Righteous, Red, and Rockin’ Introducing the Sammy Hagar Red Rocker Les Paul

He could make it the “Sammy Hagar” Les Paul simply by playing it for 15 years, y’know? Kinda’ like Jimmy Page did? Kinda’ like Slash did? or Billy Gibbons?

You don’t have to ruin a perfectly beautiful expensive axe by branding it with your own personal idosynchractic emblems… what a waste of artistic craftsmanship…

Hagar’s better off with Dean Guitars

All you guys beak about this and that about the guitar, but someone gave one to you, you’d probably be happy.

It looks good.

Probably plays fine.

I hate this site!

Hmm. There’s not much of a difference between a standard LP and the Hagar LP.

The standard LP has a mahogany body with a maple top, stock Gibson pickups, 2 vol 2 tone knobs, mahogany neck, tune-o-matic bridge, rosewood fingerboard, and three way toggle.

The only thing that sets the Hagar LP apart is the red maple top and the Chickenfoot logo on the headstock. Some signature model.

So, what does this mean for Hagar’s Yamaha model?

hmmmm….strange, because you can still buy the SH Yamaha Signature Model :

http://www.yamaha.com/guitars/products/productdetail.html?CNTID=60008

They should have made a Epiphone for 800.- USD instead !

Pretty stange Simon. Whats stranger is that Gibson seem to have let a single cutaway model like the SH get past them – is Yamaha too small to sue?

you guys are a bunch of complaining bitches. if anyone paid you to have a signature guitar, all you fuckers would do it! stop being a bunch of fucking pansies!

The color should have been something more original like Cabo Cobalt Blue, like the old bottles.

to all my friends on the VHND scar, skutch, ducky and everyone else. how about all of us here at VHND take next week starting monday 2/15/10 make all positive and supporting eddie, alex, wolfie, dave, sammy, mike and even gary. i really just wanna see if we can have peace on our comments for one week!…i’m gonna go have another beer. just a drunk suggestion. THANK YOU MY FRIENDS! vh for life…

..this guitar has nothing to do with chickenfoot !

Phil,

I’m all for it, but I don’t post negative comments anymore anyway. It just gets old. I haven’t said anything bad about CF in ages. As far as this post, I think this guitar is a beauty. I wouldn’t pay that much for any guitar, but I certainly don’t fault Sammy for putting it out. Good for him.

skutchipoo

Steve

It has zero to do with the money.

Its all about the Ego.

Sam is no different than Ed.

Van Foot:

Seems like every promising guitar player gets an endorsement these days. I mean, look at the John Mayer strat. I like Mayer but his “Signature Stratocaster” is literally just a custom shop. It is in SRV colours and has some nice pickups and a slim neck, theres nothing innovative about it.

I miss players like Clapton and SRV who would just get a guitar and stick with it – did SRV even have an endorsement when he was alive? I’m not sure if he did. Clapton just mashed Strats together and created something beautiful that years later was brought into use for the public.

More players should do what Flea is doing. He recently brought out the “Fleabass”, which is a bass that he himself uses on stage and costs $500 to buy. Not $4000. He is pretty much in the top 10 bass players in the world (still living) and his signature bass is not a lot of money at all, for playing something that the man himself does. Can you imagine buying the Axis for $500? Thats crazy money.

I 100% agree that the players refine tone through the original instruments that they played. It annoys me that so many guitar players get endorsements because if they are like Eddie, they are constantly tone-chasing and therefore only stick with a certain sound for a few albums until they find something different. If you look at FUCK, Balance and VH3, the tone really differs through those, as Eddie went from his Kramer to the Musicman to the Peavey.

But hey, I’d like to think if I was offered an endorsement I’d take it. Free guitars, no?

Flea is absolutely an amazing bass player. One of the best I’ve ever heard. Sounds like he’s a pretty cool mofo too.

O shit I look like a hypocrite but Phil right on man! I say we as a collective VHND sign a petition complementing van halen on their kickass 07/08 tour and humbly requesting some more and a new album from our favorite band. If not that at least a live dvd!!!

