In Search Of Excellence - Sammy Hagar: From Broke Kid To Rockstar Entrepreneur | E17

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Sammy Hagar is one of the most prolific artists in the history of Rock and Roll.  Playing in bands like Montrose and Van Halen, and with a successful solo career that included the rock anthem “I Can’t Drive 55,” Sammy has had 25 platinum albums and has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide.  Sammy is also an extremely successful serial entrepreneur and was the first celebrity to create his own tequila brand which he sold more than 20 years ago for nearly $100 million.  He is also devoted to giving back and is a generous philanthropist.  But who was Sammy before fame and fortune? How did he become the successful rock icon and entrepreneur he is today?  Sammy’s journey is filled with many challenges, incredible perseverance, a lucky coincidence, and an ability to change.  Sammy attributes his success to the lessons he learned about resilience and appreciation while growing up in poverty in Salinas, CA where he often slept in a car with his mom and siblings to get away from his alcoholic father.  When Sammy fell in love with music at a Rolling Stones concert at age 14, the scrappy, adaptable young man bought a guitar from Sears and decided he would stop at nothing to pursue his dream of becoming a rock star.In this fascinating episode, Sammy and Randall talk about Sammy’s journey from poverty to the big stage, Sammy’s experience with the bands Montrose and Van Halen, his creativity and marketing abilities in building Cabo Wabo Cantina and Cabo Wabo Tequila, and his dedication to philanthropy and making a difference in local communities.Topics Include:  - The odd jobs Sammy had while growing up which taught him the value of a strong work ethic;- Sammy’s first realization about what having money would be like;- Sammy’s first concert experiences and learning to play the guitar;- The lessons Sammy learned from growing up poor;- The ups and downs and experiences of playing with Van Halen for 20 years;- The sale of Cabo Wabo Tequila for nearly $100 million to Gruppo Campari;- His creativity, branding, and marketing tactics used to build the Cabo Wabo brand;- Sammy’s three most important ingredients in the path to excellence;- His ability to finding joy and happiness in the simple things;- The origins of Sammy’s Beach Bar and Grill and the restaurant’s commitment to give back; - And other topics…Sammy Hagar is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and entrepreneur.  In the 1970s, Sammy’s career took off with the rock band Montrose, and continued after he launched a successful solo career that included some of the greatest rock anthems ever written with songs like “I Can’t Drive 55,” “Right Now,” and “Why Can’t This be Love.”  Sammy was the frontman for Van Halen for nearly 20 years, has had 25 platinum albums, and has sold 60 million records worldwide.  He is a Grammy award winner and inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Sammy is also an incredibly talented entrepreneur, starting companies such as Cabo Wabo Tequila, Cabo Wabo Cantina, Sammy’s Beach Bar and Grill, Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum, and Santo Mezquila. He is also a two-time New York Times best-selling author and a dedicated philanthropist.  In 2008, Sammy started the Hagar Family Foundation, a private non-profit that focuses on food relief and children’s causes including children with cancer.Sponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

my mom saw me filling out the paper. She starts crying, says, you're not going to do that. Look what it did to your father. And I threw the papers in the trash. And that was my end of my boxing career. So that was an important moment because I gave up on one dream. I was lost for a while, but then I started getting into music. And my mom bought me that guitar, $29.95.

That guitar changed my life. My mom made payments. At $29.95, my mom had to make frigging payments. That's how poor we were. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and desire to be the very best we can be, to learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there.

Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings, and we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. My guest today is Sammy Hagar. For more than four decades, Sammy has been one of the best and most accomplished lead singers and songwriters in the history of rock music. Over his career, Sammy has had 25 platinum albums and sales surpassing 60 million worldwide. Along his journey, he has set the tone for some of the greatest rock anthems ever written with songs like I Can't Drive 55, Right Now, and Why Can't This Be Love.

Sammy won a Grammy Award in 1991, and in March 2007, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Van Halen. In addition to being a music icon, Sammy is an incredibly successful entrepreneur. He's the owner of Cabo Wabo Cantina, a thriving and iconic lifestyle brand. He's the founder of Cabo Wabo Tequila, which he sold in 2008 for $91 million. He's the founder of Sammy's Beach Bar Rum and a co-founder of Santo Tequila, as well as several restaurants. Sammy has also had incredible success in the worlds of publishing, TV, and radio, including five seasons of his hit TV show, Rock and Roll Road Trip with Sammy Hagar, and his host of Sammy Hagar's Top Rock Countdown. And if that wasn't enough, he's also a two-time

number one New York Times bestselling author for his books, Read My Uncensored Life and Rock and Are We Having Fun Yet? Sammy is also an incredibly dedicated and generous philanthropist who, along with his wife, Carrie, have donated many millions of dollars to a wide range of charities. Sammy, welcome to In Search of Excellence. Wow, well, that's a lot to live up to. I guess we got a lot of explaining to do. How did that guy do all that? Exactly. Well, let's find out, all right? I always start with our family because from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personalities, our value, and our future. You grew up in Salinas, California, the youngest of four children. We're going to talk about both of your parents separately, but I want to start with your father, Bobby. He served in World War II, and when he returned, he worked at the Kaiser Steel Mill.

Your dad was also a bantamweight boxer who held a record for being knocked down 20 times in a single fight. He was also a disturbed alcoholic who often boxer who held a record for being knocked down 20 times in a single fight. He was also a disturbed alcoholic who often spent your family's rent money on booze, which meant you and your family were regularly evicted. You lived in nine different houses before you were 10 years old, and many of those moves were to get away from your dad. In addition to being what you called the town drunk and a complete alcoholic and madman, your dad was also a wife beater and violent towards his kids. So much so that your mom Gladys would occasionally take you

and your siblings to a nearby Orange Grove to sleep in the car. When you were 10 years old, your mom said that's enough and she left your dad for good. It's a lot. Can you share with us what it was like growing up poor, moving around so much, and having a dad who was a violent alcoholic? And how did all of this affect you as a child and then later on in life? Wow, it's such a deep question. I never knew I was poor because I didn't know any better. And we always lived in poor neighborhoods, lived in a small town. And there really weren't rich people in Fontana at that time. And if there were, I wasn't hanging out with them and going to their houses. So in some ways, being poor was kind of a really great adventure that I think really gave me a sense of appreciation. Every time I got somewhere in life, I would revert back to, wow, this is

great. It's so much better than before. I thought before it was okay. But my mother made it good the way my father was because she ran off with us. So we never got abused. My father never touched me. He only praised me. He would say, you're going to be champ of the world. My father wanted me to be a fighter. So I grew up thinking, yeah, I'm going to be a boxing champion. I'll be the world champion. I'll be rich and famous. And I just had this fantasy going on in my head. And my dad encouraged it. He'd put on the gloves with me, show me how to box. And my friends would come over to the house, and my dad would get a couple drinks in me and say, come on, put on the gloves, son.

You know, my buddies would be going, oh, no, not this again. Because I was pretty good. You know, I had a good jab. I was fast, and I knew how to punch, even at a young age. My father taught me how to do that kind of stuff. So my dad was cool. I mean, I looked up to him. I thought he could beat anybody up.

I was proud of him. It wasn't until I started dating, I started getting involved with girls, that I realized my dad was a town drunk and her dad wouldn't let me come over to her house. And I thought, what's going on here? I was naive. And my dad helped make me that way. And my mom did too. She grabbed us and ran us out of the house and went camping.

You know, when the weather was good, we went camping. So we weren't homeless. We would have been homeless. I've been sleeping in a car, which we did many times. But my dad was, he just really had a drinking problem. Other than that, he had a good heart. He was a really sensitive guy. My dad used to look at this mountain that I used to always say that I could

see that mountain in his eyes. And he would look at this mountain and go, isn't that beautiful? Or he'd look at some tree or some flowers or something. My dad, he was a badass. I mean, he'd punch anybody in the face for just looking at him wrong. I thought, man, this guy's tough, but he's really sensitive. So I kind of inherited that in a way. I'd look at it and see, I want to see what my dad was seeing. And so I think my dad had a profound influence on me and made me want to be somebody and convinced me I was going to be somebody. So I never had any doubt. What about being poor? Did you have any exposure in Fontana? We'll talk about some of the odd jobs you had in a minute, and one of them, how it had an influence on you.

But you said you didn't know that you were poor growing up. There weren't different socioeconomic classes when you were in school? No, no. In school, I was really good at math. I was really good at art, and I was good in gymnastics. So that's what I concentrated on. I didn't pay attention. I didn't do well in English, which it's funny that I'm a writer, my whole profession, but I wasn't really good at English because I didn't, and I hated history. I didn't want to know about what happened. I want to know

what's going to happen right now. So I decided to be in poor. Like I said, my friends are all poor. I'd go to their house and they weren't much better off than me, but some of them were a little better off, but their dad worked at the same place my dad worked. And the reason we were poor is because my dad would get, throw drunks for like a month at a time and not go to work. So we had no income and my mom would leave and she'd do ironings or pick fruit or clean houses. We used to go do yard work and stuff like that. We'd pull up to some house that the yard looked trash and they looked like they might

have had a little bit of money. My mom would go knock on door and say, hey, we'll clean your yard up and stuff for five bucks. And we'd do it, the whole family. We'd jump out and pick berries. We'd go to the strawberry patches and potato fields in Fontana. It was very agriculture around there, close to the Coachella Valley. So we could drive 20 minutes and go work in the fruit or in the vegetable fields. And we did it as a family. It was great. It felt like fun. I'd make my own money. I'd have like $4, man. I go, man, I'm going to go buy a new pair of Levi's, a pair of shoes and a t-shirt with this, you know, in the early 50s. Let's talk about your grandfather and the impact he had on your life. Can you tell us about the

Actillo Lounge, Lord Fletcher's, Frank Sinatra, and the four presidents of the United States? My grandpa, Bio, my mother's father, came from Italy. He was very illiterate, didn't speak English that well. I guess when he got here, came when he's about eight or nine years old on a boat and he worked in a restaurant industry. He was a great chef, but he was like a superstar in the family because he was the only guy. He worked at these great places in Palm Springs and he served Frank Sinatra and he would serve, a president would come in and have a, they'd have a big buffet and he was part of that. And so we, you know, grandpa, and he was a good bullshitter. He was number one, he was a thief and a liar,

which I hate to call him that because he can't defend himself, but he was, we loved him. And I'm named after him, Sam R, you know, Sam Roy. And that's Roy's my middle name. So, but I dug him. He was always uptight. You couldn't mess around his car. He always had kind of a nice car and it would be like, wow, you know, get your feet up, you know, wipe your shoes off before you get in this car. He was, he was like, I go, man, this guy's grumpy, you know, but, but he taught me how to fish, taught me how to hunt, taught me how to cook. me how to hunt taught me how to cook and i just remember pulling up to he lived in a trailer because he was always on the run he never never lived in a house he lived from a tent to a trailer had a new car every three or four years and had a really nice airstream trailer and he would pull that trailer all around different parts of the

country and go fishing hunting uh he'd can all of his goods. He, a renaissance man, he made everything. So I learned how to make food from him, how to cook well and how to eat well. I knew what things tasted like. So if I went to a restaurant, I used to say, man, I really want to go to this Italian restaurant or whatever. And you go there and go, well, this ain't as good as grandpa's. And my mom was a good cook too. So I learned what smells good and what tastes good in food and how to prepare things. He showed me how to do a mirepoix the way his version of a mirepoix. He would chop the onion, the carrots, and the celery, and he wouldn't put them all in the same pan. He would do the carrots first, then into a pot. A little more olive oil.

