Sammy Hagar

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is the Red Rocker himself, Sammy Hagar.
Sammy why red?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Red is my favorite color. There's no question about that.
Always has been. And when I in nineteen seventy six,
I wrote a song called Red with my co wrote
with my dear buddy John Carter, and I became the
Red Rocker by accident. It was I didn't call myself
the Red Rocker. Someone else called me that, and then
fans started calling me that, and I just said, Okay,

(00:42):
I'm the Red Rocker, but I love the color red.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
It's got a special thing about it.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Okay, how many Ferraris do you have?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Seven? Okay?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Are they all red?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
No?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Guess what? I only have one red Ferrari. No too,
I'm sorry, I have two red Ferraris. They all have
like either a red stripe or a couple of them
have red and terrier though, but she red Ferraris are
too obvious.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
So I'm not a red Ferrari guy.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I know, but that's a classic red color, that's why.
So what color are your fasting is?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
I got black, I got a kind of a green one.
I've got a cream colored almost yellow, but it's not
as cream. I've got a couple of black ones and
a red one, and I don't know, honestly, thinking about
my ferraris, I know I'm missing a couple in my
mind right now.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I don't see them in my head. They're in a warehouse.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
What's the oldest in the newest you have?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, the newest is.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
The new s u vas call a Puerle singue, but
I don't have it yet, but that's the newest.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
And before that, I have a lat Ferrari, which.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Rod Stewart just tried to buy from me, and I've
got email from him again this morning because it's the
color combination once and they don't make them anymore. They
only made four hundred and ninety of them, and he
wanted one, so he's trying to find a used one,
and nobody wants to sell them. I mean, they're we're
really special cars. And the oldest ones are seventy one
Daytona's coup three sixty five g T Daytona.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Convertible.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
No, no, the convertibles are really crazy expensive. They only
made like twelve of those or something. Now I've got
a coop Okay, So why do you know so much
about this, Bob?

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, and I know a little bit about it. So
you have them all in a warehouse?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah? I have them a I have a warehouse, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
I have my homes have multiple car garages, you know,
like I keep four or five cars at different houses.
But I have a warehouse where I rotate them.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Okay, and you only have ferraris or do you have
other stuff too?

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Oh? No, No, I got muscle cars. I got an
old ee jagg, I got a you know, a couple
of Shelby's, a GT Ford GT forty. I have a Cobra.
What else do I have? I have a sixty seven
Corvette uh Stingray convertible red right, Yeah, there you go. Yeah,
and I got you know, a few yeah, just exotics

(03:15):
and muscle.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
It's about it.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Okay, are you a you know? Are you a Are
you a Mopark guy or a GM guy? Oh?

Speaker 3 (03:23):
See, here you go. I'm a Ford guy. Watch yourself. Well,
this and that's when when I had when I had
my TV show, uh uh a rock Roll road Trip
that was one of my this or that. Are you
a Ford or a Chevy guy? Because the Chevy guys
are always kind of uptown. Ford's a little more red
neck like myself, you know, a little more down to
earth kind of guy. Uh. And the Mopark guys were

(03:44):
always the weirdos.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
They were the guys that, you know, didn't have a
lot of friends. They were kind of loaners. And when
I was in high school, that was it. My buddies
were Ford guys. We didn't like the Chevy guys. And
the more Park guys were cool because they were just
kind of they stayed out of any kind of fad situation,
you know, they weren't taking sides.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, okay, So your first car was.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Forty nine Chevrolet.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Forty nine Chevrolet.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Where did you get into?

Speaker 1 (04:12):
What kind of condition was it in?

Speaker 3 (04:15):
I paid fifty dollars for it, and I wasn't in
a very good condition and had a blown head gasket
and reverse had a chip in it so when you
put it reverse you would have to hold it in
there otherwise it would jump, you know, jump out of reverse.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Oh it was. It was really pretty rough.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
But hey, fifty bucks to be back in those days, Bob,
I didn't you know, that was like real money.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
And the first car you bought once you made some money.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Oh okay, honestly, I think the real first car, you know,
was a Ferrari. Finally, you know when I when Montrose
got signed to our record deal in nineteen seventy three,
I we got fifty thousand dollars. We got I mean,
I mean wait, I got five thousand dollars. We got
fifty thousand dollars. We each took five and we bought

(05:07):
twenty five thousand dollars worth of equipment. And with my
five thousand dollars, I rented a house for two hundred
dollars a month because I was living in a really
bad apartment in the city. I rented a house in
Marin County and Mill Valley, and I bought a Citron,
a green Citron.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
You know what those things are? You know they raise
up absolutely.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Would you buy the two CVX or did you buy
a Maserati? Which one did you buy?

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Oh? No, it's before the Maserati, but I bought our No,
it wasn't before the Maserati. But no, I didn't buy
that was too expensive. I just bought a regular DV.
I think they were called dB twenty thirty one or
something like that. Whatever, it was just a four seater,
four door, and I loved that car. I mean that

(05:56):
car was so cool but very unusual. I mean it
wasn't very rock stars, but the real, first real car
about though.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Then I bought a Porsche.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
I got a five thousand dollars royalty check one time,
and I bought a five thousand dollar Porsche. I was
so reckless, you know, I'd spend every penny i'd get it.
I'd just go spend it and say, well, hopefully i'll
make more. And then then I sold the Porsche, went
to England and to record my Red album, and I
bought a Ferrari in England, a right hand drive three
sixty three point thirty two plus two four headlight version,

(06:29):
and that car has been sold recently a couple of times.
It was Bluebird Blue because it belonged to Sir Donald Campbell,
the Bluebird racing guy, the boat guy who died in
the boat in Locknest, and it belonged to him. And
now they say it was John Lennon's car. I've seen
it advertised in Ferrari newsletters and stuff, you know, three
hundred thousand dollars. I think I went for the last

(06:52):
time I sold it for eight thousand. I bought it
for five sold for eight. And they say it's John
Lennon's car, and it can't be because there was not
two three point thirty g T two plus two's four
headline version bluebird blue.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well that was white, hadn't drive. Did you take it
to America or just leave it in England?

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah? No, I brought it, brought it to America and
I drove it all for about ten years that way.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
But that was before me. You said, when I made money.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
But I hadn't made any money yet though John, I
mean not John, mister Lennon.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I hadn't made any money yet, Bob.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
So when I finally made money, then I bought a
real Ferrari. You know, Well that was a real Ferrari,
believe me. But I mean I bought a new one.
I bought a five twelve boxer.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Okay, a couple of things. The Cituane Was it new?

Speaker 2 (07:44):
No?

Speaker 3 (07:44):
I think it was a sixty seven or sixty eight.
Maybe it was a seventy. I don't you know. I
don't remember much about that car, just and why I
bought it. I still don't know. I loved the CV
two but that wasn't going to work for a family car.
You know, that thing would barely go up. So but
I was in love with CV twos. I thought, man,
if I ever had a beach house and you know,

(08:07):
somewhere and I was, you know, I'd just drive around
a little CV too, and I might have to get
one of those down that You got me thinking about it, Okay,
but that's the true dB forty one something like that.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
And that had an air suspension and it had the
headlights that turned. How much trouble did you have with
that car?

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Oh, a lot of trouble that when the suspension went
out and I was I was pretty much broke on
my ass all through Montrose and for the next few
years after that after I left Montrose. But yeah, the
suspension went out and there was only one guy that
could fix it, and it was not cheap for me
at that time. It was probably a couple of thousand dollars,
and I think that's about what the car costs. The

(08:48):
car costs like twenty five hundred dollars when I bought it.
But it just was so bad ass. You know, that
car was the most comfortable, smooth riding car ever. Still
to today. I used to drive that from San Francisco
to Los Angeles when Montrose was recording. I would drive
it all the way down, NonStop, one tank of gas.
It got like about forty miles to the gallon, a
little tiny four cylinder with one hundred and twenty horsepower maybe,

(09:11):
And it wasn't fast. It was really a dog but
it was really smooth. It just it was a cruiser.
And certain people. I've always been one of those guys
that if you got a certain person's attention, it's the
person I wanted their attention. I didn't want normal attention,
you know. I wanted certain kind of people. And I'm

(09:32):
still that way. I like when I drive a very
rare car, I might have like you know, like my
old Daytona. You know it's it doesn't scream. It does
a little bit now because it's really getting, you know,
a classic. But you know, somebody sees it and they go, wow, man,
a Daytona and they and they tripping on it. See
that's the kind of person. I say, yeah, I stopped

(09:52):
and have given the time to date. I don't want
to be screaming down the road in some Lamborghini or something,
some bright orange thing, you know, and it makes a
lot of noise, even though frays do make a lot
of noise. But I don't like that. I don't like
everybody going, hey, whoa look at that? Oh you know, uh,
that's embarrassing to me. It's you know, I don't know
what it is. I've always been that way. Even though
you want to be a rock star. You want everybody

(10:14):
to love you and come and see you and scream
for you. But in my everyday life, I don't want that.
How about that?

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Were you always that person? Like growing up?

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yeah, I'm kind of shy, you know, in high school
and stuff, I was shy. You know, girls liked me
and I man, I was being I was always shy.
I wasn't like a lady's guy going hey baby, what's
going on. I've never been that guy, you know on
stage a little bit.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
But but man, and I was, I'm shy. I turned
red real quick.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
There here you go, they're not We finally hit the
bottom on that one.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Okay, But you're shy, but you want attention, and you
don't want the same kind of attention as everybody else.
You kind of want to be known as your own unique,
cool character.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, I'd say that's fair enough statement. You know, I'd
rather appeal to someone that gets it, you know what
I mean. If you don't get it, I don't need
your attention. You know, it's like I want to The
attension I want is attention that I would be willing
to engage with, not just to quick like, well look
at me, I'm cool. I'm getting all this attention and
walk through the room, you know, like a like a peacock.