Van Foot – Good post. I saw them with Brother Cane too. Pretty cool, except no snow.(Texas)
I’ve also heard personal stories of Eddie being a Dick. Of course all of that M.A. stuff was astonishing. But I won’t rehash all that.
I knew a chick who was on a flight with Eddie. She said he got super drunk and belligerent. He was yelling at the flight attendants and like spitting while he was talking, he was so drunk and angry. I’m not basing him being a jerk on just that, shit happens, but it’s a bunch of other stuff. And I’m sure he can be really cool too, I’m sure he’s not always a jerk. I’m not saying he’s 100% asshole. Shit we can all be asshole’s sometimes.
But I wouldn’t have believed Eddie was such a jerk at all 15 years ago. He just didn’t seem like one to me back then. But it’s hard to ignore stuff that’s in plain sight now.
But It doesn’t change how much I love VH. I don’t think about him being a dick when I’m rocking out to VH.
It would just be a lot cooler if he was more positive and saw things in a better light. I guarantee we would have already gotten new music from him if he didn’t have such a negative mind set on things.

The only thing I’m not sure about in your post is — what do you mean about Sammy forgetting about people? And when you talked about the Big Fat Money thing. Do you mean Eddie or Sammy? Both or everyone? Later, man.

Van Foot- Do you have some time to read some of what my brain shits out, if not that’s cool. You don’t have to read this and respond bro. I’m at home with a hardcore case of insomnia, just killin time. But here goes some of my really long-winded b.s. anyway.

I don’t know if I would go so far as to say Sammy has forgot about his fans because he put his name on a $4000 guitar but I understand your point of view man. I was a little shocked when I saw that price tag. Although I think you may be taking it a little to personally if you think to yourself “F U Sam” about the release of that Les Paul. But you’ve obviously been a big fan for a long time. So if that’s the way you feel, that’s the way you feel. You’re entitled to it. I mean I understand where you’re coming from as far as the price issues and how it excludes large brackets of people/fans.

I felt the same way when I found out about the prices for tickets for the reunion tours with Roth and Hagar. Most Van Halen fans were always referred to and known as blue collar types, like you said. So I felt they had pretty much forgot about their longtime, loyal fan base at that time of the reunions or they just didn’t care about the original blue collar fans anymore. Yes the reunions were a big deal but the guys in VH weren’t ever going broke.(maybe Roth j/k) Dave kicks ass w/ VH.

But they would have been a bigger deal if the Roth reunion was a true reunion with Mike included and if Eddie would have been clean and sober for the reunion with Hagar. Mike and Sammy wanted to take it further and make it a world tour but Eddie couldn’t keep it together. I guess that’s kind of harsh. He’s an alcoholic, shit happens sometimes, but fuck it’s frustrating.

It was a let down and disappointing for me to think of Van Halen in that new light though, with the inflated ticket prices. Like it was an opportunity for a big cash rake-in and that the tours weren’t inspired by music or something more positive other than the desire for money. The bond that I had felt VH had with their fans seemed like it started t dissolve somewhat at that point. That was a turning point for me, as far as my diehard fanatical Van Halen persona dying down quite a bit.
Oh well life goes on. Sometimes I do wish I could revisit the old days though, when the band was tight and firing on all pistons.

But to backtrack a little, I understand your point VanFoot about how it would have been cool for Sammy to keep the blue collar fans in mind when choosing a guitar to put his name on. However I just feel like, someone doesn’t have to buy a Sammy signature $4000 guitar to play guitar. Ya know, He put it out there if a collector wants it or if some die hard fan has $4000 burning a hole in his pocket. Obviously someone just learning how to play isn’t going to spend that kind of money on a guitar. On the other hand the inflated ticket prices are a bigger deal to me because you DO have to buy them and spend the bigger bucks to hear Van Halen play Live. So to me, that kind of stuff is a bigger poke or slight at the fans. Just my two cents.
Remember the $20-$40 ticket prices (for good seats) Ahhh the old days when I was ecstatic about new Van Halen albums and knowing they were coming to town soon.

Van Foot – I agree with you about Metallica. The only albums I listen to are “…and Justice for All” and the ones before it. R. the Lightening, Master of P, J in t Fire. They Changed their sound to much after Justice. I talked about it in more depth on another post a while back, but to me it sounded like they lost the heavy metal in their souls. They lost it, you can hear it– or lack of it. Too much money and fame maybe? But definitly not enough genuine, honest metal feel. Not a fan anymore, except for the early albums, still love those!

