We’ve got a big update with lots of Sammy Hagar & Cabo Wabo news.

1) Birthday Bash dates announced:

This year’s dates for Sammy Hagar’s Birthday Bash in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico will be October 5th through the 13th. He will be performing at the Cabo Wabo Cantina on Oct. 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 11th, & 13th. The tickets are FREE, but the lines are long!

2) Satellite map of Cabo San Lucas:

Here’s a pretty cool Cabo San Lucas satellite map, courtesy of WikiMapia, that will hopefully inspire you to plan a trip down there!  Move your cursor around to pan one way or the other. Move it over the different locations and information will appears. On the left are controls to zoom in & out. It’s so detailed that you can even see people if you zoom in all the way!

3) Redhead Booze Cruise & Beach Party:

Sammy Hagar fans host a Redhead Beach Party & a Redhead Booze Cruise (or two) every year during the week of Sammy’s Birthday Bash. The money raised is for a non-profit organization called Amigos de los Niños. They provide quality health care in Los Cabos for children.

The Redhead Booze Cruises will take place on Oct. 7th & Oct. 10th, at 3pm. Prices are $35 in advance before Oct. 1st, and $40 after Oct. 1st. To purchase tickets, simply make a payment via paypal to adlncabo@hotmail.com, and please list names of attendees and which date of the cruise you’ll be attending. You can email Carla at adlncabo@hotmail.com with any questions.

The Redhead Beach Party will take place on Oct. 12th at around noon. Admission is free.

4) Fresno’s Cabo Wabo Cantina opens this Friday.

From The Frenso Bee:

Cabo Wabo comes to Fresno
Creator Sammy Hagar is expected to visit soon.
By Mike Osegueda / The Fresno Bee
08/26/08

Cabo Wabo — at 3950 N. Cedar Ave., Suite 101, in the Granite Park complex - opens tonight for three private nights, before its public grand opening at 11 a.m. Friday. The cantina is the creation of rocker Sammy Hagar (formerly of Van Halen), who started the restaurant, bar and live music venue in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. There’s a second location in Lake Tahoe. Fresno’s Wabo is the third.

For the grand-opening festivities, Aaron Hagar, Sammy’s son, will perform, Granite Park developer Milt Barbis says. Barbis also says Cabo Uno, the house band from the original Cabo Wabo location, will play here soon.

Hagar himself also can be expected in Fresno soon, says Barbis, though the date is being kept a secret. It should be within the first month. Hagar friend Michael Anthony, the ex-Van Halen bass player, is expected to be in Fresno next week. Part of the allure of Cabo Wabo is that Hagar’s star power attracts drop-in guests.

“Fresno has always been good to [Hagar],” Barbis says. “So he’s really excited to do this for the city.”

5) Sammy Hagar open’s “Sammy’s Beach Bar & Grill” at Maui’s Kahului Airport

The Hawaiian Islands’ casual, beach environment and Hagar’s personal flare inspired the atmosphere and ambience of Sammy’s Beach Bar & Grill. Signed memorabilia from the artist’s personal collection adorn the walls surrounding the bar. Sammy Hagar, Van Halen, and other rock and surf inspired music provides the backdrop.

“Music and dining are two of my great passions. Our menu is the result of recipes and advice I’ve received from some of my favorite friends, the celebrated chefs I’ve met in my travels across America. Working with HMSHost to develop Sammy’s Beach Bar & Grill has been an unparalleled positive experience,” said Sammy Hagar.

Sammy Hagar will dedicate his profits from this restaurant to local community children’s charities through the Hagar Family Foundation. Guests can enjoy a great meal and know that together they have made a difference to local children in need.

Read Marketwatch.com’s full article here.

There is another article about Sammy’s Beach Car & Grill form The Maui News here.

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It’s no secret that Paul Gilbert, one of the greatest guitarists of our time, is a huge fan of Eddie Van Halen. On his “Get Out of My Yard” CD (released in 2006), Paul was inspired to write an instrumental tribute to his idol, called “3 E’s For Edward”.

In the CD’s liner notes, Paul wrote the following:

“My biggest guitar hero is named Edward. I have seen visions of freedom, virtuosity, and unspeakable joy that remain unmatched. I hope he can find his way to a place free of all pollution and once again show us the beauty of his music and soul. With this hope in mind, I put three strings on my acoustic guitar, tuned them all to E (in octaves), and play these notes for him.”

Here’s video of Paul playing “3 E’s For Edward” and discussing how and why he came up with the song.