He'd do the onions into the pot. And I'd say, why do you do it like that, Grandpa? He'd say, because it keeps all the flavors separate. You don't want it just to taste like one thing. You want it to taste like carrots, celery, and onion. And I thought, wow, I took that with me my whole life. And it's the same with a song. You're playing instruments.

You want the bass to sound like the bass. You want the guitar to sound like guitar. You want the drums to sound like drums. You don't want them to sound like a big bottle of mush. And he really had it together. But I learned a lot from my grandpa. Quality of life. There you go. I want to go back for a second and talk about your childhood, early childhood specifically. What were you like as a kid? Were you popular? Were you a leader? As a kid, I was really popular. I was very small. I was short, but I had big sisters that would comb my hair and I had a duck tail when I was five years old, you know, and a big old pompadour and I mean, a jelly roll thing, you know, anything that was in fashion way above my era, I was in. They had me

wearing Levi's customized down low, put the small belt, you know, and my sisters had me looking like Elvis, you know, at all times. And so the girls dug me in school and I was a good dancer. I loved to dance and I would be the first guy on the dance floor, little short guy. So the big guys, I was kind of a little short, tough guy too. You know, I had an attitude. And so the big guys liked me because they'd say, ah, come on, you know, let's take Sammy with us. You know, these older guys, 16, 17 year old, I'm like 10 or 11. They'd take me around and it sounds stupid, but they would get me to go into a situation where they want to get in a fight, you know, go to the next town over at a football game. They'd bring me and I would go around, you know, act like a tough guy and somebody would push me or something. They'd say,

hey man, you're picking on the little guy. I kind of thought I was invincible because I had these big tough guys as friends and the girls liked me. No, I had it going on. I had everybody fooled because I would have a paper out. I'd get up at four o'clock in the morning and go throw papers. I would go to school. I would, after work, I would go wash dishes.

I'd mow lawns. I'd do anything because I wanted to dress nice. So my mom didn't have that money. And after my dad, after they split it completely, you know, we were really poor and I didn't have no allowance,

no nothing, no way of earning money. So I earned my own money. So I always looked like I was probably doing pretty good. But as I started getting in my early teens and I was getting interested in girls going to dances, I wouldn't bring anybody home to my house anymore, man. That was it. You know, I didn't want anybody to see how i lived so i had a kind of a a big front going on in junior high and and i just had one mexican friend guy who lived down the street from me who was poorer than me or just as poor henry aguilar and he's the only guy would let come my house we'd walk from school with a bunch of guys and then him and i would turn off and go down the side street and then we didn't we'd go to our neighborhood, and we used to build model cars and stuff together.

So he was kind of like my homie to hang around at home. I'm just remembering this stuff. This is crazy, I got to tell you. And then, but at school, I didn't hang around with him. He had a whole different group of friends. I started hanging around with people. I mean, I could have been the president of junior high and stuff. I could have been city councilman or whatever they used to have, student councilman.

But I didn't ever want to do those kind of things, but I could have. I was always in all the dances. But like I said, I finally went to one of my girlfriend's houses, and her dad was not. He found out who I was, and he said, he put me in his car and drove me home. He said, come on, get in the car. And he said, he put me in his car and drove me home. He said, come on, get in the car. And he took me out of there. I was over at the house, you know, hanging out. And I guess my dad had beat him up in a bar, had punched him out. Yeah, pretty embarrassing. That's when I started realizing the way of it. You're carrying a little luggage with you, son, your dad

did a rough job around this town for you. Every successful person I've ever met had a bunch of odd jobs growing up. We've talked about a bunch of yours, talked about, I went door to door in neighborhoods around my house asking a stranger if I could pick their weeds. I bagged groceries at Kroger in high school. I dug ditches one summer while they were building the Weight Watchers World Headquarters in Farmington Hills, Michigan. We've talked about you pick fruit, you deliver newspapers and mow lawns. And although your family was dirt poor, your aunt lived in Palm Springs and knew some wealthy people. Your cousin cleaned pools for wealthy families. And when you were nine years old, you cleaned pools with them. Can you tell us about Danny Thomas, the popsicle,

and the influence this had on your future? Yeah. When I saw real money, you know, when I went and cleaned those pools, I saw Alfred Hitchcock's house and Danny Thomas's house. I never even dreamed of having a swimming pool. So I was happy to go clean them. And Danny Thomas comes out, it was like 124 degrees in the summer in Palm Springs. And I'm out there scrubbing on my hands and knees, scrubbing the tile, you know, from the top. And he's going, hey, jump in there, you know? And I went, really, man? All right. You know, and I took off my shirt and my jeans, probably. I can't remember what I was dressed like, but I didn't have a bathing suit on, I don't think. And I dove in the pool and I thought, man, I swam at Danny Thompson's pool. And I used to tell my friends that, you know, and they would think, whoa. And I said,

I told him I saw Alfred Hitchcock in the window, like in his movies where he'd always be looking out a window or something in that scene. And I don't believe I really saw Alfred Hitchcock, but I cleaned his pool with my cousin Chuck and my uncle. But wow, seeing the rich, the person that in Fontana, when I lived there, my dad finally cleaned up for 11 months and we actually rented a nice house. Never owned a house. My mother didn't own a house, or my parents didn't own a house until I bought her one. So I never owned a house.

We always rented, but we were renting dumps most of the time because my mom would think, well, we have to leave. We're going to lose this house anyway. My dad cleaned up for a long time, went to AA meetings and got a real support system from his workers, his Kaiser Steel workers. And we moved to a nice house. And across the street was a guy that owned a sporting goods store and he owned all kinds of real estate. He had a real estate company, the Petersons. And they had a young boy that was about a year younger than me and single kid. He didn't have any brothers and sisters. And they had a three-car

garage. They had a Lincoln, a Cadillac, and a Chrysler Imperial, man. I just remember, and I was a car guy. In 1956, we had a 49 Ford, but we lived in the same neighborhood, but they had this really nice house in that neighborhood. It wasn't really a neighborhood. It was kind of very rural. We had a lot of property. It was just kind of fields. But he had a nice piece of property with the in-law quarters and they had a living maid and all these things. And this guy took a liking to me and my brother because we'd play with his kid. Bobby would come over to the house and say, hey, Sammy, can you come over? Oh, can I come over and play? I'd say, no, let's go to your house. Because man, he had every toy in the world. His mom would make his grilled cheese sandwiches and give us ice cream and all this stuff.

I'm going, man, I really saw how rich people live for 11 months. They took me to Disneyland with him. I saw Disneyland for the first time. They took me to a country club. And they would get the golf country club. They were working for lunch with Bobby. And I'm sitting there going, you know this is like living and that's where i really saw how it was so much what it would be like to be wealthy i mean you know it was just i thought wow i had never even dreamed it but i

think that really elevated my brain to say well i want to live like that you know i'd rather i'm not gonna live like this anymore i'm a I'm going to live like that. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I certainly opened my eyes. And I think it's really important for young people to have an experience like that. And I had it long enough to really say, I know what this is about now. This ain't just a one-time fantasy. Oh, they must not live like this every day. No, these people live like this every day. I really think it's eye-opening and it's enlightening. It expands your consciousness at least to say there is a better life. Some people that just live in a ghetto their whole life and never get out, they don't know any difference. Like when I was young, I didn't know, like I said, I didn't know I was poor. I had no idea. Somebody asked me what I wanted to do

when I grew up. Oh, I want to be a boxer. I'm going to be a world champion. Oh, what are you going to do? You know, when are you going to do that? Well, I don't know. You know, it's like, I don't know even know when I'm going to start. You know, I just goof off with my dad or my friends with boxing gloves. But the truth of the matter is, is that I thought, well, if I'll take a job at Kaiser Steel where my dad's working right now, you know, man, he's making, you know, like 80 bucks a week.

I wasn't thinking big time at all. But until I, I think the Petersons really put that enlightenment into me. The Palm Springs thing was fantasy. It was a movie stars and stuff. You know, those aren't real people. Well, you know, now that they are. Well, some of them. Because you are one.

No, some of them are real people I know plenty of them there aren't okay let's not go there okay there you go all right

at some point in our lives there comes a point where we figure out what we want to do for some it comes very early in life for some it comes later in life

let's talk about when you discovered music tell us about the Sears catalog the fabulous Castiles and sneaking into Swing the auditorium in life. Let's talk about when you discovered music. Tell us about the Sears catalog, the fabulous Castiles, and sneaking into Swing, the auditorium when you were 17 years old. Wow. I wasn't 17, I don't think. I think I was younger than that, because my friend, when I snuck into the Swing auditorium to see the Rolling Stones,

their first American performance, I was 64, maybe. Was that when it was? I don't remember, but my friend was driving. I don't think I was 64, maybe. Was that when it was? I don't remember, but my friend was driving. I don't think I was driving. 1964, the US debut of the Rolling Stones. So is what I saw with that was what I really wanted to be. That and seeing Eric Clapton in the first Cream performance at the Whiskey A Go-Go. I'm going to play guitar like him. First, I wanted to be Mick Jagger. Well, I wanted to be Elvis Presley, and then I wanted to be Mick. And then I said, no, I'm going to be Eric Clapton. He plays and sings. So I'm going to be like Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck at the same time. I'm going to be Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at the same time. How I got

that influence was I decided it was going to be both. But I didn't even play guitar yet. I was just barely starting. I think is what really changed me up was I had a really crazy experience with my dad. He was really in bad shape and he was going to take me into, I got my car, I had a permit, and he had a car. I was able to drive with him even though he didn't have a driver's license. We drove into LA to the Main Street Gymnasium and he said, I want you to train with him, even though he didn't have a driver's license. We drove into LA to the Main Street Gymnasium, and he said, I want you to train with John Velliflor, who had Jerry Corey back in those days, and Mondo Rama, some of those kind of people came out of the Main Street Gym. And we went there. My dad told John Velliflor, I want to get my son a professional life. He's going to go professional. He said, well, has he had any average of life? He'd been fighting his whole life. So he said, okay, it's going to cost like X amount of dollars. My dad went down, gave blood and got the money to get the forms for me to fill out to become

a professional fighter. And I sparred with a real fighter. He hit me in the head. My head was ringing for a week. I thought, man, I don't know if I really want to do this, but hey, I got to do this for my dad. Got back home. My mom saw me filling out the papers.

She starts crying, says, you're not going to do that. Look what it did to your father and blah, blah, blah. And I threw the papers in the trash. And that was my end of my boxing career. So that was an important moment because I gave up on one dream. I was lost for a while, but then I started getting into music. And I can tell you right now, music, first, my mom bought me that guitar from Sears and Roback, $29.95 with a guitar that's,

and the case has got an amplifier in it. So you set it up, plug it in, you're a one-stop shop. It was loud enough to sing to. I got to say, it's kind of perfect for that. You could sing without a microphone. But the bottom line is, I just bought that guitar. Not that one, but I bought one on eBay recently. I found one for like 900 bucks, and I bought it because I thought, that's my first guitar. I need to have that. Even if it wasn't mine, that guitar changed my life. My mom made payments. At $29 29.95 my mom had to make friggin payments that's how poor we were but you know she told me if you learn to play never on sunday on your friend's guitar i'll buy you a guitar so i sat down with him he taught me how to play

never on sunday and i butchered it but but i got guitar, and I never played Never on Sunday again. I started playing Dick Dale's Miserlew and Rolling Stones and Beatles songs. You had your first band in high school when you were 14 years old. You were an excellent student, but after you graduated high school, you wanted to get out of Fontana as fast as you could. You moved to nearby Riverside, California, managed a local music store, and played in a handful of bands, local bands, including the Johnny Fortune Band, Big Bang, Skinny, Dust Cloud, Cotton, Jimmy, the Justice

Brothers, and Manhole. Then you got married and moved to San Francisco. And at some point after moving there, two of your band members were arrested on drug charges. You were broke without a band. And after that, you spent several months driving a dump truck for your father-in-law in New York as a means of supporting yourself until you could put a new band together. Here you are. You dreamed of becoming a musician your whole life, and now you're driving a dump truck. On our path to excellence, all of us have to overcome many challenges and obstacles along the way. We're going to talk about some of your other challenges a little later, but now can you take us back to the exact moment where you got that call, your bandmates are in jail, what you were feeling that day and on the flight back to New York, and while you were driving dump trucks, were you depressed?