As far as the “Marching to Mars” C.D. I disagree. Okay to be honest with you, I bought it when it first came out and threw it in my C.D. player and my first thoughts were, actually I think I said it out loud,–“What the Fuck is This!”
I think I was expecting it to sound more like what Sammy did last with VH. I didn’t even like “Little White Lie” at first. But I gave it another chance and the more I listened to it, it really grew on me in a big way. I not only accepted that it didn’t sound similar to a VH album, I came to appreciate how different it was. Not better, but different. I loved Roy Rogers’ bluesy slide guitar playing on “Little White Lie” which eventually became my fav song from that album. The harmonica by Huey Lewis sounded cool too. The whole album contained a lot of different sounds and lyrical subjects that I felt made it interesting. Okay a lot of it was about Eddie, Al and Ray Daniels, but I thought that was interesting too. Did you not appreciate Bootsy Collins’ bass playing on the song “Would you do it for Free?” which is obviously a song directed towards someone by the last name Van Halen. Or the tribute to Ray Daniels “On the Other Hand” or how ‘bout the stoner jam “The Yogi’s so high, I’m stoned” No? Really? Damn dude. It IS different and not for everyone, but wow you really hated it huh? Do you think if you gave it another chance it could grow on you like it did me, or does the thought of that make you feel nauseous, like me watching Gary Cherone prance around and peek through his legs backwards on stage like a douche.

Anyway man, I personally came to the conclusion that the whole album was interesting and a really different step for Sammy to take which I (eventually) really dug. So much so that when I heard about the Japanese album version containing two extra songs I bought that one too.

I know I’m rambling on and on, hopefully the sleeping pills will be kicking in soon, but I have to add something about my last post about Eddie or I’ll feel unworthy, just kidding. I was talking about how Eddie seems to have turned into a big prick. Well I know there is a lot of good in him too. I just get pissed off sometimes when I think about certain things, and more negative than positive comes out of me. One thing I remembered about Eddie is that I have an old newspaper clipping or two of him visiting sick children in hospitals.
And I remember a story once when some scumbag grifter promised these sick kids in an infirmary that he was friends with Eddie and he was going to get him to come and visit them. Well needless to say he skipped town with some stuff he stole (can’t remember what exactly) and went onto the next set of victims, I’m sure. Everyone got swindled and to make things worse the kids were let down when they found out Eddie wasn’t coming. Well Eddie found out about this and showed up at the infirmary and hung out there for a little while. Took pictures with ‘em, handed out C.D.’s signed autographs and stuff. Pretty cool stuff Edward. So Eddie obviously has a good heart he just has a lot of issues. But who doesn’t?
Later man, gettin woozy. Thank God, right? sorry……you didn’t have to read it all though, or maybe you didn’t. I understand. Now it’s time to go make copies of St. Anger and hand them out to everybody at a street corner and then watch youtube videos of Gary Cherone. Oh man, I shouldn’t even joke about those things.
Whatever, I’m just fuckin around. Gary may be a nice guy, I don’t know, I just don’t care for him as the frontman for VH. And I haven’t even listened to much of St. Anger, but I heard enough to know I’m not interested in hearing anymore.

I think Gary’s a nice guy but was shunned by the press. I saw the Extreme Reunion tour in 2008 and he was a lot less prancy on stage (he didn’t scratch his balls through his legs like he did before “Fire in the Hole” at Rock in the Park – heres the youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxm32xmSaLE) and you can’t quite believe him when he says in front of a good few thousdand Van Halen fans “WE have a new record”. Didn’t feel right.

Saying that, I come back to VH3 time and time and time again just because its so different and out there. I’m definitely not ashamed to own this album.

Panama – I read your post too, it was pretty interesting. Seems like those who are Van Halen fans have a good appreciation for Metallica too. They seem almost desperate to woo my generation into liking them (hence Death Magnetic) but I’ve always thought of them as a thrash-turned-commercial band. Everything after the Black Album (and including that) weren’t very good. I thought Load/ReLoad were just filler. I didn’t even try St Anger seeing as I’m not too much of a fan but I’ve heard bad things. I caught the last part of their set at Reading Festival 2008 and they were pretty tight.

Interesting about Green Day, I got into them through American Idiot (impressionable 13 year old at the time) although their back catalogue is a lot more impressive. Billie Joe irritates me as a lead singer but I’ve always loved how tight the rhythm section is. Pretty cohesive.

If you haven’t already, check out the latest release from Alice In Chains. They seemed to learn directly from Van Halen when they got a new lead singer to replace Layne – do a tour, get the fans appreciative of the singer THEN do a record. And it is a great record. Feels great to still have bands like Alice In Chains around, especially given their history with Van Halen.

Peace.

Rich – I agree with everything you said about Metallica. I went into more detail about ‘em on another post, but I pretty much expressed the same things you said.

