Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the Red Rocker himself, Sammy Hagar.
Speaker 1: Sammy why red?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: Red is my favorite color. There's no question about that.
Speaker 3: Always has been. And when I in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: I wrote a song called Red with my co wrote
Speaker 3: with my dear buddy John Carter, and I became the
Speaker 3: Red Rocker by accident. It was I didn't call myself
Speaker 3: the Red Rocker. Someone else called me that, and then
Speaker 3: fans started calling me that, and I just said, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm the Red Rocker, but I love the color red.
Speaker 2: It's got a special thing about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, how many Ferraris do you have?
Speaker 2: Seven? Okay?
Speaker 1: Are they all red?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Guess what? I only have one red Ferrari. No too,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I have two red Ferraris. They all have
Speaker 3: like either a red stripe or a couple of them
Speaker 3: have red and terrier though, but she red Ferraris are
Speaker 3: too obvious.
Speaker 2: So I'm not a red Ferrari guy.
Speaker 1: I know, but that's a classic red color, that's why.
Speaker 1: So what color are your fasting is?
Speaker 3: I got black, I got a kind of a green one.
Speaker 3: I've got a cream colored almost yellow, but it's not
Speaker 3: as cream. I've got a couple of black ones and
Speaker 3: a red one, and I don't know, honestly, thinking about
Speaker 3: my ferraris, I know I'm missing a couple in my
Speaker 3: mind right now.
Speaker 2: I don't see them in my head. They're in a warehouse.
Speaker 1: What's the oldest in the newest you have?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, the newest is.
Speaker 3: The new s u vas call a Puerle singue, but
Speaker 3: I don't have it yet, but that's the newest.
Speaker 2: And before that, I have a lat Ferrari, which.
Speaker 3: Rod Stewart just tried to buy from me, and I've
Speaker 3: got email from him again this morning because it's the
Speaker 3: color combination once and they don't make them anymore. They
Speaker 3: only made four hundred and ninety of them, and he
Speaker 3: wanted one, so he's trying to find a used one,
Speaker 3: and nobody wants to sell them. I mean, they're we're
Speaker 3: really special cars. And the oldest ones are seventy one
Speaker 3: Daytona's coup three sixty five g T Daytona.
Speaker 1: Convertible.
Speaker 3: No, no, the convertibles are really crazy expensive. They only
Speaker 3: made like twelve of those or something. Now I've got
Speaker 3: a coop Okay, So why do you know so much
Speaker 3: about this, Bob?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know a little bit about it. So
Speaker 1: you have them all in a warehouse?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I have them a I have a warehouse, you know.
Speaker 3: I have my homes have multiple car garages, you know,
Speaker 3: like I keep four or five cars at different houses.
Speaker 3: But I have a warehouse where I rotate them.
Speaker 1: Okay, and you only have ferraris or do you have
Speaker 1: other stuff too?
Speaker 3: Oh? No, No, I got muscle cars. I got an
Speaker 3: old ee jagg, I got a you know, a couple
Speaker 3: of Shelby's, a GT Ford GT forty. I have a Cobra.
Speaker 3: What else do I have? I have a sixty seven
Speaker 3: Corvette uh Stingray convertible red right, Yeah, there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I got you know, a few yeah, just exotics
Speaker 3: and muscle.
Speaker 2: It's about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you a you know? Are you a Are
Speaker 1: you a Mopark guy or a GM guy? Oh?
Speaker 3: See, here you go. I'm a Ford guy. Watch yourself. Well,
Speaker 3: this and that's when when I had when I had
Speaker 3: my TV show, uh uh a rock Roll road Trip
Speaker 3: that was one of my this or that. Are you
Speaker 3: a Ford or a Chevy guy? Because the Chevy guys
Speaker 3: are always kind of uptown. Ford's a little more red
Speaker 3: neck like myself, you know, a little more down to
Speaker 3: earth kind of guy. Uh. And the Mopark guys were
Speaker 3: always the weirdos.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: They were the guys that, you know, didn't have a
Speaker 3: lot of friends. They were kind of loaners. And when
Speaker 3: I was in high school, that was it. My buddies
Speaker 3: were Ford guys. We didn't like the Chevy guys. And
Speaker 3: the more Park guys were cool because they were just
Speaker 3: kind of they stayed out of any kind of fad situation,
Speaker 3: you know, they weren't taking sides.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So your first car was.
Speaker 2: Forty nine Chevrolet.
Speaker 1: Forty nine Chevrolet.
Speaker 2: Where did you get into?
Speaker 1: What kind of condition was it in?
Speaker 3: I paid fifty dollars for it, and I wasn't in
Speaker 3: a very good condition and had a blown head gasket
Speaker 3: and reverse had a chip in it so when you
Speaker 3: put it reverse you would have to hold it in
Speaker 3: there otherwise it would jump, you know, jump out of reverse.
Speaker 2: Oh it was. It was really pretty rough.
Speaker 3: But hey, fifty bucks to be back in those days, Bob,
Speaker 3: I didn't you know, that was like real money.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And the first car you bought once you made some money.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, honestly, I think the real first car, you know,
Speaker 3: was a Ferrari. Finally, you know when I when Montrose
Speaker 3: got signed to our record deal in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 3: I we got fifty thousand dollars. We got I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean wait, I got five thousand dollars. We got
Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars. We each took five and we bought
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand dollars worth of equipment. And with my
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars, I rented a house for two hundred
Speaker 3: dollars a month because I was living in a really
Speaker 3: bad apartment in the city. I rented a house in
Speaker 3: Marin County and Mill Valley, and I bought a Citron,
Speaker 3: a green Citron.
Speaker 2: You know what those things are? You know they raise
Speaker 2: up absolutely.
Speaker 1: Would you buy the two CVX or did you buy
Speaker 1: a Maserati? Which one did you buy?
Speaker 3: Oh? No, it's before the Maserati, but I bought our No,
Speaker 3: it wasn't before the Maserati. But no, I didn't buy
Speaker 3: that was too expensive. I just bought a regular DV.
Speaker 3: I think they were called dB twenty thirty one or
Speaker 3: something like that. Whatever, it was just a four seater,
Speaker 3: four door, and I loved that car. I mean that
Speaker 3: car was so cool but very unusual. I mean it
Speaker 3: wasn't very rock stars, but the real, first real car
Speaker 3: about though.
Speaker 2: Then I bought a Porsche.
Speaker 3: I got a five thousand dollars royalty check one time,
Speaker 3: and I bought a five thousand dollar Porsche. I was
Speaker 3: so reckless, you know, I'd spend every penny i'd get it.
Speaker 3: I'd just go spend it and say, well, hopefully i'll
Speaker 3: make more. And then then I sold the Porsche, went
Speaker 3: to England and to record my Red album, and I
Speaker 3: bought a Ferrari in England, a right hand drive three
Speaker 3: sixty three point thirty two plus two four headlight version,
Speaker 3: and that car has been sold recently a couple of times.
Speaker 3: It was Bluebird Blue because it belonged to Sir Donald Campbell,
Speaker 3: the Bluebird racing guy, the boat guy who died in
Speaker 3: the boat in Locknest, and it belonged to him. And
Speaker 3: now they say it was John Lennon's car. I've seen
Speaker 3: it advertised in Ferrari newsletters and stuff, you know, three
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars. I think I went for the last
Speaker 3: time I sold it for eight thousand. I bought it
Speaker 3: for five sold for eight. And they say it's John
Speaker 3: Lennon's car, and it can't be because there was not
Speaker 3: two three point thirty g T two plus two's four
Speaker 3: headline version bluebird blue.
Speaker 1: Well that was white, hadn't drive. Did you take it
Speaker 1: to America or just leave it in England?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, I brought it, brought it to America and
Speaker 3: I drove it all for about ten years that way.
Speaker 2: But that was before me. You said, when I made money.
Speaker 3: But I hadn't made any money yet though John, I
Speaker 3: mean not John, mister Lennon.
Speaker 2: I hadn't made any money yet, Bob.
Speaker 3: So when I finally made money, then I bought a
Speaker 3: real Ferrari. You know, Well that was a real Ferrari,
Speaker 3: believe me. But I mean I bought a new one.
Speaker 3: I bought a five twelve boxer.
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of things. The Cituane Was it new?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I think it was a sixty seven or sixty eight.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was a seventy. I don't you know. I
Speaker 3: don't remember much about that car, just and why I
Speaker 3: bought it. I still don't know. I loved the CV
Speaker 3: two but that wasn't going to work for a family car.
Speaker 3: You know, that thing would barely go up. So but
Speaker 3: I was in love with CV twos. I thought, man,
Speaker 3: if I ever had a beach house and you know,
Speaker 3: somewhere and I was, you know, I'd just drive around
Speaker 3: a little CV too, and I might have to get
Speaker 3: one of those down that You got me thinking about it, Okay,
Speaker 3: but that's the true dB forty one something like that.
Speaker 1: And that had an air suspension and it had the
Speaker 1: headlights that turned. How much trouble did you have with
Speaker 1: that car?
Speaker 3: Oh, a lot of trouble that when the suspension went
Speaker 3: out and I was I was pretty much broke on
Speaker 3: my ass all through Montrose and for the next few
Speaker 3: years after that after I left Montrose. But yeah, the
Speaker 3: suspension went out and there was only one guy that
Speaker 3: could fix it, and it was not cheap for me
Speaker 3: at that time. It was probably a couple of thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: and I think that's about what the car costs. The
Speaker 3: car costs like twenty five hundred dollars when I bought it.
Speaker 3: But it just was so bad ass. You know, that
Speaker 3: car was the most comfortable, smooth riding car ever. Still
Speaker 3: to today. I used to drive that from San Francisco
Speaker 3: to Los Angeles when Montrose was recording. I would drive
Speaker 3: it all the way down, NonStop, one tank of gas.
Speaker 3: It got like about forty miles to the gallon, a
Speaker 3: little tiny four cylinder with one hundred and twenty horsepower maybe,
Speaker 3: And it wasn't fast. It was really a dog but
Speaker 3: it was really smooth. It just it was a cruiser.
Speaker 3: And certain people. I've always been one of those guys
Speaker 3: that if you got a certain person's attention, it's the
Speaker 3: person I wanted their attention. I didn't want normal attention,
Speaker 3: you know. I wanted certain kind of people. And I'm
Speaker 3: still that way. I like when I drive a very
Speaker 3: rare car, I might have like you know, like my
Speaker 3: old Daytona. You know it's it doesn't scream. It does
Speaker 3: a little bit now because it's really getting, you know,
Speaker 3: a classic. But you know, somebody sees it and they go, wow, man,
Speaker 3: a Daytona and they and they tripping on it. See
Speaker 3: that's the kind of person. I say, yeah, I stopped
Speaker 3: and have given the time to date. I don't want
Speaker 3: to be screaming down the road in some Lamborghini or something,
Speaker 3: some bright orange thing, you know, and it makes a
Speaker 3: lot of noise, even though frays do make a lot
Speaker 3: of noise. But I don't like that. I don't like
Speaker 3: everybody going, hey, whoa look at that? Oh you know, uh,
Speaker 3: that's embarrassing to me. It's you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: what it is. I've always been that way. Even though
Speaker 3: you want to be a rock star. You want everybody
Speaker 3: to love you and come and see you and scream
Speaker 3: for you. But in my everyday life, I don't want that.
Speaker 3: How about that?
Speaker 1: Were you always that person? Like growing up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm kind of shy, you know, in high school
Speaker 3: and stuff, I was shy. You know, girls liked me
Speaker 3: and I man, I was being I was always shy.
Speaker 3: I wasn't like a lady's guy going hey baby, what's
Speaker 3: going on. I've never been that guy, you know on
Speaker 3: stage a little bit.
Speaker 2: But but man, and I was, I'm shy. I turned
Speaker 2: red real quick.
Speaker 3: There here you go, they're not We finally hit the
Speaker 3: bottom on that one.
Speaker 1: Okay, But you're shy, but you want attention, and you
Speaker 1: don't want the same kind of attention as everybody else.
Speaker 1: You kind of want to be known as your own unique,
Speaker 1: cool character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd say that's fair enough statement. You know, I'd
Speaker 3: rather appeal to someone that gets it, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. If you don't get it, I don't need
Speaker 3: your attention. You know, it's like I want to The
Speaker 3: attension I want is attention that I would be willing
Speaker 3: to engage with, not just to quick like, well look
Speaker 3: at me, I'm cool. I'm getting all this attention and
Speaker 3: walk through the room, you know, like a like a peacock.
Speaker 3: You know that that's not the kind of attention I want.
Speaker 3: If I attract someone, I want to know that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can communicate with this person and maybe there's something
Speaker 3: to learn here.
Speaker 2: You know, they get it. You know.
Speaker 3: I like people that get what I get and like
Speaker 3: what I like. And my fan base is getting like
Speaker 3: that pretty much. I got to tell you, you know, it
Speaker 3: hasn't dwindled down to that. It's just that it has
Speaker 3: expanded into that. You know, it takes a long time
Speaker 3: to become famous when you have a certain different kind
Speaker 3: of charisma about you. I think, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It ain't like that. I'm not.
Speaker 3: I wasn't a natural born star. I had to work
Speaker 3: on that shit. I'm still working on it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So when you were in school, were you like
Speaker 1: one of the group. Were you trying to be independent unique?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, I was trying to be independent unique.
Speaker 3: I had my own little group, not really a big group,
Speaker 3: but I had I had a few friends, but I
Speaker 3: got to say, everybody liked me.
Speaker 2: I was really liked.
Speaker 3: One of the shortest guys in high school, and there
Speaker 3: was a girl that was shorter than me, another guy
Speaker 3: about my size, and that was it.
Speaker 2: So we were the you know, small people.
Speaker 3: But I was always really into dressing nice, like I said,
Speaker 3: but not just normal what you know, I didn't go
Speaker 3: I'd look for weird stuff. I was definitely kind of
Speaker 3: a little bit of a weirdo. But everybody liked me.
Speaker 3: All the you know, all the big job guys. They
Speaker 3: would say, hey, Sammy, he's cool. You know, hey, come
Speaker 3: on over and hang with us doing the lunchtime. And
Speaker 3: I'd be like, hey, it's cool, and hang with them
Speaker 3: a little bit. I'll kind of a social butterfly, but
Speaker 3: I never I wasn't really that sociable, but I, you know,
Speaker 3: I could be.
Speaker 2: I knew how to be cool and how to act
Speaker 2: with the tough guys.
Speaker 3: I knew how to act with the jocks, and definitely,
Speaker 3: you know, I just kind of float around. But my
Speaker 3: little group was works were they were kind of like
Speaker 3: the losers in school. You know. They were the guys that, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, the parents were alcoholics or you know, like
Speaker 3: a one guy was divorced, you know, single parent, and
Speaker 3: and I kind of was attracted to the wounded, you know, butterflies,
Speaker 3: you know, even even the girls. I like those girls
Speaker 3: kind of better than the uptown girls, which always which
Speaker 3: like me, I was really uh, you know, popular in
Speaker 3: that sense. But I wasn't you know, I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 3: I did not click I did not click up. I'm
Speaker 3: tripping on this myself. Now, you got me thinking I
Speaker 3: was when looking back, I'm thinking, yeah, I was kind
Speaker 3: of like a I had a little mistique, I think
Speaker 3: going you know, I was always happy and sociable and high,
Speaker 3: you know, got along with everybody. Only got one fight
Speaker 3: in high school, one frigging fight the whole time when
Speaker 3: high school is all we did.
Speaker 2: Everybody tail was.
Speaker 3: Fight, you know, And I was never the guy that
Speaker 3: had to fight anybody. You know. I was always like,
Speaker 3: you know, hanging out and watching a good fight.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the fight.
Speaker 3: It was with the littlest guy in in school. It
Speaker 3: was like he was my size, you know, And so
Speaker 3: the tough guys, you know, when they used to they
Speaker 3: push on me to kick his ash for some reason,
Speaker 3: you know, because I was supposed to be a tough
Speaker 3: little guy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: My dad was a fighter, so I was always you know,
Speaker 3: kind of spar and boxing and goofing off, and for
Speaker 3: so finally I just picked the fire with them in
Speaker 3: a parking lot.
Speaker 2: Was so stupid.
Speaker 3: It was like, you know, I think we both just
Speaker 3: threw one punch, locked up, ended up on the ground,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, and headlocks each of us, and
Speaker 3: neither one of us could do anything, and finding somebody
Speaker 3: said break it up, teacher's coming, and we broke it
Speaker 3: up and went our separate ways. And I never even
Speaker 3: I never even said anything to the guy ever again.
Speaker 3: I just see him, you know, we just see each
Speaker 3: other walk down the hall, just ignore each other.
Speaker 2: It was so stupid.
Speaker 3: It was probably the worst fight I've ever been in,
Speaker 3: not that i'd been in any real viguines.
Speaker 1: You talk about your father being a tough guy. What
Speaker 1: did you learn from your father?
Speaker 3: Well, I learned unconditional love. And I gotta tell you
Speaker 3: it's the strangest thing because my dad was, you know,
Speaker 3: it beat everybody up. He was a tough guy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: A cop would pull him over in the car because
Speaker 3: he was drunk driving, or just he was speeding, or
Speaker 3: you know, ran a stop sign, and he would just
Speaker 3: get out of the car and knock the cop out,
Speaker 3: just boom. He was a boxer, so he could hit.
Speaker 3: He knew where to hit you, how to put your
Speaker 3: lights out, so he would get out of the car
Speaker 3: and just knock the guy out, get back in the
Speaker 3: car and go home. And then hare comes my dad
Speaker 3: sitting in the bear on the couch, smoking a cigarette,
Speaker 3: drinking a beer, you know, and the cops beat on
Speaker 3: the door, come on, Robert, come on out, we know
Speaker 3: you're in there, and say, yeah, fuck you, you know,
Speaker 3: come in and get me. And it would be like
Speaker 3: five cops, you know, they'd finally hit get up, go
Speaker 3: out there, and he'd just go at it with all
Speaker 3: five guys, you know, hit knock a couple of them out,
Speaker 3: and they'd get him. They hit him at the belly club,
Speaker 3: cut him all up, handcuff him, take him to jail.
Speaker 3: He'd get out in a few days. It was a
Speaker 3: small town deal. The judge knew him. It's like they
Speaker 3: took his license away. They threw him in road camp.
Speaker 3: He went to road camp. The longest he was gone
Speaker 3: one time is for six months because he actually really
Speaker 3: beat up a CHP officer and Palm Springs. He was
Speaker 3: driving drunk and he knocked the guy out, but we
Speaker 3: weren't home, so he kept going. He was going down
Speaker 3: to Braley Colexico, where he had some Mexican buddies. When
Speaker 3: he was a fighter, he used to he was a
Speaker 3: bandon weight, so he would always be a border town
Speaker 3: attraction because he was supposed to the Irish, which we
Speaker 3: found out he wasn't, but.
Speaker 2: I'll get it. Great thing for the Irish.
Speaker 3: So they'd have the Irish against the Mexicans, you know,
Speaker 3: the bantamweight fights. And Manu Artis, who was a great
Speaker 3: great champ, lived down there, so he's going down there
Speaker 3: to see him. So they set up a roadblock and
Speaker 3: they got him, and they really worked him over, and
Speaker 3: he worked them over pretty good too. And then when
Speaker 3: he was in jail, he was raising so much hell
Speaker 3: they come in and beat him up again. So when
Speaker 3: he went to be arraigned in court, he was handcuffed.
Speaker 3: I didn't see this, but the word is that he
Speaker 3: jumped up on the judge his desk and kicked him
Speaker 3: in the face and went to road camp for six months.
Speaker 3: And it ruined his life and my mom, all of them.
Speaker 3: You know, she had three kids. It was I think
Speaker 3: it was before I was born. And yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: tough one. I just found out a lot about it.
Speaker 3: I just did finding your Roots. I did it. It's
Speaker 3: going to come out later this year. And boy, he
Speaker 3: had the newspaper clippings and all that stuff, and it
Speaker 3: broke my heart how rough my mom had it. But
Speaker 3: my father taught me unconditional love. He made me feel
Speaker 3: that I was loved more than anything on the planet,
Speaker 3: and that I meant everything to him, and that he
Speaker 3: made me feel like somebody. He called me champ. He said,
Speaker 3: you're gonna be champing the world.