And if so, how did you get over that? And as part of that, tell us about the ship and the two creatures inside of the ship who visited you while you were laying awake one night. Man, you just dumped a bunch of stuff in one bucket, brother. First of all, just to correct you, I never drove the dump truck. I didn't even drive it. I worked on the back of it. I was the guy who was out lifting up the stuff, throwing it in the back. My wife's brother was driving her dad's truck.

I wasn't driving a truck. He had the better job than me. But to start with, and also we didn't fly back to new york is what happened is when that what happened up in san francisco somebody gave my drummer acid and uh of course we're in san francisco right playing music what do you expect in the in this era 67 around there he went out and his him the bass player was the leader of the band and the drummer in the bass player roomed together and I had my little room.

And they had community bathrooms. It wasn't even, we didn't even have our own bathroom. It was just rooms, you know, like six bucks a night or something. And we were living above the club we were playing at, backing up these oldie but goodie acts of coasters and the drifters and the Shirelles and these kind of oldie but goodie acts that were coming in and we would play their songs.

Because my bass player was an older dude. He knew it, but he was selling weed. They couldn't live on what they were getting. I couldn't either, but I was making it because I was poor. I guess they might've had more money than me, but it was a Larry Taylor and Dave Arnold. Dave was selling weed. Larry took acid, went out in the street, four o'clock in the morning, finds these two cops walking the beat in North Beach and in the strip club area where we were playing. And he goes, hey, you guys need to get high. And they said, oh, really?

He said, yeah. He said, well, where can we get something? So he said, you guys want to get high? And they said, yeah. He said, come on. He's stoned on acid. He thinks he's going to turn these cops on to getting high. He's like, well, I'm going to change the law.

I've changed the world right here. I'm going to turn these cops on to getting high. So's like, well, I'm going to change the law. I've changed the world right here. I'm going to turn these cops on to getting high. So of course, they go right with him up to the room, walk in the room, arrest the fuck out of him. They take him to jail. And I'm there with my wife, no money. So I went and the manager, the manager of the club, I said, man, he liked me and liked the band, but he took a liking to me, Don Pruitt, a wonderful guy, a wonderful man, by the way, a person that helps other people, even if he's not in a great position. No, these people need help. I'm going to help them. And he said, look, I live in this apartment. They're painting my apartment. Can you paint? And I said, hell yeah. So I i painted made some money enough money to paint

i started went and worked with these guys i made some good friends doing that there was a couple guys that were really cool guys and i'm music one was a musician too so i kind of got myself in the san francisco scene i went back home and uh tried to get it together but my and i said i'm moving to san Francisco someday. I'm going to get my shit together and I'm going to move to San Francisco. There's something up there. And this Don Pruitt guy said, yeah, I'll try to help you out. If you put a band together, bring them here, I'll get you guys some work. I said, cool. So in the meantime, my wife gets pregnant. I get my draft notice and her dad says, I'm sending you two bus tickets. My daughter's pregnant. You're coming

back to New York and you're going to live with us. I'm not going to have this baby out in the streets living like hippies and like bums, you know, because my mom didn't want us living there. She, you know, said, if you're not going to get a job, you can't live here. It was pretty hard times, brother. I got to tell you what I think right now i'm going man i was desperate i packed up my guitar and my amplifier i put wood on the front of my amp the amplifier weighed like 100 pounds one suitcase between us we got on a bus that stopped in every freaking town it took three days to get to rochester new york and uh i went to work on his garbage truck he was tough my father-in-law, who became one of my dearest people I've ever known in my life, later in life. He was tough

on me, man. He wouldn't even look at me. He'd shake my hand like this. He'd turn his head, shake my hands, four o'clock in the morning. You ready to go to work? Yep. Yeah, that was tough, Rochester, New York. When it starts snowing, my brother-in-law was a good mechanic and him and I bought this bullshit little van that had a blown up engine. We put a new engine in and we rebuilt it. We'd come home from working on the garbage truck. You go to work at four in the morning, you're done at seven. So we'd go eat breakfast, come back home, start working on this car. And then I worked in another place at night. I was making in a print shop because I was trying to save some money. I was saving every penny. I'm living with my father-in-law now.

They're cooking. I'm eating their food, not paying any rent. And I was saving every penny. And I wanted to get back and move to San Francisco. So there was a lot of stops in between. But that was my goal, was to get to San Francisco, where I thought I could make it. And I did. That's where it happened but my father-in-law finally started liking me because i had i wasn't a bum i got it

i rolled up my sleeves i could work i knew how to do it had to be done i wasn't like a lazy guy at all never was still ain't but anyway he helped us with the car. The first day it snowed, we strapped my ex-wife in the back. And we strapped this cot we built in the back so it wouldn't roll around and tied it to the walls. Put her in the back of the car because she was pregnant. About four or five months by then. And we drove nonstop, taking turns overnight, 56 hours from New York to Southern California. I rented a house with the money I had, went on welfare, had the baby and moved to San Francisco. Long story short. Can you tell us about the ship and the two creatures inside of the ship?

That happened during that time before I moved to San Francisco. Yes, sir, I can tell you about that ship. We want to hear about it well first of all at that stage in my life i was like 20 years old i didn't know anything about astronomy astrology i didn't know about i'd look at the sky just see stars i never even looked at the sky i was looking at the ground looking for money or bottles or something i could cash in and make money off of trying to make a living, but just no belief in any UFOs. I didn't, you know, anything, nothing. And all of a sudden I'm laying in bed and I have this dream that I was being manipulated some way. And this is before wireless.

This is before remote, even remote control things. And I saw this little ship, like it was a flying saucer, sorry to say, 13 miles away, sitting on this little hillside in Lyle Creek, knew right where the area was. And they were tapped into me with a wireless system. But to me, I see a wire. In my brain, it's all I can think of is they got me plugged in. They're plugged into my brain. And I don't know if they were uploading or downloading. Now, I believe they were just downloading. They're just trying to see what I had to offer. You know, who's this guy?

It was random. I don't believe I'm special from that. I believe I'm special from the experience a little bit, but not, they didn't pick me because I was special and they weren't trying to make me something. I believe this now. So long story short, I'm kind of waking up and I'm seeing what's going on. I'm going, what the hell is this? Two little guys way up there. How is this working? Couldn't put it together, but didn't yell it out. Telepathy. I could hear them. I could feel them. We were

communicating somehow. And they had a numerical system. It was like, not from our numerical system. It was like, and I was unplugged. And they went black. My room turned completely white in the middle of the night. It just turned so white that it was like infinity. And then it went pow. And I opened my eyes. And I thought my eyes were open and all these weird things. And a split second, I was shaking like a leaf.

And it's in the middle of the night. I didn't know what to do. I don't even think I woke up my wife. I didn't want to scare her. It was like scary as hell. But my brain said, what in the hell was that? And I started looking in the sky and I started thinking, wow, I started reading astronomy books. When I got first money I ever bought anything with, it was probably a

telescope. I wanted to look and I started studying the planets. I started studying the cosmos. I started reading Einstein's book, Theory of Relativity. I started reading Ouspensky. It just set me, I got goosebumps in my arms right now, just telling you this. I got them all over my legs. It set me on a quest. I'm going to find out what in the hell that was. And I started believing and I started wondering, what's God? I mean, what are we here for? I didn't think about reading the Bible. I just went to church because my parents made me. I wasn't interested in none of that. It opened my brain. And when your brain is open, you start absorbing other things. And

everything started happening for me from that moment on. Cosmic shit. I decide, oh, I think I'll go back to San Francisco and see if that guy's still there. And walking up, knocking on the door, and I meet some other guy that says, oh, yeah, you've got long hair, bushy hair. He says, you're going to be contacted from UFOs. I don't know if they've been calling them from flying saucers or alien beings, you know, you'll be contacted by alien beings. Guys would look at me and see that I had had that experience, that they knew. I sound like a crazy person right now, but I would have thought people crazy too, but it freaking happened. So that was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Otherwise, I'd have just been living in that

house probably and playing that nightclub. I was trying to get the job at and making a living and having kids and a family. So you moved back to California in the 70s. 1983 rolls around. You're playing in a San Francisco cover band, and a well-known session guitarist named Ronnie Montrose learned about you, recruited you to join his new rock band. You appeared on the first and second albums, which included the first song you ever wrote, Bad Motor Scooter. And a couple years later, you and Ronnie had some conflicts and you were fired from the band. We're going to talk about your solo career in a minute, but when you were the lead singer and got that job, did you at this point think you had made it? Yeah. I didn't have any money yet, but I knew that was the forest I could see at what was making it. I had an album out. I'd been on TV.

And I toured the world. And I hadn't made any money yet. You know, $150 a week is what we made and $10 a day per diem to eat on. My phone was shut off at home and all that kind of stuff. But I couldn't have been happier. You couldn't have got me to be bummed out. the only bummed out thing is when i got kicked out of the band and it's because of my ambition i'm a very ambitious person if i'm in a room with somebody and somebody says hey how are we gonna do this or how does that work or can we do this and if

nobody jumps up and takes the lead boom i'm the first guy say here's how we do this? And if nobody jumps up and takes the lead, boom, I'm the first guy to say, here's how we do it. And here's what we're going to do. And I'd start going. I don't even, I started leaving a dust trail. I'm completely a knee-jerk, spontaneous, don't think no downside exists in my world. And I go for it. And that's the way I've always been. And it scared the hell out of my, any leaders I was ever around. You know, If I had a boss, he'd say, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, kid. So Ronnie thought I was trying to take over the band because I was always coming up with these ideas and writing all the songs. And so his insecurity threw me out of the band. But it's really unfortunate that we never could communicate. I was naive. I didn't know what an ego was. He had an ego. I had never seen an ego. No one told me that there's people that will do the wrong thing

just because of their pride. I never knew anybody like that. Nobody would do that. What? Being naive and being poor, going back to catch us up here again, the poor side of it and the naivety of the whole thing, I think was really important to get me through the hard times. So nothing seemed like a hard time to me. Hell, I'd already slept in a car and I'd already been hungry. I already had nothing. I had to work in fields at four o'clock in the morning, picking fruit, you know, with

my mom and then get up and go to school and then drop me off at school and come back. She'd work the rest of the day. So anything that happened to me was like, this is no big deal. So Montrose, we were living it up. I was living in a hotel room. My drummer is my bandmate, my roommate. We had to double up. We drove our own car, had a station wagon. We drove ourselves from gig to gig. I remember a time in Montrose getting stuck in a hotel because Ronnie Montrose was using his credit card because he had been in Edgar Winterman. I thought he was rich, but he really wasn't. He had made some money.