(11:25):
You know that that's not the kind of attention I want.
If I attract someone, I want to know that, yeah,
I can communicate with this person and maybe there's something
to learn here.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
You know, they get it. You know.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
I like people that get what I get and like
what I like. And my fan base is getting like
that pretty much. I got to tell you, you know, it
hasn't dwindled down to that. It's just that it has
expanded into that. You know, it takes a long time
to become famous when you have a certain different kind
of charisma about you. I think, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
It ain't like that. I'm not.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
I wasn't a natural born star. I had to work
on that shit. I'm still working on it.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Okay, So when you were in school, were you like
one of the group. Were you trying to be independent unique?

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Uh? Yeah, I was trying to be independent unique.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
I had my own little group, not really a big group,
but I had I had a few friends, but I
got to say, everybody liked me.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
I was really liked.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
One of the shortest guys in high school, and there
was a girl that was shorter than me, another guy
about my size, and that was it.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
So we were the you know, small people.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
But I was always really into dressing nice, like I said,
but not just normal what you know, I didn't go
I'd look for weird stuff. I was definitely kind of
a little bit of a weirdo. But everybody liked me.
All the you know, all the big job guys. They
would say, hey, Sammy, he's cool. You know, hey, come
on over and hang with us doing the lunchtime. And
I'd be like, hey, it's cool, and hang with them
a little bit. I'll kind of a social butterfly, but

(13:01):
I never I wasn't really that sociable, but I, you know,
I could be.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
I knew how to be cool and how to act
with the tough guys.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
I knew how to act with the jocks, and definitely,
you know, I just kind of float around. But my
little group was works were they were kind of like
the losers in school. You know. They were the guys that, yeah,
you know, the parents were alcoholics or you know, like
a one guy was divorced, you know, single parent, and

(13:31):
and I kind of was attracted to the wounded, you know, butterflies,
you know, even even the girls. I like those girls
kind of better than the uptown girls, which always which
like me, I was really uh, you know, popular in
that sense. But I wasn't you know, I didn't. I didn't.
I did not click I did not click up. I'm

(13:53):
tripping on this myself. Now, you got me thinking I
was when looking back, I'm thinking, yeah, I was kind
of like a I had a little mistique, I think
going you know, I was always happy and sociable and high,
you know, got along with everybody. Only got one fight
in high school, one frigging fight the whole time when
high school is all we did.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Everybody tail was.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Fight, you know, And I was never the guy that
had to fight anybody. You know. I was always like,
you know, hanging out and watching a good fight.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
So tell me about the fight.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
It was with the littlest guy in in school. It
was like he was my size, you know, And so
the tough guys, you know, when they used to they
push on me to kick his ash for some reason,
you know, because I was supposed to be a tough
little guy.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
You know.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
My dad was a fighter, so I was always you know,
kind of spar and boxing and goofing off, and for
so finally I just picked the fire with them in
a parking lot.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Was so stupid.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
It was like, you know, I think we both just
threw one punch, locked up, ended up on the ground,
you know, you know, and headlocks each of us, and
neither one of us could do anything, and finding somebody
said break it up, teacher's coming, and we broke it
up and went our separate ways. And I never even
I never even said anything to the guy ever again.
I just see him, you know, we just see each

(15:13):
other walk down the hall, just ignore each other.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
It was so stupid.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
It was probably the worst fight I've ever been in,
not that i'd been in any real viguines.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
You talk about your father being a tough guy. What
did you learn from your father?

Speaker 3 (15:29):
Well, I learned unconditional love. And I gotta tell you
it's the strangest thing because my dad was, you know,
it beat everybody up. He was a tough guy.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
You know.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
A cop would pull him over in the car because
he was drunk driving, or just he was speeding, or
you know, ran a stop sign, and he would just
get out of the car and knock the cop out,
just boom. He was a boxer, so he could hit.
He knew where to hit you, how to put your
lights out, so he would get out of the car
and just knock the guy out, get back in the
car and go home. And then hare comes my dad

(16:02):
sitting in the bear on the couch, smoking a cigarette,
drinking a beer, you know, and the cops beat on
the door, come on, Robert, come on out, we know
you're in there, and say, yeah, fuck you, you know,
come in and get me. And it would be like
five cops, you know, they'd finally hit get up, go
out there, and he'd just go at it with all
five guys, you know, hit knock a couple of them out,
and they'd get him. They hit him at the belly club,

(16:23):
cut him all up, handcuff him, take him to jail.
He'd get out in a few days. It was a
small town deal. The judge knew him. It's like they
took his license away. They threw him in road camp.
He went to road camp. The longest he was gone
one time is for six months because he actually really
beat up a CHP officer and Palm Springs. He was

(16:44):
driving drunk and he knocked the guy out, but we
weren't home, so he kept going. He was going down
to Braley Colexico, where he had some Mexican buddies. When
he was a fighter, he used to he was a
bandon weight, so he would always be a border town
attraction because he was supposed to the Irish, which we
found out he wasn't, but.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
I'll get it. Great thing for the Irish.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
So they'd have the Irish against the Mexicans, you know,
the bantamweight fights. And Manu Artis, who was a great
great champ, lived down there, so he's going down there
to see him. So they set up a roadblock and
they got him, and they really worked him over, and
he worked them over pretty good too. And then when
he was in jail, he was raising so much hell
they come in and beat him up again. So when
he went to be arraigned in court, he was handcuffed.

(17:31):
I didn't see this, but the word is that he
jumped up on the judge his desk and kicked him
in the face and went to road camp for six months.
And it ruined his life and my mom, all of them.
You know, she had three kids. It was I think
it was before I was born. And yeah, it's a

(17:52):
tough one. I just found out a lot about it.
I just did finding your Roots. I did it. It's
going to come out later this year. And boy, he
had the newspaper clippings and all that stuff, and it
broke my heart how rough my mom had it. But
my father taught me unconditional love. He made me feel
that I was loved more than anything on the planet,

(18:12):
and that I meant everything to him, and that he
made me feel like somebody. He called me champ. He said,
you're gonna be champing the world.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Someday.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
He'd be drunk on his ass come in my room
to you know, at night, because him mom would be fighting.
He'd come in and hug me and just worship me.
And I got to tell you, I felt protected. I
felt like my dad could take care of anything, and
I was I wouldn't have to be afraid ever, you know,
growing up, except of them beat my mom up or something.

(18:43):
But it was a strange, really strange you know, balance
in my life that my dad. He taught me that,
and I thought, and I think he taught me how
to believe in myself because he believed in me. I'm
telling you, I'll be four years old. He's telling me,
you're gonna be champ with the world. You're gonna be somebody.
You're going to be somebody's son. I mean, constantly driving

(19:06):
that into my head, and I'm going, yeah, okay, you.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Want to be somebody.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
I mean I really believed it, you know, and that's
that's that's something to learn, you know.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
I don't know if you can teach somebody that. Well, Okay,
you had siblings. Did he say the same to your
brothers and sisters?

Speaker 3 (19:21):
No? He didn't like my sisters. He cursed them because
you know, they had boyfriends. He'd you know, threatened to
beat up their boyfriends who they'd come to, you know,
try to go out and stuff when they were teenagers.
He was not cool to them, and he was not
cool to my brother, my older brother, he called him.
He called me muscle brain, and he called my my

(19:43):
brother flea brain. He called me champ. And he used
to make fun of my brother. When he would cry,
he'd say, sound like a sireen. You know, he picked
on him. It was looking back, it was really not cool.
I don't know why he favored me so much. He
didn't like my my grandfather, my mom's dad, who was
a full blood of Sicilian, and my dad didn't like him.

(20:08):
And and I was named after him, sam r. His
name was sam ROI byo, I'm sam Roy Hagar and
my dad, but yet he favored me. I think that's
kind of funny too in itself. You know, my dad
chased my grandpa.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Around.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
He was chasing him. We were camping. I saw this
with my own two eyes. My grandma and grandpa they
were big campers, and so the whole family. We were camping.
My dad got drunk, got mad at my grandpa, and
my grandpa took off running, was running around a car.
My dad was chasing him, trying to get him, and.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
This is true shit.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
And my grandma picked up a rock and tried to
throw it to hit a big rock, you know, like
as big as your head type rock to try to
hit my dad just you know, take him out. And
instead of hit my granda knocked tip cold bleeding and
my dad chilled out. He was like, oh shit. You know,

(21:06):
he had a really good heart about him. He just
had a crazy, whacked out temperature. He get hot so fast,
and that's all he knew had to do is start swinging.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
What do you think, since you're not a young man
yourself and you've lived a lot, what was going on
with him?