Speaker 2: Someday.
Speaker 3: He'd be drunk on his ass come in my room
Speaker 3: to you know, at night, because him mom would be fighting.
Speaker 3: He'd come in and hug me and just worship me.
Speaker 3: And I got to tell you, I felt protected. I
Speaker 3: felt like my dad could take care of anything, and
Speaker 3: I was I wouldn't have to be afraid ever, you know,
Speaker 3: growing up, except of them beat my mom up or something.
Speaker 3: But it was a strange, really strange you know, balance
Speaker 3: in my life that my dad. He taught me that,
Speaker 3: and I thought, and I think he taught me how
Speaker 3: to believe in myself because he believed in me. I'm
Speaker 3: telling you, I'll be four years old. He's telling me,
Speaker 3: you're gonna be champ with the world. You're gonna be somebody.
Speaker 3: You're going to be somebody's son. I mean, constantly driving
Speaker 3: that into my head, and I'm going, yeah, okay, you.
Speaker 2: Want to be somebody.
Speaker 3: I mean I really believed it, you know, and that's
Speaker 3: that's that's something to learn, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can teach somebody that. Well, Okay,
Speaker 1: you had siblings. Did he say the same to your
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters?
Speaker 3: No? He didn't like my sisters. He cursed them because
Speaker 3: you know, they had boyfriends. He'd you know, threatened to
Speaker 3: beat up their boyfriends who they'd come to, you know,
Speaker 3: try to go out and stuff when they were teenagers.
Speaker 3: He was not cool to them, and he was not
Speaker 3: cool to my brother, my older brother, he called him.
Speaker 3: He called me muscle brain, and he called my my
Speaker 3: brother flea brain. He called me champ. And he used
Speaker 3: to make fun of my brother. When he would cry,
Speaker 3: he'd say, sound like a sireen. You know, he picked
Speaker 3: on him. It was looking back, it was really not cool.
Speaker 3: I don't know why he favored me so much. He
Speaker 3: didn't like my my grandfather, my mom's dad, who was
Speaker 3: a full blood of Sicilian, and my dad didn't like him.
Speaker 3: And and I was named after him, sam r. His
Speaker 3: name was sam ROI byo, I'm sam Roy Hagar and
Speaker 3: my dad, but yet he favored me. I think that's
Speaker 3: kind of funny too in itself. You know, my dad
Speaker 3: chased my grandpa.
Speaker 2: Around.
Speaker 3: He was chasing him. We were camping. I saw this
Speaker 3: with my own two eyes. My grandma and grandpa they
Speaker 3: were big campers, and so the whole family. We were camping.
Speaker 3: My dad got drunk, got mad at my grandpa, and
Speaker 3: my grandpa took off running, was running around a car.
Speaker 3: My dad was chasing him, trying to get him, and.
Speaker 2: This is true shit.
Speaker 3: And my grandma picked up a rock and tried to
Speaker 3: throw it to hit a big rock, you know, like
Speaker 3: as big as your head type rock to try to
Speaker 3: hit my dad just you know, take him out. And
Speaker 3: instead of hit my granda knocked tip cold bleeding and
Speaker 3: my dad chilled out. He was like, oh shit. You know,
Speaker 3: he had a really good heart about him. He just
Speaker 3: had a crazy, whacked out temperature. He get hot so fast,
Speaker 3: and that's all he knew had to do is start swinging.
Speaker 1: What do you think, since you're not a young man
Speaker 1: yourself and you've lived a lot, what was going on
Speaker 1: with him?
Speaker 3: He's a super bad alcoholic. He was in World War Two.
Speaker 3: He was a paratrooper. He jumped out of an airplane
Speaker 3: and broke his jaw. He didn't he had a Tommy
Speaker 3: gun and he was shooting the gun supposedly as he
Speaker 3: was coming down, because you know, he was landing in
Speaker 3: an enemy field, and he got off course, landed in
Speaker 3: a tree, broke his jaw, had a couple of ribs,
Speaker 3: messed up, got left behind, lived in.
Speaker 2: A foxhole, he said, for a few days.
Speaker 3: Actually shot another man that was in another fox hole,
Speaker 3: you know, the enemy, and you know they'd take pop
Speaker 3: shots at each other, and finally he shot him. And
Speaker 3: I think it messed him up so bad to have
Speaker 3: to kill another human. And he came back and he
Speaker 3: took his When he got back into his company, he
Speaker 3: to his company commander he shot the ground and told
Speaker 3: him it made him dance. And he got dishonorable discharge.
Speaker 3: And he was never the same. My mom said he
Speaker 3: would wake up in the middle of the night and
Speaker 3: jumping up in the bench, say where's my tommy gun?
Speaker 3: Where's my tommy gun? And I could see him doing
Speaker 3: that in my head. You know, I don't think I
Speaker 3: really witnessed it, but he became a bad alcoholic.
Speaker 2: He was a boxer before that.
Speaker 3: He'd fought, you know, in the old days, practically bare knuckle,
Speaker 3: you know, it was just like a piece of leather
Speaker 3: over your hands. And he had never been knocked out
Speaker 3: in his life. He was knocked down. I think he
Speaker 3: holds a record of the most knockdowns in one round
Speaker 3: in history or something like that. And uh, he just
Speaker 3: kept getting back. Uh this before my time too. I
Speaker 3: never witnessed that. But he was fearless and uh angry,
Speaker 3: but the sweetest man in the world. But boy, when
Speaker 3: he get drinking, he would get angry. I guess I
Speaker 3: think that's what he was. He was dealing with that.
Speaker 3: He was dealing with what we see now is you know,
Speaker 3: people come back from Vietnam and stuff with this, with
Speaker 3: that same problem, you know, semi. But he had it
Speaker 3: in a day where you couldn't be a whimp. You know,
Speaker 3: you couldn't say, I'm scared. You couldn't say to him.
Speaker 3: He couldn't anyway.
Speaker 2: You know. He was that generation he belonged with. He
Speaker 2: belonged to the cowboy days.
Speaker 3: He should have had a six gun around his hip
Speaker 3: and just that should have been in That's where he belonged.
Speaker 2: He came from that era. You know.
Speaker 3: He was born in a cupboard wagon, for God's sakes,
Speaker 3: coming from Kentucky to California my grandparents with eleven other kids.
Speaker 3: He was born in Texas. Well, they were picking cotton.
Speaker 3: They were in a cupboard friggin wagon. And so he
Speaker 3: he was old school man, you know. And how long
Speaker 3: did he live? Fifty six, died in the back.
Speaker 1: Of the Did he live long enough to see your success?
Speaker 2: No? No, terrible?
Speaker 1: And whatever happened with your siblings and what's your relationship
Speaker 1: with them?
Speaker 3: Now? My brother has passed. He's three years older than me.
Speaker 3: He passed about right before COVID. Well, right in the
Speaker 3: beginning of COVID, he passed. I don't think I was
Speaker 3: from COVID. He had a lot of heart attacks and
Speaker 3: he just had breathing problems. He had heart problems, but
Speaker 3: he did fine. I mean, you know, he had some problems.
Speaker 3: I got to say, he had to stopped drinking. But
Speaker 3: he wasn't wounded as bad as you would think. Because
Speaker 3: we had such a wonderful mother. My mom raised us
Speaker 3: like to be strong people. She made us work. We
Speaker 3: worked in the fields with her.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: She would go dig potatoes, pick apricots, you know, pick
Speaker 3: berries into berry patches.
Speaker 2: You know. We were like field workers, my whole family.
Speaker 3: And we'd go out, all four of us, right before
Speaker 3: we'd go back to school. My mom would make us
Speaker 3: go out and we'd pick fruit and pick vegetables and
Speaker 3: do yard work around then around our town. Uh, and
Speaker 3: to get money to you know, buy clothes for school.
Speaker 3: And I always dress good and I'd make my money.
Speaker 3: I knew what I wanted to. I'm on a nice
Speaker 3: pair of Levi's that customize them up. You know, I
Speaker 3: had my my thing. But my mom was wonderful, so
Speaker 3: she made us all strong and feel like we had
Speaker 3: a family with the community. After my dad and they
Speaker 3: split up, and then my dad finally died, but.
Speaker 2: My sisters both happily.
Speaker 3: My oldest sister's happily married for fifty some years to
Speaker 3: the same guy.
Speaker 2: Has wonderful kids, very family oriented.
Speaker 3: They all live in the same frigate neighborhood, all four
Speaker 3: of her kids and her very family oriented.
Speaker 2: Everyone in.
Speaker 3: My sister Velma very successful. She's started a business. She's
Speaker 3: kind of like me, she's very business oriented. And yeah,
Speaker 3: everybody's really good. We get along great. I mean, we
Speaker 3: love each other. We support each other.
Speaker 1: So when you ultimately made a good chunk of change,
Speaker 1: which you did, to what degree did you support your family.
Speaker 3: I bought my mother her first home she ever owned
Speaker 3: in her life when I got my first big record
Speaker 3: advance and made.
Speaker 2: My first tour money. And then later on I bought her.
Speaker 3: Really nice house next to my sister Valma, who had
Speaker 3: a beautiful home in Palm Desert. So I bought my
Speaker 3: mom the house next door, and they because they really
Speaker 3: got along well. And those two, my mom and my sister,
Speaker 3: and you know, when I sold my group will Campari,
Speaker 3: I basically split up a million dollars with my friends
Speaker 3: and family, so my close friends and family.
Speaker 1: Okay, so where does this entrepreneurship come from being poor?
Speaker 2: I ain't going to be that again, you know, I've
Speaker 2: been there.
Speaker 3: Uh. I think the drive that keeps me going at
Speaker 3: this stage when I don't need money, I don't need fame,
Speaker 3: I don't need fortune. I just need to be happy
Speaker 3: and content. But I'm still so driven that it kind
Speaker 3: of makes me happy to achieve. I'm achieved, achieved, nut
Speaker 3: and and I give most of the money away now
Speaker 3: that you know, from all my restaurants and stuff.
Speaker 2: But I think that drive come from just humiliation. You know.
Speaker 3: One time in high school, because my dad was always
Speaker 3: such a tough guy, such a small town, I had
Speaker 3: a girlfriend, my first girlfriend, you know, the first puppy love,
Speaker 3: seventh grade, and.
Speaker 2: I walked over to her house.
Speaker 3: I used to walk her home, you know, from school
Speaker 3: every day, and then I'd walk all the way across
Speaker 3: town to my house. I didn't want to by know
Speaker 3: where I lived because we were single parent at that
Speaker 3: stage and living in a pretty poor situation.
Speaker 2: But like I said, I had a paper route.
Speaker 3: I'd mow lawns, I would go to my family, my
Speaker 3: aunts and my uncles and drive my bicycle over there
Speaker 3: and say, can i'm move your lawa. I need a
Speaker 3: dollar you know, I need a dollar badge, you know.
Speaker 3: And so I was always you know, dressed and I
Speaker 3: so they were in school. Everyone thought I was cool,
Speaker 3: but really I was poor as shit. Our house was
Speaker 3: really bad neighborhood and we were just renting and my
Speaker 3: mom was had a really funky job, but you know,
Speaker 3: we were poor. So I would walk my girlfriend home
Speaker 3: every day from school. And then one time her mother
Speaker 3: invited me and said, oh, come in and have some
Speaker 3: dinner with us, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'm sitting there at the dinner table.
Speaker 3: Her dad walks in and my girlfriend says, hi, Daddy,
Speaker 3: this is my friend Sammy Hagar, and he goes, Hagar
Speaker 3: is your father Robert.
Speaker 2: I said, yay, he goes get the hell out of
Speaker 2: my house.
Speaker 3: My dad had beat him up in a bar and so,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like I was so humiliated from that.
Speaker 2: And then my girlfriend she.
Speaker 3: Could I couldn't come to the house and you know,
Speaker 3: she couldn't see me, and it just I think that
Speaker 3: honestly said I'm going to be somebody. I went back
Speaker 3: to my dad said I'm going to be somebody and
Speaker 3: that she ain't going to happen to me again. It
Speaker 3: was so embarrassing. It was just brutal, you know. So
Speaker 3: I think that's what still drives me. I don't know why,
Speaker 3: but I think that one moment and then a couple
Speaker 3: of times, my dad would be walking down the street
Speaker 3: drunk in the middle of the night, and I'd be
Speaker 3: out with my buddies back then. Now we got a car,
Speaker 3: and now we're looking for girls, and sometimes we'd have
Speaker 3: girls in the car, you know, and we'd be drinking
Speaker 3: the beer and stuff and cruise down the road, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, I'd see my dad staggering down
Speaker 3: the road. You know, he was homeless at some point,
Speaker 3: and I would go, oh shit, you know, and some
Speaker 3: guys in a car would say, a man, it's not
Speaker 3: your old man. Oh well, yeah, I know a guy
Speaker 3: who went to jail with him. And you know, I
Speaker 3: was hanging around with these loser kind of dudes and
Speaker 3: they had been in a couple of you guys, they
Speaker 3: know he'd been in jails. Yeah, I met your dad
Speaker 3: in jail. Yeah, man, he's a badass. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: he beat some guy up in jail, you know, and
Speaker 3: all this kind of stuff. So one side it was
Speaker 3: me saying, yeah, my dad's a badass, and as I
Speaker 3: was saying, well, this is get embarrassing, and I would,
Speaker 3: you know, so I'd go get my sister and tell
Speaker 3: her my dad was walking down see her down the street,
Speaker 3: and she'd go find him, bring him to a house
Speaker 3: and clean him up. And then he'd just steal five
Speaker 3: bucks out of her person, go out and get drunk again.
Speaker 3: He was he was completely helpless. I mean, I could
Speaker 3: help him now, but then there was nowhere to put him.
Speaker 3: We didn't know what to do. There was no alcoholic.
Speaker 3: There was alcoholic anonymous, but all of his buddies from
Speaker 3: that were just as bad as him.
Speaker 2: So you know, yeah, he gave it a shot a
Speaker 2: few times.
Speaker 3: But I think the longest here of stayed sober in
Speaker 3: my life that we remember was nine months. We actually
Speaker 3: had one year in our life that was like normal,
Speaker 3: lived went to the same school for the whole year,
Speaker 3: you know, had friends over to the house, you know
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. Yeah, it's pretty much a trip,
Speaker 3: you know, Bob, You're rolling me back through this thing
Speaker 3: pretty strong.
Speaker 2: When I wrote my book.
Speaker 3: I went through this once, and this is the closest
Speaker 3: I've come to remember and all this stuff. It's not
Speaker 3: like I try to forget it. I'm not one of
Speaker 3: those guys that bury my head in the sand. It's
Speaker 3: just that there's so much good stuff going on. I
Speaker 3: very seldom go back and think about this stuff. But
Speaker 3: I had a tough child. It didn't feel like it
Speaker 3: at the time, but it does now I'm looking back
Speaker 3: on going we were poorish.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you have built an empire, okay, with restaurants, alcohol,
Speaker 1: et cetera. The only person I can think who's in
Speaker 1: your category is Jimmy Buffett. Do you think that you've
Speaker 1: gotten the respect you deserve? Do you still want respect?
Speaker 1: What's your take on that.
Speaker 2: I don't think I will ever.
Speaker 3: Be able to satisfy that thing in myself unless I
Speaker 3: become some kind of a spiritual, enlightened person, which I'm
Speaker 3: becoming little by little. I'm becoming more spiritual and looking
Speaker 3: for enlightenment, looking for purpose and what I can do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Maybe if I turn around and do enough for others,
Speaker 3: I may get over it. But other than that, no,
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't think that's a thing I can
Speaker 3: a hunger and a thirst that it can be satisfied. Because,
Speaker 3: like I said, it's not like I do this for
Speaker 3: money at all. I do it for I love it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: When I have an idea word, it's thought word action
Speaker 3: for me. You know, I have a thought, I tell
Speaker 3: it to myself or tell somebody else, or I write
Speaker 3: it down or talking to my phone, and then I
Speaker 3: go to work on it.
Speaker 2: I say, oh, this is great. I have something to do.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, I love achieving and it's not
Speaker 3: like I said, it's not ego way over that I
Speaker 3: feel real good about myself. Like I don't, you know,
Speaker 3: have this ego where I I mean, I feel fine
Speaker 3: about my achievements and fine about everything I do and
Speaker 3: how would I do for other people in my life?
Speaker 2: But I'm still doing it and why I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's fun, I guess, you know, it's as much fun
Speaker 3: as being a rock star going out on stage, you know,
Speaker 3: with you know, opening up a new business and having
Speaker 3: it be successful is like you know, walking to a
Speaker 3: liquor store and seeing my booze on the counter, or
Speaker 3: walking into a bar a restaurant and looking at the bar,
Speaker 3: my booze on the back bar. Man, that's like hearing
Speaker 3: your song on the radio two hundred times, you know
Speaker 3: in montro So. I remember hearing my voice on the
Speaker 3: radio the first time. I couldn't even hear it. It
Speaker 3: was so crazy. I'm just going, I'm not, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't know what to do. I wanted more. I
Speaker 3: wanted to feel it. I wanted to hear it. I couldn't.
Speaker 3: And it's almost that good seeing your booze and stuff
Speaker 3: and seeing your restaurant packed, you know, seeing your hotel full.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, yeah, Jimmy, Buffet's done really well. Now, though,
Speaker 3: if Jimmy woke up with my money, it probably filed
Speaker 3: for chapter eleven.
Speaker 2: But that's a different story.
Speaker 1: Okay, but Jimmy gets a lot of respect. Are you
Speaker 1: still fighting for the respect that someone like Jimmy or
Speaker 1: someone else might have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of, you know, you know what I don't like.
Speaker 3: I don't like to be disrespect It's not like I
Speaker 3: need respect as much as I maybe used to. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that was a big deal for me, wanting
Speaker 3: to be a rock star and rich and famous and
Speaker 3: you know, but I gotta tell you. I think it's
Speaker 3: I just really don't like disrespect. You know, there's some
Speaker 3: people that just don't like me, you know, and it's
Speaker 3: going to be that way with everybody. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I feel like it's almost like being the president of
Speaker 3: the United States or something. You know, when you're rich
Speaker 3: and famous and have all these you know, businesses and
Speaker 3: people know it, some people don't like you for it,
Speaker 3: and that makes me mad, you know, Like there's people
Speaker 3: that don't like rich people, and I think, well, man,
Speaker 3: there's some poor people that are as bad as rich people.
Speaker 3: You know, some rich people are bad people, period. Some
Speaker 3: poor people are bad people. You can't judge a person
Speaker 3: by their money. You judge them by what they do
Speaker 3: and who they are and what they do for others.
Speaker 3: And you know how you know you can you know,
Speaker 3: look a look at Warren Buffett. I mean, he gets
Speaker 3: half of his money away. Okay, so what he still got?
Speaker 3: You know, he says, no one needs more than five
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars. What, of course not. But truthfully, it
Speaker 3: gets five hundred million dollars away, you know, to charities
Speaker 3: and build schools and hospitals, and you know, hell, he's
Speaker 3: a wonderful man.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: If we had more people like him, the government wouldn't
Speaker 3: have to be so strapped trying to take care of
Speaker 3: all these people. So I feel like I'm one of
Speaker 3: those kind of people. I want to I want to
Speaker 3: do really good with my money, and when I open
Speaker 3: up a new restaurant and I give all that money away.
Speaker 3: I just opened up a restaurant here in Orange County
Speaker 3: at the Waterfront Hilton. It's called Kabbo Wobble Beach Club.
Speaker 3: It's my first beach club. I'm kind of morphing Kabo
Speaker 3: Wobble into beach my beach thing, Sammy's Beach Bar and
Speaker 3: grills and Sammy's Beach Bar run Beach Bar, cocktails and
Speaker 3: Kabbo Wobble. I'm melting them together. So it's Kabo Wobble
Speaker 3: Beach Club. If you see what I'm saying. That saying
Speaker 3: I'm loving this project. I want to have a beat
Speaker 3: Kabbo Wobble resort. But my point is when I opened
Speaker 3: it up, I give every every penny every month goes
Speaker 3: to Chalk Children's Hospital of Orange County. And if there's
Speaker 3: extra money where it starts being so dam much. But
Speaker 3: I'm going, well, you know, then I'm gonna give some
Speaker 3: to food banks and give them to Tillies. This Attillies
Speaker 3: thing where this really helps teenagers up. So I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm giving them money. Well I'm not even touching it.