He had a credit card, and his credit card was maxed. They wouldn't let us out of the hotel. So after that, you started what would become a very successful solo career. You had your first platinum record, Standing Hampton, which had some great songs on it, including There's Only One Way to Rock. Then 1983 rolls around. Your next album, Three Lock Box, generated your first Top 40 single,

Your Love is Driving Me Crazy, which hit number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. And at this point, you're on a roll. Your next album, V.O., comes out, and along with it came your best-known song, I Can't Drive 55, which is one of the greatest rock anthems of all time and which pumps me up every time I listen to it. And at this point, you're headlining in the U.S. and Europe. Three years later, you have your first number one hit with your song Give to Live, which came out after you joined Van Halen.

Can you walk us through all of that? You get fired from Montrose. You're starting your own solo career. You have your first platinum album. You reached the Billboard Hot 100. You've got massive hit, I Can't Drive, 55. And then you have the number one song in the United States. Is this the dream? And was each of these accomplishments on your bucket list? Did you have a bucket list? And at this point, did you really think you had really, really made it and you weren't going to go any further than this? Well, once I got one little taste of fame and fortune, it was the fortune that drove me on then after.

Because once you're on TV, you see yourself, once you have a hit record and all that, it's like, you think, well, I can do this as long as I want. When you're in the middle of a success and you're hot, when I was hot in the 80s, I thought, well, this will never end, number one. And number two, I can do whatever I want because my ego started thinking, yeah, I did all this. I worked hard and got everything I wanted and I know how to do it and I can keep doing it.

But money is what woke me up to the fact that you can have more. You know what I mean? It's like I was living a pretty good life, but I thought, man, if I retire, I ain't going to be able to live like this. I got to keep working. So I thought I had to keep working. So then I started thinking about, well, maybe if I do the right thing with my money and all that, it could change things. But to where I wouldn't have to work if I didn't want to, that was the only insecurity I had was being broke again in my life. So I started becoming driven by money. Not where I would do anything for money, not like that, but driven, hey, if I can make that kind of money, go out and do that, I'll go do it. I'll work my ass off. I'll work 365 days a year. But it wasn't like, oh, you want to go hit baby seals over the head with a hammer for a million dollars? No, no, thanks. I don't need that kind of money. I wasn't like that.

But I started becoming driven, really driven. But the hits and all those things, it was strange because my manager at that time said to me, you're the only artist. This guy was the Beatles tour manager, the Rolling Stones agent, Petula Clark's manager and agent, the Osmond Brothers early manager and agent, and had a band called Sweet. And he took me on as my manager. And he said, you're the only artist I've ever known in my life that success drives you. You get better and you work harder with success. Most artists, when they have enough success where they feel, hey, I got a million dollars or I've got plenty of money, they start

losing their drive and they start getting distracted. And you've seen it again and again, how many people have hit the top and then just disappeared or ruined their life some way. I started working out more. I started running every day. I started practicing more. I sat in my room and wrote songs. I'd come after a show, I'd go to my room with a guitar and I'd write another song. I was driven, driven, driven. He really expressed that. He said, I've never met anybody like you. This is great. You are really, success makes you better. You get smarter. You tighten up your act and all this. And I think he was right because I wanted more. I didn't think I had enough. I know I had enough. I knew I had made it, but I didn't. The dream from then, after 1982, the dream was over. I accomplished much more than I ever thought I would ever accomplish.

And I start dreaming a different dream. I can't explain it, but I just start thinking, no, there's something else that this can bring me. Being a rock star is cool, but man, I'm 40 years old. Man, how long can I do this? Here I'm 74 now, and I'm still doing it, but it does give me pleasure now again. But there was a time where I was just doing it, and not for money, but I was saying, no, I got to keep doing this, kind of for money, but until I find out what else I can do. Everything goes around, comes around, but the dream was over in the 80s, not over like, oh my God. I still had heart and passion, but I mean, I dreamt so much more than I ever thought I would have. This was beyond the dream and the dream wasn't what I thought it was.

So fame and fortune really didn't bring you anything. If you were still had a miserable marriage, you were still going to have that miserable marriage. If you were an alcoholic, you were still going to be an alcoholic. If you were a bad guy, you were still going to be a bad guy. Fame and fortune don't change none of that. All it does is keep you from having to work at something you might not want to do. I really got enlightened to fame and fortune, and I thought, I'm no longer about fame and fortune. I'm about doing what I want to do, and this is going to lead me into something. I started thinking I might want to be into politics. I thought, I could be president if I wanted, or maybe I want to run a big corporation.

I would think like that because I had no education. I never finished high school, so I didn't have a backing from a college with a degree and all this stuff. So I started wanting to do things to show that I could do anything. I was starting to flex my muscles, say, I'm smart as heck. I know how to run that company. I could do this. I could do that. And so I got really, really ambitious and creative in the sense where I would try anything. I was fearless. Let's talk about Van Halen, one of the greatest and most successful rock bands of all time. Van Halen, for those who don't know, is the 19th best-selling music group of all time. It has sold 56 million albums in the United States, another 29 million throughout the world. In 1978, you're playing at a music festival, and

Eddie Van Halen, one of the greatest guitarists of all time, if not the greatest guitarist of all time, came up to you and told you that Montrose had been his favorite rock band, referring to himself as a Montrose freak, and told you that his own music was influenced by Montrose. Fast forward six years, 1985, and your Ferrari BB512i is in the shop for a tune-up, and as fate would have it, Eddie Van Halen also happened to be at the shop that day. He was admiring your Ferrari, and when he asked your mechanic, Claudio Zampoli, about the car, Claudio said it belonged to you. Tell us what happened next. This is just one of those crazy things where the cosmic thing that

happened to me, back with the UFO, the little flying saucer dudes, ever since then, things like this would happen to me. And it just was just pure coincidence, but it just didn't get blown out the window. So Eddie Van Halen says to Claudio, oh, Claudio says, oh, that car belongs to Sammy Hagar. You should call him, get him in your band. And Eddie goes, you got his phone number? Claudio says, yeah. And he sits right down in the office and calls me out of the blue. I just got home from a tour, been home two days, a VOA tour, maybe 120 shows. I was done, happy to be home. And the best shape of my life, though, you know, I didn't, man, I was like chiseled.

He says, hey, Dave quit. Why don't you come down and join our band? I said, oh, man, no. You know, hey, I'm just getting off the road, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, give me a couple of days. And he said, no, you know, hey, I'm just getting off the road, blah, blah, blah. And I said, no, give me a couple of days. And he said, no, come down like tomorrow. No, I said, when do you want to do this? He said, come down tomorrow. I go, oh, no, no, you got to give me a couple of days. Man, I said, man, I just got my hair, I just shaved my head, cut all my hair off because my hair was trashed from sweating every night in the lights. And it was like a haystack

on top of my head. So I cut it all off after most tours and i thought man i ain't gonna go around with like this and and he goes uh i said why don't you come up here and let's try to write some songs see what we got he goes well i got i got some idea you know blah blah so he talks me into it i'm i call my manager i left her he's going i said man i'd love to play with eddie but i said man i don't want to be in that band you know thinking about their image because of the previous singer and and i'm going i'm not that kind of guy, you know? So anyway, I went down and the rest is history, Van Halen. Eddie and I hit it off like just on a creative level. He's going, whoa, you can hit that note. I said, sure, I can hit that. No, you hit higher now. You can't. It goes onto

the piano. What would you sing to this? He starts going, you know, why can't this be done? Then I'm going, he's going, holy shit, man. And I was going, you know,

whoa, whoa, man. Well, try this, try that. They were like using me. Like I was like,

they'd never heard anybody that could, I could sing. It's pretty funny. So you joined Van Halen, which to many becomes known as Van Hagar. And with you as a lead singer, they produced four multi-platinum number one Billboard charting albums,

5150, OUA12, Four Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, and Balance. During that time, the band has nine number one mainstream rock hits with you as a lead singer. Your time with them had a lead singer. Your time

with them had a lot of great moments and some that were not so great. You joined in 1985. You were fired from the band in 1996. Then you returned again from 2003 to 2005. And then either you were quit or were fired again. Can you tell us what those first 11 years were like? You're fronting one of the most popular and successful bands of all time. You're popping out multi-platinum albums, singing in front of sold-out stadiums, 80,000 screaming fans. And from there, can you share with us when you were fired twice, the medical issues, this time involving your pregnant wife, disagreements about their next album, Eddie's alcoholism, and him smashing his guitar on stage, sending shrapnel into the crowd and almost hitting you? Well, you hit on the good and the bad times. So let's start with the good times. Yeah.

That band, when I joined them, we released the first album. We all had our first number one record, straight to the billboard top of the charts, number one for five weeks. I believe that's what it was. Anyway, and the first show, the album wasn't even out and it sold out in five minutes in streetport louisiana and we came out we didn't even have a new album out yet they haven't even released the first single why can't this be loved everything got pushed back blah blah for some crazy reasons and we started the tour anyway and the people tore down the barricade and the rest is history we said man this band the chemistry was just magic. So it was what that being in Van Halen and having that kind of success, that even though I had success, it wasn't quite superstardom. See, I thought, eh, I'm over it. I've done it all. I'm going to cut

my hair off after a few. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know if I'll make another record for another year or two. And then I go right back in the fire. I'm thrown right back in the fire. So like I said, I was in tip-top shape. My voice was preem. I'd been singing for years and really singing at the top of my game. I was on this diet where it was a diet where I didn't eat fat and I didn't eat proteins. It was carbs that actually without sugar, the carbs would just eat fat right off your body. So I had about 11% fat content. I could run 12, 15 miles without breaking sweat practically. So I was a machine, man. So when I joined Van Halen, this machine was like, hey, let's go guys. And these guys are like

drinking and doing drugs. And I'm going, man, hey, come on guys, this ain't working. And everybody kind of got on my routine. I became the leader of the band. Here we go again. Hey, nobody else knows how to do this? I'll tell you what you got to do. Let's go take over this fucking world. And I got my manager, Ed Leffler, in there. So long story short, we took off on a carnival ride

that got me back motivated as a rock star. I said, oh, no, this is real. This is superstardom. I saw the difference. Remember I told you I was kind of saying, I don't know why I'm doing this. Don't know what I really want to do. The dream is kind of over. The dream woke the fuck up real fast in Van Halen and walking out on stage, giving it. We were great. We were the greatest band in the world at that time. I don't care what anyone says. I'll argue with you about anybody. I didn't dare anybody to follow Van Halen in those days, in that first seven, eight years. Then that just started getting

old. The drugs and the alcohol really started kicking in. I was doing quite a bit myself, not in a situation where I needed rehab or where I was hurting my body or my life, but I was partying pretty good. I was girls, lead singer in Van Halen, the biggest rock band in the world, handsome young man out there, multimillionaire, driving Ferraris. You bet I was taking advantage of all that. I was having myself a time in my life, but it wasn't taking a toll on me physically or anything, but it was taking a toll on my marriage. So it ruined my marriage. And then when my marriage, my wife got sick from it, she had a nervous breakdown. I got concerned.