Speaker 3 (21:29):
He's a super bad alcoholic. He was in World War Two.
He was a paratrooper. He jumped out of an airplane
and broke his jaw. He didn't he had a Tommy
gun and he was shooting the gun supposedly as he
was coming down, because you know, he was landing in
an enemy field, and he got off course, landed in

(21:50):
a tree, broke his jaw, had a couple of ribs,
messed up, got left behind, lived in.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
A foxhole, he said, for a few days.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Actually shot another man that was in another fox hole,
you know, the enemy, and you know they'd take pop
shots at each other, and finally he shot him. And
I think it messed him up so bad to have
to kill another human. And he came back and he
took his When he got back into his company, he

(22:22):
to his company commander he shot the ground and told
him it made him dance. And he got dishonorable discharge.
And he was never the same. My mom said he
would wake up in the middle of the night and
jumping up in the bench, say where's my tommy gun?
Where's my tommy gun? And I could see him doing
that in my head. You know, I don't think I
really witnessed it, but he became a bad alcoholic.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
He was a boxer before that.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
He'd fought, you know, in the old days, practically bare knuckle,
you know, it was just like a piece of leather
over your hands. And he had never been knocked out
in his life. He was knocked down. I think he
holds a record of the most knockdowns in one round
in history or something like that. And uh, he just

(23:03):
kept getting back. Uh this before my time too. I
never witnessed that. But he was fearless and uh angry,
but the sweetest man in the world. But boy, when
he get drinking, he would get angry. I guess I
think that's what he was. He was dealing with that.
He was dealing with what we see now is you know,
people come back from Vietnam and stuff with this, with

(23:25):
that same problem, you know, semi. But he had it
in a day where you couldn't be a whimp. You know,
you couldn't say, I'm scared. You couldn't say to him.
He couldn't anyway.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
You know. He was that generation he belonged with. He
belonged to the cowboy days.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
He should have had a six gun around his hip
and just that should have been in That's where he belonged.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
He came from that era. You know.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
He was born in a cupboard wagon, for God's sakes,
coming from Kentucky to California my grandparents with eleven other kids.
He was born in Texas. Well, they were picking cotton.
They were in a cupboard friggin wagon. And so he
he was old school man, you know. And how long

(24:12):
did he live? Fifty six, died in the back.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Of the Did he live long enough to see your success?

Speaker 2 (24:22):
No? No, terrible?

Speaker 1 (24:31):
And whatever happened with your siblings and what's your relationship
with them?

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Now? My brother has passed. He's three years older than me.
He passed about right before COVID. Well, right in the
beginning of COVID, he passed. I don't think I was
from COVID. He had a lot of heart attacks and
he just had breathing problems. He had heart problems, but
he did fine. I mean, you know, he had some problems.

(24:58):
I got to say, he had to stopped drinking. But
he wasn't wounded as bad as you would think. Because
we had such a wonderful mother. My mom raised us
like to be strong people. She made us work. We
worked in the fields with her.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
You know.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
She would go dig potatoes, pick apricots, you know, pick
berries into berry patches.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
You know. We were like field workers, my whole family.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
And we'd go out, all four of us, right before
we'd go back to school. My mom would make us
go out and we'd pick fruit and pick vegetables and
do yard work around then around our town. Uh, and
to get money to you know, buy clothes for school.
And I always dress good and I'd make my money.

(25:47):
I knew what I wanted to. I'm on a nice
pair of Levi's that customize them up. You know, I
had my my thing. But my mom was wonderful, so
she made us all strong and feel like we had
a family with the community. After my dad and they
split up, and then my dad finally died, but.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
My sisters both happily.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
My oldest sister's happily married for fifty some years to
the same guy.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Has wonderful kids, very family oriented.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
They all live in the same frigate neighborhood, all four
of her kids and her very family oriented.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Everyone in.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
My sister Velma very successful. She's started a business. She's
kind of like me, she's very business oriented. And yeah,
everybody's really good. We get along great. I mean, we
love each other. We support each other.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
So when you ultimately made a good chunk of change,
which you did, to what degree did you support your family.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
I bought my mother her first home she ever owned
in her life when I got my first big record
advance and made.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
My first tour money. And then later on I bought her.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Really nice house next to my sister Valma, who had
a beautiful home in Palm Desert. So I bought my
mom the house next door, and they because they really
got along well. And those two, my mom and my sister,
and you know, when I sold my group will Campari,
I basically split up a million dollars with my friends

(27:22):
and family, so my close friends and family.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Okay, so where does this entrepreneurship come from being poor?

Speaker 2 (27:37):
I ain't going to be that again, you know, I've
been there.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Uh. I think the drive that keeps me going at
this stage when I don't need money, I don't need fame,
I don't need fortune. I just need to be happy
and content. But I'm still so driven that it kind
of makes me happy to achieve. I'm achieved, achieved, nut
and and I give most of the money away now
that you know, from all my restaurants and stuff.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
But I think that drive come from just humiliation. You know.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
One time in high school, because my dad was always
such a tough guy, such a small town, I had
a girlfriend, my first girlfriend, you know, the first puppy love,
seventh grade, and.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
I walked over to her house.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
I used to walk her home, you know, from school
every day, and then I'd walk all the way across
town to my house. I didn't want to by know
where I lived because we were single parent at that
stage and living in a pretty poor situation.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
But like I said, I had a paper route.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
I'd mow lawns, I would go to my family, my
aunts and my uncles and drive my bicycle over there
and say, can i'm move your lawa. I need a
dollar you know, I need a dollar badge, you know.
And so I was always you know, dressed and I
so they were in school. Everyone thought I was cool,
but really I was poor as shit. Our house was
really bad neighborhood and we were just renting and my

(28:53):
mom was had a really funky job, but you know,
we were poor. So I would walk my girlfriend home
every day from school. And then one time her mother
invited me and said, oh, come in and have some
dinner with us, you know.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
So I'm sitting there at the dinner table.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
Her dad walks in and my girlfriend says, hi, Daddy,
this is my friend Sammy Hagar, and he goes, Hagar
is your father Robert.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
I said, yay, he goes get the hell out of
my house.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
My dad had beat him up in a bar and so,
you know, it's like I was so humiliated from that.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
And then my girlfriend she.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
Could I couldn't come to the house and you know,
she couldn't see me, and it just I think that
honestly said I'm going to be somebody. I went back
to my dad said I'm going to be somebody and
that she ain't going to happen to me again. It
was so embarrassing. It was just brutal, you know. So
I think that's what still drives me. I don't know why,

(29:55):
but I think that one moment and then a couple
of times, my dad would be walking down the street
drunk in the middle of the night, and I'd be
out with my buddies back then. Now we got a car,
and now we're looking for girls, and sometimes we'd have
girls in the car, you know, and we'd be drinking
the beer and stuff and cruise down the road, and
all of a sudden, I'd see my dad staggering down
the road. You know, he was homeless at some point,

(30:16):
and I would go, oh shit, you know, and some
guys in a car would say, a man, it's not
your old man. Oh well, yeah, I know a guy
who went to jail with him. And you know, I
was hanging around with these loser kind of dudes and
they had been in a couple of you guys, they
know he'd been in jails. Yeah, I met your dad
in jail. Yeah, man, he's a badass. Yeah, you know,
he beat some guy up in jail, you know, and
all this kind of stuff. So one side it was

(30:37):
me saying, yeah, my dad's a badass, and as I
was saying, well, this is get embarrassing, and I would,
you know, so I'd go get my sister and tell
her my dad was walking down see her down the street,
and she'd go find him, bring him to a house
and clean him up. And then he'd just steal five
bucks out of her person, go out and get drunk again.
He was he was completely helpless. I mean, I could

(31:01):
help him now, but then there was nowhere to put him.
We didn't know what to do. There was no alcoholic.
There was alcoholic anonymous, but all of his buddies from
that were just as bad as him.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
So you know, yeah, he gave it a shot a
few times.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
But I think the longest here of stayed sober in
my life that we remember was nine months. We actually
had one year in our life that was like normal,
lived went to the same school for the whole year,
you know, had friends over to the house, you know
that kind of thing. Yeah, it's pretty much a trip,
you know, Bob, You're rolling me back through this thing

(31:38):
pretty strong.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
When I wrote my book.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
I went through this once, and this is the closest
I've come to remember and all this stuff. It's not
like I try to forget it. I'm not one of
those guys that bury my head in the sand. It's
just that there's so much good stuff going on. I
very seldom go back and think about this stuff. But
I had a tough child. It didn't feel like it
at the time, but it does now I'm looking back

(32:06):
on going we were poorish.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Okay, So you have built an empire, okay, with restaurants, alcohol,
et cetera. The only person I can think who's in
your category is Jimmy Buffett. Do you think that you've
gotten the respect you deserve? Do you still want respect?

(32:29):
What's your take on that.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
I don't think I will ever.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
Be able to satisfy that thing in myself unless I
become some kind of a spiritual, enlightened person, which I'm
becoming little by little. I'm becoming more spiritual and looking
for enlightenment, looking for purpose and what I can do.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Now.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Maybe if I turn around and do enough for others,
I may get over it. But other than that, no,
I don't. I don't think that's a thing I can
a hunger and a thirst that it can be satisfied. Because,
like I said, it's not like I do this for
money at all. I do it for I love it.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
You know.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
When I have an idea word, it's thought word action
for me. You know, I have a thought, I tell
it to myself or tell somebody else, or I write
it down or talking to my phone, and then I
go to work on it.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
I say, oh, this is great. I have something to do.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
It's like, you know, I love achieving and it's not
like I said, it's not ego way over that I
feel real good about myself. Like I don't, you know,
have this ego where I I mean, I feel fine
about my achievements and fine about everything I do and
how would I do for other people in my life?

Speaker 2 (33:48):
But I'm still doing it and why I don't know.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
It's fun, I guess, you know, it's as much fun
as being a rock star going out on stage, you know,
with you know, opening up a new business and having
it be successful is like you know, walking to a
liquor store and seeing my booze on the counter, or
walking into a bar a restaurant and looking at the bar,
my booze on the back bar. Man, that's like hearing
your song on the radio two hundred times, you know

(34:15):
in montro So. I remember hearing my voice on the
radio the first time. I couldn't even hear it. It
was so crazy. I'm just going, I'm not, you know,
I didn't know what to do. I wanted more. I
wanted to feel it. I wanted to hear it. I couldn't.
And it's almost that good seeing your booze and stuff
and seeing your restaurant packed, you know, seeing your hotel full.