Speaker 3: But when I walk in there and it's packed, I'm going, yes,
Speaker 3: this is so great, you know, and I see that check. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's so you can't. I don't want nobody mad at me.
Speaker 3: I don't want nobody dogging me for that, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, if I do. You know, I got five
Speaker 3: restaurants I do that with, and it comes to about
Speaker 3: six hundred thousand dollars a year that I give away
Speaker 3: every year for ten years, and every every gig I've
Speaker 3: ever played for the last thirteen years since I sold
Speaker 3: Cobbo Wobble Tequila for the zillion dollars I give every
Speaker 3: city I play, I give twenty five hundred dollars minimum
Speaker 3: to the local food bank every cent for you know,
Speaker 3: like twelve thirteen years. So I want to be respected
Speaker 3: for that, not not necessarily respect. I'm not asking for it,
Speaker 3: but just don't disrespect me and call me an asshole
Speaker 3: or thea ain't call me a rich shirker.
Speaker 2: Oh that folk are so rich man, you know, I
Speaker 2: hate him. Don't do that to me. That's that makes
Speaker 2: me mad.
Speaker 1: Okay, we live in an era where people are here
Speaker 1: and hate all the day long online, and you have
Speaker 1: to ignore a little bit about that. But on a
Speaker 1: higher level, tell me about a couple of times you
Speaker 1: were disrespected.
Speaker 2: Ah, nothing really comes to mind.
Speaker 3: I had a couple business partners that really try to
Speaker 3: take advantage of me and really stole from me and
Speaker 3: actually cheated me and when they knew what I was
Speaker 3: doing with my money. And I call that disrespect.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like.
Speaker 3: If I do something really nice for someone and they
Speaker 3: take advantage of that and I you know, I've got
Speaker 3: a business partner right now. I feel in the same
Speaker 3: way about a guy. I got to get away from
Speaker 3: this guy. I got to get rid of him. But
Speaker 3: I have a philosophy that you never fuck anybody like you.
Speaker 3: Just don't do that. Any situation I get in is
Speaker 3: supposed to be everyone wins, you win, I win. I
Speaker 3: don't want to win and you lose. I do not
Speaker 3: want that. I won't I won't get involved. Uh, And
Speaker 3: I don't want where you win and I lose, I
Speaker 3: won't get involved, but I have before. And so that's
Speaker 3: the ultimate goal for me is to never fuck anybody.
Speaker 3: And then so when I go into a relationship and
Speaker 3: I do something really nice for someone, say hey, you
Speaker 3: want to be my business Parker, you do this and
Speaker 3: I'll do this and we'll be partners. Yeah, shake hands,
Speaker 3: no contract, And then they turn around and fuck me.
Speaker 3: That That really that makes me mad. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: really angry to be disrespected. That's to me, it's pure disrespect.
Speaker 3: For someone to take advantage of someone that's trying to
Speaker 3: do something nice for them, that's disrespect.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked about Warren Buffett, and famously Warren Buffett
Speaker 1: taught Bill Gates how to be a philanthropist. Where do
Speaker 1: you get all your phillianthropical elements? Where did you learn
Speaker 1: to give back?
Speaker 3: Uh? Wow, oh boy, I got goosebumps. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if you can see these things. My hair is
Speaker 3: standing up on my body. That's how much I love
Speaker 3: giving back. This the it's man, It's what drives me
Speaker 3: now is how much more I can do? What more
Speaker 3: can I do? How can I fix that? And where
Speaker 3: it came from was I went to a charitable event
Speaker 3: that was high falutin in San Francisco, long long time ago,
Speaker 3: I want to say fifteen years ago or more.
Speaker 2: It was for a Painted Turtle, which is.
Speaker 3: An organization that's kind of like Make a Wish where
Speaker 3: they build this little village and playground type thing for
Speaker 3: children that are dying, have termally ill and which my
Speaker 3: biggest my biggest concern is determinedly ill children that parents
Speaker 3: cannot keep supporting them. They've run out of insurance or whatever.
Speaker 3: That child has only got a couple of years to live.
Speaker 3: Who but Paul Newman. They showed a little clip and
Speaker 3: they showed Paul Newman. He was just leaning on a counter,
Speaker 3: had a beer in his hand. It was at a race.
Speaker 3: He had his race thing on and it was he
Speaker 3: was pasted already, but it was just an old clip
Speaker 3: where he was part of the paintal I think that
Speaker 3: was his one of his main things. And he said,
Speaker 3: when we see when you see a situation of someone
Speaker 3: in a position that you can help, a bad situation,
Speaker 3: that you can actually do something about it, and you don't.
Speaker 2: He goes, I couldn't live in myself.
Speaker 3: So he saw a situation that he thought, well, I'm
Speaker 3: in a position I can actually help that.
Speaker 2: I can change that, you know.
Speaker 3: And that's how he got in the hook in philanthropy.
Speaker 3: He thought, you know, and I thought to myself, Wow,
Speaker 3: what a beautiful thing. I just hit home with me
Speaker 3: that if you see something a person that's in a
Speaker 3: bad situation, it's like, you know, an elderly lady falling
Speaker 3: down in the street, you stop your frigging car and
Speaker 3: you get out and you help that lady, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 2: It just hit home with me.
Speaker 3: So I just thought, man, I'm in a position now
Speaker 3: where I can actually start doing something. So I started
Speaker 3: the found I looked into it and I found out,
Speaker 3: you know, you give a dollar because you have to
Speaker 3: pay taxes on it. So I thought, well, that's stupid.
Speaker 3: You know, that's horrible. You know, I want them. I
Speaker 3: want that person to have all that money, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. If I if I got a Ford
Speaker 3: one hundred dollars, I want them to have the full
Speaker 3: hundred dollars. So someone, my attorney, told me about you know,
Speaker 3: you started a foundation, and I said, oh shit. I
Speaker 3: looked into it, started to hag our family foundation, and
Speaker 3: that's how I give money away. It's it's just it's
Speaker 3: really wonderful because my foundation and is not one where
Speaker 3: I allow people to give me money. I tell everyone, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I don't want you money. I earn my own money,
Speaker 3: I put it in my foundation and I give it away.
Speaker 3: You just come and buy my tickets, you buy my booze,
Speaker 3: you come to my restaurants, and I'll take care of
Speaker 3: the other thing. Don't try to write me a check,
Speaker 3: you know, because you start taking other people's money. Now
Speaker 3: you're that's a rough gig man. I don't want to
Speaker 3: be that responsible, you know. So my idea of philanthropy
Speaker 3: is not raising money through other people. But I go
Speaker 3: play music like acoustic work cure. I do it every
Speaker 3: year and except in COVID. We just race finally hit
Speaker 3: a million dollars that we did in eight years for
Speaker 3: Children's Hospital for.
Speaker 2: The cancer. Children that are infants that.
Speaker 3: Are born with brain tumors and they have to be
Speaker 3: radiate it and their parents got to stay with them
Speaker 3: for months a brand new baby. You know, you can't
Speaker 3: just drop it off, say okay, we have to go
Speaker 3: back to work and go home. A lot of people
Speaker 3: come from out of town to UCSF where they have
Speaker 3: a wonderful division of gene knockemora. She's doing wonderful research
Speaker 3: where she's dealing with the toxins of radiation and getting
Speaker 3: rid of them and getting immune system back up so
Speaker 3: that the tumors don't come back, because otherwise radiation ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the time tumors come back. So I'm supporting
Speaker 3: that so she can have a assistant, so she can
Speaker 3: spend more.
Speaker 2: Time in the lab.
Speaker 3: And the money though that from this concert, then we
Speaker 3: support the parents that need a place to stay that
Speaker 3: we can't afford to stay in San Francisco for a month,
Speaker 3: you know, say yeah you can't, I'll take care of that,
Speaker 3: you know. So it's really grassroots stuff. That's the way
Speaker 3: I like to do it. But so far now we've
Speaker 3: raised a million dollars one hundred thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 3: Fifty goes to the assistant and fifty goes into the
Speaker 3: tank to support, you know, families. So that's the way
Speaker 3: I like to do it. I say, look, i'll play
Speaker 3: the music. We're not going to show you pictures of
Speaker 3: babies dying. We're not going to have a silent auction,
Speaker 3: We're not going to ask for donations. You come to
Speaker 3: the concert, Bob, we're taj Mahal joon't bias. Sammy Hagar,
Speaker 3: Chris Isaac and Mike Anthony did it this year and
Speaker 3: it's just like it sells out in five minutes at
Speaker 3: the Fillmore. Every penny goes except for the expenses, you know,
Speaker 3: right to the college.
Speaker 2: And that's the way I like to do it. Man,
Speaker 2: That is so cool. Same thing.
Speaker 3: You open up a restaurant, Come love the food. I
Speaker 3: guarantee the food and drink's gonna be good. You gonna
Speaker 3: hear my music. It's gonna be the food that I eat.
Speaker 3: And I give the money away. Don't try to give
Speaker 3: me your money. I don't want your money because that's dangerous,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, but if you give it away
Speaker 3: and it got ripped off, it was a bad deal.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like you never know. There's there's plenty of crooks
Speaker 3: and philanthropy folks. Let me just tell you that much
Speaker 3: right now. It's harder to give money away than it
Speaker 3: is to make it. How about that, Bob. That's Sammy
Speaker 3: Hagar's philosophy. I can make money easy, giving it away
Speaker 3: is tough.
Speaker 2: Man. You got to make sure it's right.
Speaker 3: You know, that would be disrespect if you gave somebody
Speaker 3: some money for something.
Speaker 2: Like that and they misused it. Who see, I got
Speaker 2: to ax to grind here. There's something my dad taught me.
Speaker 2: Maybe I learned that from my dad too.
Speaker 1: Okay for you to get into a business, you know,
Speaker 1: I get so caught up making sure everything's right that
Speaker 1: I don't do it. So to what degree do you
Speaker 1: vet what's going on or you just say we're going
Speaker 1: we're going to fix the problems after.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm stupid like that. That's my downfall. I have
Speaker 3: no downside. I can't even see a downside. When I
Speaker 3: see a vision of a business and I see all
Speaker 3: the way to the end of the tunnel, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not I never just it's never. Just first thing,
Speaker 3: I say, oh, that's a good idea, and then I say,
Speaker 3: oh but oh.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, oh, oh yeah, and oh man.
Speaker 3: And then it just starts flying. And when it starts flying,
Speaker 3: I say, somebody say, well what if what do you
Speaker 3: mean what after? This can't lose There's no downside, you know.
Speaker 3: That's my biggest fault as a businessman. That's why I
Speaker 3: tell people I'm not as good a businessman as you think,
Speaker 3: because I never weigh it. I mean I was starting
Speaker 3: to now a little bit. But I never do anything
Speaker 3: though until I find the guy. I always find the
Speaker 3: guy first. It's all about finding the guy to run
Speaker 3: the business. And that's where I need to partner that
Speaker 3: I can trust and that won't disrespect my vision. And
Speaker 3: I've had that happen a few times. But that's the
Speaker 3: most important thing, is finding the guy. I can't do
Speaker 3: it every day. I just have one meeting a month
Speaker 3: with my companies, and I just go out with the tattoos,
Speaker 3: you know, and I get the tattoos for promotion.
Speaker 2: I wear the shirts.
Speaker 3: I'm not wearing one now because I didn't want to
Speaker 3: insult you by wearing one promoting one of my businesses.
Speaker 1: Okay, so before you got involved, it was called Cabo
Speaker 1: San Lucas, not Cabo, and it was really sleepy. I
Speaker 1: mean I literally think you gotta get you get credit
Speaker 1: for building up Cabo. What did you see and how
Speaker 1: did that all come together?
Speaker 3: Well, boy, Bob, that was a vision. That's a dream
Speaker 3: I never had. Keith Richards got married down there to
Speaker 3: Patty Hanson. I think it is her name Patty, and
Speaker 3: they got married and I saw in People magazine a
Speaker 3: picture at their wedding of an infinity pool with the
Speaker 3: ocean in the background, a palm tree and a cactus,
Speaker 3: and I went, where in the hell is that my
Speaker 3: favorite thing? Ocean desert? You know, A palm tree man.
Speaker 3: You know, I got a philosophy. If palm trees don't grow, Sammy,
Speaker 3: don't go. You know, I'm a beach nut. I'm a
Speaker 3: beach nut. I love it, and I love the desert,
Speaker 3: you know. And there they were, was, you know, and
Speaker 3: I thought, where is this? So I went and it
Speaker 3: was one flight in a week, one flight out a week,
Speaker 3: you know, flew in, picked up people took him out
Speaker 3: from San Francisco, and you know, but and then I
Speaker 3: had a There was no phones, no TVs, no nothing.
Speaker 3: Three hotels. I stayed at the Twin Dolphins. I fell
Speaker 3: in love. I just fell in love. So I'd go
Speaker 3: there as much as I could. And I was there
Speaker 3: one year and I said to I made friends with
Speaker 3: the matri d there. That the guy that was kind
Speaker 3: of the bellman. He took care of everything at this
Speaker 3: little resort, very small resort, fifty rooms.
Speaker 2: And I said, hey, uh, I need to make a
Speaker 2: phone call.
Speaker 3: Man. You know, somebody came down with a newspaper and
Speaker 3: they said the stock market had crashed.
Speaker 2: It was like an eight. I guess.
Speaker 3: Seventy nine eighty. Something had happened economically. Not that I
Speaker 3: was worried about my money, but I was worried, what's
Speaker 3: going on? You know, I heard these guys talking pool side. Yeah, man,
Speaker 3: it's well yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: What I said.
Speaker 3: I said, hey, I want to go make phone but
Speaker 3: I wanted to call my my manager, my accountants or somebody.
Speaker 2: So he said, I got to take you into town.
Speaker 2: So it was a dirt rope.
Speaker 3: He took me into town, had to go down to
Speaker 3: you were royals, about six miles into town. Seven miles
Speaker 3: into town. You go to a to the phone company.
Speaker 3: You gave him the money. An operator said it's going
Speaker 3: to cost you this much to talk for three minutes.
Speaker 3: I says, okay, gave her the paesos. She plug it in,
Speaker 3: dial it up, gave me the phone and I said, wow,
Speaker 3: I saw downtown. I'm going, holy shit, this face is unbelievable.
Speaker 3: There's nothing here. There's palapa roos. And he goes, oh,
Speaker 3: let's go house some tacos. I know, this great little shock.
Speaker 3: I mean these are shocks, no windows, no air conditioning,
Speaker 3: dirt floor, chickens running around. Went into this place with
Speaker 3: je and he goes, I said, what do you what
Speaker 3: are you going to have?
Speaker 2: He goes toyo.
Speaker 3: The owner of this little thing was called Gudalajara.
Speaker 2: And he goes, Boyo, there's sickens running around.
Speaker 3: I swear went back and killed the damned chicken, put
Speaker 3: it on the grill, and I'm glad. This is unbelievable.
Speaker 3: You hear the chicken back there, you know. And I
Speaker 3: just fell a love and then another. So I made
Speaker 3: him take me into town. A couple other times, I'd
Speaker 3: come down there and stay for two weeks at a time.
Speaker 3: And I came in and we went right back to
Speaker 3: the same restaurant, and there's two little kids.
Speaker 2: At this time.
Speaker 3: You can see lands in You can look at the
Speaker 3: marina and nothing, no hotels, no nothing down there. There's
Speaker 3: hotels but Solomar and Finisteric where Keith got married.
Speaker 2: We're at the other end.
Speaker 3: So we're right there in the strip on the on
Speaker 3: the marina, and two little boys had a stick stuck
Speaker 3: through swordfish eyes right through his eyes. And they were
Speaker 3: each had the stick and if the swordfish probably weigh
Speaker 3: one hundred pounds. And they were dragging it down the
Speaker 3: road into these little shack restaurants and they had had
Speaker 3: slices taken out of it, chunks was bleeding and stuff,
Speaker 3: you know. And I'm going, whoa. And they come by
Speaker 3: where we're sitting. The owner of the restaurants, Scott, starts
Speaker 3: talking to him and he comes to us. They said,
Speaker 3: you guys want Marlon said, yeah, hell yeah, cuts a
Speaker 3: couple slashes off, give us the kids some paesels, throws
Speaker 3: it on the grill. Dude, I fell in love. Didn't
Speaker 3: you hear a mariachi band? You're drinking shots at tequila?
Speaker 3: I said, I'd have found fucking paradise. And I said,
Speaker 3: I want to build. I want to buy a piece
Speaker 3: of land. I want to build a little PLoP a
Speaker 3: bar down here and sell real tequila because I had
Speaker 3: tasted real tequila and Jorge found the spot. I bought
Speaker 3: it for one hundred thousand dollars. I built the Cabo
Speaker 3: Wobble for two hundred and sixty three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: and it makes that much a month. You know, it
Speaker 3: just it just was the biggest gold mine ever in
Speaker 3: the history. And the first three years it lost money.
Speaker 3: You know, it was because there was no people down there.
Speaker 3: You know, It's like so then they finally paved one
Speaker 3: of the roads, and then they put a new hotel up,
Speaker 3: and then they did this, and then they did that.
Speaker 3: And now I still Lovekabo, but it is so fricking
Speaker 3: here's hotel, hotel, hotel hotel. When I when I first
Speaker 3: went there, there was occupancy was six thousand people between
Speaker 3: locals and all the hotel rooms between San Jose Delcabo
Speaker 3: and down talk about six thousand people. Now there's half
Speaker 3: a million people, and it's crazy. But I still love
Speaker 3: the hell out of it. It was a weird vision.
Speaker 3: I just fell in love. It was pure passion. I
Speaker 3: had no idea I was ever going to make a
Speaker 3: penny or ever going to make tequila.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a dream. I did not dream.
Speaker 3: That dream was never dreamt and everyone thought I was crazy.
Speaker 3: I broke a band up, I lost an accountant. People
Speaker 3: just quit on me when I was doing that project.
Speaker 3: You know, Van Halen were going nuts, you know, you
Speaker 3: they went down there and there was no phones in
Speaker 3: anything yet, you know. And they were staying at a hotel,
Speaker 3: no room service and stuff, and they were freaking out.
Speaker 2: They didn't like it.
Speaker 3: It's so funny when I think back, because now they
Speaker 3: would love it.
Speaker 1: Well legend is, and you know the truth who knows,
Speaker 1: because I certainly don't. Was they were invested and then
Speaker 1: they freaked out and got angry at you, and you
Speaker 1: had to buy them out.
Speaker 2: What really happened there.
Speaker 3: Well, it wasn't even a biot. We were in debt.
Speaker 3: The Kabbo Wobbo was in debt once again. I had
Speaker 3: a bad manager partner down there. It became very heavy
Speaker 3: into drugs and he lost everything and the government came.
Speaker 3: He wasn't paying the vendors. We weren't making money, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't. He was ordering the beer and the food
Speaker 3: and the but he wasn't paying anybody. So they shut
Speaker 3: him down. They came to put a red a yellow
Speaker 3: ribbon around. The government confiscated the Cobbo Wobbo. And I
Speaker 3: was on tour and we got I said, hey guys,
Speaker 3: we got to kick in some money. We owed eighty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. He had about eighty thousand dollars debt, so
Speaker 3: I could call a friend down there, you know, hoard
Speaker 3: hand guys, and I said, hey, go down and see
Speaker 3: what's going on. I said, yeah, you got we need
Speaker 3: you need to pay eighty thousand dollars to get the
Speaker 3: keys back, you know. And the guy took off that
Speaker 3: was that he did it. He was out of tech.
Speaker 3: He just took out it. And so, uh, they said.
Speaker 2: Fuck you.
Speaker 3: This is your deal man. You're a problem man. You
Speaker 3: deal with it. And I said, wow, not cool. They
Speaker 3: said let them. They said, let them have it, let
Speaker 3: the government out. We don't want nothing to do with
Speaker 3: this anymore. They had already put in about ten twenty
Speaker 3: grand apiece over the years and three years every now
Speaker 3: and then say okay, everybody's got to kick in ten grands,
Speaker 3: you know, or we need twenty grand to keep the
Speaker 3: doors open. And they didn't like that either, but I
Speaker 3: didn't either. But it wasn't that much money. For God's sake.