I thought, I got to straighten out here. And then when I started straightening out and not wanting to tour as much as I needed to break, it kind of broke the band up. Kind of, you know, not really that particular. We were kind of going sideways anyway. Eddie was in and out of rehab. Alex had quit drinking but he had gone through a couple divorces in that band ed and val got divorced and things went sideways absolutely and like a marriage or anything else i saw this ain't working no more i

ain't happy in this band all the fame and the fortune in the world isn't working for me. And I need a change. And I met my now present wife. We've been together 30 years, Kari and I. And I fell in love. And when I fell in love, deep in love, you know, I hadn't been in love for a long time. I'd been partying so hard. I didn't even know what love was. And when you fall in love, somebody can come up and say, hey, man, somebody just stole your car. And you go, I don't care. I'm in love, man. And so that's kind of the way Van Halen was. It's like, it's watching the Beatles thing, the whole Yoko Ono thing. That's the way Johnny fell in love. But unfortunately, Yoko was, she jumped into, she joined the Beatles where Kari didn't join Van Halen. But I was in love and I just wanted to be with her. Eddie would say, well, let's practice. I don't want to be home with my wife. I want to

practice. I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to, you know, let's go back on tour. And I say, look, man, you know, I can't just work every day, all day, every day and get nowhere. Cause we just argue. We started arguing about stuff. Cause Eddie just didn't want to finish anything because he didn't want to go back home. That's before he split up with Val. So she had bussed him for being drunk or for being on drugs and he'd get in a fight when he went home. So he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to go home. So he expected everybody just to sit in the studio with him all day, smoke cigarettes and drink. And I'm going, well, I can't do that. I want to be with my new love. I'm in love. I want to go home. I want to go

dinner with her. So we kind of fell apart. It was a tough split, I got to tell you. When finally they called me up and threw me out after I had my first baby, Kari and I got married and had a baby. And it was, wow, disheartening, just like Montrose. I thought, what am I going to do now? And K'm like, that's what, and Kari kept saying, hey, you wanted this, you know, you wanted to quit, but you didn't want to quit. So they just helped you out. And I thought, yeah, but wow, now I get Van Halen, the biggest band in the world, man, you know, it's a nice launching pad, but how can I do better than that? And only thing that drove me then was my ego and my pride. I'm saying, no, I can't get thrown out of a band and disappear.

So I rolled up my sleeves and went right back to work again. Here we go. Sammy can't take a break no matter what he does. God's going, oh, no, you're not going to just lay around doing that. So I put together a new band, made a record, and went out and started a whole new life, a whole new direction, a whole new image. I changed into a lifestyle thing. I just said, I'll never work for fame and fortune or just to make money.

I'll never play with people I don't like again. So we all have challenges and sometimes our greatest disappointments turn into our best opportunities. And let's talk about your incredible success as a serial entrepreneur. There's too many to talk about on the podcast, but I want to focus on two of them. And I want to start with a People magazine spread in December of 1983, which showed pictures from Keith Richards' wedding at the Finisterra Hotel in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. You worshiped Keith Richards, and you're back in SoCal, and you're San Lucas, Mexico. You worshiped Keith Richards and you're back in

SoCal. You're looking at these pictures. You thought the resort looked pretty spectacular. What'd you do next? I told my wife, let's go see that place. She looked it up. It's Twin Dolphins, a hotel that's no longer there. There's a montage resort there now on the same property in Cabo. I say, yeah, you know about that. And I said, I want to go there. And I went and stayed at that resort and I fell in love with that place. I said, this place is killing. And so I went down for my birthday in October and I decided to make it an annual thing. So every October I went down, I said, did that for about three years. And then one time when I was there, I hadn't joined Van Halen yet, actually. This was before Van Halen.

This was 1983, 82, 83, when I first went to Kabul. But when I was in Van Halen, I had already bought a condo, and I was living down there. But I said, I want to build a cantina. I want to build a tequila bar. When I bought my first condo, to put things in perspective, I went to my Mexican friends that I had met down there and the architect friend whose father had built the condos who lived there too. I said, I want to furnish my place. Let's go to Mexico City. He said, oh, no, we go to Guadalajara, man. Let's go to Guadalajara. That's where all the great art is and all the

great furniture makers and just a lot of great artists there you know so i said okay so i had a little airplane so we went to guadalajara and i while we were there i said let's you ever want to go to tequila you know i said yeah let's go to tequila that'd be cool i like tequila you know and uh i hadn't really thought about making tequila yet but so i tasted real tequila and i said, whoa, man, this is unbelievable. 100% agave tequila had not come to America yet. People were drinking tequila with a worm in it back then, you know, 82, 83, before Patron, before Cabo Wabo, Don Julio. I was before Don Julio.

Don Julio was down there, but not in America. So I tasted Don Julio and I tasted a lot of other tequilas from the town of Tequila in Jalisco. So I said, man, I want to build a little cantina, a little club where I can play music when I'm down here and make my own tequila, bring my own tequila. You know, they have a Cabo Wabo tequila. The name Cabo Wabo came from the guy walking down the street. I think people have all heard this before, I think. But the Van Halen guys, when we wrote the song Cobble Wobble, they had no idea what I was thinking. I'm going, I'm going to build it.

I'm going to build the Cobble Wobble. We're going to put that song out. I'm going to build the Cobble Wobble. And I'm going to have my own tequila called Cobble Wobble Tequila. But I didn't think about bringing it to America. I did not dream that dream. Everybody said, man, you were smart. That was before tequila.

You were right in the beginning. And no, I was not smart. I was lucky. My little spaceship guys, intervention again, my brain is always really open from them, that experience. And so I was open to making tequila. So I went down to a distillery. I said, hey, we went to all these places and these farmers, the Rivera family, they said, yeah, you have to bring us places and these farmers, the Rivera family, they said, yeah, you have to bring us bottles. We make our tequila. We sell our tequila to, I mean, we sell our agave to the big tequila makers. They were farmers, but they had their own little private batch.

They make about 20 cases a year for the family. And I said, well, can I have some of that? They said, well, no, you got to bring your own bottles. So I said, okay. So, because I thought it was the best tequila I ever tasted in my life. And we, you know, we had tried 20, 30 different places, went and found out how to get the bottles, went to my other Mexican friend and said, Hey, do you know where we can get bottles made? Sure. I know this guy hand blows them in and I go in and say, okay, we want to order, you know, 150 bottles. Okay. And want to

put them, deliver them to this place, take them down there. They're pouring it in there with siphon hoses. They look like they're full. Okay, that's enough. Put a cork in it to the next one. I mean, it was that primitive. And I was, then I built the Cobble Wobble. Van Halen was involved, but they weren't involved. But I mean, I was still doing it. And my manager said, if you really want this to be successful, you better bring them guys in because they're going to torture you for doing this. Because they were, what's he doing? What's he doing in Mexico all the time? He's not showing up for rehearsal.

We're trying to write songs. He's writing the lyrics in Mexico. And I'm going, damn right. That's where I'm inspired to write lyrics. I come to the studio, walk in, blow out my new songs, my lyrics. Boom, boom, see you guys. Back down to Mexico, I had my own little plane. That kind of freaked him out a little bit,

but we weren't getting into it because we still had a great manager. But anyway, he just said, bring him in. So they become partners in Cobble Wobble. And when the thing, when they threw me out, that ended. But I know I went back to Van Halen, but I was in Van Halen when I started Cobble Wobble. So let's just go back a second

because there are some very interesting details here that I just want to go back to. You're down there, you decide you want to open a performance space. We're not talking about a little bar like with a stage in the back, like the Troubadour in LA, which holds 500 people.

We're talking about a 14,000 square foot venue with indoor outdoor seating for a thousand people your accountant loved it so much that he quit she she quit and then your awesome manager Renata Ravina who was awesome in helping me set this up didn't love it so much either so she convinced you to enlist as you said the Van Halen no not Ren. Renata took Sarah's job as my kind of bookkeeper at that time. She's become my personal business manager for the office and so forth for 30 some years now, 40 years, whatever it's been. But no, Ed Leffler was the manager of Van Halen. And he said, if you're going to do this and you want to get MT, I wanted MTV to have a big party and

film it, the opening of the Cabo Wabo. And he said, it better be Van Halen's Cabo Wabo. Otherwise you're not going to get their support and their, and their MTV is probably not going to support it. So anyway, that he, he got them involved. Okay. So you build it. It's on the edge of the Marina in downtown Cabo San Lucas. It's awesome. If you haven't been there, I've been there lots of times, primarily in college, by the way, where my life now with five kids is a little different than it was now. No, it's grown up now. You're welcome to still come. By the way, I hope we can meet there in a couple of weeks when we're down there for the holiday. Absolutely. I'll let you know when I'm going to be there. Yeah, because I'm going. All right. Awesome. So its motto is where the land ends and the party begins. It opens in 1990

and people made fun of you. They were mocking you. The LA Times wrote an article that said, celebrities just can't resist opening a restaurant. And at first it's bleeding money and lost money his first three years. It was $300,000 in debt. We've already talked about what happened on the venue side. So Van Halen, you bought back what they had put in. You're an optimistic guy. Then you leave Van Halen. A music manager named Shep Gordon came to visit you, gave you some advice. Right around that time, you also met your wife, Carrie, who told you that you reminded her of somebody and urged you to meet him, which you did. What did Shep tell you?

Who did Carrie want you to meet? And as part of this, tell us about Juan Eduardo Nunez, the Highlands of Jalisco, and the $5 gas cans. Man, you are deep, brother. Listen, rewriting my book now in my own voice now you know like something i refuse to do well first of all shep gordon a brilliant guy he saw he came to cabo and he saw me down there saw me go on stage in a bathing suit no shirt and he's going why don't you roll this to go why are you putting on leather pants to go on stage and then you're, and going on tour?

And why wouldn't you just do this lifestyle thing? He goes, he turned me on to the word lifestyle. And I'm going, I don't know what lifestyle is. And my wife says, you know, you need to go see Jimmy Buffett. You know, she goes, you remind me of Jimmy Buffett. And I said, Jimmy Buffett? Wow, that guy, he's still around?

She goes, oh man man he's huge i'm gonna get out of here you know because she came from virginia in the east coast and down in florida and all that you know jimmy was like selling out arenas you know and amphitheaters and wasn't coming to the west coast or i i he was just off my radar for some reason because he was off of everybody's radar. He was doing his little underground lifestyle thing. So I go to see him. I say, he's playing where? That place holds 19,000 people.

Packed. Can't get a ticket. I'm calling a promoter. I want to see Jimmy Buffett. Can you give me some good seats or something? He's going, you want to be in the audience? I'm going, yeah, I want to see what this guy's about. He's going, man, people are going to recognize.

I said, nobody's going to recognize me at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Did they? Yes, they did. So anyway, long story short, Shep Gordon said, yeah, like Jimmy Buffett. And the light went on. And I just said, boy, yeah, I can just go out there as myself. You mean? Because I mean, I was living on the beach. I became born to beach.

It's me. I'm all about the beach. And I thought, yeah. After Van Halen, I just started. I started doing it in Van Halen, to be honest with you. But then when I got thrown out, I went 100%. I don't think I wore long pants again. And I got on stage barefoot, T-shirt, the way I rolled into town. I just went on stage that way. And I started casualizing my show instead of trying to put on a show. I went out, had waitresses bringing me drinks and stuff and drinking Cabo Wabo tequila and making margaritas on stage. I'd say, hey, you guys got a minute here?

I guess we've been up here an hour and a half. I'm going, I guess we could take a break and come back and play another hour for you. But why don't I just take a break right here? I'm going to make myself a cocktail. I'm going to show you how to do it. I did that kind of stuff. I built a brand without knowing what in the hell I was doing. It's like my favorite line is, no, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know how to do it. And that's kind of the way Shep Gordon told me. He said, roll it together, man. The lifestyle brand, sell your tequila, build your clubs all over the country and

Cabo Wabos. And he goes, you got a brand, brother. And I'm going, a brand? You know what I mean? I didn't even think of myself as a brand at that time. So Shep really enlightened me to all that. And Kari enlightened me to Jimmy Buffett. And I rolled this stuff together. And here I am today, walking brand. I got tattoos, a Cabo Wabo tattoo. I got the new Santo tattoo. I got the Beach Bar cocktails. I got...

