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Sammy Hagar is the multiplatinum Red Rocker, the outgoing, bombastic front man of hard rock champions Van Halen, currently embarked on his fourth platinum career with his supergroup, Chickenfoot. In addition to his legendary status among rock stars, he is the masterful entrepreneur behind Cabo Wabo tequila. When he's not on the road, he splits his time among California, Hawaii, and Mexico.

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Loud rock, fast cars, and Cabo.
This is the life of Sammy Hagar.

For almost forty years, Sammy Hagar has been a fixture in rock music. From breaking into the industry with the band Montrose to his multiplatinum solo career to his ride as the front man of Van Halen, Sammy's powerful and unforgettable voice has set the tone for some of the greatest rock anthems ever written—songs like "I Can't Drive 55," "Right Now," and "Why Can't This Be Love."

In Red, Sammy tells the outrageous story of his tear through rock 'n' roll, detailing the backstage antics and nonstop touring that have made his voice instantly recognizable. Beginning with his musical coming-of-age in the blue-collar towns of California, Sammy traces his rough and determined rise to fame, working harder than anyone else out there and writing songs about the things he loved—fast cars, loud parties, and lots of good times.

But solo success was just the start, a prelude to his raucous and notorious decade as the front man for Van Halen, one of the biggest-selling rock groups in history. Filled with behind-the-scenes stories from his time with the band, Red offers the Van Halen story as Sammy saw it, holding nothing back about the worldwide stadium tours, the tensions with Eddie, the messy parties, the divided friendships, and, of course, his controversial and widely disputed exit from the band.

After Van Halen, Sammy changed directions again, throwing himself headfirst into the tequila business and creating Cabo Wabo, one of the most successful tequila brands in the world. And all the while he continued to rock, touring the country with his bands the Waboritas and Chickenfoot, and eventually reuniting with Van Halen for a tour that became both a box-office smash and a personal catastrophe.

From the decadence of being one of the world's biggest rock stars to the unfiltered story of being forced out of Van Halen, Sammy's account spares no one, least of all himself. His is a tale of a true rock 'n' roller—someone who's spent decades bringing the party with him wherever he goes but always headin' back to Cabo for mas tequila.