Speaker 3: We're in van Hale on this days. So they said,
Speaker 3: let them keep it, and I said no. So I said, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll take it. So they indemnified, you know, maybe indemnify
Speaker 3: them if there was a lawsuit they'd want no trouble,
Speaker 3: so they gave it to me and it was yeah,
Speaker 3: it really it really put it. Then when it took off,
Speaker 3: like a year later, it started really the town grew.
Speaker 3: You know, Ednall are going.
Speaker 2: You fuck her?
Speaker 3: You know you you ran it into the ground so
Speaker 3: that you could get it back from us. And I'm going,
Speaker 3: you guys, if I was smarter, I wouldn't. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: need you guys.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: You know, it was like god, it just really got it.
Speaker 3: They got really angry about that when it started really
Speaker 3: becoming popular. You know, people would we'd be on tour
Speaker 3: and uh and people would come see us in a
Speaker 3: hotel say, oh, man, we loved the kabba wabble. We
Speaker 3: were there, o man, so fucking great. And they'd be like,
Speaker 3: you know, so because trouble. It didn't I didn't say
Speaker 3: it broke the band up, but it didn't help. But
Speaker 3: keep things, you know, with my divorce coming up after
Speaker 3: that and all that that, you know, the band just
Speaker 3: and Leffler died and then that band was over.
Speaker 1: You know, tell me about starting the Tequila.
Speaker 3: Well, when I first went to Cabo, the first thing
Speaker 3: it happened to me, it was I had a real margarite,
Speaker 3: a hand squeeze line good fresh sea salt on the
Speaker 3: rim control, uh, and real tequila. And I said, man,
Speaker 3: before that I was I never really had a real marguerite,
Speaker 3: you know, mixer, you know, and uh, it blew my mind.
Speaker 3: I said, this is the best speaker I've ever had
Speaker 3: in my life. What's in it? Blah blah blah blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. Oh, let me see that tequila. And it
Speaker 3: was just some you know, one hundred percent of goby tequila.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what it was. At that time,
Speaker 3: there were no one hundred percent of goby tequilas in America.
Speaker 3: There was every everything was meek. Still, it's fifty one
Speaker 3: percent tequila, forty nine percent whatever you want to put
Speaker 3: in there to make it, make it brown, make it
Speaker 3: look like it's aged, and make it sweet and make it,
Speaker 3: you know whatever. Anyway, the headache stuff, so you know,
Speaker 3: I had that disease like everyone else. You you know, Oh,
Speaker 3: I can't drink tequila. No, it's I had the worst
Speaker 3: hangover in my life on tequila.
Speaker 2: Don't know.
Speaker 3: Thanks, you know, then all of a sudden I taste
Speaker 3: pure a hundred percent of goby Tica. I go, man,
Speaker 3: I've never had anything like this. I never had a
Speaker 3: margarita like this. So I was getting ready to look
Speaker 3: to buy a condo. So I finally built a condo
Speaker 3: unit down here. The roads were still dirt and everything.
Speaker 3: So I was going to go buy this condo. And
Speaker 3: I said, uh uh, while we're in Gualajara, let's we
Speaker 3: were starting construction on the coppoll. Let's go to Gualajara
Speaker 3: and let's look at furniture because it's really cool, artistic town.
Speaker 3: Gualahara has got some of the coolest shops. It's like
Speaker 3: Rodeo Drive, but it's of Mexico. And I so Guy said,
Speaker 3: let's go to Tequila Horterhay, my partner who's still my partner,
Speaker 3: by the way, who still runs the cantina, who's still
Speaker 3: you know, he's he's rich now too, from a bellman.
Speaker 3: I told him you're going to be my partner, and
Speaker 3: he never fucked me. We're still partners. It's a beautiful story.
Speaker 3: I mean, I love him and his family. Without him,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't wouldn't have made it through all that. So
Speaker 3: he said, let's go to Gualahara. I've said, friends there,
Speaker 3: let's take us for some tequila tastings. So I went
Speaker 3: and I saw what tequila, how it's made, and I
Speaker 3: saw rila gave and I saw him cooking it, and
Speaker 3: I saw him doing all this stuff, and we stayed
Speaker 3: and we so we stayed there a few days, and
Speaker 3: I said, I want to start my own tequila. I'm
Speaker 3: going to make Cacabo wabble tequila. And we went around,
Speaker 3: went back. I had an airplane at that time, a
Speaker 3: small plane, but you know, a turboprop that I used
Speaker 3: to take down there. So we fly straight over to
Speaker 3: Gualajara and spend a few days and fly back. And
Speaker 3: I had my condo and we we went around knocking
Speaker 3: on doors, and one family said, yeah, we'll we'll make
Speaker 3: tequila for you, bring us to bottles. And I'm going, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I was tasting all these tequilas. I mean
Speaker 3: it was take your ivan bottle, dump the water out,
Speaker 3: take it out of their barrel, or take it right
Speaker 3: out of their bottle, and they'd let you taste it.
Speaker 2: I mean it was like that primitive.
Speaker 3: These were farmers that were growing their gave and made
Speaker 3: their own little private stash of about twenty cases a
Speaker 3: year for their family and their parties, and they sold
Speaker 3: all the agabe. So I said, well, I want you
Speaker 3: to make me tequila because that's the best tequila ever
Speaker 3: tasted in my life. And it was El Vahito who
Speaker 3: now makes Santo. I went back to them after I
Speaker 3: sold it because they changed it. So anyway, long story short,
Speaker 3: I said. They said, bring us bottles. So I said, hoory, hey,
Speaker 3: where are we going to get littles? Said?
Speaker 2: Oh, I got a friend.
Speaker 3: So I went to this bottle place with the hand
Speaker 3: blue fricking bottles and I saw blue them. I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's do the blue bottom. Okay, hand blown great glass
Speaker 3: in the bottom. It could cut your freaking hand on right.
Speaker 3: And they were not perfect, all of them. I took
Speaker 3: a case of bottles. They filled them up for me,
Speaker 3: put corks in them, and I brought them back to
Speaker 3: the cantinas and they were sending me samples, and pretty
Speaker 3: soon we bought these little barrels and put them all
Speaker 3: in the cantina when it first opened, and they and
Speaker 3: they sent me samples and like gas line can, like
Speaker 3: five gallon gas line can of tequila had sent it
Speaker 3: and we'd pour it into the barrels and serve it
Speaker 3: out of the barrels in. After six months you had
Speaker 3: a reprisodo. After four months you had a ripissoda. And
Speaker 3: it was just so good. It was unbelievable, handmade tequila,
Speaker 3: the biggest fat ripe of gobvis is. Before there was
Speaker 3: a shortage like now, I mean you get Gobby's this
Speaker 3: big if you're lucky, and so it was like unbelievable.
Speaker 3: It exploded, and Andrew Diaz Blue tasted it and said
Speaker 3: this A wrote a story in a mag Sea said
Speaker 3: this is one of the three best tequilas in the world,
Speaker 3: Kabawa and and all of a sudden, phones ringing, Wilson Daniels,
Speaker 3: you know, the DRC guys calling me saying we want to,
Speaker 3: you know, import your tequila. And I'm going, wow, I
Speaker 3: don't even know what to do here, you know. So
Speaker 3: it called Shep Gordon. You know, Shep Gordon is the
Speaker 3: biggest brain at that you know for me, Shep Gordon's
Speaker 3: got one of the most he thinks more out of
Speaker 3: the boxing name.
Speaker 2: So I called chef Shep. Here's what's going on? What
Speaker 2: am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: Send me let me taste of tequila. I send a
Speaker 3: note Willie Nelson tastes it.
Speaker 2: He goes.
Speaker 3: Willie says, it's fucking good. I said, shep goes, I
Speaker 3: never had tequila.
Speaker 2: I'm going. Willie says, it's good. You know, it's fucking good.
Speaker 3: So so we I had to find another bottling company.
Speaker 2: I hired a.
Speaker 3: Guy in Gualajara, a guy named Julio escandone who's passed now,
Speaker 3: but he he said, I'll take care of everything down here.
Speaker 3: I'll get you the better bottles and we'll take him
Speaker 3: deliver them to the place. And and pretty soon the
Speaker 3: they're making six thousand cases of kaba waba and they're going, whoa.
Speaker 3: The farmers are going, man, were like rich, you know,
Speaker 3: and I'm going, yeah, this is awesome. And then the
Speaker 3: next year we had thirty seven thousand case order and
Speaker 3: because the tequila just exploded, not because of me, it
Speaker 3: just a patron came out and I was right behind him.
Speaker 3: So it was amazing that this little factory, I mean,
Speaker 3: these said little farmers that had a small little distillery,
Speaker 3: they grew right with me. They said, oh no, we'll
Speaker 3: do it, we'll do it, we'll do it. They bought
Speaker 3: bigger tanks. They you know, they hired they got a
Speaker 3: truck instead of honestly they had horseback and fucking carts.
Speaker 3: You know, they said they bought a truck. And I
Speaker 3: was in the tequila business and it exploded. I made
Speaker 3: money the first frigging second year. I started making money,
Speaker 3: huge profits, like you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars,
Speaker 3: and then millions and millions of dollars, and it was like, wow,
Speaker 3: it just exploded. I ever seen a luckier guy in
Speaker 3: my life. That's where I say the dream. I never
Speaker 3: dreamt the whole Cobo thing. It just was like, thank you,
Speaker 3: Keith Richards. I still haven't met I met Keith, but
Speaker 3: not in a situation where I've been able to talk
Speaker 3: to him about this.
Speaker 2: Dude, I owe you. What do you want from me?
Speaker 3: You know, I'll send you down there and give you
Speaker 3: the penthouse sweet for as long as you want it,
Speaker 3: you know, And he doesn't need my money, but I
Speaker 3: owe that man.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you had the company, you built it up,
Speaker 1: you supposedly sold it for one hundred million dollars. Usually
Speaker 1: there's a non compete, but now you're making tequila again
Speaker 1: and run too. So explain what's going on here.
Speaker 3: Well, when I sold it, I did sell it for
Speaker 3: one hundred million dollars, but I only sold eighty percent
Speaker 3: of it, so I only got eighty million dollars. And
Speaker 3: then I sold the twenty percent back to them five
Speaker 3: years later because it wasn't the kind of deal that
Speaker 3: I thought was going to be right, and it postponed
Speaker 3: me from being able to make tequila again. And I
Speaker 3: tell you, I got hooked on this game. It's really
Speaker 3: really fun and exciting.
Speaker 2: It's so.
Speaker 3: Organic and holistic, the way the process they make tequila
Speaker 3: reel together. Now, these people put everything in all these
Speaker 3: preserves and crapit, tequila, there's not There's only like seven
Speaker 3: natural tequilas on the market right now. I think In
Speaker 3: Santo's one of them, and that real tequila's made the
Speaker 3: real way. We don't put sugar in it because we
Speaker 3: use greenagabe. You know, we just wait till the agave
Speaker 3: is big enough and we you know, we pay more
Speaker 3: for it and all that stuff trim it properly. But
Speaker 3: that's a long story about the process of making. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I loved it so much that I just no matter
Speaker 3: I said, I got all this money. What the fuck
Speaker 3: am I doing? I just stuck in the bank. I
Speaker 3: started a foundation. Okay, yeah, I started giving money away.
Speaker 3: I helped a lot of people. But I'm still saying
Speaker 3: my lifestyle hasn't changed. So I bought an airplace, you know,
Speaker 3: the biggest purchase I've ever made in my life, you know,
Speaker 3: A big airplane, A nice airplane, beautiful airplane. Take my
Speaker 3: whole band in my family, go on tour. That was
Speaker 3: my only thing I did other than that. I didn't
Speaker 3: buy a new house. I already had houses. I didn't
Speaker 3: buy a new new Ferraris. I did, but I mean
Speaker 3: I would have anyway. You know, when the La Ferrari
Speaker 3: came in, I had to have that car. So long
Speaker 3: story short, it was like I thought, I liked the game,
Speaker 3: I don't like the money.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm having more fun with the game than
Speaker 2: with the money. You know.
Speaker 3: So I already had enough money, So it was really
Speaker 3: a strange thing to have that feeling where I really now,
Speaker 3: I don't have the need. I'm not money hungry anymore,
Speaker 3: you know, from being poor, so that there's life changing.
Speaker 3: So I sold it back to them so I could
Speaker 3: do a non compete. The non compete would end in
Speaker 3: five years. But in the meantime, I started a rum company,
Speaker 3: Sammy's Beach bar Room in Hawaii. And this was my
Speaker 3: big stupid idea that I still make the rum, but
Speaker 3: I had to move to Porter. I was making rum
Speaker 3: from cane in Maui. Okay, Maloi property. How much Maui
Speaker 3: property is worth, So sugar cane is like a weed.
Speaker 3: And I was They had these sugar cane farms, and
Speaker 3: I was supporting all this because they cut the sugar
Speaker 3: cane down. Take it down to the old C and
Speaker 3: H sugar factory, which had left one little department open
Speaker 3: for me, so that they could make you know, sugar
Speaker 3: out of the cane, drive it back up, make a
Speaker 3: handmade rum in Hawaii. White rum that costs by the
Speaker 3: time it hit the market was like forty nine dollars
Speaker 3: a bottle. When you can buy a bottle of white rum,
Speaker 3: you know Bacardi or any of the rum's white rum,
Speaker 3: you can buy a bottle for like nine dollars, and
Speaker 3: mine was like forty nine dollars. And people say, well,
Speaker 3: nobody drinks white rum. But I thought I was going
Speaker 3: to elevate rum the way I elevated tequila because see,
Speaker 3: I was making real tequila that people say, oh wow,
Speaker 3: this is better than any tequila have ever drank. Well,
Speaker 3: my rum is better than ay rum you drink. But
Speaker 3: nobody was wanting to pay forty nine dollars for it.
Speaker 3: I wasn't getting it in the well, and and so
Speaker 3: I said I had to move. It started getting more
Speaker 3: and more expensive. It'd be seventy dollars now. I moved
Speaker 3: it to Puerto Rico, where the real cane, you know, grows,
Speaker 3: and they make rum much less expensive and it's not
Speaker 3: as good, but it's still better than the competition because
Speaker 3: once again, I don't cut corners. I'm not having to
Speaker 3: meet margins like, oh well, well we got to raise
Speaker 3: our price because it cane. It just went up. No, no,
Speaker 3: just you know, I just won't make as much. It's okay,
Speaker 3: you know. I want to make the best cane, best rum.
Speaker 3: I don't want to use dirty cane. I don't want
Speaker 3: to use old caine. I don't want to add you know,
Speaker 3: molasses and things to it. So anyway, long story short
Speaker 3: of got in the rum business, which is not like
Speaker 3: the tequila business. The rum business has never exploded. It
Speaker 3: exploded like in the twenties. I miss I missed that ride,
Speaker 3: you know. So my rum company, yeah, it breaks even
Speaker 3: it you know, makes a couple thousand dollars here and there,
Speaker 3: but it's really not a It's just a labor of love.
Speaker 3: And I refuse to quit, you know. So I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to make these cocktails now. So I've made now,
Speaker 3: I with the trying to keep the rum thing alive,
Speaker 3: I made Sammy's Beach Bar cocktails pure Rum, pure sparkling
Speaker 3: rum ward winning gold medal Rum. Sammy's Beach Bar Rum
Speaker 3: is in those cocktails. Everyone else just puts generic alcohol
Speaker 3: in those cocktails. You know, they were beer originally, they
Speaker 3: put beer based, and they put wine based. And I
Speaker 3: was the first guy to make spirit based. And I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'm on top of this. And during COVID, I'm doing
Speaker 3: all this right. So it's going slow, slow, you know,
Speaker 3: in mail order and phone calls and zooms.
Speaker 2: Get it all done.
Speaker 3: COVID in is and about fifty friggin the big boys
Speaker 3: came out with the cocktails now and the cans. You know,
Speaker 3: but they still don't use the good rum. They still
Speaker 3: don't use the good noun. And there's no artificial flavors,
Speaker 3: no artificial colors. Mine's the best, the best of the best,
Speaker 3: and that's way I like to do things. But the
Speaker 3: division exploded. I mean, these guys came out spending forty
Speaker 3: million dollars on a launch, you know, for Super Bowl
Speaker 3: ad for whoever came out with that limon one a
Speaker 3: smear and offer somebody anyway. You know, all the big
Speaker 3: boys came out all around me and they're crushing me.
Speaker 3: But I'm just keep my head above water. But my tequila.
Speaker 3: I went back to the same Elva Eito guy when
Speaker 3: the don compete, and I made mesquila, the world's first mesquila.
Speaker 3: Everyone was drinking mescal. It's the hip is saying, oh, mescal, mescal.
Speaker 3: I went to down to Oahaka and went to every
Speaker 3: mescal maker, the rarest ones, the most expensive ones, and
Speaker 3: I can't drink more than one shot of that stuff,
Speaker 3: and man, you feel like I smoked a cigar and
Speaker 3: licked the ashtray afterwards. So I said, I want to
Speaker 3: tone this down and I wanted to mix it with tequila,
Speaker 3: and everyone said, you can't do it. It's either mescal
Speaker 3: the made in Ohaka or tequila made in Jalisco, and
Speaker 3: I said, well, what do you mean we can blend them.
Speaker 3: The government said, no, you can't. That's illegal. There's no
Speaker 3: such thing. As I said, it's misquilla. I'm gonna call
Speaker 3: it misquilla. I fought for a year, hired lawyers, nothing.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 3: Finally, my distiller, my old cobbo wobble Guy el Vehito,
Speaker 3: who makes Santo for me, he said, look, I can
Speaker 3: do it off premise.
Speaker 2: I can't do it my distillery.
Speaker 3: I said, okay, So we bring a truck truckload of
Speaker 3: the scallop from Wahaka. He goes to this little shack
Speaker 3: on the outskirts of Jalisco and blends it. And now
Speaker 3: they say it's okay, it's but I can't trademark it.
Speaker 3: And I said, okay, okay, so it's misquilla, but you
Speaker 3: can't trademark the name. It's like Kleenex, you know, It's
Speaker 3: like everybody calls a Kleenex, no matter what the brand is.
Speaker 3: So anyone can do it now, and a few people
Speaker 3: are doing it. But but it was the first blend.
Speaker 3: And then Guy Fieri comes knocking on my door seeing me.
Speaker 3: I thought, you said, next time you started it's a
Speaker 3: tequila company. You were going to make me your partner, man,
Speaker 3: you know what the fuck here's I said, Oh well,
Speaker 3: I forgot because I did, you know. So we had
Speaker 3: a we had a shake over the phone, and he said,
Speaker 3: now let's make real fucking tequila. I want to make
Speaker 3: Blanco Reposanto and a Yeho And we just are releasing
Speaker 3: our in Yeho right now because we put it in
Speaker 3: barrels and we aged it, write and we did everything right, Bob.
Speaker 3: I could go on and on. This would be this
Speaker 3: whole interview could be about the tequila business.
Speaker 2: It's so.
Speaker 3: It's so crazy, it exploded, and everybody and his dog
Speaker 3: has a tequila, but they have dog tequilas. The difference
Speaker 3: between a pure real tequila and the one things that
Speaker 3: are on the market now is just it's sacrilege.
Speaker 1: Okay, how's Cosamigos compared to yours?
Speaker 2: Not even close.
Speaker 3: I ordered a shot of costume because I haven't had
Speaker 3: it in probably three or four years, because I'm not
Speaker 3: a fan.
Speaker 2: Nothing against those guys.
Speaker 3: I love George Plooney, you know, and I looved Randy
Speaker 3: Gerber and Mike Millman's one of my dearest friends in
Speaker 3: the world. So these guys are cool guys, don't get
Speaker 3: me wrong, but they make Their quote was, well, we didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, we wanted to make a tequila that was
Speaker 3: a lot easier to drink.
Speaker 2: Well that's impossible, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Real tequila is fucking who it's got that shiver. You
Speaker 3: got to ask why you have the salt and the
Speaker 3: line's fun. It's it's just you know. Oh see, I
Speaker 3: get goosebumps once again talking about it's such a wonderful spirit.