But you know what's funny? I know you don't want to jump ahead, but it's what I want to say about all this is that it is all rolled together in one person and I own it all. I don't endorse. So that's why I feel comfortable promoting my brands. I said, no, I invented that. I made these. I went and bought the bottles and took them down to the tequila place and helped the guys pour it in there.

Then I put the name on it and said, here, it's mine. It's my taste. It's my bottle. It's my bottle. It's my everything. So I'm not endorsing. When you go out and promote an endorsement, you're doing it for money. When you go out and promote for yourself, you're doing it for a reason because you want to be successful at what you do and you believe in your product and that it's the best product out there. Otherwise, I wouldn't be promoting it. Drinking tequila back then wasn't nearly as popular as it now. It took you a while. Things eventually started to take off. In 2002, tequila sales in America

were growing at an average rate of 6.2% a year. You started making Cabo Wabo tequila in 1996. You're growing it slowly for the first three years. At that point, you're producing around 2,000 cases a year. 1999 rolls around, you started to distribute it. Seven years later, Cabo Wabo was selling 147,000 cases per year. And you'd become the second best-selling tequila in the United States, behind Jose Cuervo. And at that point, you started to get some... And Patron.

And Patron. So, see, Jose Cuervo was the biggest-selling tequila. Patron was And Patron. So, it's the... Jose Cuevo was the biggest selling tequila. Patron was the biggest selling premium brand. And Cabo Wall was a premium brand. I was number two premium band in the world. And at that point, you started to get some buyout offers from huge beverage companies. First, you thought, I don't really need the money. What am I going to do? You're going to pay some tax, put it in the bank. So you say no to $20 million, then $30 million. At this point, you're making around $4 to $5 million as a rock star, which is itself is a ton of money. But this is a different kind of money, what people refer to as fuck you money,

putting yourself in a new stratosphere of wealth. And then a company called Grupo Campari called, and they upped the ante. How high did they up it and who did you invite to that year's October birthday bash and what happened then? Well, I invited the owner and the attorneys and the CEO of Grupo Campari to come to Cabo to talk. They offered me $67 million, which was 10 times earnings. I was making an average of $6.7 million profit from Cabo Wabo Tequila for the last three years. I was making a little more than that the last year because it was growing every year. But if you average the last three years, it averaged 6.7 million and they offered me 10 times earnings. And I was flabbergasted. I was

like, you know, my God, I have a 20% partner in Mexico and that's it. I own the rest. And I'm going, man. Then I started thinking, and it's making so much money. It's like, I didn't need money. I'm going, what am I going to do with that money? Then I got nervous. So I invited him down to talk and I was thinking about doing the deal. And then I said, you know, it's not going to change my life. Why am I doing this here? I'm going to lose my brand. I'm in love with growing this brand.

This is the most fun I've ever had outside of sex and rock and roll is growing this brand. Seeing it grow, it was just unbelievable. Patron by then had taken off and they broke their deal with their spirits partners, Seagram's, and they hired 40 people and they spent, I heard like $10 million that year and started their own really spirits company. I was associated with another company that was partners. They were distributing and importing and all this stuff. I didn't have employees. I had four employees and nothing. It was really low operating expenses. I was making all profit. So long story short, I didn't want to do that. I said, I don't want to do a Patrona,

but then they took off and they got to like three, 400,000 cases and they really started taking off and everyone saw that. So Grupo Campari came to me and they wanted this bad. They said, man, you're like, I'm number two. They know that I'm underachieving. So I said, no, I sat down with Luca Garavoglia, the lawyer at that time was a guy named Stefano and Bob Kunze, the CEO of Campari. And he was brand new. He had just come in. Then the old guy was the guy that done the deal with us or was making the deal. And it's kind of complex. That's why I'm bringing this up. Because Bob, I don't think was a fan. I think he was saying, you guys are crazy. You're painting this guy way too much money. Look at this guy. He's walking around in a bathing suit. He's living on a beach. He's a bum. You know what I mean? He's not going to run this company right. I don't know

if that's what he was thinking, but in my head, I knew he didn't really relate to me like the other guys. Luca Garavoglio is one of the greatest men I've ever met in my life, the owner of Campari. And he is brilliant. And I'm still dear friends with him. I always sign my emails forever grateful, Sammy, for what he did for me. But anyway, so I said, no, you know, guys, I've got cold feet. I don't want to do it. I'm sure they thought I was negotiating, but I wasn't.

And my friends around me, Shep Gordon and people that I'd been talking to about all this, they're going, have you lost your mind? I said, no, I'm making $7 million a year. I'm making three or four as a rock star in star you know in my music why would i do that what am i gonna do with that money i said give me 60 million bucks i'm gonna go stick it in a bank i'm sure that makes me that scares me to death you know what i mean so but i said no i don't think it just doesn't change my life and uh for the you know the right way and they said well what would change your life i said what do you mean what amount and they said, well, what would change your life? I said, what do you mean? What amount? And they said, yeah, it's Campari guys sitting at my table, right in my house. And I'm

going, I don't know, like, you know, like a hundred million dollars or something like that. And they looked at each other. Yeah. Okay. And I fucking fell on the ground, rolling on the ground, laughing. I couldn't control myself. Everybody's getting worried about me. They thought he's going to have an aneurysm or something. He's going to have a heart attack. He's going crazy. Look at him. I couldn't stop laughing.

It was the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life. It was just funny, peculiar, funny, ha ha. Every kind of funny. And these guys, you know, Italians, they're fun loving guys. You know, they start laughing. Ah ha, you know, he's a very happy, you know, look at Sammy. He's a very happy, you know, and I very happy. Look at Sammy. He's very happy. And I did it.

And it took a year to do the deal. Very interesting what happened to the brand after that. But it's still doing well. But it went way down because for a year, my distributors knew I was going to sell it, my partners. If you're going to sell it, what the hell are we going to put any money into? We're not going to pay attention to it. Their new distributors, the enemy, the guys that have been saying, hey, what does he know about tequila? Sammy, he goes, ah, Cabo Wabo's garbage. You

should buy ours. Those guys are now going to sell it. They're going in trying to sell it. I thought you said it was garbage. Now you're trying to sell me. It really went down. It got cut in half by the time the deal was made, But the deal was still the deal. And it was, I tried to keep 20% of the product. So I sold 80. I got 80. And then there was a $4 million in the pipeline that came through after sales that were money that was owed and this and that, and it came back to me. So when you say it was $94, $93 million, it was really a $100 million deal.

And I am such a stupid fuck that I said, no, I want to keep 20% and sell it. I thought, oh, they're going to build it up. My 20% will be worth more than $100 million. And the truth of the matter is it went way down. And after five years, I wanted to get rid of the non-combatant. So I sold the 20% back for $13 million. So I didn't make what I thought I was going to make. So I lost $7 million on the deal. Yeah, but Santo is coming soon. I mean, Santo is right here and right now. It's doing phenomenally well.

So congratulations on that. But I want to talk about some of the marketing things you did. You talked about the song Cabo Wabo. You wrote when you were at Van Halen. It was the fourth single on the O things you did. You talked about the song Cabo Wabo. You wrote when you were at Van Halen. It was the fourth single on the OUA 12 albums. And as you said, the Cabo Wabo is really the Cabo Wobble. The guy is drinking too much, walking home from the bar. But it was just a song. 11 years later, before you sold the company, you wrote the song Mas Tequila, which was an immediate hit. And when you played it, you'd bring people on stage, you'd bash a tequila bottle pinata full of confetti. You would beat a 20-foot tall replica of the blue

glass Cabo Albo bottle with your guitar. You would play a trumpet that shot fireworks out at the end of the song. And then you've got those swim trunks. You got the shirt, the flip-flops. But you talked about this. I mean, you hadn't spoken with Van Halen in 10 years. They told you you couldn't wear the Cabo Albo t-shirt on stage. So you get the Cabo Albo tattoo on your arm and you're wearing short sleeve shirts and the Van Halen guys hate you for that. You drink tequila on the Jay Leno show

to promote what you were doing and you were criticizing it. So who cares? If you hadn't done all those things, it probably wouldn't have been as successful. But what you did do is you became the OG. You became a model for other celebrities to follow. There's actually an iPhone app called GrapeStars that tracks celebrity spirits and wines. And it's really a thing. There's 86 right now. And you've got George Clooney and Randy Gerber started in 2013.

Costa Migos, five years later, it's a billion-dollar sale. Michael Jordan, Sincoro Tequila, $1,600 a bottle. The Rock, Dwight Johnson launched a tequila last year. It's one of the fastest-growing spirits brand everywhere. And then, of course, there's Kendall Jenner, who in February of this year announced to her 200 million Instagram followers she was launching 818 Tequila, which sold out in four hours. People from 80 countries. And it's just crazy how you did this. And I want to move that into passion because I think you've got a real, and then I think you've got something else going on with these other celebrities. In terms of passion, let's expand on it a bit. Can you achieve excellence if you don't have a passion for what you're doing? And as part of this,

what are the three or five most ingredients to our path to excellence? Well, passion, a great product, and hard work and determination. If it don't happen overnight, if you've got a great product and you really believe in it, then eventually you're going to make it happen. It's going to happen. It's just got to be good. If it's not good, it'll come short on you. If you don't have enough passion, you'll quit, or people won't believe you. If you don't work hard enough, it ain't going to happen. So those three things, hard work, passion, and a great product. You've got to have a great product if you're going to stand behind it. So that's why I don't endorse. I make sure that products is up to my standards. But the way I promoted was so unique that I saved myself $40 million. Most people building a brand has spent about $40 million nowadays.

It's pretty much the, it used to be 10. When I first started, 10 was the Patron model. And then you keep spending as you go. But I mean, the big number to get in the game is about 10. It's 40 now. There's no question about it. The Costa Migo guys, I have no idea what they spent. But George and Randy, mainly George, did a ton of work like I did by going and meeting people, throwing parties, getting written a big suite in Vegas and inviting all the influential people to drink their tequila.

And they got all sending it to Christmas time. Everybody got a bottle, you know, and people talking about it. He went to all the favors he could get in the movie industry for the Grammy Awards, a bottle on every table, or certainly at the back bar when you went to get a drink. That all came this way I did it. I started out by I went on tour, built the Cobble Wobble stage, had the big bottle, like you said, had the waitresses coming out, bring me the drinks. It was Cobble Wobble, Cobble Wobble, Cobble Wobble, everything I did, tattoo on my arm, Van Halen. Eventually, I start promoting getting that in the venues, which was really tough. Now, it's a piece of cake.

If I say, if I'm going to play, if I'm going to play your venue, you got to put my booze in there. You got to put my Santo in there, put my beach bar rum or my cocktails, something, or else I'm not going to play. I don't play just for money anymore. I play to promote my brands and have my fans to be able to experience it. Then they go out and they're like, you have this little army of people. They walk into liquor stores and bars, hey, I want a shot of Santo tequila, you know, or hey, I want this or I want that. That's how I promote it. And it saved me $40 million, you know, you might say. And everybody's doing it now. I don't think everyone is passionate about it. I don't think everyone, I think 90% of these people are doing it for money because they saw how much money I made and how much money Clooney made. They're probably looking at Clooney now. Half the people that I run

into is, oh, you make tequila? Well, you're like George Clooney. And I'm going, well, yeah, okay. I guess you could put it like that. Let's talk about the importance of being prepared and its huge role that it plays in our success. One of the hallmarks of my own career has been to be the most prepared person in the room. It started in college. I'd go to the library at least three hours a day when I had nothing going on. I'd study for finals more than a month before I had any way ahead of time for at least eight hours a day starting two weeks before finals. And with very limited exceptions, there wasn't a test in college I took where I didn't know I was going to get an A.