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Michael Anthony will be signing autographs at The Rock and Roll Emporium, 205 Main Street in Downtown Huntington Beach Friday, August 22, 2008 at 5pm. Best know for his work as a founding member with Van Halen, Michael Anthony is currently promoting his newest projects including his line of tasty extra-hot sauces, and his collectible miniature replicas of his signature basses. To meet Michael Anthony and get an Autograph, you must have a ticket. Tickets will be available at The Rock and Roll Emporium starting Tuesday August 19th at 5pm. Your ticket is free with your purchase of one of Michael’s signature hot sauces and replica mini-bases. The Rock and Roll Emporium is a leading resource for those who love Rock-n-Roll and a major attraction for downtown Huntington Beach, CA - Surf City, USA. The store has collected authentic autographed guitars; drum heads, photos, collectibles and Rock & Roll-inspired apparel and accessories from many of the best-known and respected artists in the world.
The Rock and Roll Emporium
205 Main Street
Huntington Beach, CA 92648
714-960-4040

Michael’s award-winning original sauces are made from Michael’s own personal recipes. The gourmet hot sauces, mustard, and BBQ sauces are both highly collectible and very spicy.

The legendary Jack Daniel’s bass is Michael Anthony’s most infamous bass. It was custom-made for him and introduced on Van Halen’s massive 1984 tour. The original bass currently resides at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

This collectible miniature guitar replica was hand-crafted after Michael’s love for Jack Daniel’s.

Scale: 1:4
Height: Approximately 9-10″
Includes: Adjustable Display Stand

Created Exclusively for Michael Anthony! Officially licensed.

FREE BONUS! Order the bass from Van Halen Store and you’ll receive a nice collector’s item - a vintage 8″ x 10″ photo (shown at the top of this article) featuring a killer concert shot of Michael Anthony playing the bass, with his facsimile signature and the classic VH logo. Made out of thick, glossy cardstock. Officially licensed and made back in 1984. Perfect for displaying alongside the bass!

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As most Van Halen fans are aware, Van Halen’s standard performance contract during their glory days in the late 70’s and early ’80s contained a provision calling for them to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms, but with all the brown candies removed. The presence of even a single brown M&M in that bowl was sufficient legal cause for Van Halen to peremptorily cancel a scheduled appearance without advance notice (and usually an excuse for them to go on a destructive rampage as well).

Naturally, David Lee Roth was the one that came up with that. As Roth explained in his autobiography, Crazy From The Heat:

More frequently than not, things are not what they seem. You may have heard of the brown M&M’s story of Van Halen. And it read like this in the contract rider: “There will be no brown M&M’s anywhere in the backstage area or immediate vicinity, upon pain of forfeiture of the show with immediate compensation.”

I would come in backstage, and if I saw brown M&M’s, I’d trash the dressing room and threaten to cancel the show, and the promoter would come backstage, all consternated. We pitched it as “Caruso forbade whistling backstage,” that it was bad luck. It’s a luck thing. It’s a charm. I made it seem like it was a complete act of self-indulgent extravagance - which I’ve always found very attractive as a performance. Or even a lifestyle. Hey, sign me up. Can she come too? Great.

Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.

The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say “Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . . .” This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”

So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl . . . well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening. And I’ll give you an example.

The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn’t read the contract, and weren’t sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.

I came backstage. I found some brown M&M’s, I went into full Shakespearean “What is this before me?” . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . . and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of fun.

The staging sank through their floor. They didn’t bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M’s and did eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the backstage area.

Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?

The legend continues …. an article posted today on MetroTimes.com reports that Van Halen was still demanding the M&M’s during their 2007-2008 tour. The Van Halen references are in purple:

No brown M & M’s!

Liz Butsicaris Jackson: Queen of the rock ‘n’ roll caterers

By Bill Holdship

It’s no urban myth. On their early tours, Van Halen demanded that all brown M&M’s be removed from backstage bowls at their concerts. The person in Detroit responsible for removing those candy-coated chocolates was Liz Butsicaris Jackson, owner of Queen of Cups Catering, the biggest caterer for rock and pop concerts in the area, with a territory that extends as far as Grand Rapids and Saginaw.

Jackson got into the business almost by accident. As a teen, she was friends with local promoter Gail Parenteau. “I liked boys in bands,” she admits,” “and because I knew Gail, I got to hang out backstage. And because I was shy, I’d bring cookies for the bands.” Before long, Parenteau was asking, “Can you bring sandwiches?” In no time, she graduated to deli trays.