Speaker 3: So I ordered a cosamigo the other day with Michael Anthony.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: We were at this place and they had a bar
Speaker 3: and I went, I said, what do you got? And
Speaker 3: I saw they had patron which is wonderful tequila. And
Speaker 3: I looked in and I and they had Constamigo, of
Speaker 3: course because it's one of the biggest tegabos in the world. Now, Uh,
Speaker 3: and I go, give me a shot at blanco. Uh
Speaker 3: on the rocks. And he said, you don't want don't
Speaker 3: want to market readia. Do you want a cocktail? Say no, no,
Speaker 3: I just wanted on the rocks. He was almost like
Speaker 3: you sir, the bark and they put it on the rocks.
Speaker 3: And I took a sip and I said to Mike,
Speaker 3: and I looked at the part and I said, hey,
Speaker 3: I ordered a shot, not a cocktail. This has got
Speaker 3: more shit in it than a cocktail. It's got vanilla,
Speaker 3: it's got coconut, it's got uh, it's just sweeteners, glycerine.
Speaker 3: So it's like makes your tongue thick. It's like a
Speaker 3: syrupy feel on your tongue, you know, because that makes
Speaker 3: it easier to swallow and makes it smoother. And it
Speaker 3: had all these things, and I'm going, oh my god,
Speaker 3: but I'm sorry everybody. They're not the only ones. Everybody's
Speaker 3: doing that. And that's why tequila is so big now.
Speaker 3: Real tequila drinkers don't like that. But there's the masses
Speaker 3: are drinking tequila now, and the masses don't like real tequila.
Speaker 2: They go, oh that's too hot. Oh my god. No,
Speaker 2: you know, I've seen it of my own two life.
Speaker 2: Tequila burns a little bit.
Speaker 3: It's it's a spirit, and it's it's got very subtle flavors,
Speaker 3: very subtle. You get a little bit of oak when
Speaker 3: you put it in wood, you know, you get a
Speaker 3: little bit vanilla, little coconut, out of the wood. But
Speaker 3: you don't get that out of a frigging blanco unless
Speaker 3: it's the Crystali, which is at the new style where
Speaker 3: they put it in wood for three or four years
Speaker 3: and then they redistill it and filter the color out
Speaker 3: and it's a white patrol and started that trend. It's
Speaker 3: a white tequila that tastes delicious, but you know it's
Speaker 3: it's it's very expensive to do that because you got
Speaker 3: an agent and lose all that product.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I don't want to make that tequila.
Speaker 3: I'm making a blanco and nyejo, a reposanto and a
Speaker 3: mosquito that's santo.
Speaker 2: The real shit.
Speaker 1: Okay, anybody who's in this business knows that the real
Speaker 1: key end is distribution. So you start these new companies,
Speaker 1: how a you're handling distribution.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of these guys got a lot of
Speaker 3: backing money. A lot of celebrities got big money, and
Speaker 3: they go to some backers and they they pay for it.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like you pay to play and the
Speaker 3: old day, you know, you get a record on the
Speaker 3: radio too. You know, that's kind of what's going on
Speaker 3: with the distribution. But yeah, it's all about distribution. But
Speaker 3: the whole thing is it's the end is one thing,
Speaker 3: getting it in a store. If it don't sell, you're
Speaker 3: out of here. And that's why you're seeing tequila companies
Speaker 3: come and go. Every year there's another one hundred one
Speaker 3: starting and another forty going out of business, and it's
Speaker 3: it's really a tough game. You have to the distributors
Speaker 3: take a big chunk to begin with the big boys
Speaker 3: Southern Wine and Young's and Young's markets with oh, come on,
Speaker 3: who is Youngs with?
Speaker 2: I forget the.
Speaker 3: Name of it, but anyway, there's two major distributors now
Speaker 3: Southern Glazier merged and Youngs merged with oh why can't
Speaker 3: even remember them? They used to have to kill, used
Speaker 3: to have Cabbo Wobble. When I sold Caaba Wobble went
Speaker 3: to Southern. Now I'm with Southern now again. But they
Speaker 3: have a lot of power. But they they're careful because
Speaker 3: see their names. They're the reputation online. So they go
Speaker 3: to Safeway and go, hey, you know, buyas a couple
Speaker 3: thousand cases, put them in your stores.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get paid.
Speaker 3: They buy in, and then they sit there and go, hey,
Speaker 3: it ain't moving, Get this shit out of my store.
Speaker 3: I need the space. So it's a tough game. You
Speaker 3: don't want to make mistakes like that. And that's where
Speaker 3: my expertise of being in the business before comes from,
Speaker 3: because my first idea was, oh, man, just get it
Speaker 3: everywhere and my fans will go buy it.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily they go buy it, but they got to
Speaker 3: run across it, and they're not really you know, it's
Speaker 3: it's a tough game right now, but I still love
Speaker 3: it every time you win. Wow, Like you know, Santo,
Speaker 3: we just got Caesar's Group, the whole group. You know,
Speaker 3: they have more hotels in Vegas than anyone and between
Speaker 3: all their bars and it's like, you know, Guy Fieri's friends,
Speaker 3: because he has a couple of restaurants with Caesars with
Speaker 3: the group, and so he got to the owner and
Speaker 3: the owner put the hammer down and say, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: but it's it's it's uh. I'll give you one hint
Speaker 3: for new guys. It's about relationships. If you know somebody
Speaker 3: and they're a fan, they'll take care of you. You'll
Speaker 3: get your booze right in their liquor store or right
Speaker 3: in their bar. So it's like the old DJs when
Speaker 3: you used to know the DJ. You're friendly, You go
Speaker 3: in there after your show, you go in and do
Speaker 3: a night at midnight show, you know at KSJO or whatever,
Speaker 3: and they, you know, they.
Speaker 2: Play your record.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like you got a friend, you got
Speaker 3: a DJ friend. Well, now if you've got a bartender friend,
Speaker 3: he'll put your boos in his bar. And the bartenders
Speaker 3: are the new DJs in this business.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you know Guy Fieri? And then you
Speaker 1: were Bottle Rock was with Jose Andre some chef. It's like,
Speaker 1: how do you know all these people? And are you
Speaker 1: one of these people who literally knows everybody or you
Speaker 1: just have a select group you hang out with.
Speaker 3: Well, now you know what I'm like back in high school, Bob,
Speaker 3: We're coming full Silindier. I love this. I love this interview.
Speaker 3: You're killing me. You see, it's like when I was
Speaker 3: in high school. I know everybody, but I have my
Speaker 3: little group. Still, I'm still that same guy. You know,
Speaker 3: Emma La Gazi's my friend, Jose Andres my friend. Guy
Speaker 3: Fieri's my friend. You know, I've got a few really
Speaker 3: good close chef friends and they are close friends and
Speaker 3: we cook together and we.
Speaker 2: Michael Mina.
Speaker 3: I patronize their restaurants when I'm in their city where
Speaker 3: they on tour, and I call them to get special favors. Hey,
Speaker 3: I can't get in, you know, like Jose Andres, Hey
Speaker 3: I can't. You can't get into his restaurants. It's like Jose,
Speaker 3: I got it. I need a table for six. It's
Speaker 3: you know, it's six o'clock. Well done. So we're those
Speaker 3: kind of friends. I love chefs. I love cooking. It's
Speaker 3: my second favorite thing, you know, besides music. I'm if
Speaker 3: you want to ask me what I do. I come
Speaker 3: home from the studio of twelve hours and I go
Speaker 3: straight to the kitchen and I whip something up, and
Speaker 3: I can cook my ass off. You know, I've had them,
Speaker 3: Lagassi tell me. You know, Sammy, I've been good cook
Speaker 3: you son. I'm a bitch, you know. So you know
Speaker 3: I can hang with those guys. I can't. I'm not
Speaker 3: as versatile. Maybe you know, they have more knowledge, but
Speaker 3: I really have a good palette. So Guy Fiertti came
Speaker 3: when Cabbo Wobbo when we were having a promotion back
Speaker 3: way before I sold it, back when we had the
Speaker 3: very you know, at about forty thousand seconds third year,
Speaker 3: I was doing a local tour in the Sandmans in
Speaker 3: the Bay Area and we had a contest for whoever
Speaker 3: sold the most tequila in their bar got to come
Speaker 3: to the show. I sent a limo for him. They
Speaker 3: meet me backstage. I got a signed guitar. They got
Speaker 3: on the side of the stage. I got to, you know,
Speaker 3: witness the whole nine yards right, a VIP thing. So
Speaker 3: Guy Fiertti being a huge fan at that time, I
Speaker 3: didn't know it.
Speaker 2: I didn't know him.
Speaker 3: He had a little restaurant called Johnny Garlics, and he said,
Speaker 3: I'm going to put it in my will. Now, this
Speaker 3: is a high end tequila. They got nine dollars bottles
Speaker 3: of booze in your well, nine dollars a leader and
Speaker 3: this was a seven fifty for thirty forty two dollars.
Speaker 3: He put it in as well. Of course, he won
Speaker 3: the damn contests and didn't make any money on his
Speaker 3: on his bar for a few months. He walks in,
Speaker 3: looks just like me. He's got shorts, flip flops. You know,
Speaker 3: his hair, my head. That time we were wearing gators glasses.
Speaker 3: He had my same glasses on my little goatee.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: My beach looked that I had going back then, and uh,
Speaker 3: I'm going all of this fucking guy. He's out of sight,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Boom boom boom.
Speaker 3: We have fun. I love his personality. He's exactly like
Speaker 3: he is now. He didn't invent himself. He didn't grow
Speaker 3: into this gig. He was born like this.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He's one of those guys. He wakes up at eight
Speaker 3: o'clock in the morning, he already has his bling on.
Speaker 3: I think he sleeps with the ship, his hair spiked up,
Speaker 3: he's got his sunglasses. He's a badass. He's really really
Speaker 3: the real do. I love that guy? So he after
Speaker 3: the show, I give him the signed guitar before the
Speaker 3: show where I met first, and I say, you know,
Speaker 3: after the show, coming back, I have some food. He
Speaker 3: went and had his sushi chef because Johnny Garlak has
Speaker 3: had a sushi menu. He put made a bunch of sushi.
Speaker 3: He put it on the guitar and I came walking
Speaker 3: out stage into the dress room and he had guitars,
Speaker 3: sushian and guitar served it to me. I said, this
Speaker 3: is my fucking pal right here right. So we we
Speaker 3: became friends. He came to every show I've ever done
Speaker 3: in the Bay Area and around the country.
Speaker 2: He was doing that.
Speaker 3: So I helped him get in with Emma Lagazi and
Speaker 3: my Food Network friends. I helped him get you know,
Speaker 3: uh not that didn't help him win. I helped him
Speaker 3: get it audition. I turned him on to some people.
Speaker 3: He got involved and became the next Food Network start.
Speaker 3: Now he's the biggest celebrity chef on the planet. And
Speaker 3: and when I sold Kabba Wobble, he read it. He
Speaker 3: calls me up and says, dude, did I read what
Speaker 3: I just read? I said, I don't know what you
Speaker 3: just read. He said, you sold Wobble for like a
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars. Said, that's what the deal was. And
Speaker 3: like I said, I only took the first twenty. I
Speaker 3: left twenty on the table.
Speaker 2: For a while.
Speaker 3: I thought the brand was going to get much bigger
Speaker 3: and my twenty was going to be, you know, worth
Speaker 3: even more than that. I thought I was a smart businessman,
Speaker 3: already smarter than me. Trust me, those guys are the greatest.
Speaker 3: I love that brand in that company for doing what
Speaker 3: they did for me. But anyway, so I said, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: he goes you know, dude, you ever want to do
Speaker 3: this again? I said, I can't do nothing for five years.
Speaker 3: He said, if you ever want to do this again,
Speaker 3: I'm your partner. I said, okay. And we just been
Speaker 3: friends and friends and friends and friends and hang out
Speaker 3: in cobble. It comes to my birthday bash then, like
Speaker 3: I said, I started Santo and wasn't thinking about him,
Speaker 3: and he busted my ass and he's Boom, he's partner instantly,
Speaker 3: I mean we have We just shift hands. We didn't
Speaker 3: even shake can We're on the phone. I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're my partner. Okay, here's how much I got in.
Speaker 3: Here's how much going to cost for you to buy
Speaker 3: in to you know what I got in. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not selling you nothing. I'm just exchanging my shares
Speaker 3: for what I have. And boom, we just did it
Speaker 3: that way. And he's the best partner you could ever have.
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone could outwork Guy Fieri. He's most
Speaker 3: He gets up at four in the morning, does morning
Speaker 3: shows in fucking New York from California. Then you know,
Speaker 3: and then out the door he's filming two or three
Speaker 3: TV shows he's got going on. He's got seventy five
Speaker 3: eighty restaurants. You know it's the guy's rocking man.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you had a number of big victories, the
Speaker 1: victory with tequila, et cetera. Musicians are legendary for blowing
Speaker 1: the money. Where is the money? Is it in real estate?
Speaker 1: Is in stocks? His bonds? You pay attention? Do you
Speaker 1: not pay attention?
Speaker 3: I kind of when I got that big money, I
Speaker 3: start paying attention because I didn't want to lose everything
Speaker 3: that I know. This is my my nest egg. So
Speaker 3: I investigated some things, and I tell my brokers and
Speaker 3: my management and my accountants, I do not care about
Speaker 3: making money with my money. Don't go out there and
Speaker 3: say I'm gonna make you, you know, twenty percent of
Speaker 3: your money. I'm not interested. I want the safest saying possible.
Speaker 3: I invest in the United States of America, and I
Speaker 3: invest in cities and states because ones that I think,
Speaker 3: you know, that look like they're not going to go bankrupt,
Speaker 3: you know. So it's kind of like keeping your money
Speaker 3: in places like that that if the United States goes under,
Speaker 3: well then I'm gonna lose my money. But if I
Speaker 3: had it in other place, I'm gonna lose it. Way
Speaker 3: before that, you know. So I'm just I'm so conservative
Speaker 3: you'd be surprised. It's it's like I don't like making
Speaker 3: money with money. To me, when I say, nobody gets fucked.
Speaker 3: To me, if you're making too much money with your money,
Speaker 3: somebody's getting fucked.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't work that way all of a sudden magic,
Speaker 3: you know, just somebody's gonna hand their money over to you.
Speaker 3: Somebody must lose for you to win. So I don't
Speaker 3: like that game, and I don't know enough about it.
Speaker 3: So I invest in myself. I have a ton of
Speaker 3: real estate, and I believe in things. I have, you know,
Speaker 3: a car collection from heaven and I use it. I
Speaker 3: drive my cars, and I stay in my homes, and
Speaker 3: I bought my family homes, you know, like and.
Speaker 2: You know, my kids.
Speaker 3: I have a wonderful, wonderful trust set up for my kids,
Speaker 3: which I really believe in. I believe in my parents
Speaker 3: are gone. But you know, my mom. I put a
Speaker 3: lot of money into my mom. She always had a
Speaker 3: nice new car and she had a beautiful home. And
Speaker 3: it's we're all in my name, And it sounds cheesy,
Speaker 3: but it's like, no, it's not. It's like you can
Speaker 3: make your mother, your family, your parents and brothers and
Speaker 3: sisters really happy. If you're really rich enough, you can
Speaker 3: really do wonderful things for them. And then you know
Speaker 3: your mother is going to pass and your parents are
Speaker 3: going to pass before you, and you just inherit it
Speaker 3: back and then you know, you give it to someone else,
Speaker 3: so you you you turn it. That's that's the way
Speaker 3: I do my money. I don't like to just stash
Speaker 3: it away. Someplaces say, look how much money I'm making
Speaker 3: on my money. I'm still earning enough money where I
Speaker 3: don't have to live off my money. And so it's
Speaker 3: it's just all my kids name. And you got to
Speaker 3: do it properly so they don't get robbed from the
Speaker 3: government when you die, you know, they so that they
Speaker 3: have their The inheritance taxes are fifty percent, you know,
Speaker 3: and then there's then there's.
Speaker 2: Income tax on top of that.
Speaker 3: You know, you give your kid a million dollars and
Speaker 3: he ends up with a couple hundred thousand dollars. It's
Speaker 3: just not cool, you know. So you've got to have
Speaker 3: really good estate planning. And I spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time and effort and investigation on that because you know,
Speaker 3: when I turned seventy, you know, five and a half
Speaker 3: years ago, I really started thinking about mortality, and all said,
Speaker 3: you're going, I never thought.
Speaker 2: Of that before.
Speaker 3: I'm so busy, I'm so I'm still driven, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm still progressing and working on things. And I go, what, well,
Speaker 3: it only only got Maybe I plan on living to
Speaker 3: be one hundred at least, and then I'll tell you
Speaker 3: if I'm on live any longer when i'm a hundred,
Speaker 3: because if I'm healthy, I said, okay, I'm gonna live longer.
Speaker 3: But so I got twenty five years to live. And
Speaker 3: I think how fast the last twenty five years went.
Speaker 3: I just go, holy shit, I got I got a
Speaker 3: lot to do. I better take care of things. I
Speaker 3: got to make sure my kids are cool, you know,
Speaker 3: and I got to make sure that everything's set, you know,
Speaker 3: and I don't leave.
Speaker 2: A mess when I die.
Speaker 3: And I've never thought of that until I turned seventy,
Speaker 3: and I wrote that song father Time about it. It's
Speaker 3: like all of a sudden, Wow, you just go, wow,
Speaker 3: I'm not afraid to die and whatsoever. And it's but
Speaker 3: it's just interesting to start thinking, Wow, m I got
Speaker 3: to make sure my people are taking care of you know,
Speaker 3: and everything's cool.
Speaker 2: And it was a strange thing. And I spent a
Speaker 2: whole year.
Speaker 3: I took two years off and then COVID hit and
Speaker 3: I got to take more time off and work and
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. That's if anyone asked me,
Speaker 3: you know, what's the positive that came out of COVID,
Speaker 3: it was one was.
Speaker 2: I got time.
Speaker 3: I had down time, so I took care of a
Speaker 3: lot of things. And I learned that we are all
Speaker 3: in the same fucking boat man. The COVID made the
Speaker 3: biggest realization on the planet. Rich, poor, You're all fucked now,
Speaker 3: you know what it's like. So it kind of brought
Speaker 3: a nice reality to me and a more of appreciation
Speaker 3: of health and life and freedom and this country. You
Speaker 3: know about the freedom in this country, it keeps getting
Speaker 3: taken away. It keeps getting taken away by things like
Speaker 3: COVID and by the nine to eleven situation. It's like,
Speaker 3: freedom's a wonderful thing. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Okay, just switching gears. Your kids, you grew up poor,
Speaker 1: they did not grow up poor, So what are they up?
Speaker 2: And my oldest one, did.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you incentivize them.
Speaker 3: I know, my wife and I if we fight about anything,
Speaker 3: it's every time I'm trying to do something for the kids,
Speaker 3: it's like you're gonna ruin them. Yeah, I will ruin them. Happily.
Speaker 3: I could careless if they ever had to work a
Speaker 3: day in their life. I would be happy for them
Speaker 3: if they were happy. Now they're not happy. That's different.
Speaker 3: But my oldest son, who's fifty two years old, he Aaron.
Speaker 3: He saw the pors we were on well for he
Speaker 3: was born in a county hospital and I was on
Speaker 3: food stamps, you know, so he saw the whole process.
Speaker 2: He went right with it. You know, he's he.
Speaker 3: And he's the one that's really more of a spender
Speaker 3: and does it put value on it than anyone. He
Speaker 3: wants things like me. He wants my cars, he wants
Speaker 3: you know, he wants all that. And he's talented like crazy,
Speaker 3: and he does a great job with his hobbies. He's
Speaker 3: turned hobbies into making a living. But as soon as
Speaker 3: he got his trust money, the way I haven't set up,
Speaker 3: my kids get their trust money at certain stages, they
Speaker 3: get a certain amount of twenty five and then they
Speaker 3: get the big chunk at forty and then they get
Speaker 3: dressed when I die. So every time he gets his chunk,
Speaker 3: he just blows done both through it. But I have
Speaker 3: to stop him, Aaron. I know, you got a new car.
