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“This version of this band had some of the most high level spiritual connections I’ve ever had with anybody on any level” Sammy Hagar on Van Halen’s chemistry
“It was magic. We had f**king magic.”
Image: MediaPunch Inc / Alamy
Sammy Hagar has spoken about the incredible musical and spiritual connection the members of Van Halen shared during his time in the band, saying “it was magic”.
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In a new video promoting Van Halen’s new The Collection II 5-CD box set, Hagar offers a peek behind the curtains on the making of the track Cabo Wabo from the band’s 1988 album OU812.
“I went to Cabo with a bunch of four or five things, to finish up lyrics for a week. And the band stayed back and was working up other music and I remember writing the words to Cabo Wabo,” Hagar says.
“And I called up [Eddie Van Halen]… and I said ‘just think Make It Last [from Montrose]’ and I was going ‘I’ve been to Rome, Dallas, Texas’ and he’s going ‘oh yeah, wait wait wait wait’ — Ed was always ‘wait wait wait wait wait’; we call him ‘rewind’ all the time — so he’s going wait a minute and he picks up a guitar [and begins playing]”.
“They had already worked that up,” says Hagar. “They had already recorded the fucking instrumental version of it. And I wrote those lyrics. I came home and picked up my microphone, read the lyrics to the track, and that’s on a [Shure] SM58 because I was just roughing it to see if it works.”
“It works so good it was like one freaking take,” the singer adds. “And I wrote those lyrics away from them and they wrote the music away from me and we came back and it was the perfect song.”
“I mean, right down to every word. I didn’t change one word. I didn’t do anything.”
Of the band’s chemistry, Hagar notes: “Once again, it was magic. We had fucking magic, man. This version of this band had some of the most high level spiritual connections I’ve ever had with anybody on any level. Not even talking about music, I’m talking about the spiritual connection that we had in this band during this era.”