Jackson’s late father, Jimmy, owned Lindell AC, the legendary downtown Detroit sports bar. “I was a rock ‘n’ roll hippie girl and wanted nothing to do with sports,” she recalls. But working at the bar taught her everything she needed to know about doing business. Before long, AC Lindell was a sports rock ‘n’ roll bar, catering to jocks and rockers alike; Patti Smith threw a party there during her first Detroit stop, as did Van Halen. And Jackson’s “sports” connection also landed her work as a sports reporter on the old WABX-FM. It was a job she’d maintain through the early ’80s, although at the same time, “I was cooking dinner for U2 at the Grand Circus Theatre and taking food to Roy Orbison out at Nitro.”

Queen Of Cups would evolve and grow out of those humble beginnings, and Jackson’s aim to this day is to create “a real vibe” backstage for her charges. “These folks are living on a bus,” she explains. “It’s not a very civilized way to live, and sitting down to eat is often the highlight of their day. When the crew gets off the bus in the morning, we have bacon cooking, homemade muffins ready, espresso brewing. We want them to feel comfortable and at home.

Jackson’s job is full-service, extending beyond food. Her rolodex is overflowing with numbers for anything a traveling band might desire — from “acupuncturists to swamis to S&M dungeons,” she laughs. “When Elton John needs three dozen apricot roses in his dressing room, they call me to find them.” (Jackson is also hoping to move into catering for the many films that are being shot here in Detroit; she recently helped out the catering company for Clint Eastwood’s new film when it was filming in Grosse Pointe.

She’s saving her really juicy stories for a book after she retires; she’s also working on a rock ‘n’ roll cookbook of her best recipes. She doesn’t have any real horror stories, though — even if Mötley Crüe once threw the requested roasted full turkey she’d painstakingly cooked and stuffed into the sand outside their trailer. (”Their wardrobe person told me not to be upset; they’d done the same thing every stop on the tour!”)

But generally, the stars are delighted to be treated so well. British acts are especially grateful that she brings in native U.K. treats; the members of Coldplay even went around to personally thank each member of her crew, several of whom have been “stolen” to go on tour with Dave Matthews and the Eagles, among others. N’Sync couldn’t have been more grateful when she went across the street from the Pontiac Silverdome to buy a griddle, Wonder bread, Velveeta and Campbell’s Tomato soup, cooking 300 grilled cheese sandwiches that they missed so much on the road. She’s also transformed their dressing room (locker room, actually) into a “boy’s paradise.” The Beastie Boys — who used to help Jackson’s daughter, Jane, with her homework backstage — even tried to hire her to go on the road with them.

As for those “strange” requests, like no brown M&M’s, Jackson says that artists put those in their riders just to make sure promoters actually read the contracts. She recalls a Jethro Tull rider from a few years back that had “a toothless prostitute” as one of the demands. “I went up to the band and said, ‘Honey, we’re in downtown Detroit. I can get one of those for you in five minutes if you’re really serious!’”

History even recently repeated itself during the Detroit Van Halen stop when Wolfgang Van Halen — son of Eddie, replacing original bassist Michael Anthony — requested “no brown M&M’s” in his dressing room as a tribute to his father. “We went through and took out all the brown ones for him,” she says. So what did she do with them after they were removed? “We placed them in a bowl and put them in Eddie’s dressing room!” she laughs.

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From The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

LOS ANGELES—According to local authorities, Jamie, 17, is crying, reportedly over a post-coital rejection by rock star David Lee Roth. “Although Jamie would feel better if she wrote David a letter, she is crying,” said former Van Halen manager Eddie Arnesen. Though sources say Jamie has been in love before, and that she knows what love is for, in this case it was a mere one-night stand, and love should be more than that. Arnesen added that despite the fact that when Roth and Jamie parted, the long-haired, vinyl-clad rocker said, “Gimme a call some time,” Jamie knows what that will get her.

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Sammy Hagar is finishing up his new CD, entitled, “Cosmic Universe Fashion”, and he hopes it will be ready for release in October. Most songs were recorded with his regular band, the Waboritas, but at least one song, “Loud”, includes special guests - Matt Sorum (Velvet Revolver, Guns ‘n’ Roses), Billy Duffy (The Cult), and Michael Anthony (Van Halen).

All songs are recorded and the CD is currently in the mixing stage.

Also, there is about 5 minutes of cool footage of Sammy, Michael, Matt & Billy inside Sammy’s studio, working on “Loud”. The footage was filmed on August 14th.

Visit Matt Sorum’s Myspace page and scroll down just a bit to view the video. (You might be required to create a Myspace account to be able to watch it).

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TheTourBus.com has recently interviewed Sammy Hagar, and today they posted just a quick, 90 second clip from it, when they asked Sammy what he thought about the Van Halen/David Lee Roth reunion.

Sammy Hagar: “The reunion with Dave was the greatest thing they could have done. I think it was so outta sight. But why didn’t they just keep Mike just one more time?”

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