Speaker 3: You got five cars already. You don't need another fucking motorcycle.
Speaker 3: You know, he's the only one that I got to
Speaker 3: slap around. Everyone else seems to be pretty cool. My
Speaker 3: youngest boy, Andrew is singing and playing music and doing
Speaker 3: a great job. He's awesome. He's got everything going for him.
Speaker 3: He's a great songwriter. I just blew my mind how
Speaker 3: he just exploded like that when he turned about twenty five.
Speaker 3: He just decided before that he was a martial artist
Speaker 3: and I wouldn't let him fight, so he became a trainer.
Speaker 3: He had two or three fights and broke my heart.
Speaker 3: You know, he broke his knuckles, you know, get banged up.
Speaker 3: The UFC fighting type shit. You know, that's not the
Speaker 3: mixed martial arts. So he became a trainer, and I
Speaker 3: thought that's what he was going to do, you know,
Speaker 3: get himself a big, nice gym. But now he started
Speaker 3: writing songs and singing music. They're playing music and he's
Speaker 3: really really good. And my oldest daughter, kam Up. She
Speaker 3: just got her first trust. She's twenty five, twenty seven now,
Speaker 3: she just got her first chunk, and she bought a
Speaker 3: nice little house in Maui where she wanted to live.
Speaker 2: She has skincare products.
Speaker 3: She's got two degrees in business and in fashion, and
Speaker 3: she's a meditation and yoga teacher and a complete holistic
Speaker 3: little queen.
Speaker 2: Little she just wonderful.
Speaker 3: And my youngest daughter, who hasn't got anything yet, she
Speaker 3: just turned twenty one. She's a barrel racer and she
Speaker 3: likes my booze business, which is really finally, finally, you know,
Speaker 3: someone like Andrew falling in my footsteps of music. I
Speaker 3: pray for him because it's not easy. But my daughter,
Speaker 3: I just I just pray that she will do it.
Speaker 3: She's she goes out on trips with my head of
Speaker 3: sales for the Beach Bark Cocktail Company, and she goes
Speaker 3: into accounts and she just landed the mix She took
Speaker 3: mixologist courses. She landed the mixology course at the a
Speaker 3: Montage Hotel in Healsburg, which is a really super high
Speaker 3: end place in the wine country. And so she's really
Speaker 3: going down that road. She's got she got a palette
Speaker 3: on her. You know, I use her with my products.
Speaker 3: I said, what do you think of this? You know,
Speaker 3: what do you think of this? She's she's awesome, and
Speaker 3: she's Samantha Hagar perfect, She's Sammy, but she drives a truck,
Speaker 3: she's got a horse. She's a fucking barrel racer. She's
Speaker 3: as redneck as you get. You know, she's all about that.
Speaker 3: Just it's they're all different. I mean, I'm talking about
Speaker 3: not even from the same planet.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've been married a couple of times. You got
Speaker 1: married before or you had your big success now, certainly
Speaker 1: at the time before the internet and cell phones, a
Speaker 1: lot of guys wanted to get successful so they could
Speaker 1: have some of the perks the lot rock and roll, lifestyle, romance, sex, etc.
Speaker 1: What have you learned about, you know, relationships, et cetera,
Speaker 1: being on the road so much being famous.
Speaker 3: Well, Bob, you know I've saw both sides of that movie.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you, I've been the worst husband on
Speaker 3: the planet and I've been the best husband on the planet,
Speaker 3: which I am now and have been for a long time.
Speaker 3: For my second marriage, I learned you never lie to anyone,
Speaker 3: to your children, and especially your spouse, your partner. You
Speaker 3: don't lie to that person. And so once I've became
Speaker 3: a rock star, we got married. We're high school sweethearts,
Speaker 3: and I was completely not it. Never had a relationship,
Speaker 3: but neversed another girl for seven years. And then I
Speaker 3: start getting a montross around on the road. I start
Speaker 3: becoming a rock star, and I started being a really
Speaker 3: very unfaithful person that I'm ashamed of.
Speaker 2: But I was having the time of my life. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'll admit that, you know I'm not. I'm not.
Speaker 3: But I became into a situation where I was lying
Speaker 3: all the time to her and I had to, and
Speaker 3: it was It's what ended my marriage. If I wouldn't
Speaker 3: have fallen in love with someone carry my wife now
Speaker 3: of twenty seven, I don't know, gotta be careful getting
Speaker 3: close to thirty with her. I had twenty four with Betsy,
Speaker 3: my previous marriage. And but if I would have never,
Speaker 3: if I could have got out of that lie, I
Speaker 3: probably would still be married to the same person. But
Speaker 3: I went and fell in love in the middle of
Speaker 3: the lie. So I once I got out of that
Speaker 3: relationship and the divorce and all that, I just made
Speaker 3: a pat I will never lie again, because that then
Speaker 3: you're you're fucked. You got to living a lie? Is
Speaker 3: it ruins anybody's life. Some people just go through life
Speaker 3: just lying, lie and lie and lying lying. And so
Speaker 3: that's what I learned about a relationship. Don't lie to
Speaker 3: your partner and if you can help, but don't cheat
Speaker 3: on them. And if you do, you should probably come
Speaker 3: clean with it sometime and hopefully it doesn't. You know,
Speaker 3: they're understanding and you can work it out. But because boy, uh,
Speaker 3: it's it's a big deal having a I feel terrible
Speaker 3: about my former relationship, even though I had the best
Speaker 3: time of my life from you know, being successful rockstar.
Speaker 2: I got to tell you, there is no better time.
Speaker 3: You can have fast cars, all the money in the world,
Speaker 3: jet airplanes, you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Speaker 3: I never was a big drug guy, but you know
Speaker 3: I did enough to have fun and I and I sexually.
Speaker 3: I had more fund than anybody in the planets. That
Speaker 3: probably Rod story he was He might have been the
Speaker 3: most glamorous rock star, you know, him and Elvis. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine how much fun they must have had. But
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a very sexual person. I still am
Speaker 3: at my age and very very sexual and I think
Speaker 3: it's one of the most important things in the relationship
Speaker 3: to me. When it's over in the bedroom, that's when
Speaker 3: you start, you know, fooling around, looking around, looking at
Speaker 3: other women thinking, you know, it's it's really important a
Speaker 3: good physical relationship in a marriage.
Speaker 2: So that's what I've learned.
Speaker 3: Just don't lie to your partner and be as good
Speaker 3: as you can and keep the sexual drive going in
Speaker 3: the house.
Speaker 2: And usually you don't be looking around so much.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have so much going on with busy, this,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Where does music fit into all this?
Speaker 2: You know, it's all built around music.
Speaker 3: Bob Shep Gordon, that's the my genius buddy, He's the
Speaker 3: big I always say, checked the big brain out on Shep.
Speaker 3: He said to me one time he came and saw
Speaker 3: me when I first built the Cabo Wabbo and then
Speaker 3: Van Halen, when I start wearing shorts and T shirts
Speaker 3: on stage, you know, and I just didn't get dressed
Speaker 3: up anymore, just walk out on stage the way I
Speaker 3: was because I learned how to do that in Cabo.
Speaker 3: I come off the beach in Avadian suit flip flops,
Speaker 3: no shirt back in the day, and you know, I
Speaker 3: just jump up on stage and start jam with the band,
Speaker 3: you know, and it felt so good. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like wow. You know, they didn't pay I don't have
Speaker 3: to get fucking dressed up, you know. But I mean
Speaker 3: I get dressed up a little bit now again, because
Speaker 3: I feel like you kind of owe at least some
Speaker 3: kind of glamour to the business. I like to keep
Speaker 3: a little bit of that glamour going. I think it's
Speaker 3: important showbiz. But when I first start doing that ship
Speaker 3: and then I got thrown out of Van Halen, and
Speaker 3: I said, I'm never gonna get dressed up again. I'm
Speaker 3: never going to play with people that I don't get
Speaker 3: along with. You know that people are gonna fuck me.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not gonna suck it away. And Sheep said, yeah,
Speaker 3: you remind me of Jimmy Buffett. You know he came
Speaker 3: down to Cowboys going. You remind me of Buffett. And
Speaker 3: I said, Jimmy Buffett, you know that one hit wonder.
Speaker 2: You know. I mean, I had no idea that Jimmy
Speaker 2: had this thing going.
Speaker 3: And and my wife Cary says, oh man, you you've
Speaker 3: never seen Jimmy Buffett, And I said no. She goes, well, god,
Speaker 3: you got to go see Jimmy Buffa. She was from Virginia,
Speaker 3: you know, beach and shit. She had seen him a
Speaker 3: hundred times. She took me to see him. And I
Speaker 3: walk into this nineteen thousand seed amplifier packed, sold out,
Speaker 3: fucking parrot heads and balloons and Frisbees, and it was
Speaker 3: like a day on the beach man. And he comes out.
Speaker 3: Nobody liked the grateful dead. Nobody's paying attention to Jimmy.
Speaker 3: They got their own party going. He just playing the
Speaker 3: background music. I'm going, this is fucking living right here,
Speaker 3: and I'm going, I'm down with this shit.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So I kind of really rolled heavily into that line
Speaker 3: lifestyle thing, and is what shef Gordon said.
Speaker 2: It was kind of managing me.
Speaker 3: He was co managing me and kind of executive managing
Speaker 3: me at that time and helping me when I was
Speaker 3: with the tequila. And he goes, he goes, man, you
Speaker 3: rolled it all into one. He's going, you know, since
Speaker 3: you don't have to put on different hats, you're not
Speaker 3: a businessman, you know, make your business your lifestyle, Make
Speaker 3: your lifestyle your business, and everything's related. So people drink
Speaker 3: your tequila and they come and see your music, and
Speaker 3: they have a better experience.
Speaker 2: And that's what I figured with the Cobble Wobble.
Speaker 3: I learned that you have a better experience if you're
Speaker 3: eating the same food I'm eating.
Speaker 2: These are my menu there, you know, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm hands on with my restaurants.
Speaker 3: My food's got to be a certain you know, level,
Speaker 3: and a certain stop, and the type of drinks.
Speaker 2: And then you're up there playing the media. You're all
Speaker 2: drinking the same thing.
Speaker 3: It's like the old days, you know, in the Grateful
Speaker 3: Dead and the old Fillmore, where everybody took the same acid,
Speaker 3: smoking the same weed, and is this thing happens and
Speaker 3: it's a deeper experience. It's not just let's go see them,
Speaker 3: sit and seat, you know, drink a beer and go home.
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't that there's a better experience than that.
Speaker 3: So I I realized that that's where my music comes in,
Speaker 3: is that it's still an integral part of everything I do.
Speaker 3: I sit around and play music in my house more
Speaker 3: than anything else except cook and sleep.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I spend more time with my guitar. I write songs
Speaker 3: every day. This morning, I turned on my tape recorder.
Speaker 3: I played this this little una like a stone's kind
Speaker 3: of but can't you hear me knock it? I was
Speaker 3: thinking about that song and I was kind of riffing
Speaker 3: off of it. I had to turn my tape recorder.
Speaker 3: I say, oh, this is really cool. Look, because when
Speaker 3: you try to learn somebody else's thing, when you're like me,
Speaker 3: you end up writing your own thing. Because I can't
Speaker 3: ever learn to play somebody else's ship, right, you know,
Speaker 3: I can. I hit this bad note, but well that's
Speaker 3: kind of cool. Yeah, And that's half the way I write.
Speaker 3: I play music all the time. It's and I you know,
Speaker 3: I went down on my basement yesterday and sang for
Speaker 3: an hour. Just always try to keep my voice where
Speaker 3: for the emergency I had to jump on stage, I
Speaker 3: can sing. My voice is more important to me than
Speaker 3: my dick. And I'm not joking as much as I'm
Speaker 3: you know, my dick's important. But if it doesn't work
Speaker 3: for some reason, I say, well i'll work tomorrow.
Speaker 2: If my voice doesn't work, I'm going in.
Speaker 3: I'm fucked because you step up on stage and you
Speaker 3: can't sing. That's the most embarrassing thing on the planet.
Speaker 3: And I care about my voice and about my chops,
Speaker 3: and I'm ready, and I'm I'm That's why I'm I
Speaker 3: like to the idea of being able to jump on
Speaker 3: stage stress the way you are, because that way I
Speaker 3: feel like, well, I got all the other shit together
Speaker 3: in case I just have to do it.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm ready.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't want to say well I couldn't
Speaker 3: sing because I wasn't dressed, right, That would be kind
Speaker 3: of funny.
Speaker 2: Okay. I love my music now, it's my basis.
Speaker 1: You've had this great success, but parallel to your success
Speaker 1: in the twenty first century, the music business has changed.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you're Paul McCartney or your Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1: You make new music has a very minimal impact. Okay.
Speaker 1: Whereas it used to be went all the radio stations
Speaker 1: that we listened to the radio, there was a learned
Speaker 1: amount of product. Then there was MTV et cetera. Has
Speaker 1: this you know a lot of people stopped making new music.
Speaker 1: Has this affected your motivation? No?
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: The thing that affected my motivation was I felt like
Speaker 3: I was dried up a little bit like I said,
Speaker 3: pretty much said it on you. I'm a lyricist, so
Speaker 3: I've written every lyric of every song.
Speaker 2: You know, I never have a lyricist for it.
Speaker 3: Well, a couple of times, but three out of five
Speaker 3: hundred songs I've written, I'm the lyricist. It's hard to
Speaker 3: find inspiration. So without inspiration, I won't just finish and
Speaker 3: write a song.
Speaker 2: I said.
Speaker 3: I was jamming around today, but I didn't have the
Speaker 3: inspiration to finish it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes a song like father Time, which is my favorite
Speaker 3: song I've written in the last forty years, maybe maybe
Speaker 3: my whole life. It was so inspired that I picked
Speaker 3: up the guitar and just played it and say it.
Speaker 3: And I had to actually turn on my little tape
Speaker 3: recorder on my phone. I just had to say, fuck,
Speaker 3: I better record this. It's coming. It's coming, the whole thing,
Speaker 3: the words, everything I had a thought about. I told
Speaker 3: you about the growing old, thinking, wow, how many more
Speaker 3: years I got left. I started looking at the other
Speaker 3: side and and and I just the words just came,
Speaker 3: you know, And I just started talking about the situation
Speaker 3: I was in, and you know, where I was sitting,
Speaker 3: I hear the waves crashing I'm in my house in Maui.
Speaker 3: I'm hearing the waves crashing on the shore. That's been
Speaker 3: going on forever and more, you know, But there's something
Speaker 3: about the sun in Mexico. It just burns different. Those
Speaker 3: are lyrics that those were that was a thought that
Speaker 3: I had right then and there I'm hearing the waves
Speaker 3: crashing that's been going on for ever. Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 3: in Hawaii, Mexico. It's different, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And that's the kind of songs that I look for
Speaker 3: nowaday and if they come, enough comes, I'll make a
Speaker 3: record every time. And I'm sitting on about five of
Speaker 3: them right now, and I'm sitting and thinking, I don't
Speaker 3: feel like making another record, but I might have to
Speaker 3: my last one. Crazy times, you know, I think it's
Speaker 3: the best record I've made since Standy Hampton. You know,
Speaker 3: it's maybe Chicken Floy the first Chicken Fit record. I
Speaker 3: just think it's just fucking brilliant. I love that record.
Speaker 3: But I had a guy like Joe Satriani. It's like
Speaker 3: when you got a Eddie van Halen or Joe Satriani,
Speaker 3: it's much easier to be a lyricist, trust me, because
Speaker 3: they bring you a piece of music that just speaks
Speaker 3: to you. So I'm fine with making records. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't care about money I spent. I've probably lost
Speaker 3: three hundred and fifty thousand dollars on my last record.
Speaker 3: I paid for it, you know, I didn't care. I
Speaker 3: don't need a record company anymore. I mean I need
Speaker 3: them to distribute, but I don't need them to give
Speaker 3: me money to write.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, on this last record, you work with Dave Cobb,
Speaker 1: who's the hottest, most respect producer national does Chris Stapleton
Speaker 1: along with a million other things. How did you hook
Speaker 1: up with Cobb? And what did he add?
Speaker 3: Oh, he's the greatest producer on the planet. Man, He's
Speaker 3: He's right up there with Templeman. You know, Ted Templeman
Speaker 3: was a great producer because because he produced you, he
Speaker 3: didn't make you come to him. You know, he took
Speaker 3: your music and just made it better. That's what Cobb does.
Speaker 3: He's brilliant. He's fucking the best. I've said I couldn't
Speaker 3: work with another producer ever, I don't think if I'd
Speaker 3: make another record have to be a cop. Well, he
Speaker 3: came to me, he said, he reached out to my
Speaker 3: management company and said his manager said, said, Dave wants
Speaker 3: to produce a Sammy Hagar record, and is he interested?
Speaker 3: And I said, look, yeah, you know, so I talked
Speaker 3: to him on the phone. I told him I wanted
Speaker 3: to make At that time with the Circle, when we
Speaker 3: were brand new, I said, I want to make a
Speaker 3: Maricana record. I want to make a record like the band,
Speaker 3: you know, like I want to write that kind of music.
Speaker 3: I want to be very acoustic and heavy harmony, very
Speaker 3: you know, Americana.
Speaker 2: You know, to the bone and bluesy folky.
Speaker 3: And he said, oh no, man, he goes, I grew
Speaker 3: up on fucking Stanley Hampton and fifty one fifty. Get
Speaker 3: the fuck out of here, he goes, I make those
Speaker 3: kind of records.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I want to make a record of you because I
Speaker 3: want to make your record. I want to make the
Speaker 3: definitive Sammy Hagar record. I want Montrose, Sammy Hagar, Chicken
Speaker 3: Foot Van Halen, I want everything you did in that.
Speaker 3: I want to make it just you know, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: I want Michael Anthony in there with you, with those harmonies.
Speaker 3: And I'm going, shit, Well, I just don't really want
Speaker 3: to make a record like that right now. And then
Speaker 3: a couple of years later, I started writing these cool
Speaker 3: songs I got, I got riffed out. I started playing
Speaker 3: these badass guitar riffs, and father Times was in my pocket.
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to record this song soon because otherwise,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just I'm.
Speaker 2: Not going to be in love with it the way
Speaker 2: I am now.
Speaker 3: It was a song that every time I sang, I
Speaker 3: got goosebumps and choked up. That's the kind of song
Speaker 3: I want to write, and that's what I want to sing.
Speaker 2: Goosebumps.
Speaker 3: It can be because it's so bad ass, and I
Speaker 3: could get tears of my eyes because it's so bad ass.
Speaker 3: It don't have to be a sad song, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. But so anyway, so I said, okay,
Speaker 3: I want to do it, and he said I can
Speaker 3: do it, and blah blah blah, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: We went back and it was the quickest record ever made.
Speaker 3: My life is right up there with fifty one to
Speaker 3: fifty in the first Montreals record. Those records are just
Speaker 3: done in ten days, you know, And god, it just
Speaker 3: he's so good. He pick up a guitar. He was
Speaker 3: the fifth beatle. I didn't even play guitar on a
Speaker 3: freaking record. He played all my parts and reinvented a
Speaker 3: lot of them, and him and Vic just smoked on
Speaker 3: guitars live as fuck. I sang every song live except
Speaker 3: for a couple of them Pump It Up. I couldn't
Speaker 3: sing the lyrics because I was trying to read them.
Speaker 3: There're too many lyrics. I didn't know him well enough,
Speaker 3: so I had to overdub those. And then the last
Speaker 3: two songs that we wrote, I didn't have lyrics for
Speaker 3: him because we wrote Crazy Times and we wrote Slow Drain,
Speaker 3: the opening track on the Spot. He co wrote it
Speaker 3: with me and Uh. I had to go home and
Speaker 3: write the lyrics that night, and I did and came
Speaker 3: back the next day and sang them, and we were
Speaker 3: done with that freaking record.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 3: Mercuridius said I played it for him because I wanted
Speaker 3: I wanted an opinion. I would have wanted your opinion, Bob.
Speaker 3: I'm not just saying this because I'm talking to you now.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I wasn't thinking he was reaching out to me at
Speaker 3: the time because he wanted to hear the record. Because
Speaker 3: of David Cobb. A lot of people were saying, hey,
Speaker 3: we want to hear what you guys are doing. It's
Speaker 3: a country what is it? No, it's rock, man, It's
Speaker 3: fucking right. And anyway, so I took it this house.