(34:35):
You know, it's like, yeah, Jimmy, Buffet's done really well. Now, though,
if Jimmy woke up with my money, it probably filed
for chapter eleven.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
But that's a different story.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Okay, but Jimmy gets a lot of respect. Are you
still fighting for the respect that someone like Jimmy or
someone else might have.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, kind of, you know, you know what I don't like.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
I don't like to be disrespect It's not like I
need respect as much as I maybe used to. You know, Yeah,
I think that was a big deal for me, wanting
to be a rock star and rich and famous and
you know, but I gotta tell you. I think it's
I just really don't like disrespect. You know, there's some

(35:19):
people that just don't like me, you know, and it's
going to be that way with everybody. I mean, you know,
I feel like it's almost like being the president of
the United States or something. You know, when you're rich
and famous and have all these you know, businesses and
people know it, some people don't like you for it,
and that makes me mad, you know, Like there's people
that don't like rich people, and I think, well, man,

(35:41):
there's some poor people that are as bad as rich people.
You know, some rich people are bad people, period. Some
poor people are bad people. You can't judge a person
by their money. You judge them by what they do
and who they are and what they do for others.
And you know how you know you can you know,
look a look at Warren Buffett. I mean, he gets
half of his money away. Okay, so what he still got?

(36:01):
You know, he says, no one needs more than five
hundred million dollars. What, of course not. But truthfully, it
gets five hundred million dollars away, you know, to charities
and build schools and hospitals, and you know, hell, he's
a wonderful man.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
If we had more people like him, the government wouldn't
have to be so strapped trying to take care of
all these people. So I feel like I'm one of
those kind of people. I want to I want to
do really good with my money, and when I open
up a new restaurant and I give all that money away.
I just opened up a restaurant here in Orange County
at the Waterfront Hilton. It's called Kabbo Wobble Beach Club.

(36:39):
It's my first beach club. I'm kind of morphing Kabo
Wobble into beach my beach thing, Sammy's Beach Bar and
grills and Sammy's Beach Bar run Beach Bar, cocktails and
Kabbo Wobble. I'm melting them together. So it's Kabo Wobble
Beach Club. If you see what I'm saying. That saying
I'm loving this project. I want to have a beat
Kabbo Wobble resort. But my point is when I opened
it up, I give every every penny every month goes

(37:01):
to Chalk Children's Hospital of Orange County. And if there's
extra money where it starts being so dam much. But
I'm going, well, you know, then I'm gonna give some
to food banks and give them to Tillies. This Attillies
thing where this really helps teenagers up. So I mean,
I'm giving them money. Well I'm not even touching it.
But when I walk in there and it's packed, I'm going, yes,

(37:22):
this is so great, you know, and I see that check. Yeah,
that's so you can't. I don't want nobody mad at me.
I don't want nobody dogging me for that, you know.
I mean, if I do. You know, I got five
restaurants I do that with, and it comes to about
six hundred thousand dollars a year that I give away
every year for ten years, and every every gig I've

(37:43):
ever played for the last thirteen years since I sold
Cobbo Wobble Tequila for the zillion dollars I give every
city I play, I give twenty five hundred dollars minimum
to the local food bank every cent for you know,
like twelve thirteen years. So I want to be respected
for that, not not necessarily respect. I'm not asking for it,

(38:05):
but just don't disrespect me and call me an asshole
or thea ain't call me a rich shirker.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Oh that folk are so rich man, you know, I
hate him. Don't do that to me. That's that makes
me mad.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Okay, we live in an era where people are here
and hate all the day long online, and you have
to ignore a little bit about that. But on a
higher level, tell me about a couple of times you
were disrespected.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Ah, nothing really comes to mind.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
I had a couple business partners that really try to
take advantage of me and really stole from me and
actually cheated me and when they knew what I was
doing with my money. And I call that disrespect.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
You know. It's like.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
If I do something really nice for someone and they
take advantage of that and I you know, I've got
a business partner right now. I feel in the same
way about a guy. I got to get away from
this guy. I got to get rid of him. But
I have a philosophy that you never fuck anybody like you.
Just don't do that. Any situation I get in is
supposed to be everyone wins, you win, I win. I

(39:17):
don't want to win and you lose. I do not
want that. I won't I won't get involved. Uh, And
I don't want where you win and I lose, I
won't get involved, but I have before. And so that's
the ultimate goal for me is to never fuck anybody.
And then so when I go into a relationship and
I do something really nice for someone, say hey, you
want to be my business Parker, you do this and

(39:38):
I'll do this and we'll be partners. Yeah, shake hands,
no contract, And then they turn around and fuck me.
That That really that makes me mad. I mean, I'm
really angry to be disrespected. That's to me, it's pure disrespect.
For someone to take advantage of someone that's trying to
do something nice for them, that's disrespect.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
Okay, you talked about Warren Buffett, and famously Warren Buffett
taught Bill Gates how to be a philanthropist. Where do
you get all your phillianthropical elements? Where did you learn
to give back?

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Uh? Wow, oh boy, I got goosebumps. And I don't
know if you can see these things. My hair is
standing up on my body. That's how much I love
giving back. This the it's man, It's what drives me
now is how much more I can do? What more
can I do? How can I fix that? And where
it came from was I went to a charitable event

(40:36):
that was high falutin in San Francisco, long long time ago,
I want to say fifteen years ago or more.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
It was for a Painted Turtle, which is.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
An organization that's kind of like Make a Wish where
they build this little village and playground type thing for
children that are dying, have termally ill and which my
biggest my biggest concern is determinedly ill children that parents
cannot keep supporting them. They've run out of insurance or whatever.
That child has only got a couple of years to live.

(41:11):
Who but Paul Newman. They showed a little clip and
they showed Paul Newman. He was just leaning on a counter,
had a beer in his hand. It was at a race.
He had his race thing on and it was he
was pasted already, but it was just an old clip
where he was part of the paintal I think that

(41:33):
was his one of his main things. And he said,
when we see when you see a situation of someone
in a position that you can help, a bad situation,
that you can actually do something about it, and you don't.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
He goes, I couldn't live in myself.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
So he saw a situation that he thought, well, I'm
in a position I can actually help that.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
I can change that, you know.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
And that's how he got in the hook in philanthropy.
He thought, you know, and I thought to myself, Wow,
what a beautiful thing. I just hit home with me
that if you see something a person that's in a
bad situation, it's like, you know, an elderly lady falling
down in the street, you stop your frigging car and
you get out and you help that lady, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
It just hit home with me.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
So I just thought, man, I'm in a position now
where I can actually start doing something. So I started
the found I looked into it and I found out,
you know, you give a dollar because you have to
pay taxes on it. So I thought, well, that's stupid.
You know, that's horrible. You know, I want them. I
want that person to have all that money, you know
what I mean. If I if I got a Ford
one hundred dollars, I want them to have the full
hundred dollars. So someone, my attorney, told me about you know,

(42:48):
you started a foundation, and I said, oh shit. I
looked into it, started to hag our family foundation, and
that's how I give money away. It's it's just it's
really wonderful because my foundation and is not one where
I allow people to give me money. I tell everyone, no, no, no,
I don't want you money. I earn my own money,

(43:08):
I put it in my foundation and I give it away.
You just come and buy my tickets, you buy my booze,
you come to my restaurants, and I'll take care of
the other thing. Don't try to write me a check,
you know, because you start taking other people's money. Now
you're that's a rough gig man. I don't want to
be that responsible, you know. So my idea of philanthropy
is not raising money through other people. But I go

(43:30):
play music like acoustic work cure. I do it every
year and except in COVID. We just race finally hit
a million dollars that we did in eight years for
Children's Hospital for.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
The cancer. Children that are infants that.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Are born with brain tumors and they have to be
radiate it and their parents got to stay with them
for months a brand new baby. You know, you can't
just drop it off, say okay, we have to go
back to work and go home. A lot of people
come from out of town to UCSF where they have
a wonderful division of gene knockemora. She's doing wonderful research
where she's dealing with the toxins of radiation and getting

(44:08):
rid of them and getting immune system back up so
that the tumors don't come back, because otherwise radiation ninety
percent of the time tumors come back. So I'm supporting
that so she can have a assistant, so she can
spend more.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Time in the lab.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
And the money though that from this concert, then we
support the parents that need a place to stay that
we can't afford to stay in San Francisco for a month,
you know, say yeah you can't, I'll take care of that,
you know. So it's really grassroots stuff. That's the way
I like to do it. But so far now we've
raised a million dollars one hundred thousand dollars a year.
Fifty goes to the assistant and fifty goes into the

(44:46):
tank to support, you know, families. So that's the way
I like to do it. I say, look, i'll play
the music. We're not going to show you pictures of
babies dying. We're not going to have a silent auction,
We're not going to ask for donations. You come to
the concert, Bob, we're taj Mahal joon't bias. Sammy Hagar,
Chris Isaac and Mike Anthony did it this year and

(45:07):
it's just like it sells out in five minutes at
the Fillmore. Every penny goes except for the expenses, you know,
right to the college.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
And that's the way I like to do it. Man,
That is so cool. Same thing.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
You open up a restaurant, Come love the food. I
guarantee the food and drink's gonna be good. You gonna
hear my music. It's gonna be the food that I eat.
And I give the money away. Don't try to give
me your money. I don't want your money because that's dangerous,
you know. I mean, but if you give it away
and it got ripped off, it was a bad deal.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
You know.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
It's like you never know. There's there's plenty of crooks
and philanthropy folks. Let me just tell you that much
right now. It's harder to give money away than it
is to make it. How about that, Bob. That's Sammy
Hagar's philosophy. I can make money easy, giving it away
is tough.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Man. You got to make sure it's right.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
You know, that would be disrespect if you gave somebody
some money for something.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Like that and they misused it. Who see, I got
to ax to grind here. There's something my dad taught me.
Maybe I learned that from my dad too.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Okay for you to get into a business, you know,
I get so caught up making sure everything's right that
I don't do it. So to what degree do you
vet what's going on or you just say we're going
we're going to fix the problems after.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
Yeah, I'm stupid like that. That's my downfall. I have
no downside. I can't even see a downside. When I
see a vision of a business and I see all
the way to the end of the tunnel, you know,
it's not I never just it's never. Just first thing,
I say, oh, that's a good idea, and then I say,
oh but oh.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Oh oh, oh, oh yeah, and oh man.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
And then it just starts flying. And when it starts flying,
I say, somebody say, well what if what do you
mean what after? This can't lose There's no downside, you know.
That's my biggest fault as a businessman. That's why I
tell people I'm not as good a businessman as you think,
because I never weigh it. I mean I was starting
to now a little bit. But I never do anything

(47:12):
though until I find the guy. I always find the
guy first. It's all about finding the guy to run
the business. And that's where I need to partner that
I can trust and that won't disrespect my vision. And
I've had that happen a few times. But that's the
most important thing, is finding the guy. I can't do
it every day. I just have one meeting a month

(47:34):
with my companies, and I just go out with the tattoos,
you know, and I get the tattoos for promotion.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
I wear the shirts.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
I'm not wearing one now because I didn't want to
insult you by wearing one promoting one of my businesses.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Okay, so before you got involved, it was called Cabo
San Lucas, not Cabo, and it was really sleepy. I
mean I literally think you gotta get you get credit
for building up Cabo. What did you see and how
did that all come together?