I got one B plus in all of college. I graduated top 1% of my class. Then I went for a job interview with Eli Broad, who at the time was one of only two people in the world who had started two Fortune 500 companies from scratch. I went into that interview with the goal that I'd be the most prepared person ever to meet with them. I knew if I landed that job, it would change my career and my life forever. I spent 40 hours, 40, preparing for that job interview. And I achieved my goal despite a horribly unsuccessful legal career who had three jobs in seven months after I graduated from law school. I was completely unqualified for the position and they hired me at age 27 to be the assistant to the chairman. So now when I coach

people looking for a job or whatever they do, I tell them that preparing doesn't mean spending five minutes on a couple of Google searches. It means studying and preparing for whatever you do, like it's a final exam or like your future depends on it, which it often does no matter what you're doing. Being the most prepared person in the room has served me incredibly well. It's allowed me not only to achieve these results in a much, much faster way, but it's also allowed me to achieve results I never would have been able to do without it. How important was preparation to you for your own success? And can you give us a couple of examples? Well, so much different from yours, but same.

Prep is the most important thing. If you're not prepared, you're just not going to succeed, unless you're some kind of magician. I prepped so much different. As a musician, I picked up my guitar and I sat in my room every second of my waking hours when I wasn't eating or doing something, driving a car or something I had to do. I had that guitar in my hand and I was prepping for learning how to play them licks, learn how to understand what i'm doing and write a song you know writing songs prepping for an album to me would be writing 28 songs for a 10 song album i'd spend three months in the studio writing and writing and writing and writing that was my style of prep it's so much different than what you had to do. I mean,

what you have to do for a business thing. The thing I didn't prep for was my tequila business. I didn't prep for that, but I did spend a lot of time there drinking tequila. And I don't mean getting drunk. I just mean tasting and tasting and tasting until I had one that I said, this is it. Don't distill it three times. I like it better distilled twice. I like it when you cut the agave a little closer, lose product. It's going to be more expensive, but you're losing 30%, like what we do with Santon, what I did with Cabo Wabo towards the end.

I said, how are we going to make this better? How are we going to make this better? That's the same thing. It's really just learning your craft and finding out what makes it the best, which is, once again, great product. And then my heart is in it. When I tasted Santo Blanco, when we got it right, when we could trim that agave more and more and more and said, I don't care. They said, well, it's going to be expensive. I don't care. I don't need to make the same margin as somebody like Casamigo. They're making mediocre tequila. I'm sorry. They are. And I'm not going to do that. I'd really have the best tequila in the world than the biggest tequila in the world. I'm not trying to make Jose Cuervo or

Salsa. I'm trying to make Sammy's Santo tequila or Sammy's Cabo Wabo, Cabo Uno, the last one I made, the best tequila ever made, the best Añejo ever on the planet. No one will ever make a better tequila. And it's because I just don't cut corners. And so my prep was tasting and going back and saying, what else can we do? Using other people's knowledge to make the best product so that when I said, when I stand there, talk to you, and tell you that this is the best tequila of the world, I can look you right in the eye. I can say, okay, buddy, blind tasting. Pour mine in one glass. Pour your favorite three over here and mix them up, and I'll tell you which one's mine. And I can do that, and I can still do it right

now with confidence because I know what it tastes like because that's the prep. That's the thing. And I'm a big believer. You got to do the homework. You don't just go down to there and find some guy that'll put your name on it, let you put your name on his shit like every one of these people are doing. I'm sorry. Some of it's good. Some of it's better than others. Some of it's mediocre. Some of it's crap. They probably don't even know what good tequila is. But if you just go put your name on it, you ain't taking the ride. Going down there and finding it and working with the guy, how can we make it better? And you learn and you learn. And then you eat the food that they're feeding the pigs, they're feeding

the pulp the pigs are eating that. And then you roast one of them pigs and you're drinking tequila and making tacos. I mean, come on, brother, If you miss all that by just go slapping your name on it down at the lawyer's office, you can make all the money you want. It ain't going to make you happy like this. This makes me happy. The tequila is awesome, by the way. Your partner, Miles Scully, is passing it out like nobody's business. He sent me some bottles here. I have it behind me. I encourage everyone to go and buy it. It's phenomenal. It's the best tequila in the world, straight up. I just told you why, and you can make it yourself too if you want to, but most people are greedy and they would rather make more money per bottle than have better product per money, but whatever. I'm getting arrogant. Has arrogance got anything to do with fame? No, it'll bite you in the ass eventually.

It'll make people hate you, therefore hate your product. You're confident and you have the track record and resume to say that. I don't take it that way at all. And you may or may not be biased about your product. It's selling very well. People love it. And the proof will be in the pudding. But it is really awesome.

So congratulations on the launch of that, Brad. Let's switch gears. We have a few more topics to cover. Let's talk about our fear of failure and the insecurity that nearly all of us have. I've had some success in my career, and I failed a lot too, and I still fear failure. Most people I do, it's one of our great motivators. You've told people that you've never felt secure about your music. Given all of your success, how on earth can that be? And is failure one of your great motivators? Well, I don't know if failure is because I think I told you in the first part of this interview that I'm fearless and I kind of feel like I never see a downside.

If I've got a fault, it's I never see the downside. Because if I see the downside, I do get scared. If I think something a fault, it's I never see the downside. Because if I see the downside, I do get scared. If I think something can go wrong, I'm one of those guys, oh shit, it's probably going to go wrong. Because I'll get in one of those insecure moments at four o'clock in the morning when I wake up in the middle of the night and when I'm worried about something and I start worrying about everything and it's in 10 times magnified and I'll ruin my next day and I'll lose 12 hours of good hard work I could have, good hard positive work I could have done. So I try to stay away from fear, but I fear failing. Yes. I fear rejection. I hate to say

it, but it's probably from my poor childhood. I don't want to be rejected. I don't want somebody to say, oh, that guy, he ain't any good. Don't go see that guy or his booze isn't any good, man. He's a phony. Ooh, I don't necessarily fear that. I hate that, but I don't like it. So I guess I'm fearful of it. No one's saying any of those things about you. I'm a fairly well-liked guy. I must admit. I make friends, not enemies. I try to anyway. You've worked so hard to get where you are today and your immense success, it affords you a lot of freedom and to do things that you love to do. I think it's very important for us to reap the rewards of our hard work and have fun. You love your Ferraris, you love your

birthday bash in October. What else are you doing for fun? Wow. At my age now, I'm really running out of things that really interest me. I've got everything. I've had it. I'm able to have anything I want. And that's a very interesting position to be in. I'm a little bit afraid of that, of where this is going for the rest of my life. I'm not excited about a lot of things anymore, and it bothers me. And I don't know if it's my age. It's something I'm dealing with. And I've never said this to anyone, but I've been thinking about it a lot. I wrote a new song. I made a new record with my band, The Circle, working with David Cobb, one of the greatest producers I've ever worked with in my life, probably the greatest, and I've worked with the greatest producers of all time. David Cobb is just, he brought things out of me that I can't tell you. I asked him to

do. I said, push me, get me back, make me do what, be as great as I was when I wanted it so bad I would kill myself to do it. And so he pushed me real hard. And I wrote this line called, when is the last time you did something for the first time? It's just a line in a song. And I'm starting to try to live that way now. I'm trying to say that maybe will make me happy if I do something. Go, wow, I was so afraid to do that, or I never thought about doing that, and I did it. And wow, that was a blast. It puts a smile on your face to do something that new at my age. And even with your wife, and we've been together 30 years, and it's like, yeah, let's try something new. You know what I mean? It's like in the bedroom, wherever,

the kitchen. I really think it's important to push yourself like that because when you start losing as you get older and you've in my position, I don't think everyone's in my position, but anyone that's got enough money to do anything and enough, not just money, it's the ability to do anything I want practically. And you're not excited by doing some of those things. It's kind of a bummer, man. So I'm sitting there going, what makes me happy? And I'll tell you one of the silliest things. I love planting a garden. My wife and I, she's really got a green thumb. Shit grows, man. She puts it in the ground, it grows. And we put in a garden, all of our homes, everywhere has

a garden. And if I could, I would have chickens too, because I love chickens and I love fresh eggs. And I like to get up in the morning and go get those fresh eggs and make breakfast, make pancakes, whatever. I like doing creative things in the morning and go get those fresh eggs and make breakfast, make pancakes, whatever. I like doing creative things in the yard. Simple thing like walking out and seeing my tomato garden and picking those tomatoes and going and making a fresh pasta, fresh tomato sauce and the basil from the garden and everything. Oh, honey, I need another onion. Go out and get me an onion. That makes me happy as fuck.

Okay. I mean, that really makes me happy. And I've found that simple things in life sometimes are really what it's all about. Jumping on my airplane and flying to New York to have dinner with somebody don't make me happy, you know? It's like, fuck, I got to, ah, I don't feel like going to New York, you know? You know what I mean? It's like, well, you got your own plane. So what? I don't feel like sitting on it. You know what I mean? I'd rather be on the beach here eating my tomatoes than in my garden, you know? So that's kind of where Sammy's at today. Thank you for sharing that.

I'm honored. I'm glad that we're unique here. And I'm happy that you told it here first. I also have a garden at my house. I love gardening. We grow apples, oranges, figs, tangerine, tomatoes, avocados, herb garden, rose garden, tomatoes. We have three different kinds of peppers that we grow. We grow our own pumpkins for Halloween. We've squashed watermelon and I love it. I'm not doing all the gardening myself. We have someone to help with that.

But I love going out there, picking the fruit of the trees. I have two very young kids, five and one and a half. And I mean, we just love it. We absolutely love it. You get out there and we produce too much of it. You know, when they all bloom at once, you know, you can't eat it. So I'll give it away to friends who love it. It's what your neighbors are for.

That's what you're... It's organic. We're not spraying anything on them. Let's talk about your incredible generosity and philanthropy. Since 2008, you and Kari have donated more than $4 million to local communities with a special focus on funding food relief and children's causes, including helping terminally ill children where their families run out of money. Can you tell us more about that? How important is giving back on our path to excellence? And what's your ultimate goal with your philanthropy? Well, my ultimate goal is

to have more businesses that I will give 100% of the proceeds that I receive, like my Sammy's Beach Bar and Grills in the airports. That's where I started it. A guy came up to me and said, before I had a foundation, I finally got a foundation. Makes it easier because you give a dollar, it goes there. You don't have to give 50% to the government. If the government's not going to take care of these people and feed these people, then I'm going to. And that's my philosophy, is that you do what you can and you do it in your community first. If you can afford to send money to Africa, God bless you, you do what you can and you do it in your community first. If you can afford to send money to Africa, God bless you, you know what I mean? But take care of, I believe, where you can see it. Guy across the street ran into some hard times, you know, help him out, you know what I

mean? Like you help your neighbors and community out and your family first. That's my philosophy because I don't have enough. Even Warren Buffett can't take care of everybody. And he's given half of it away and he still can't take care of everybody. So anyway, so I focus on feeding people first. But when I started the Beach Bar and Grills, a guy came up and said, hey, you've been successful at Cabo Wabo.

