes timeless. Every generation finds its meaning.”
The timeless part extends to the man himself. At 77, Hagar’s still plotting the next gig, even if the gym isn’t high on his list. “Who wants to exercise?” he laughs. “But hey, I’ve been practicing singing every day. Maybe that means something’s coming. You never know.”
Then he shrugs, half-serious, half-showman. “I just go where it feels right. If I’m hungry, I eat. If I’m not, I don’t. If I feel like screaming, I scream. That’s rock & roll, baby.”
Watch the full interview above and then check out the videos below.