Speaker 3 (48:08):
Well, boy, Bob, that was a vision. That's a dream
I never had. Keith Richards got married down there to
Patty Hanson. I think it is her name Patty, and
they got married and I saw in People magazine a
picture at their wedding of an infinity pool with the
ocean in the background, a palm tree and a cactus,
and I went, where in the hell is that my

(48:30):
favorite thing? Ocean desert? You know, A palm tree man.
You know, I got a philosophy. If palm trees don't grow, Sammy,
don't go. You know, I'm a beach nut. I'm a
beach nut. I love it, and I love the desert,
you know. And there they were, was, you know, and

(48:51):
I thought, where is this? So I went and it
was one flight in a week, one flight out a week,
you know, flew in, picked up people took him out
from San Francisco, and you know, but and then I
had a There was no phones, no TVs, no nothing.
Three hotels. I stayed at the Twin Dolphins. I fell
in love. I just fell in love. So I'd go

(49:11):
there as much as I could. And I was there
one year and I said to I made friends with
the matri d there. That the guy that was kind
of the bellman. He took care of everything at this
little resort, very small resort, fifty rooms.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
And I said, hey, uh, I need to make a
phone call.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Man. You know, somebody came down with a newspaper and
they said the stock market had crashed.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
It was like an eight. I guess.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
Seventy nine eighty. Something had happened economically. Not that I
was worried about my money, but I was worried, what's
going on? You know, I heard these guys talking pool side. Yeah, man,
it's well yeah, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
What I said.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
I said, hey, I want to go make phone but
I wanted to call my my manager, my accountants or somebody.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
So he said, I got to take you into town.
So it was a dirt rope.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
He took me into town, had to go down to
you were royals, about six miles into town. Seven miles
into town. You go to a to the phone company.
You gave him the money. An operator said it's going
to cost you this much to talk for three minutes.
I says, okay, gave her the paesos. She plug it in,
dial it up, gave me the phone and I said, wow,

(50:19):
I saw downtown. I'm going, holy shit, this face is unbelievable.
There's nothing here. There's palapa roos. And he goes, oh,
let's go house some tacos. I know, this great little shock.
I mean these are shocks, no windows, no air conditioning,
dirt floor, chickens running around. Went into this place with
je and he goes, I said, what do you what

(50:41):
are you going to have?

Speaker 2 (50:41):
He goes toyo.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
The owner of this little thing was called Gudalajara.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
And he goes, Boyo, there's sickens running around.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
I swear went back and killed the damned chicken, put
it on the grill, and I'm glad. This is unbelievable.
You hear the chicken back there, you know. And I
just fell a love and then another. So I made
him take me into town. A couple other times, I'd
come down there and stay for two weeks at a time.
And I came in and we went right back to

(51:10):
the same restaurant, and there's two little kids.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
At this time.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
You can see lands in You can look at the
marina and nothing, no hotels, no nothing down there. There's
hotels but Solomar and Finisteric where Keith got married.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
We're at the other end.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
So we're right there in the strip on the on
the marina, and two little boys had a stick stuck
through swordfish eyes right through his eyes. And they were
each had the stick and if the swordfish probably weigh
one hundred pounds. And they were dragging it down the
road into these little shack restaurants and they had had
slices taken out of it, chunks was bleeding and stuff,

(51:47):
you know. And I'm going, whoa. And they come by
where we're sitting. The owner of the restaurants, Scott, starts
talking to him and he comes to us. They said,
you guys want Marlon said, yeah, hell yeah, cuts a
couple slashes off, give us the kids some paesels, throws
it on the grill. Dude, I fell in love. Didn't
you hear a mariachi band? You're drinking shots at tequila?

(52:07):
I said, I'd have found fucking paradise. And I said,
I want to build. I want to buy a piece
of land. I want to build a little PLoP a
bar down here and sell real tequila because I had
tasted real tequila and Jorge found the spot. I bought
it for one hundred thousand dollars. I built the Cabo
Wobble for two hundred and sixty three hundred thousand dollars

(52:29):
and it makes that much a month. You know, it
just it just was the biggest gold mine ever in
the history. And the first three years it lost money.
You know, it was because there was no people down there.
You know, It's like so then they finally paved one
of the roads, and then they put a new hotel up,
and then they did this, and then they did that.
And now I still Lovekabo, but it is so fricking

(52:51):
here's hotel, hotel, hotel hotel. When I when I first
went there, there was occupancy was six thousand people between
locals and all the hotel rooms between San Jose Delcabo
and down talk about six thousand people. Now there's half
a million people, and it's crazy. But I still love
the hell out of it. It was a weird vision.
I just fell in love. It was pure passion. I

(53:12):
had no idea I was ever going to make a
penny or ever going to make tequila.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
I mean, that's a dream. I did not dream.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
That dream was never dreamt and everyone thought I was crazy.
I broke a band up, I lost an accountant. People
just quit on me when I was doing that project.
You know, Van Halen were going nuts, you know, you
they went down there and there was no phones in
anything yet, you know. And they were staying at a hotel,

(53:39):
no room service and stuff, and they were freaking out.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
They didn't like it.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
It's so funny when I think back, because now they
would love it.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Well legend is, and you know the truth who knows,
because I certainly don't. Was they were invested and then
they freaked out and got angry at you, and you
had to buy them out.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
What really happened there.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Well, it wasn't even a biot. We were in debt.
The Kabbo Wobbo was in debt once again. I had
a bad manager partner down there. It became very heavy
into drugs and he lost everything and the government came.
He wasn't paying the vendors. We weren't making money, but
he wasn't. He was ordering the beer and the food

(54:19):
and the but he wasn't paying anybody. So they shut
him down. They came to put a red a yellow
ribbon around. The government confiscated the Cobbo Wobbo. And I
was on tour and we got I said, hey guys,
we got to kick in some money. We owed eighty
thousand dollars. He had about eighty thousand dollars debt, so
I could call a friend down there, you know, hoard

(54:40):
hand guys, and I said, hey, go down and see
what's going on. I said, yeah, you got we need
you need to pay eighty thousand dollars to get the
keys back, you know. And the guy took off that
was that he did it. He was out of tech.
He just took out it. And so, uh, they said.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Fuck you.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
This is your deal man. You're a problem man. You
deal with it. And I said, wow, not cool. They
said let them. They said, let them have it, let
the government out. We don't want nothing to do with
this anymore. They had already put in about ten twenty
grand apiece over the years and three years every now
and then say okay, everybody's got to kick in ten grands,
you know, or we need twenty grand to keep the

(55:16):
doors open. And they didn't like that either, but I
didn't either. But it wasn't that much money. For God's sake.
We're in van Hale on this days. So they said,
let them keep it, and I said no. So I said, okay,
I'll take it. So they indemnified, you know, maybe indemnify
them if there was a lawsuit they'd want no trouble,
so they gave it to me and it was yeah,

(55:41):
it really it really put it. Then when it took off,
like a year later, it started really the town grew.
You know, Ednall are going.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
You fuck her?

Speaker 3 (55:50):
You know you you ran it into the ground so
that you could get it back from us. And I'm going,
you guys, if I was smarter, I wouldn't. I wouldn't
need you guys.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Man.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
You know, it was like god, it just really got it.
They got really angry about that when it started really
becoming popular. You know, people would we'd be on tour
and uh and people would come see us in a
hotel say, oh, man, we loved the kabba wabble. We
were there, o man, so fucking great. And they'd be like,
you know, so because trouble. It didn't I didn't say
it broke the band up, but it didn't help. But

(56:23):
keep things, you know, with my divorce coming up after
that and all that that, you know, the band just
and Leffler died and then that band was over.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
You know, tell me about starting the Tequila.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Well, when I first went to Cabo, the first thing
it happened to me, it was I had a real margarite,
a hand squeeze line good fresh sea salt on the
rim control, uh, and real tequila. And I said, man,
before that I was I never really had a real marguerite,

(56:59):
you know, mixer, you know, and uh, it blew my mind.
I said, this is the best speaker I've ever had
in my life. What's in it? Blah blah blah blah
blah blah. Oh, let me see that tequila. And it
was just some you know, one hundred percent of goby tequila.
I don't even know what it was. At that time,
there were no one hundred percent of goby tequilas in America.
There was every everything was meek. Still, it's fifty one
percent tequila, forty nine percent whatever you want to put

(57:20):
in there to make it, make it brown, make it
look like it's aged, and make it sweet and make it,
you know whatever. Anyway, the headache stuff, so you know,
I had that disease like everyone else. You you know, Oh,
I can't drink tequila. No, it's I had the worst
hangover in my life on tequila.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Don't know.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
Thanks, you know, then all of a sudden I taste
pure a hundred percent of goby Tica. I go, man,
I've never had anything like this. I never had a
margarita like this. So I was getting ready to look
to buy a condo. So I finally built a condo
unit down here. The roads were still dirt and everything.
So I was going to go buy this condo. And
I said, uh uh, while we're in Gualajara, let's we
were starting construction on the coppoll. Let's go to Gualajara

(57:59):
and let's look at furniture because it's really cool, artistic town.
Gualahara has got some of the coolest shops. It's like
Rodeo Drive, but it's of Mexico. And I so Guy said,
let's go to Tequila Horterhay, my partner who's still my partner,
by the way, who still runs the cantina, who's still
you know, he's he's rich now too, from a bellman.