Alice In Chains was one of my all time favorite bands n the 90′s. But I haven’t really checked the new AIC out. I thought Layne Staley was perfect as the lead singer for AIC. Although I’ve heard the new guy is really good.
I’ve heard one new song on the radio and to be honest I didn’t really like it, I wasn’t impressed much. It wasn’t because of the new singer. I think Jerry Cantrell did most of the singing on the song I heard. I just didn’t really like the song in general very much. But maybe I’ll give it another chance and check out more of the other songs on the new album.

Later, and thanks for the input. You’re one of the guys here that I think posts good stuff, Interesting comments.
Later man.

Sammy may have done some cool shit musically-most of it before his stint in VH imo, but he hasn’t earned his own guitar… and with a 4k price tag, in this economy????????

That’s total BS.

ps-If CF didn’t exist, neither would this guitar.

Panama-

Saw AIC open for VH in Sept ’91. It was weird pairing, esp looking back on it, but they kicked ass.

I vaguely remember Baby Animals (female singer??)…they may have opened for VH around that time. I can’t remember either When I saw them toward the end of the same tour, it was May ’92 and I don’t recall them having any opener.

I do recall Tripping Daisy opening for DL on their 92-93 tour. I think Our Lady Peace may have too.

I saw Primus open for Rush around the same time and Bonham open for ELP. Good shows.

arthur_bishop1972 says:

February 28th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Sammy may have done some cool shit musically-most of it before his stint in VH imo, but he hasn’t earned his own guitar…

But on the Jimi post, you said Sammy was in the same category as Air Supply and Three Dog Night? So which is it, he has cool shit or a blip on the radar? It’s the same radar you notice him on so he must be doing something for you to notice it and call it cool?

Dude you really need to get a clue! Sammy has had a TON of guitars in his name, dating back to Washburn to now the Les Paul!

Just because he isn’t Eddie Van Halen or Satriani doesn’t mean he isn’t a good guitar player! Sammy’s been playing the guitar longer than you’ve been alive and quite good at it too!

Arthur_bishop – Yes, Jar of Flies is an sweet-ass album. I hardly ever listen to it anymore though because it reminds me off an ex (who was hot as hell), you know how that goes?
I used to put that C.D. on a lot when we would…..you know. So it makes me feel a little odd listening to it now. Those were really good times, but still it feels kinda weird now to listen to it.
But I would fully recommend anyone playing that album when they are….you know, with your…special lady friend. ha haha.
Just make sure you put it on repeat so you don’t lose the vibe or your mojo. ha ha, ’cause it’s not a very long album.
But it has a great vibe, dark and sexy.
Sorry it just reminds me so much of that girl. I can almost feel that thick air and the smell of her when I listen to it.
T.M.I. I should shut up. I’m happily married anyway now. But at least I was a wild man for a little while before I got tied down (I mean that in a good way). Tied down….huh, that reminds me of another girl…lol. It actually really does. This girl who was into being tied and tying others was even hotter in bed and probably hotter looking than the other girl in some ways. And probably out of my league as far as physical attractiveness, not personality wise though. She was a stuck up, kind of dumb beyotch. But it didn’t matter cause all we did was F like rabbits. ha ha. I swear this girl was put on earth to f**k. She was amazing. Okay I’ll shut up now, starting to sound like a real asshole not to mention male chauvinist pig. But damn that girl was incredible.
There’s nothing wrong with recollecting or reminiscing about good ‘ol memories every once in a while is there? I’m lucky enough to have some good memories, but it’s not I’ve had a rockstars life or anything.

Changing subject now. We all know Sammy isn’t one of the greatest guitar players to ever walk the Earth, but so what. Neither are 99% of people who play. But he can hold his own, he knows how to play.
He has never said he is in the same catagory with guys like Eddie or Satch. But he likes to play and I think he has written some cool stuff.
He even said himself that he wanted a “proper” guitar player to be in Chickenfoot. He’s humble about it.
But he has been playing the guitar and has been a working musician years before I was even born, so if he has the opportunity to have a signature guitar, then more power to him. It doesn’t bother me at all that Les Paul slapped Sammy’s name on a guitar. The price is steep, but wtf. There are a million other guitars out there….whatever.

Like I said before, I think these lyrics to “There’s Only One Way to Rock” go perfectly with the overall feeling of this thread

“And you can analyze this situation.
To me it’s all just mental masturbation.”
“Crank up the drums, crank out the bass
Crank up my Les Paul in your face.”

It’s all good everyone. Remember we all come here for the same basic reason. We’re all fans of Van Halen. I think sometimes we forget that and get aggravated with each other. If we were all at a party together I’m sure we would all get along.
Latah…