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Red

HarperCollins

Chapter One

When I was growing up, Fontana, California, was all
orange groves, grape vineyards, and chicken ranches. I
could eat oranges, grapefruits, and tangerines all fucking day if I
wanted. I had to walk through an orange grove just to go to my
next-door neighbor?s house. There really was no neighborhood.
It was long before tract homes. At the corner of each of the long
country blocks, there were these big, ten-foot-tall cement tanks
with open roofs on them, called water weirs, which fed water
to the houses from clean, clear Lytle Creek in the foothills. The
water weirs had a float on them, and when the water got too low,
the float would kick on and they?d fill back up like a toilet. Each
one had a ladder going up so guys could ser vice them, and kids
would drown in them all the time. We always heard a rumor that
some kid got polio from one of them. But it was our drinking
water and it was ice-cold. In the summer, we used to jump in and
swim. Not swim, but dunk down, get cooled off, and climb out.
I don?t want to say we?d piss in them, but we did.
My dad moved to Fontana because he heard the steel mill was
hiring. When I was born in Monterey County Hospital in Salinas,
California, Dad and Mom had been picking lettuce in the
fields and living in a camp where everyone else was Mexican. The
Kaiser Steel Mill?the first steel mill west of the Mississippi?
pretty much made Fontana. Growing up, every kid in Fontana
was just trying to get through high school to get a job at Kaiser
Steel. We thought it paid great. Originally, you didn?t even need
a high school diploma, but, as Kaiser Steel built up, and other
plants opened up, making pipes or big beams, you needed a high
school diploma. Unless, of course, they got a big order and needed
the people. Then they?d hire anybody, and lay you off when they
got the job done. But everybody was happy to go there and make
whatever they were paying.
It was a brutal job though, working at a steel mill in a 160-
degree heat, pieces of hot metal flying out at you. My dad worked
in the open hearth, the hottest, hardest work in the plant, where
they pour the ingots into big troughs and make steel. Molten
fucking steel. He came home with his clothes drenched from sweat,
and he used to take salt tablets every day before he went to work.
He had probably the lowest job on the totem pole, and they moved
his schedule almost every week. He would go from swing shift to
graveyard shift to day shift. Sometimes he?d come home at mid-
night and go to work again at six in the morning. He got burned
real bad one time?the side of his face was completely taken off.
Just from the heat. It wasn?t steel hitting him. It was that he got
too close or there was a flare-up or something and it just fucking
ripped the skin off his face.
My dad?s parents had been migrant farm workers who came
out from Kentucky on a covered wagon. They?d picked cotton all
the way through Texas, and my dad was born in Texas. Two kids
were?that?s how long they were in Texas. They had thirteen kids.
He had a younger sister, but he was the youngest boy. My dad was
handsome and athletic, but he was a bad little fucker. He would beat
the shit out of his big brothers. My uncle told me my dad chased his
big brother, my uncle Charlie, up a tree. My dad sat there, smoking
a cigarette, waiting for him to come down to beat his butt. Charlie
slept in the tree rather than take an ass-kicking from my dad.
My mom, Gladys, was born in Los Angeles. Her dad came over
from Italy when he was eleven years old and never learned to speak,
read, or write English. He and my grandma?she was Italian, too?
never owned a house. They lived in a trailer and were always on the
move. He was a chef and he went where the work was. He cooked in
Yosemite and went up to Klamath when the salmon were running.
He would hunt and fish and work only when he had to. During the
winter season, he would cook in Palm Springs, make these huge
buffets at the lodge where President Eisenhower stayed. But when
the season was over, he?d pack up, take all his money, steal every-
thing he could out of the restaurant, and take off in the middle of
the night. The guy was a complete thief?a real crook, my grandpa,
and a prick, too. Once in a while he was nice. I?m named after the
fucker, Sam Roy. They raised my mom and her sister that way. She
grew up in a tent and didn?t finish seventh grade.
Mom and Dad got married when she was fifteen. Mom always
said all the girls liked him in high school. My dad had dreams. He
wanted to be a big-shot kind of guy. He liked hanging around big
shots. Bob Hope used to let him caddy on weekends, when he was
growing up in Palm Springs. She was sixteen years old when she had
my oldest sister, Bobbi. Practically the day she had the baby, as soon
as she came home from the hospital, she got pregnant again with
my other sister. My sisters Velma and Bobbi are nine months apart.
My father could beat up anybody. I was so proud of that, growing
He was such a bad-ass. When he was younger, Bobby Hagar
fought bantamweight. He won his first eight fights by knockouts.
He was a little guy, five foot eight, same size as me, but that son
of a bitch could hit?he could have been something. But he got
drafted during World War II, shortly after he?d gotten my mother
pregnant again with my brother, Robert. My father shipped out as
a paratrooper. He?d never even been in an airplane and suddenly
he?s jumping out of them. On his first jump, over a battlefield in
France, his parachute went way off course. He tangled in trees and
smashed his face into a tree trunk. He had a Tommy gun and, as he
was coming down, he was scared, so he sprayed the ground with
bullets. He banged into the tree and broke his jaw. He cut himself
down. He dug a hole, and stayed in a foxhole for a few days. His
jaw was killing him. He was disoriented, obviously all banged up
from hitting this tree, but he had his gun. Nearby was a German
soldier, also separated from his unit, and they played a fox-and-
mouse game until my dad killed him in a shootout. I think it really
screwed up his head. Killing someone one-on-one isn?t like shooting
people you don?t know. My dad lived with this guy for a couple of
days, sneaking around, not sleeping at night, really not wanting to
mess with each other, but every now and then, taking a potshot.
When he returned to his company, he was crazy. He was freaked
out that he shot the guy. Plus he was a bad-ass anyway. He emptied
his magazine in the ground in front of his commanding officer.