(58:19):
I told him you're going to be my partner, and
he never fucked me. We're still partners. It's a beautiful story.
I mean, I love him and his family. Without him,
I wouldn't wouldn't have made it through all that. So
he said, let's go to Gualahara. I've said, friends there,
let's take us for some tequila tastings. So I went
and I saw what tequila, how it's made, and I

(58:40):
saw rila gave and I saw him cooking it, and
I saw him doing all this stuff, and we stayed
and we so we stayed there a few days, and
I said, I want to start my own tequila. I'm
going to make Cacabo wabble tequila. And we went around,
went back. I had an airplane at that time, a
small plane, but you know, a turboprop that I used
to take down there. So we fly straight over to

(59:00):
Gualajara and spend a few days and fly back. And
I had my condo and we we went around knocking
on doors, and one family said, yeah, we'll we'll make
tequila for you, bring us to bottles. And I'm going, oh,
you know, I was tasting all these tequilas. I mean
it was take your ivan bottle, dump the water out,

(59:23):
take it out of their barrel, or take it right
out of their bottle, and they'd let you taste it.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
I mean it was like that primitive.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
These were farmers that were growing their gave and made
their own little private stash of about twenty cases a
year for their family and their parties, and they sold
all the agabe. So I said, well, I want you
to make me tequila because that's the best tequila ever
tasted in my life. And it was El Vahito who
now makes Santo. I went back to them after I
sold it because they changed it. So anyway, long story short,

(59:52):
I said. They said, bring us bottles. So I said, hoory, hey,
where are we going to get littles? Said?

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Oh, I got a friend.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
So I went to this bottle place with the hand
blue fricking bottles and I saw blue them. I said, yeah,
let's do the blue bottom. Okay, hand blown great glass
in the bottom. It could cut your freaking hand on right.
And they were not perfect, all of them. I took
a case of bottles. They filled them up for me,
put corks in them, and I brought them back to

(01:00:17):
the cantinas and they were sending me samples, and pretty
soon we bought these little barrels and put them all
in the cantina when it first opened, and they and
they sent me samples and like gas line can, like
five gallon gas line can of tequila had sent it
and we'd pour it into the barrels and serve it
out of the barrels in. After six months you had

(01:00:37):
a reprisodo. After four months you had a ripissoda. And
it was just so good. It was unbelievable, handmade tequila,
the biggest fat ripe of gobvis is. Before there was
a shortage like now, I mean you get Gobby's this
big if you're lucky, and so it was like unbelievable.
It exploded, and Andrew Diaz Blue tasted it and said

(01:00:58):
this A wrote a story in a mag Sea said
this is one of the three best tequilas in the world,
Kabawa and and all of a sudden, phones ringing, Wilson Daniels,
you know, the DRC guys calling me saying we want to,
you know, import your tequila. And I'm going, wow, I
don't even know what to do here, you know. So

(01:01:18):
it called Shep Gordon. You know, Shep Gordon is the
biggest brain at that you know for me, Shep Gordon's
got one of the most he thinks more out of
the boxing name.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
So I called chef Shep. Here's what's going on? What
am I gonna do?

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
Send me let me taste of tequila. I send a
note Willie Nelson tastes it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
He goes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Willie says, it's fucking good. I said, shep goes, I
never had tequila.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
I'm going. Willie says, it's good. You know, it's fucking good.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
So so we I had to find another bottling company.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
I hired a.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Guy in Gualajara, a guy named Julio escandone who's passed now,
but he he said, I'll take care of everything down here.
I'll get you the better bottles and we'll take him
deliver them to the place. And and pretty soon the
they're making six thousand cases of kaba waba and they're going, whoa.
The farmers are going, man, were like rich, you know,

(01:02:07):
and I'm going, yeah, this is awesome. And then the
next year we had thirty seven thousand case order and
because the tequila just exploded, not because of me, it
just a patron came out and I was right behind him.
So it was amazing that this little factory, I mean,
these said little farmers that had a small little distillery,

(01:02:29):
they grew right with me. They said, oh no, we'll
do it, we'll do it, we'll do it. They bought
bigger tanks. They you know, they hired they got a
truck instead of honestly they had horseback and fucking carts.
You know, they said they bought a truck. And I
was in the tequila business and it exploded. I made
money the first frigging second year. I started making money,

(01:02:49):
huge profits, like you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars,
and then millions and millions of dollars, and it was like, wow,
it just exploded. I ever seen a luckier guy in
my life. That's where I say the dream. I never
dreamt the whole Cobo thing. It just was like, thank you,
Keith Richards. I still haven't met I met Keith, but

(01:03:12):
not in a situation where I've been able to talk
to him about this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
Dude, I owe you. What do you want from me?

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
You know, I'll send you down there and give you
the penthouse sweet for as long as you want it,
you know, And he doesn't need my money, but I
owe that man.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Okay, So you had the company, you built it up,
you supposedly sold it for one hundred million dollars. Usually
there's a non compete, but now you're making tequila again
and run too. So explain what's going on here.

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
Well, when I sold it, I did sell it for
one hundred million dollars, but I only sold eighty percent
of it, so I only got eighty million dollars. And
then I sold the twenty percent back to them five
years later because it wasn't the kind of deal that
I thought was going to be right, and it postponed
me from being able to make tequila again. And I
tell you, I got hooked on this game. It's really

(01:04:11):
really fun and exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
It's so.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Organic and holistic, the way the process they make tequila
reel together. Now, these people put everything in all these
preserves and crapit, tequila, there's not There's only like seven
natural tequilas on the market right now. I think In
Santo's one of them, and that real tequila's made the
real way. We don't put sugar in it because we
use greenagabe. You know, we just wait till the agave

(01:04:36):
is big enough and we you know, we pay more
for it and all that stuff trim it properly. But
that's a long story about the process of making. But anyway,
I loved it so much that I just no matter
I said, I got all this money. What the fuck
am I doing? I just stuck in the bank. I
started a foundation. Okay, yeah, I started giving money away.
I helped a lot of people. But I'm still saying

(01:04:57):
my lifestyle hasn't changed. So I bought an airplace, you know,
the biggest purchase I've ever made in my life, you know,
A big airplane, A nice airplane, beautiful airplane. Take my
whole band in my family, go on tour. That was
my only thing I did other than that. I didn't
buy a new house. I already had houses. I didn't
buy a new new Ferraris. I did, but I mean

(01:05:18):
I would have anyway. You know, when the La Ferrari
came in, I had to have that car. So long
story short, it was like I thought, I liked the game,
I don't like the money.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
You know, I'm having more fun with the game than
with the money. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
So I already had enough money, So it was really
a strange thing to have that feeling where I really now,
I don't have the need. I'm not money hungry anymore,
you know, from being poor, so that there's life changing.
So I sold it back to them so I could
do a non compete. The non compete would end in
five years. But in the meantime, I started a rum company,

(01:05:52):
Sammy's Beach bar Room in Hawaii. And this was my
big stupid idea that I still make the rum, but
I had to move to Porter. I was making rum
from cane in Maui. Okay, Maloi property. How much Maui
property is worth, So sugar cane is like a weed.
And I was They had these sugar cane farms, and

(01:06:12):
I was supporting all this because they cut the sugar
cane down. Take it down to the old C and
H sugar factory, which had left one little department open
for me, so that they could make you know, sugar
out of the cane, drive it back up, make a
handmade rum in Hawaii. White rum that costs by the

(01:06:33):
time it hit the market was like forty nine dollars
a bottle. When you can buy a bottle of white rum,
you know Bacardi or any of the rum's white rum,
you can buy a bottle for like nine dollars, and
mine was like forty nine dollars. And people say, well,
nobody drinks white rum. But I thought I was going
to elevate rum the way I elevated tequila because see,

(01:06:54):
I was making real tequila that people say, oh wow,
this is better than any tequila have ever drank. Well,
my rum is better than ay rum you drink. But
nobody was wanting to pay forty nine dollars for it.
I wasn't getting it in the well, and and so
I said I had to move. It started getting more
and more expensive. It'd be seventy dollars now. I moved
it to Puerto Rico, where the real cane, you know, grows,

(01:07:16):
and they make rum much less expensive and it's not
as good, but it's still better than the competition because
once again, I don't cut corners. I'm not having to
meet margins like, oh well, well we got to raise
our price because it cane. It just went up. No, no,
just you know, I just won't make as much. It's okay,
you know. I want to make the best cane, best rum.