Speaker 3: I played it for him and he said that last
Speaker 3: song is just classic childhood's end. He goes, you need
Speaker 3: to take a piece of that and re record it,
Speaker 3: running through some effects way in the backgroun. He just
Speaker 3: came up with this wild idea and put it at
Speaker 3: the beginning, just for a few seconds, and then you
Speaker 3: have a concept record. And I said, wow, you're right,
Speaker 3: I do because it was it is a concept record.
Speaker 2: It's about Covid child who's.
Speaker 3: In Man, we're all grown up now, went we all
Speaker 3: went through that shit together and nobody, We're not fooling ourselves.
Speaker 2: Man, this is real, uh, hard times.
Speaker 3: And so I re recorded that thing and Cobb did
Speaker 3: it in the hotel room. He was on tour with
Speaker 3: Chris Stapleton. He was in Vegas in a hotel room.
Speaker 3: I told him what I wanted to do. He got
Speaker 3: acoustic guitar. He put it on his frecking iPhone. He
Speaker 3: played the acoustic guitar part. He said, I want to
Speaker 3: do it different because I want to put it in
Speaker 3: a different key so that you don't have to scream it.
Speaker 3: And I said yeah, yeah, yeah, and then he sent
Speaker 3: it to me. I went into my studio played his
Speaker 3: thing back, saying it sent it to him. He's on
Speaker 3: the front of the record and we have a concept record.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how brilliant he is. He's just ficking good.
Speaker 3: I never see a guy work so fast and don't
Speaker 3: he don't get hung up. He never says hmmm, let
Speaker 3: me no, no, He just fucking you know, yeah, boom,
Speaker 3: let's do there. Okay, don't play let's watch out, watch
Speaker 3: out your drum part there to go back to the bridge,
Speaker 3: play the bridge?
Speaker 2: Good? Yeah, Well, you know he's like that.
Speaker 3: He just bam bam, bam bam and just orchestrating and
Speaker 3: has his shit together.
Speaker 2: He's a bad motherfucker excuse. And so is Chris Stapleton,
Speaker 2: by the way.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you make new music when you go play live,
Speaker 1: it's like Jimmy Buffett. There's a core number of songs
Speaker 1: that he has to play every night. Okay, do you
Speaker 1: find that your audience will listen to the new music.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I didn't this new record. I wanted to go
Speaker 3: out and play the whole damn record. But I took
Speaker 3: the year off, you know, I did. I did a
Speaker 3: quick tour with George Throgod last year and then and
Speaker 3: then this year I wanted to take off. And so
Speaker 3: the record's coming gone now and we never got to
Speaker 3: rehearse and build a new show.
Speaker 2: We just do spotty shows.
Speaker 3: And I said, oh, I'll take that weekend like we're
Speaker 3: playing Vegas and Tahoe in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: And I say, well, I guess got to do the
Speaker 2: same show. You know.
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll throw one new song, because this band can
Speaker 3: learn in the dresser and we can play a new
Speaker 3: song just like and we we do it constantly. We
Speaker 3: always sew a new song or two, and especially the
Speaker 3: van Halen stuff. We got a reservoir of van Halen
Speaker 3: that we can play. Sometimes we go out and say,
Speaker 3: let's just play a fucking hour of van Halen. This
Speaker 3: fuck with these people hard, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: They keep it hit you know, fifty one, fifty oh
Speaker 3: you know, oh you wait one too, you know, four
Speaker 3: and off gone out. So we'll play a record a
Speaker 3: song from all these different things, and you know, the
Speaker 3: audience goes crazy, they lap it up. They'd rather hear
Speaker 3: that than anything. But my songs are I can deliver.
Speaker 3: I'm a I'm a performer, you know, I'm more than
Speaker 3: an artist. I think it being such a performer. I'm
Speaker 3: such a performer. That has kept me from getting artists respect,
Speaker 3: like you know, like these guys that just stand there
Speaker 3: and sing, and you know, I never get that respect.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: They always talk about my show and my rap, what
Speaker 3: I sit on stage, and my antics and and this
Speaker 3: and that. So I jump around and run around. I
Speaker 3: can deliver a song, a brand new song, as good
Speaker 3: as I can deliver. I can't drive fifty five, so
Speaker 3: so I don't worry about new songs and my fans
Speaker 3: if I'm not opening for someone, which I never do.
Speaker 3: If they're all my fans, and they'll they love anything
Speaker 3: because they're used to be in cabbo where I go
Speaker 3: on stage and I'll play two hours, but not even
Speaker 3: play one of my own songs, you know, for two
Speaker 3: ficking hours with the right guys, you know, so they're
Speaker 3: used to that. You know, I'm almost like the grateful dead.
Speaker 3: They're used to saying, well, these you don't know what
Speaker 3: you're gonna get, but you know you're going to get
Speaker 3: a party, you know. And I like being that guy.
Speaker 3: I love it, and I of course I play. I
Speaker 3: always end the show with mas tequila, heavy metal, one
Speaker 3: way to rock or if I can't drive fifty five.
Speaker 3: Almost always end my set that way. I don't do
Speaker 3: encores anymore, haven't done on Coors for fifteen years since
Speaker 3: I left fan Hanel, and I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't leave the stage. I finish my show.
Speaker 3: There's an hour and forty minutes whatever it is, and
Speaker 3: I stand there and I've opened up a cocktail or
Speaker 3: make mix myself a drink right out stage. We fuck around,
Speaker 3: Everybody goes to towels off, Mike and I do a toast,
Speaker 3: do a couple of shots, a couple of pops.
Speaker 2: Drummer walks around. You know.
Speaker 3: I talk to the people and they don't even bother,
Speaker 3: like yeah me. You know they know that we're not done,
Speaker 3: you know. And then when I feel like it, then
Speaker 3: we just start playing encores.
Speaker 2: And I usually like to end my whole show of
Speaker 2: all together.
Speaker 3: Before you walk out that show, you're gonna hear either
Speaker 3: Eagles Fly, Father Time now or when it's Love by
Speaker 3: Van Halem, and it's usually Eagles Fly or Father Time,
Speaker 3: and then when it's love and then it's all like,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 2: This is what it's all about. You know.
Speaker 3: That song it's one of the greatest ballads ever written
Speaker 3: in the history of rock, I think. And I'm proud
Speaker 3: of that lyric. I'm proud of that music Eddie wrote.
Speaker 3: And that song gives me the goosebumps every freaking time.
Speaker 3: So that's playing new songs, it just would just be
Speaker 3: it's just part of the event because it's an it's
Speaker 3: not a show, it's not a set, you know.
Speaker 2: And I can't wait to go back out again.
Speaker 3: And I'm really interested in really really digging deep into
Speaker 3: van Halen. See I've shied away from doing that because
Speaker 3: of now you know, the friction between us and you know,
Speaker 3: and there was van Halen. But now that Eddie's gone
Speaker 3: and I've hit al a hundred times out, call me.
Speaker 3: Let's get together. Let's make some music, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. It's not about trying to be van Halen.
Speaker 3: It's about give a servant the fans, and let's play
Speaker 3: that music together. For God's sakes, how could you not
Speaker 3: when you're the least singers still alive. You've got two
Speaker 3: of them that are still alive. One of them is
Speaker 3: less user friendly. But Mikey and Alan myself just let's
Speaker 3: just go play music, you know, And he just won't respond.
Speaker 3: Since Eddie's death, he's been really shut down with me anyway.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna go out and play that fucking music,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. I feel like it's well,
Speaker 3: I can still sing it. I got Michael Anthony, He's
Speaker 3: the other half. We call ourselves the other half, you know.
Speaker 3: There's ed All and Sam and Mike, you know, and
Speaker 3: we've roomed that we've traveled that way too. So I'm
Speaker 3: really horny after taking this year off to do some
Speaker 3: of them, more of even more than I've ever done,
Speaker 3: because I think the fans need it, you know. I
Speaker 3: just hope I can sing long enough to be able
Speaker 3: to play my greatest hits, A little Chicken Foot, a
Speaker 3: little Montros. Always got to play one Mantro song, you know,
Speaker 3: Space Station of five, rock Candy or Bad Motor Scooter.
Speaker 3: I mean, I have to do that, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: so if I can my voice a hold up to
Speaker 3: be able to sing two.
Speaker 2: And a half or three hours.
Speaker 3: Maybe taking a break in between, maybe Mikey sings a
Speaker 3: few of the old Van Halen songs and like we
Speaker 3: do now, he sings around with the Devil, or he
Speaker 3: sings Ain't talking about love in the middle of the show.
Speaker 3: Maybe he sings a few more of those and I
Speaker 3: take a little break, but somehow so we can get
Speaker 3: it all in to the definitive Sammy show. You know,
Speaker 3: let's you know, finish what you started here, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. It's like Eddie's death really really made
Speaker 3: it so dysfunctional because either you know, him and I
Speaker 3: were the fearless leaders, you know, really, I mean, roth
Speaker 3: was a leader in his day. I was a leader
Speaker 3: in my day, and then Eddie became the leader, you know,
Speaker 3: after I was gone, and it's like without a leader,
Speaker 3: there's no one hurting the cats, you know.
Speaker 2: And Wolfey it's not his job. You know, I love
Speaker 2: what he's doing.
Speaker 3: He's he's killing it out there by himself, you know,
Speaker 3: playing all the instruments. You know, he doesn't want to
Speaker 3: carry on the vand Handle legacy, but it has to
Speaker 3: be carried on. Some of the greatest songs in rock
Speaker 3: ever written, and for nobody to be able to go
Speaker 3: out there and do the whole thing is crazy. You know,
Speaker 3: Roth can't sing my song, so he you know, I
Speaker 3: don't want to say it, but you know he he
Speaker 3: doesn't do that great of a job on his own,
Speaker 3: so he don't want to. He don't want to mess
Speaker 3: around with mind. But you know I can sing his songs,
Speaker 3: and Mikey can sing his songs. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: if he wanted to join us, oh, I'd say, come
Speaker 3: on in a minute, but I already tried that. He's
Speaker 3: not so user friendly. But they're not criticizing him at all. Man,
Speaker 3: those songs are great. The early fucking van Halen. Van
Speaker 3: Halen don't have a stinker in their whole fucking catalog.
Speaker 3: You know, even stupid songs like on the Inside that
Speaker 3: we did on fifty and fifty, it's still great. You know,
Speaker 3: ice cream, man, it's still great. You know they're they're
Speaker 3: they could do no wrong. You got fucking Eddy van
Speaker 3: Halen playing guitar. It's got to come out pretty good.
Speaker 1: Okay, speaking of songs, and you mentioned Murk, which has
Speaker 1: the company Hypnosis, who owns your songs.
Speaker 3: Now, I sold a great deal of my early catalog
Speaker 3: to Warner Chapel, which was my you know label for
Speaker 3: most of the years for all that, and they've always
Speaker 3: been my publishers, and I sold a lot of it
Speaker 3: to them, but not my new stuff.
Speaker 2: I still own all my new stuff.
Speaker 3: And when I say my new stuff from about Chicken
Speaker 3: foot on.
Speaker 1: Now you sold the stuff, do you regret selling it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: The I mean if I needed money, I would regret
Speaker 3: because the amount you can sell it for today from
Speaker 3: what I sold it for is like ten times. But
Speaker 3: I don't need money, so I don't regret because the
Speaker 3: amount of money those songs were earning and for compared
Speaker 3: per year, it would have taken me twenty years to
Speaker 3: get the money that I sold them for. And I thought, well,
Speaker 3: why just sit and collect them little trinkets when I
Speaker 3: could have a big chunk and I can do something
Speaker 3: with that, right, And that was my philosophy way back then,
Speaker 3: way before these people were selling their kind of like
Speaker 3: boy was the only guy that you know, I remember
Speaker 3: Bowie sold his rights years ago. First got to do that,
Speaker 3: and that impressed the fuck out of me. But I
Speaker 3: didn't know how I was going to do it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like nobody was beating on my doors saying hey,
Speaker 3: So Warner Chell said hey, we want, you know, want
Speaker 3: to buy you your songs, and I thought, well, maybe
Speaker 3: they'll do something with them. You know, that would be
Speaker 3: great because the music just kind of sitting there dying.
Speaker 3: Things were changing, records weren't selling. So I thought it
Speaker 3: made a good deal. And I did make a good deal,
Speaker 3: but not by today's standards. So I'm like Mark, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure he would be right there in line. He's
Speaker 3: a fan, and we talked about it.
Speaker 2: Believe me.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, yeah, if I needed money, I'd
Speaker 3: be kicking myself and the assid right now.
Speaker 2: I'll just sell another tequila company. What the hell?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Okay, going back to Van Haalen, Legendarily, you were hooked
Speaker 1: up by your mechanic. Yeah, you had been with mocros
Speaker 1: on Warner Brothers. You were then with Capital, you'd switch
Speaker 1: to Geffen. You really had some emphasis, you were really
Speaker 1: going you go to play with the boys and ye,
Speaker 1: well wait a second, you know I got something going
Speaker 1: on with myself phone. Do you immediately say I'm all in.
Speaker 3: Boy? Bob you're telling it like it is. I didn't
Speaker 3: plan on joining that band for five seconds. When Eddie
Speaker 3: called me, I thought, oh, this is great. Because I
Speaker 3: was talking to Ted. I was getting ready to start writing.
Speaker 3: You know, I've just come off tour, but I was
Speaker 3: gonna start writing, and Ted was coaching me all the time. Hey,
Speaker 3: you know, how about this song? How about that song?
Speaker 3: With a song like this? I was sending him little
Speaker 3: snippets and we were talking about doing a new wear.
Speaker 3: So I thought, oh, fuck, man, I'll get Eddie to
Speaker 3: play on my record. This would be like the shit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh boy, but what was it. I wouldn't even considering
Speaker 3: joining that band. You know, I was selling double arenas
Speaker 3: almost in every city at that time, and Platt every
Speaker 3: album was platinum, you know, so uh I it was
Speaker 3: so weird. I thought, well, Eddie says, well, just come
Speaker 3: on down. I said, oh, man, I just got off
Speaker 3: on tour. Just cut all my hair off. Man, I
Speaker 3: need a break, man, fuck, I said, But I got
Speaker 3: to come down and get my car anyway, because he
Speaker 3: had seen my car in there. So I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll come down.
Speaker 2: I come down. I walk in the studio. It was
Speaker 2: a silly thing.
Speaker 3: I'm sure everybody's heard this story reading in my book
Speaker 3: and stuff. But those guys have been up all night
Speaker 3: playing working on songs. Summer Nights and good Enough and
Speaker 3: a couple of little other jams that were both on
Speaker 3: fifty and fifty. And they were burnts in that place,
Speaker 3: smell like booze and cigarettes. And I actually wore a suit.
Speaker 3: It was a cool suit, you know, like a Versace suit.
Speaker 3: I wore a fucking suit down into them, and Alex
Speaker 3: has got a contract. You have to sign this, a
Speaker 3: non disclosure or anything.
Speaker 2: You're here, you know.
Speaker 3: And then I'm going, what the fuck are these guys are?
Speaker 3: These guys are crazy, you know. But finally I said, well,
Speaker 3: let's just play some music, you know, and they said okay,
Speaker 3: you know, so we went in and we started playing
Speaker 3: did you sign the NBA bok No. Alex is funny.
Speaker 3: Back in those days, he was really trying to be
Speaker 3: a businessman. He was trying to, you know, be kind
Speaker 3: of like the band leader, you know, because especially after Roth,
Speaker 3: he thought he was going to step in there. And
Speaker 3: I walked in and we started playing music. I heard
Speaker 3: those Eddie and Now play together, and you know, never
Speaker 3: mind Mike. You know, it was the magic between those
Speaker 3: two guys. Mike was just filling in the holes on base.
Speaker 3: That's the way you have to play with those two.
Speaker 3: It was the most loosest, greasiest fucking groove I've ever
Speaker 3: heard in my life in rock. It reminded me so
Speaker 3: much of Cream, my favorite band ever, much more than
Speaker 3: that Zeppelin. I love Cream because Cream always played things
Speaker 3: slow and the way Ginger Baker played and it was
Speaker 3: always slow, Budy, It's not slow like Sabbath, but just
Speaker 3: slower like I'm always hyper.
Speaker 2: I'd always say, you know, I'm.
Speaker 3: Speed it up, you know, right, But they alan ed
Speaker 3: kept it down in that deep, greasy pocket. I fell
Speaker 3: in love the same thing. When I went to Cabo.
Speaker 3: I just said, oh fuck, I'm in this band. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean? This is And I just started singing.
Speaker 2: Summer Nights and my radio.
Speaker 3: And everybody's going whoa, and you know, look at goosebumps.
Speaker 3: There they are again, here they come. You can't. You
Speaker 3: just can't describe how it was, like, oh fuck, you know,
Speaker 3: I want to be in this van. I don't care.
Speaker 3: My manager goes, are you crazy? I go see David Geffen.
Speaker 3: Are you crazy? He goes, you realize you're gonna you're
Speaker 3: gonna take a pay cut. You know, you make more
Speaker 3: money your SOULO wars they got to and he goes,
Speaker 3: those guys are a mess, you know. And he tried
Speaker 3: to talk me out of it. And I'm saying, no, Dave,
Speaker 3: you don't understand ed Leffer and me sitting there and
Speaker 3: David Geff and he's sitting on his desk, scratching his head, pacing.
Speaker 2: He goes, you're my biggest artist right now. You know.
Speaker 2: He went on this.
Speaker 3: Whole guilt trip on me. And then he finally he goes,
Speaker 3: you know what, it sounds like, you really want to
Speaker 3: do this. I said, I really do want to do this.
Speaker 3: He goes, I would never stop an artist from doing
Speaker 3: what they want to do. And I went, wow, what
Speaker 3: a good man. And he said, I mean it. I'll
Speaker 3: take care of this. Let me talk to Mooston and
Speaker 3: we'll figure this out. And then he went put a
Speaker 3: gun to Mosad, said you want to see me in
Speaker 3: your band?
Speaker 2: This is my biggest artist. I want half the record.
Speaker 3: This is a rumor I heard he got half of
Speaker 3: the fifty one to fifty record and he got another
Speaker 3: Sammy Hagar record, a solo record without giving Warners half
Speaker 3: of it, because that's what their deal. And then he
Speaker 3: moved on to Universal after that. But at that time,
Speaker 3: that's what he got out of that deal. I'm thinking, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you would never stop an artist from doing with there
Speaker 3: as long as it's good for you. Na, David Geffen
Speaker 3: was He broke me, you know, worldwide. And I never
Speaker 3: forget that man. They believed in me, you know, Carter,
Speaker 3: I mean fucking Carter. I love Carter more than any
Speaker 3: other person, and that in this business for what he
Speaker 3: did for me, and what he did for Tina, what
Speaker 3: he did for Bob Seeger, how many people, what he
Speaker 3: did for the motels, he did it. He stood up
Speaker 3: for you, you know, against the corporate put his neck
Speaker 3: on the line.
Speaker 2: Nobody does that, none of them other A and R guys.
Speaker 3: John Klardner was good for me, same way, but he
Speaker 3: wouldn't put his neck on the line. He'd go, yeah,
Speaker 3: ain't gonna happen. You know that's single. He go, No,
Speaker 3: that single's not going to be a hit. And I'd
Speaker 3: say why not. They say they're not gonna put the money.
Speaker 3: Come on, you gotta be getting. He wouldn't go in
Speaker 3: there and go to batle like Carter Wood. So even
Speaker 3: though I had hits on jupping it out with Carter
Speaker 3: but anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, so ed Leffler, Okay, he had a legendary reputation.
Speaker 1: How did you hook up with him? How good was he?
Speaker 1: What was his magic? Noel was pushed aside. Edward was
Speaker 1: the manager van Halen? Then ed and to what degree
Speaker 1: did that break up van Halen?
Speaker 3: It totally broke up Van Halo. Ed Leffler was the
Speaker 3: best manager on the planet. He was a one man dog.
Speaker 3: He had Juice Newton for five minutes and he you know,
Speaker 3: but he really he managed van Halen and he was he.
Speaker 2: He lived and breathed van Halen. You know.