Do you have any other ideas? I run HMS Host, which is concessions in airports. And we're wanting to put nicer restaurants and better food products in. Now, this is a long time ago. And I said, oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And I said, yeah, what about Sammy's Beach Bar, Beach Sand and Grill or something? I said, no, I don't want to put sand in the food. How about Sammy's Beach Bar and Grill? Yeah. He said, sounds great. Well, what kind of food would you have here? I'm sitting here looking out my window and cobble on the phone and I'm looking at the ocean saying, I got to get down to the beach, man. I got to get off this phone call. And the guy said,

what kind of food? I said, well, you know, like anything but pizza or pasta, you have to do that right. So, you know, like really good burgers and good salads. And let's say a mom and dad and their two kids come in and the dad says, man, I just want to have a hamburger and a beer. And the mom says, oh, I just want to have a salad and a beer. And the mom says, oh, I just want to have a salad. And then the kids are, oh, I want some nachos and some French fries. And okay, we're going to have all that. And we're going to do it good, do a good job. He said, hey, it sounds great.

I said, okay. He said, can you write up a menu? I said, yeah, grilled cheese. And I wrote up this menu, sent it to him. They opened in Maui and it exploded. They did triple their business than the previous thing. And I gave all that money to Maui. So then I thought, well, let's do more of these.

Okay, let's do one in Cleveland. Okay, boom. Oh, let's do one in Vegas. Okay, boom. And I give the money to those communities. I think it's important that you stay in the community. Like I said, these things spit out a couple hundred thousand dollars a year for the community. And I give it to the community.

But I can't spread that out too far, especially when you're dealing with children that are my biggest, it's hard for me to even talk about, I may stop, but terminally ill children. Can you imagine you have children? Just imagine if one of them are terminally ill, and then imagine if you couldn't, I mean, you can't help them to begin with if it's terminal, and then what if you couldn't afford to even make their life as good as you could until it's over? That, I can't deal with. And it's the most expensive one because the medical system is so expensive. The government won't allow you to buy them a car to drive for the treatments for a kid that maybe

has to be on dialysis. So you can't buy him a car because then the government's, oh, they have income. We can't, you know, got to cut this off here. I don't know what it is. There's some weird laws. I don't want to change the law and I'm not against the government. I'm not anti-government. I'm all for it. But for me, so I try to make transportation for them and then i find hospitals that will tell me in maui the maui hospital general they give me their top 15 worst scenarios and i can only do about one or two a year and i do them and i give them transportation i fly the parents to the honolulu with them to get better treatment sometimes where they can get... Anyway, it's something you don't brag about, and it's something you just do out of the goodness of your heart. And I just believe the simplest one is feeding people. If you can only afford $10 a

year, give it to a food bank, your local food bank. Yeah, that's amazing. My two main things that I give to is foster care. My grandmother's 103. She was raised in foster care and then sick children, kids with cancer. So we share that DNA. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask a couple of open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast fill in the blank to excellence.

Are you ready to play? Man, you got my brain is scrambled right now. Playing sounds fun. Yeah, yeah, let's play something. You've been having fun so far, haven, you got my brain is scrambled right now. Playing sounds fun. Yeah, yeah, let's play something. You've been having fun so far, haven't you? Oh, absolutely. But you've really dug me in deep. I had no idea when I told you and when I asked your producer when I was talking to him earlier

before you came on, I said, what is this about? And he said, oh, it's going to take you through your life. I'm going, like from starting with your childhood, I'm going, holy shit, I should go back and read my book real quick and brush up. Because it's going back and remembering things properly, getting dates right. No, it gets tough. I've done a lot. Okay, but let's play. Here we go. When I started my career, I wish I had known I was going to do it this long. What would you have done differently if you had known it was going to be this long? I don't know, but I wish I'd have known.

I don't know why, but I thought I would be done at 40. I might not have been in such a hurry. I may have taken more time on things. I don't know. I'd say, I got the rest of my life to work this out. I got the rest of my life to finish this record, whatever. I always felt like I was desperate. I always felt like, oh, I got to get this done. Oh, man. Oh, man. Next year, I could be over next year. Oh, my God, I'm going to be 45 next year. If I'd have known I was going to still be doing this at 74, I wouldn't have stressed. There you go. That's what I would have done different. I would have had even more fun. How about that? The biggest lesson I've learned in

my life is? You never know what's going to happen, good or bad. You never know. Shit happens, COVID. You have four kids. The biggest lesson I've taught my kids is don't lie. There's no reason to lie. It will bite you in the ass. You tell the truth at all times. The whole truth, you tell it. You don't have to say, if you're not asked something, you don't have to say it. You know what I mean? You don't have to, that'll help you because it's hard not to lie sometimes. You go, man, I'm a... But if somebody doesn't ask you, you don't have to tell them. But if you're asked, tell the truth, especially to me. Going forward, my professional goal is? Try to be better than ever at anything I do. try to elevate my expertise. My biggest personal goal is?

Stay healthy, live to be 100, stay out of a wheelchair and bedridden, and just live right to the end like I am right now. You would love my grandmother, 103. I was in Detroit last week where I grew up, visiting her, still lives alone, raised in foster care. What a life. I was in Detroit last week where I grew up, visiting her, still lives alone, raised in foster care. What a life. She was telling me stories last week about buying her first car and I don't know, it was $150, something like that. And all the cars she had, it was just, it was so cool for me to see and for her to have the perspective. I mean, the radio came out, the TV came out, the phone was something crazy, a computer was crazy to talk to someone on your phone. Airplanes, man, airplanes. Airplanes, airplanes, the first airplane ride filled with cigarette smoke everywhere, causing everybody

cancer on that plane. I mean, just crazy stuff. What's your biggest regret? Oh, geez. Oh, my goodness. Oh, God. I'm not sure I have one. I can't regret it, but I wish I would have been able to help my father. But it's not my fault. He died before I made it. But if I would have made it and had the funds and the means, I could have helped him. He died in the street.

He's not a pretty thing. So it's not a regret, but it's something I wish I could have done. It's kind of like a regret. How proud is your mom of you? Almost too proud because I hear all the time, my mother's past too, but I hear all the time from people say, oh, I met your mom one time. She was like in Las Vegas. Oh, where did you met your mom one time. She was like in Las Vegas. Oh, where did you meet my mom? Oh, I met her in Las Vegas.

Oh, really? Like what was going on? Well, she was gambling or something and I was gambling next to her and she said, hey, I'm Sammy Hagar's mother. And they're going, and like, you know, I hear those kinds of stories all the time. Like she would just tell anybody and everybody just going around saying, I'm Sammy Hagar's mom. As she's digging through a dumpster in the back of a grocery store, because my mom and my stepfather, they had a farm and I love it now. But at the time when I was first kind of big old rock star and I bought them their first house, I bought them this really nice little farm and they had goats and pigs and a cow and nothing.

They just had one or two of everything and chickens, not like a big place. But long story short, they would go to the dumpsters in the back of grocery stores and pull out all the produce that they would throw away that was half rotten. And they'd be piling and stuff and putting it in the trunk of their car and taking it back to their animals. They'd do it every night. And they loved it. My mom is a rummaging. She'd go to the dump and she'll find stuff and bring it home. Still, after she had everything, after I was able to spend millions of dollars on my mother, but she would go around and say, oh, I'm Sammy Agar's mother. What an asshole that guy is, man. Just take better care of your mom. I saw her rummaging in a dumpster for food. Oh, man. My mom was something else,

man. I would say to my mom, what do you want, mom? I don't know. Anything, mom. What do you want? Anything. Oh, I've got everything. I don't know. I'd like to go to Vegas and have like $5,000 that I wouldn't have to worry about losing.

I'd go, God, my mom was too simple. She was wonderful. My grandmother, after our company had gone public, I said, Nana, I'm going to buy you a car. You can buy any car you want. You go to the dealership. You just tell me where you are, and I'll wire them the money that day. You just have to go before noon because I'm in Los Angeles. She lives in Detroit, so I wanted the wire to get there the same day. I'm pushing her a little bit. Nana, what's up with the car? She called me one day.

Randy, I've got the car, super excited. I'm thinking like Mercedes. I said, Nana, where are you? I'm at the Toyota dealership. I said, great. And I said, well, what are we talking about? I said, a Camry. I said, Camry's a great car.

I think it's one of the most popular cars in the country. But I said, Nana, I'll buy you whatever car you want. Go to the Mercedes dealership. You go there. I just want you to have the best car. Nope, Randy, this is what I want. So she sent me a picture of her in front of the car. It's a red Toyota. And that summer I go there, it's such a hot day. I mean, I go there, let's go for a drive, Nana. And I get in the car and it's so hot hot day i mean you know i go there let's go for a drive nana and i get in the car and it's so hot turn on the ac and i'm looking for the the window button now where and i see the roller i said now what's what is up with with this she said well the power windows was six hundred dollars more so i didn't get it i said i said, all right, you know, we're not doing that anymore.

But I bought her three more Camrys. And for me, it's been one of my greatest joys to support her for the last 20 years. You know, you work hard. I, you know, buy some nice things. I have a nice house. We have a vacation home. And I like art a lot, but being able to help my grandmother who grew up in poverty and had five husbands and has been one of the most enjoyable things in my life, that period.

Oh man, you bet. I love your grandmother. You realize this now. See, I want to meet her. You should, I'm going to, what's her name? Judy E come to detroit we'll we'll find a detroit hey judy my name is sammy hagar you probably don't know me and you might even like my music i'm not sure but i just want to say i want to live your life i want to be 103 and healthy and i want to meet you someday and if you like to drink tequila i can help you oh it's the best send her that send. Oh, God. Send her that. Okay, I will. I'll give her the biggest hug she's ever had.

I'll let her adopt me. She can adopt me. What the hell? Oh, God, that makes me tearful. Thank you for doing that. Couple more. So my favorite musician in the world is? Oh, whoa, whoa, you're going back there.

Oh, Paul McCartney. Do you know him? No. Well, that's my next question. The one musician in the world that I haven't met and want to meet is, and don't say Paul McCartney, let's go with somebody else. No, it's not.

Let me think who I haven't met that I would like to meet. You know, I've just met everybody. I mean, it's, geez, I just, well, I mean, it would have to be dead or alive. It would have to be Elvis. So, you know, if that helps, if I was one guy, I would want to spend the afternoon singing and playing and shooting the shit with and eating peanut butter sandwiches, deep fried, would be Elvis Presley,

man. I think Elvis was the king. No one has ever been bigger than Elvis. I don't care what they say, the king of this, the king of that, he was the king, okay? Crazy as he was, read all the books, I know all that stuff, but man, the big L was the man. If President Biden were standing in front of me, I would tell him. I'd tell him we need a new president. I'm sorry, sir. I love it. Sorry. The person in the world that I admire the most is.

Oh, I got to say, same same thing old or new i'd have to say somebody like mahatma gandhi i just think he was just the most genuine i read his book and just he just i don't know god i wish i could be that soulful and committed and un-egotistical or whatever it was. I don't know. If I had one wish, it would be? That end violence and greed on this planet. Probably end greed and everything else would go away with it. Sammy, that's a great place to finish. And as we do, I want to give a huge shout out to my great friend, Miles Scully, who introduced us into your new tequila company, Santo, we're your partners with Myles and Guy Fieri. If you like tequila, it's awesome. I also want to tell you, you've made a huge difference

in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, music lovers, beginning and successful musicians, entrepreneurs, and perhaps most importantly, the tens of thousands of people who have been the recipients of your incredible generosity. Sammy, thanks for being here today on In Search of Excellence.