(01:07:36):
I don't want to use dirty cane. I don't want
to use old caine. I don't want to add you know,
molasses and things to it. So anyway, long story short
of got in the rum business, which is not like
the tequila business. The rum business has never exploded. It
exploded like in the twenties. I miss I missed that ride,
you know. So my rum company, yeah, it breaks even
it you know, makes a couple thousand dollars here and there,

(01:07:59):
but it's really not a It's just a labor of love.
And I refuse to quit, you know. So I thought, well,
I'm going to make these cocktails now. So I've made now,
I with the trying to keep the rum thing alive,
I made Sammy's Beach Bar cocktails pure Rum, pure sparkling
rum ward winning gold medal Rum. Sammy's Beach Bar Rum

(01:08:20):
is in those cocktails. Everyone else just puts generic alcohol
in those cocktails. You know, they were beer originally, they
put beer based, and they put wine based. And I
was the first guy to make spirit based. And I thought, well,
I'm on top of this. And during COVID, I'm doing
all this right. So it's going slow, slow, you know,
in mail order and phone calls and zooms.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Get it all done.

Speaker 3 (01:08:43):
COVID in is and about fifty friggin the big boys
came out with the cocktails now and the cans. You know,
but they still don't use the good rum. They still
don't use the good noun. And there's no artificial flavors,
no artificial colors. Mine's the best, the best of the best,
and that's way I like to do things. But the
division exploded. I mean, these guys came out spending forty

(01:09:04):
million dollars on a launch, you know, for Super Bowl
ad for whoever came out with that limon one a
smear and offer somebody anyway. You know, all the big
boys came out all around me and they're crushing me.
But I'm just keep my head above water. But my tequila.
I went back to the same Elva Eito guy when
the don compete, and I made mesquila, the world's first mesquila.

(01:09:27):
Everyone was drinking mescal. It's the hip is saying, oh, mescal, mescal.
I went to down to Oahaka and went to every
mescal maker, the rarest ones, the most expensive ones, and
I can't drink more than one shot of that stuff,
and man, you feel like I smoked a cigar and
licked the ashtray afterwards. So I said, I want to
tone this down and I wanted to mix it with tequila,

(01:09:48):
and everyone said, you can't do it. It's either mescal
the made in Ohaka or tequila made in Jalisco, and
I said, well, what do you mean we can blend them.
The government said, no, you can't. That's illegal. There's no
such thing. As I said, it's misquilla. I'm gonna call
it misquilla. I fought for a year, hired lawyers, nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
Finally, my distiller, my old cobbo wobble Guy el Vehito,
who makes Santo for me, he said, look, I can
do it off premise.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
I can't do it my distillery.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
I said, okay, So we bring a truck truckload of
the scallop from Wahaka. He goes to this little shack
on the outskirts of Jalisco and blends it. And now
they say it's okay, it's but I can't trademark it.
And I said, okay, okay, so it's misquilla, but you
can't trademark the name. It's like Kleenex, you know, It's
like everybody calls a Kleenex, no matter what the brand is.

(01:10:40):
So anyone can do it now, and a few people
are doing it. But but it was the first blend.
And then Guy Fieri comes knocking on my door seeing me.
I thought, you said, next time you started it's a
tequila company. You were going to make me your partner, man,
you know what the fuck here's I said, Oh well,
I forgot because I did, you know. So we had
a we had a shake over the phone, and he said,

(01:11:01):
now let's make real fucking tequila. I want to make
Blanco Reposanto and a Yeho And we just are releasing
our in Yeho right now because we put it in
barrels and we aged it, write and we did everything right, Bob.
I could go on and on. This would be this
whole interview could be about the tequila business.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
It's so.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
It's so crazy, it exploded, and everybody and his dog
has a tequila, but they have dog tequilas. The difference
between a pure real tequila and the one things that
are on the market now is just it's sacrilege.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
Okay, how's Cosamigos compared to yours?

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
Not even close.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
I ordered a shot of costume because I haven't had
it in probably three or four years, because I'm not
a fan.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Nothing against those guys.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
I love George Plooney, you know, and I looved Randy
Gerber and Mike Millman's one of my dearest friends in
the world. So these guys are cool guys, don't get
me wrong, but they make Their quote was, well, we didn't,
you know, we wanted to make a tequila that was
a lot easier to drink.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Well that's impossible, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
Real tequila is fucking who it's got that shiver. You
got to ask why you have the salt and the
line's fun. It's it's just you know. Oh see, I
get goosebumps once again talking about it's such a wonderful spirit.
So I ordered a cosamigo the other day with Michael Anthony.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
We were at this place and they had a bar
and I went, I said, what do you got? And
I saw they had patron which is wonderful tequila. And
I looked in and I and they had Constamigo, of
course because it's one of the biggest tegabos in the world. Now, Uh,
and I go, give me a shot at blanco. Uh
on the rocks. And he said, you don't want don't
want to market readia. Do you want a cocktail? Say no, no,

(01:12:50):
I just wanted on the rocks. He was almost like
you sir, the bark and they put it on the rocks.
And I took a sip and I said to Mike,
and I looked at the part and I said, hey,
I ordered a shot, not a cocktail. This has got
more shit in it than a cocktail. It's got vanilla,
it's got coconut, it's got uh, it's just sweeteners, glycerine.

(01:13:13):
So it's like makes your tongue thick. It's like a
syrupy feel on your tongue, you know, because that makes
it easier to swallow and makes it smoother. And it
had all these things, and I'm going, oh my god,
but I'm sorry everybody. They're not the only ones. Everybody's
doing that. And that's why tequila is so big now.
Real tequila drinkers don't like that. But there's the masses

(01:13:36):
are drinking tequila now, and the masses don't like real tequila.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
They go, oh that's too hot. Oh my god. No,
you know, I've seen it of my own two life.
Tequila burns a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
It's it's a spirit, and it's it's got very subtle flavors,
very subtle. You get a little bit of oak when
you put it in wood, you know, you get a
little bit vanilla, little coconut, out of the wood. But
you don't get that out of a frigging blanco unless
it's the Crystali, which is at the new style where
they put it in wood for three or four years

(01:14:10):
and then they redistill it and filter the color out
and it's a white patrol and started that trend. It's
a white tequila that tastes delicious, but you know it's
it's it's very expensive to do that because you got
an agent and lose all that product.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
But anyway, I don't want to make that tequila.

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
I'm making a blanco and nyejo, a reposanto and a
mosquito that's santo.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
The real shit.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
Okay, anybody who's in this business knows that the real
key end is distribution. So you start these new companies,
how a you're handling distribution.

Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
Well, a lot of these guys got a lot of
backing money. A lot of celebrities got big money, and
they go to some backers and they they pay for it.
You know, it's like you pay to play and the
old day, you know, you get a record on the
radio too. You know, that's kind of what's going on
with the distribution. But yeah, it's all about distribution. But
the whole thing is it's the end is one thing,

(01:15:10):
getting it in a store. If it don't sell, you're
out of here. And that's why you're seeing tequila companies
come and go. Every year there's another one hundred one
starting and another forty going out of business, and it's
it's really a tough game. You have to the distributors
take a big chunk to begin with the big boys
Southern Wine and Young's and Young's markets with oh, come on,

(01:15:34):
who is Youngs with?

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
I forget the.

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
Name of it, but anyway, there's two major distributors now
Southern Glazier merged and Youngs merged with oh why can't
even remember them? They used to have to kill, used
to have Cabbo Wobble. When I sold Caaba Wobble went
to Southern. Now I'm with Southern now again. But they
have a lot of power. But they they're careful because
see their names. They're the reputation online. So they go

(01:15:58):
to Safeway and go, hey, you know, buyas a couple
thousand cases, put them in your stores.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
Yeah, you get paid.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):
They buy in, and then they sit there and go, hey,
it ain't moving, Get this shit out of my store.
I need the space. So it's a tough game. You
don't want to make mistakes like that. And that's where
my expertise of being in the business before comes from,
because my first idea was, oh, man, just get it
everywhere and my fans will go buy it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
Not necessarily they go buy it, but they got to
run across it, and they're not really you know, it's
it's a tough game right now, but I still love
it every time you win. Wow, Like you know, Santo,
we just got Caesar's Group, the whole group. You know,
they have more hotels in Vegas than anyone and between
all their bars and it's like, you know, Guy Fieri's friends,

(01:16:47):
because he has a couple of restaurants with Caesars with
the group, and so he got to the owner and
the owner put the hammer down and say, yeah, you know,
but it's it's it's uh. I'll give you one hint
for new guys. It's about relationships. If you know somebody
and they're a fan, they'll take care of you. You'll
get your booze right in their liquor store or right
in their bar. So it's like the old DJs when

(01:17:11):
you used to know the DJ. You're friendly, You go
in there after your show, you go in and do
a night at midnight show, you know at KSJO or whatever,
and they, you know, they.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
Play your record.

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
You know. It's like you got a friend, you got
a DJ friend. Well, now if you've got a bartender friend,
he'll put your boos in his bar. And the bartenders
are the new DJs in this business.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Okay, how do you know Guy Fieri? And then you
were Bottle Rock was with Jose Andre some chef. It's like,
how do you know all these people? And are you
one of these people who literally knows everybody or you
just have a select group you hang out with.

Speaker 3 (01:17:47):
Well, now you know what I'm like back in high school, Bob,
We're coming full Silindier. I love this. I love this interview.
You're killing me. You see, it's like when I was
in high school. I know everybody, but I have my
little group. Still, I'm still that same guy. You know,
Emma La Gazi's my friend, Jose Andres my friend. Guy
Fieri's my friend. You know, I've got a few really

(01:18:09):
good close chef friends and they are close friends and
we cook together and we.

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
Michael Mina.

