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My first clue as to how my interview with Sammy Hagar was going to go was when I was doing some research to come up with some questions that didn’t have anything to do with Van Halen. Surely, there is more to this guy than when he played with Van Halen. I was listening to some sound files from his website with my trusty parrot at my side. My bird started singing along and bobbing his head. When Hagar was talking, my African Grey was laughing at his joking around. My bird, it seems, loves this guy already.

As it turns out, there is a whole lot more to Sammy Hagar than playing music. And, well, my African Grey parrot was right, he’s a fun guy.  Sammy Hagar is handsome, charming and as I quickly discovered, he is one intelligent businessman. There are zero celebrity pretenses with Hagar. Talking with him was exactly like meeting up with an old friend I haven’t seen in years. On the other hand, just about every bad boy alarm I have was ringing loudly in my head when talking with this rock demigod.

Sammy Hagar was attending Emeril Lagasse Foundation’s 5th Annual Carnivale du Vin at the Venetian Casino, which I’ll write about later. “Emeril Lagasse is one of my dearest friends since we met about eighteen years ago. He cooked for my wedding,” he said. “This is a night out for us. A night off the beach. We scraped the sand off our feet and came straight here!”

Hagar has a huge bash every year for his birthday in October in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The party goes on for a couple of weeks and all his musician friends turn out for it. Every year, he donates a party package for Emeril’s foundation. This includes Emeril Lagasse cooking you dinner at Sammy Hagar’s home in Cabo San Lucas. After dinner, you are taken to the Cabo Wabo where Hagar’s band will play. “It’s a great little weekend,” he said, “It raises a lot of money.” Oh, no doubt!

“One guy even bought it twice, he had so much fun. Emeril cooks at my house for three days!… It is a special event,” he explained.

Sammy Hagar is no stranger to business. He has numerous commercial ventures going including Cabo Wabo, his tequila company and his matching Cantinas around the country and in Mexico. I wanted to know how a rock and roll guy ends up with so many successful businesses.

He removed his sunglasses and told me he was glad I didn’t have him on camera because he can’t stand looking at the lens. “I can look in a person’s eyes, but not a lens,” he quipped. So, that is why he wears the glasses in photos.

“You know, it’s so funny,” he started, “I think when I was a kid, I was four years old and I would go to my aunt’s house, who was the richest person in our family and she would pay me to do things. I would wash her car. I would trim weeds or take out the garbage. I would love to go over there because I could make some money, you know, because I was a poor kid. And so I have always been interested in how I could make a living. When I started making a living in music, it was boring making a living that way because I’d do that for free!”

“So how could I make some money?” he laughed. “So that’s what drove me to do other businesses. And my mother always telling me growing up, ‘You gotta have something to fall back on, you know. These musicians and actors and actresses, they always end up broke and all this.’ And I was worried about that, so I started a little business here and little bit there and I like it! And I give most of the money away. Sammy’s Beach Bar and Grill, every penny of that goes to children’s charities in the area.”

Sammy Hagar has a big heart and a big piece of that is with terminally ill children and their families. “Their families spend everything they have to try to give these children back a couple of years of their life,” he explained. “And then they end up with nothing! They lose their homes. I want to support them.” He further explained that he makes sure the money raised in a city will stay with that city. If the money is raised in Las Vegas then it stays in Las Vegas to help the locals and it is the same in each city.

I had read about his Cabo Wabo Cantina opening up right on the Las Vegas strip. I thought it was opening in December, but he said it opened a few days ago. He told me that it is the Grand Opening that is on December 4th, and he will be playing there that night. It will be an annual anniversary show every December. The Cabo Wabo Cantina is located in front of Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino right on the Vegas Strip.

There was limited time for this interview as it was taking place just before he was to go into dinner at the Carnival du Vin event. Readers of this blog had sent me some questions they wanted me to ask so I passed on asking some of my questions in order to answer yours. I will post the rest of the interview tomorrow giving his answers and his chuckles to what you wanted to know.

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