Speaker 3: Every Tuesday night they get together all the promo guys
Speaker 3: at his house with all the hookers in the freaking
Speaker 3: drugs and rock and rolling, and they would have the
Speaker 3: time of their lives to be getting your airplay for
Speaker 3: the next week. I mean, he lived and breathed it.
Speaker 3: And when he when Eddie and I we never we
Speaker 3: never had to discuss anything between us except music, and
Speaker 3: because ed Leffler took care of it. If we had
Speaker 3: a problem. We took it to Ed and Ed would say, well,
Speaker 3: Eddie's not going to like that. I'd say, yeah, but Ed,
Speaker 3: you know, I want to do this solo record, you know,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. I'm getting a divorce and and I
Speaker 3: can use that money, you know, pay my wife off.
Speaker 3: You know, so I want to do the greatest hits record.
Speaker 3: Edie's not gonna like it, you know that. I'm going, yeah, well,
Speaker 3: can you fix it? He could fix it right, and
Speaker 3: then you know, nothing to be said. Ever, I never
Speaker 3: mad to talk to Eddie about it. When Ed Lefler died,
Speaker 3: I had to talk to Eddie about things, and when
Speaker 3: he had to talk to me about things, and it
Speaker 3: was like, what.
Speaker 2: The fuck are you talking about? No fucking way am I.
Speaker 3: You know, So he kept the band together absolutely, one
Speaker 3: hundred percent. And then you bring in a new guy
Speaker 3: who kind of poisons the brothers seeing where the power
Speaker 3: is at this time. Now they were kind of going
Speaker 3: against me. We all know that there was a you know,
Speaker 3: like I was the outsider guy. So you know, he
Speaker 3: went with them. They said, we don't want Sammy to
Speaker 3: do solo records. Okay, I'll fix it. Goes to Warner Brothers,
Speaker 3: take his name off. No more solo records of Samy.
Speaker 3: I had a contract record do a solo record after
Speaker 3: every band, Halo record if I wanted, and I never did.
Speaker 2: But it was a.
Speaker 3: Huge deal Leffler made when I joined the band, so
Speaker 3: they took that, you know, it just start all that
Speaker 3: kind of poisoning stuff. And then as soon as I
Speaker 3: got thrown out of the band and he brought Gary Sharona,
Speaker 3: and we all know about that, he got thrown out
Speaker 3: with Gary.
Speaker 2: So it just was a shame the way it all
Speaker 2: went down.
Speaker 3: Leffler, if he wouldn't have died, Van Haler would still
Speaker 3: be together, absolutely and still the biggest band in the world.
Speaker 3: But Ed I met Ed, he had that band Sweet,
Speaker 3: and I was just signed to Capitol and Sweet was
Speaker 3: on Capital. So they were playing their their American debut
Speaker 3: at with their big hit ballroom Blitz or whatever. It
Speaker 3: was their first one and at the Santa Monica Civic.
Speaker 3: This is a great story, Bob, I got. I gotta
Speaker 3: go in one step deeper because this is a great story.
Speaker 3: Paul Kossoff from Free who was had a real bad
Speaker 3: drug problem and I I was opening for him at
Speaker 3: that that old rock and roll place down on Santa Monica.
Speaker 2: What was that rock club? Our Wood? Yeah, maybe it
Speaker 2: was a star War?
Speaker 3: Was it the Star War? That's not on Santa Monic.
Speaker 3: I mean that's not on Sunset. The star Ward was down.
Speaker 1: Not on Sunset, it is on it was on Santa Monica.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. Then by the Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I'm opening for Paul Kossoff there doing my
Speaker 3: Capital debut. I'm I'm auditioning for a Capitol deal. Paul
Speaker 3: Kossoff was wasted. I killed it for one thing. Leffler
Speaker 3: was there, saw me, right, and they said, we want
Speaker 3: to We're gonna sign that guy, uh, Carter and all
Speaker 3: those guys. So they said, we want to sign that guy,
Speaker 3: meaning me, and maybe you can put him on tour
Speaker 3: with Sweet And Leffler said, quote unquote them, you think
Speaker 3: I would let that fucking wild ass, blonde, fuzzy haired
Speaker 3: motherfucker play before my band? You're crazy, right? And Carter
Speaker 3: told me this story. Ed told me too later, so
Speaker 3: they said, oh, fuck, you know whatever. So I did
Speaker 3: get to meet it, none of that. The next two
Speaker 3: days later, Paul coss Up was on an airplane the
Speaker 3: next day to San Diego for another show. He died
Speaker 3: on the plane of an overdose and there hat attack
Speaker 3: whatever happened to him. He was opening for Sweet, so
Speaker 3: they go, hey, you know, hey, that guy you saw
Speaker 3: get him on the show. Head's going fuck yeah, he's
Speaker 3: all you know, I guess he was all pissed off
Speaker 3: and he let me do it. I killed it. I
Speaker 3: jumped off the stage, went into the audience, fucking you know.
Speaker 3: I did every trick in the book. And Sweet comes
Speaker 3: on stage. They did good, but you know, I did
Speaker 3: really good, and and ed after the show, he asked
Speaker 3: if somebody to bring me into the dress room to
Speaker 3: meet with Sweet, and he I walk in. He's got
Speaker 3: the lead singer in the fucking corner. He's smoking a cigarette,
Speaker 3: he's got his finger in his face and he's telling him,
Speaker 3: you see.
Speaker 2: What that fucking guy did. You see what that fucking
Speaker 2: guy did.
Speaker 3: And you're standing up there, you know, like some fucking pompous,
Speaker 3: you know, asshole Rock started.
Speaker 2: He was chewing him out hard. Man.
Speaker 3: I walk in and there goes, hey, just a minute,
Speaker 3: and I want to see you, And I said, okay.
Speaker 3: I mean he was so mafiosa. I fell in love
Speaker 3: with him too. I was like, oh God, I got it.
Speaker 3: This guy's got to manage me. So he came in
Speaker 3: and said, okay, I'm gonna sign you and going to
Speaker 3: get you a deal with the Capital and then and
Speaker 3: that's that's the way it happened. He became my father,
Speaker 3: my mentor everything. If I had a business problem, I
Speaker 3: called ed Leffler. If I had a marital problem, I
Speaker 3: called ed Leffler. If I had a legal problem, I
Speaker 3: called ed Leffler and he fucking fixed it. He was
Speaker 3: the king. He was so hot headed though he hid
Speaker 3: be I remember Bill Graham. Eddie Money opened for me
Speaker 3: on a Bill Graham show, and Bill Graham managed Eddie
Speaker 3: Money and conquered and we had all these special lights,
Speaker 3: you know, I from my headline too. We had four
Speaker 3: spotlights on stage operators behind me and Eddie Muddy's opening
Speaker 3: the show and Bill Graham's telling him, hey, get them
Speaker 3: spotlights on telling the lighting guy said you can't do it.
Speaker 3: The left and said, fuck you, those are our spotlights,
Speaker 3: you know, And they got into it, him and Bill Graham.
Speaker 3: I'm gotting a freck and fistfight, all rolling, all over
Speaker 3: the backstage area. And I mean he just was that
Speaker 3: kind of guy. He was not going to say roll over.
Speaker 3: He was tough man, he was awesome. I love that man.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you I still dream about him. I have
Speaker 3: dreams of him. I have dreams of Carter too. Just
Speaker 3: every now and then they come to me and just
Speaker 3: have a nice little dream. It's really cool.
Speaker 1: Just to go back to the beginning for a minute.
Speaker 1: So you're a sharp dressed kid in school. Everybody likes you.
Speaker 1: How did you get into playing music? And the Beatles
Speaker 1: didn't hit till seventy four sixty four when you were seventeen,
Speaker 1: so what was going on there?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: The crazy thing is I was more of a Stones
Speaker 3: guy than the Beatles. But I did learn I want
Speaker 3: to hold your hand, my mom. I wanted a guitar.
Speaker 3: I decided I was gonna I could sing. See And
Speaker 3: I had this older friend that was in my brother's age,
Speaker 3: three years older than me. He had a car, he
Speaker 3: had a guitar, an amplifier. He was kind of a
Speaker 3: rich kid, and he liked me because I was I
Speaker 3: was cool. I looked like a rock star and he
Speaker 3: had met me through my brother and he he you know,
Speaker 3: it's just really a funny thing.
Speaker 2: A guy named Ed Mattson, he taught me how to
Speaker 2: play guitar. U.
Speaker 3: He taught me how to drive a car, and he
Speaker 3: would he brought his guitar and ample over my house
Speaker 3: and he said, man, your mom would get you a guitar.
Speaker 3: And I said, my mom, she said, if you learned
Speaker 3: how to play never on Sunday, I'll get one from
Speaker 3: the series catalog.
Speaker 2: It was thirty nine ninety five, you know that one
Speaker 2: in the case. I bought it.
Speaker 3: I bought one recently for eighteen hundred fucking dollars right
Speaker 3: because I had to have it.
Speaker 2: But and I learned how to play it.
Speaker 3: My mom bought me his guitar, and him and I
Speaker 3: started a band, just the two of us, and we'd
Speaker 3: go play parties, you know with you know, one of
Speaker 3: my girlfriends or something, have a birthday part in her garage.
Speaker 3: And I'd say, me and my my well, my band
Speaker 3: will play. And we played instrumentals. We played Dick Dale
Speaker 3: and we played you know, soft wipe out and songs
Speaker 3: like that without a drummer. And I want to hold
Speaker 3: your Hand, I think was the first Beatles song. And
Speaker 3: then when the Stones record came out, we fucking learned
Speaker 3: the whole Stones record. But I could sing, so, you know,
Speaker 3: I decided I was going to be a singer because
Speaker 3: I'd be hanging around with my buddies in the car
Speaker 3: and and you know, I'd start singing any song came
Speaker 3: on the radio. I could sing it. I knew the
Speaker 3: lyrics and I could sing the melody. And they and
Speaker 3: they used to get pissed out. I say, how do
Speaker 3: you know all these fucking songs? I'm saying, I just
Speaker 3: know them, you know, and I still do. I never
Speaker 3: used teleprompter, And so he goes, oh yeah, they'd shut
Speaker 3: the radio off, okay, sing Satisfaction by the Stones, and
Speaker 3: you know, I'd blow it out man, you know, acapella,
Speaker 3: and then they'd have contests and'd be like trying to
Speaker 3: stump Sammy. Man. I was like rain Man. So I
Speaker 3: could sing. So everybody thought I was going to be
Speaker 3: a rock stars. So I started telling people rockstar winn
Speaker 3: at words. I start telling people I'm gonna be you
Speaker 3: know things, I'm gonna be like Mick Jagger, you know,
Speaker 3: it'd be like Elvis, and everybody believed me around town.
Speaker 3: I was one of those guys. I started dressing apart,
Speaker 3: so they said Mattson guy. He thought I was really cool.
Speaker 3: He said, yeah, this guy's got it.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I started a band with him. He's like and so
Speaker 3: because he was a really good musician. He could play anything.
Speaker 3: He's really smart guy. So he took me to see
Speaker 3: Donovan first American parents, at a place called The Trip
Speaker 3: in La.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the Trip? I don't know if you know.
Speaker 1: Before I know the Trip, but I didn't live in
Speaker 1: La then.
Speaker 3: So Donovan was playing there by himself, and it was
Speaker 3: the most magical thing I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 3: I was too young to get in and got a
Speaker 3: fake id ed could get in. He was eighteen. I wasn't.
Speaker 2: I was. I guess I was fifteen if he was eighteen.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we got in and Donovan sitting there in
Speaker 3: a stool and velvet and lace, big oh, just fucking
Speaker 3: velvet and lace and his hair and the way he
Speaker 3: had a you know, fucking poofed up like Bob Dellan.
Speaker 2: But he was gorgeous. He was like an angel.
Speaker 3: And he's setting on a stool with acoustic guitar with
Speaker 3: a spotlight on him, and it was the most magical
Speaker 3: thing I'd ever seen in my life. I thought, this
Speaker 3: guy looks like God, he looks like an angels Jesus.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: And he was just mesmerizing. And then he took a
Speaker 3: break and he came back with a band. He played
Speaker 3: Sunshine Superman, and I was fucking done.
Speaker 2: That was it. I was. I wanted to be Donovan.
Speaker 3: If you know, I've recorded Donovan, two Donovan songs on
Speaker 3: my records. Early Carter introduced me to him finally one
Speaker 3: day and just a huge Donovan fan. Over Dylan Stones,
Speaker 3: over beetles Ford, over Chevy, you know, but you know
Speaker 3: the but so that kind of set me on my
Speaker 3: path and and s Ed Matson guy really coached me along.
Speaker 3: He turned me on to the Donovant I mean little
Speaker 3: He turned me on too, Bob Dylan then and he
Speaker 3: turned me on to you know, the Stones of course,
Speaker 3: but I had already seen the Stones. Him and I
Speaker 3: went to see their first America performance. George Babcock brought
Speaker 3: him to the Swing auditorium and Semragi and we snuck
Speaker 3: in and saw the Stones.
Speaker 2: I said, I want to be micking Keith together.
Speaker 3: Then I then I saw Creams performance at the Whiskey
Speaker 3: and then I said, I want to be I want
Speaker 3: to be Eric Clapton, and you know, I just jumped around.
Speaker 3: But that's in the beginning. I was like a chameleon, man,
Speaker 3: I could. I could really absorb things from these rock
Speaker 3: stars people that I would see. And then I became
Speaker 3: a Rod Stewart fanatic too for a long time, and
Speaker 3: that's when I really started performing more. I started, you know,
Speaker 3: running around on stage and saying goofy things and throwing
Speaker 3: a party. Rod in the Face's best party on the
Speaker 3: planet at that time. I think Paul Rogers, those kind
Speaker 3: of guys really all influenced me. Gary Broker from Proc o'harum,
Speaker 3: I still think one of the greatest singers ever. He
Speaker 3: could just keep going higher and you go, fuck you
Speaker 3: take away the higher. And I learned how to sing,
Speaker 3: you know, the way I sing dreams and those songs
Speaker 3: that way, or just go hire and hire. I learned
Speaker 3: how to do that from him. And I don't know
Speaker 3: how I did it, but I didn't learn anything. I
Speaker 3: just pushed myself to do it, you know. But I'm
Speaker 3: otis Redding. All those people have really influenced and they
Speaker 3: still do I'm a sponge A boy always said that
Speaker 3: about himself, you know, people said, don't ever wear a
Speaker 3: new pair of shoes around boy Mick Jagger hurting quotes.
Speaker 3: He said he'll have them the next day. I'm a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 1: Like, okay, switching gears. Just back to No. You were
Speaker 1: talking about guy, you were talking about trust, etc. We
Speaker 1: have a very divided country. You're one of the few
Speaker 1: people who can appeal to both sides. Is there any hope?
Speaker 1: And if you could snap your fingers, what would you
Speaker 1: do to bring us together?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: If I knew how to do that, Bob, I would
Speaker 3: run for president. If I were in my sixties, even
Speaker 3: right now, I would run for fucking president. And I'm
Speaker 3: dead serious, and only agenda I would have. I would
Speaker 3: have one fucking agenda, and that would be to unite
Speaker 3: this country. How I would do that, I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: but that would be my only agenda. I'd say, don't
Speaker 3: talk to me about foreign policy, none of that right now,
Speaker 3: because this country needs to be at least seventy thirty,
Speaker 3: you know, get over this fifty to fifty divide. If
Speaker 3: we could get eighty percent of the people behind the president,
Speaker 3: and we could say we're united. Okay, this country united
Speaker 3: can change the world. We could there would we would
Speaker 3: cure the homeless situation, which is a big problem which
Speaker 3: I would want to cure. I would want to cure
Speaker 3: hunger and crime in this country. And but if we
Speaker 3: were united, we would do it together.
Speaker 2: See if we.
Speaker 3: Could reunite this country, the United States of America. I
Speaker 3: want to My platform would be I want to get
Speaker 3: rid of red and I want to get rid of blue.
Speaker 3: Let's be the purple country. And I know it's nothing
Speaker 3: to do with Prince Purple. Red and blue make purple.
Speaker 3: Let's unite and get rid of this big divide. It
Speaker 3: breaks my heart to see what's happening in this country.
Speaker 3: And as long as the people that are running this
Speaker 3: country are running it the way they are and trying
Speaker 3: to squash the other side. You know, it's like the
Speaker 3: right is trying to kill the left. The left is
Speaker 3: trying to kill the right. You know, they're throwing a president,
Speaker 3: a guy that was president, you know, indicting him, trying
Speaker 3: to get him in prison so he can't run again.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so dirty. Politics have always been dirty,
Speaker 3: but the way that each side is treating each other
Speaker 3: it's just never going to stop the divide. We've got
Speaker 3: to stop that shit. And I would be independent, and
Speaker 3: I would I would just say I'm running for the purple.
Speaker 3: Just make this country purple, and and just stop. That's
Speaker 3: you don't know how how it breaks my heart because
Speaker 3: I'm too old, you know, I can't run.
Speaker 1: Okay. And do you own any electric cars?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Three, both both two of them are in my wife's
Speaker 3: name and ones on ones in both our names. Listen,
Speaker 3: you can only drive one car at a time. I
Speaker 3: got a bunch of cuts and I said, will you
Speaker 3: own all those gas customers, all those smug making deep cars.
Speaker 3: I said, no, yeah, I own them, but I only
Speaker 3: drive one at a time. I'm not out there driving
Speaker 3: twelve cars and once fucking the environment, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's my excuse.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we have a Tesla and it's our second one,
Speaker 3: and we have an Audi or eight or whatever it is,
Speaker 3: eight hundred full electric. And I'm i gotta tell you,
Speaker 3: I give, I give. Once you've driven and gotten used
Speaker 3: to an electric car, it's the only way to go.
Speaker 3: It's so unbelievable. You stop looking at gas stations, you
Speaker 3: stop looking at you know you're going, you know, you
Speaker 3: don't have to take it in and get the oil change.
Speaker 2: It's like, it's fucking brilliant.
Speaker 3: And if the electric company doesn't stick us up so
Speaker 3: bad that electricity we can't afford electric cars the way
Speaker 3: they've done with gas, then that would be the worst
Speaker 3: thing that could happen.
Speaker 2: But it's probably gonna happen.
Speaker 3: But we put electric solar panels in the house, put
Speaker 3: the electric plug in, and we basically drive for free.
Speaker 2: And I'm telling you right now, you can't beat that.
Speaker 2: And our man.
Speaker 3: Musk has done a brilliant job with putting charging devices
Speaker 3: around and places where you can go charge your cars,
Speaker 3: so it's no longer like, well, I can't go anywhere
Speaker 3: on a long trip. You know, yeah you can. If
Speaker 3: you can do, it's the future, There's no question about it.
Speaker 3: I would give up and I'd put my cars. I'd
Speaker 3: probably have to build a museum though, so I could
Speaker 3: put my cars in, so I could go look at
Speaker 3: them and sit in and put a big movie theater.
Speaker 3: I always said, if I can't drive my Ferraris and
Speaker 3: my really exotic cars and they're too valuable or the
Speaker 3: government won't let me drive them, I'll get myself a
Speaker 3: really cool museum. I'll put a big giant screen up
Speaker 3: in there, and I'll go sit in them and eat
Speaker 3: popcorn and watch movies.
Speaker 4: I'm that note, Sammy. I think we're gonna wrap it up.
Speaker 4: I could talk to you for all all day. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's easy to see why you're successful. Is there anybody
Speaker 4: you don't get along with?
Speaker 3: Alex van Halen right and Diamond Dave, we don't seem
Speaker 3: to get along. I can get along with him, but
Speaker 3: he can't get along with me.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: I hope to bury the hatchet with Alan, if there
Speaker 3: is a hatchet to bury it, and I buried it,
Speaker 3: and so Alan I can do it too. I hate enemies.
Speaker 3: I don't go through life making enemies. It's not my game.
Speaker 3: I'll bend over backwards. Y's guilty, wrong, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 3: will say I'm sorry so fast you wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I just want to see this country come together.
Speaker 3: We'll leave it on that and yes, that's where my
Speaker 3: heart's at.
Speaker 1: On that note, we'll leave it till next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob left set
Speaker 3: S