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):
I patronize their restaurants when I'm in their city where
they on tour, and I call them to get special favors. Hey,
I can't get in, you know, like Jose Andres, Hey
I can't. You can't get into his restaurants. It's like Jose,
I got it. I need a table for six. It's
you know, it's six o'clock. Well done. So we're those
kind of friends. I love chefs. I love cooking. It's

(01:18:40):
my second favorite thing, you know, besides music. I'm if
you want to ask me what I do. I come
home from the studio of twelve hours and I go
straight to the kitchen and I whip something up, and
I can cook my ass off. You know, I've had them,
Lagassi tell me. You know, Sammy, I've been good cook
you son. I'm a bitch, you know. So you know

(01:19:02):
I can hang with those guys. I can't. I'm not
as versatile. Maybe you know, they have more knowledge, but
I really have a good palette. So Guy Fiertti came
when Cabbo Wobbo when we were having a promotion back
way before I sold it, back when we had the
very you know, at about forty thousand seconds third year,
I was doing a local tour in the Sandmans in

(01:19:22):
the Bay Area and we had a contest for whoever
sold the most tequila in their bar got to come
to the show. I sent a limo for him. They
meet me backstage. I got a signed guitar. They got
on the side of the stage. I got to, you know,
witness the whole nine yards right, a VIP thing. So
Guy Fiertti being a huge fan at that time, I
didn't know it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
I didn't know him.

Speaker 3 (01:19:42):
He had a little restaurant called Johnny Garlics, and he said,
I'm going to put it in my will. Now, this
is a high end tequila. They got nine dollars bottles
of booze in your well, nine dollars a leader and
this was a seven fifty for thirty forty two dollars.
He put it in as well. Of course, he won
the damn contests and didn't make any money on his

(01:20:02):
on his bar for a few months. He walks in,
looks just like me. He's got shorts, flip flops. You know,
his hair, my head. That time we were wearing gators glasses.
He had my same glasses on my little goatee.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:20:16):
My beach looked that I had going back then, and uh,
I'm going all of this fucking guy. He's out of sight,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Boom boom boom.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):
We have fun. I love his personality. He's exactly like
he is now. He didn't invent himself. He didn't grow
into this gig. He was born like this.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:20:30):
He's one of those guys. He wakes up at eight
o'clock in the morning, he already has his bling on.
I think he sleeps with the ship, his hair spiked up,
he's got his sunglasses. He's a badass. He's really really
the real do. I love that guy? So he after
the show, I give him the signed guitar before the
show where I met first, and I say, you know,
after the show, coming back, I have some food. He

(01:20:50):
went and had his sushi chef because Johnny Garlak has
had a sushi menu. He put made a bunch of sushi.
He put it on the guitar and I came walking
out stage into the dress room and he had guitars,
sushian and guitar served it to me. I said, this
is my fucking pal right here right. So we we
became friends. He came to every show I've ever done
in the Bay Area and around the country.

Speaker 2 (01:21:13):
He was doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
So I helped him get in with Emma Lagazi and
my Food Network friends. I helped him get you know,
uh not that didn't help him win. I helped him
get it audition. I turned him on to some people.
He got involved and became the next Food Network start.
Now he's the biggest celebrity chef on the planet. And
and when I sold Kabba Wobble, he read it. He

(01:21:37):
calls me up and says, dude, did I read what
I just read? I said, I don't know what you
just read. He said, you sold Wobble for like a
hundred million dollars. Said, that's what the deal was. And
like I said, I only took the first twenty. I
left twenty on the table.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
For a while.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
I thought the brand was going to get much bigger
and my twenty was going to be, you know, worth
even more than that. I thought I was a smart businessman,
already smarter than me. Trust me, those guys are the greatest.
I love that brand in that company for doing what
they did for me. But anyway, so I said, oh yeah,
he goes you know, dude, you ever want to do
this again? I said, I can't do nothing for five years.

(01:22:15):
He said, if you ever want to do this again,
I'm your partner. I said, okay. And we just been
friends and friends and friends and friends and hang out
in cobble. It comes to my birthday bash then, like
I said, I started Santo and wasn't thinking about him,
and he busted my ass and he's Boom, he's partner instantly,
I mean we have We just shift hands. We didn't

(01:22:36):
even shake can We're on the phone. I said, yeah,
you're my partner. Okay, here's how much I got in.
Here's how much going to cost for you to buy
in to you know what I got in. You know,
I'm not selling you nothing. I'm just exchanging my shares
for what I have. And boom, we just did it
that way. And he's the best partner you could ever have.
I don't think anyone could outwork Guy Fieri. He's most

(01:22:57):
He gets up at four in the morning, does morning
shows in fucking New York from California. Then you know,
and then out the door he's filming two or three
TV shows he's got going on. He's got seventy five
eighty restaurants. You know it's the guy's rocking man.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
Okay, so you had a number of big victories, the
victory with tequila, et cetera. Musicians are legendary for blowing
the money. Where is the money? Is it in real estate?
Is in stocks? His bonds? You pay attention? Do you
not pay attention?

Speaker 3 (01:23:40):
I kind of when I got that big money, I
start paying attention because I didn't want to lose everything
that I know. This is my my nest egg. So
I investigated some things, and I tell my brokers and
my management and my accountants, I do not care about

(01:24:00):
making money with my money. Don't go out there and
say I'm gonna make you, you know, twenty percent of
your money. I'm not interested. I want the safest saying possible.
I invest in the United States of America, and I
invest in cities and states because ones that I think,
you know, that look like they're not going to go bankrupt,

(01:24:22):
you know. So it's kind of like keeping your money
in places like that that if the United States goes under,
well then I'm gonna lose my money. But if I
had it in other place, I'm gonna lose it. Way
before that, you know. So I'm just I'm so conservative
you'd be surprised. It's it's like I don't like making
money with money. To me, when I say, nobody gets fucked.

(01:24:45):
To me, if you're making too much money with your money,
somebody's getting fucked.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):
It just doesn't work that way all of a sudden magic,
you know, just somebody's gonna hand their money over to you.
Somebody must lose for you to win. So I don't
like that game, and I don't know enough about it.
So I invest in myself. I have a ton of
real estate, and I believe in things. I have, you know,
a car collection from heaven and I use it. I

(01:25:12):
drive my cars, and I stay in my homes, and
I bought my family homes, you know, like and.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
You know, my kids.

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):
I have a wonderful, wonderful trust set up for my kids,
which I really believe in. I believe in my parents
are gone. But you know, my mom. I put a
lot of money into my mom. She always had a
nice new car and she had a beautiful home. And
it's we're all in my name, And it sounds cheesy,
but it's like, no, it's not. It's like you can

(01:25:43):
make your mother, your family, your parents and brothers and
sisters really happy. If you're really rich enough, you can
really do wonderful things for them. And then you know
your mother is going to pass and your parents are
going to pass before you, and you just inherit it
back and then you know, you give it to someone else,
so you you you turn it. That's that's the way

(01:26:03):
I do my money. I don't like to just stash
it away. Someplaces say, look how much money I'm making
on my money. I'm still earning enough money where I
don't have to live off my money. And so it's
it's just all my kids name. And you got to
do it properly so they don't get robbed from the
government when you die, you know, they so that they
have their The inheritance taxes are fifty percent, you know,

(01:26:27):
and then there's then there's.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
Income tax on top of that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:32):
You know, you give your kid a million dollars and
he ends up with a couple hundred thousand dollars. It's
just not cool, you know. So you've got to have
really good estate planning. And I spent a lot of
time and effort and investigation on that because you know,
when I turned seventy, you know, five and a half
years ago, I really started thinking about mortality, and all said,

(01:26:55):
you're going, I never thought.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Of that before.

Speaker 3 (01:26:57):
I'm so busy, I'm so I'm still driven, you know,
I'm still progressing and working on things. And I go, what, well,
it only only got Maybe I plan on living to
be one hundred at least, and then I'll tell you
if I'm on live any longer when i'm a hundred,
because if I'm healthy, I said, okay, I'm gonna live longer.
But so I got twenty five years to live. And
I think how fast the last twenty five years went.

(01:27:19):
I just go, holy shit, I got I got a
lot to do. I better take care of things. I
got to make sure my kids are cool, you know,
and I got to make sure that everything's set, you know,
and I don't leave.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
A mess when I die.

Speaker 3 (01:27:29):
And I've never thought of that until I turned seventy,
and I wrote that song father Time about it. It's
like all of a sudden, Wow, you just go, wow,
I'm not afraid to die and whatsoever. And it's but
it's just interesting to start thinking, Wow, m I got
to make sure my people are taking care of you know,

(01:27:51):
and everything's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:27:52):
And it was a strange thing. And I spent a
whole year.

Speaker 3 (01:27:54):
I took two years off and then COVID hit and
I got to take more time off and work and
all that kind of stuff. That's if anyone asked me,
you know, what's the positive that came out of COVID,
it was one was.

Speaker 2 (01:28:08):
I got time.

Speaker 3 (01:28:10):
I had down time, so I took care of a
lot of things. And I learned that we are all
in the same fucking boat man. The COVID made the
biggest realization on the planet. Rich, poor, You're all fucked now,
you know what it's like. So it kind of brought
a nice reality to me and a more of appreciation

(01:28:32):
of health and life and freedom and this country. You
know about the freedom in this country, it keeps getting
taken away. It keeps getting taken away by things like
COVID and by the nine to eleven situation. It's like,
freedom's a wonderful thing. It's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
Okay, just switching gears. Your kids, you grew up poor,
they did not grow up poor, So what are they up?

Speaker 2 (01:29:00):
And my oldest one, did.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
You know, how do you incentivize them.

Speaker 3 (01:29:08):
I know, my wife and I if we fight about anything,
it's every time I'm trying to do something for the kids,
it's like you're gonna ruin them. Yeah, I will ruin them. Happily.
I could careless if they ever had to work a
day in their life. I would be happy for them
if they were happy. Now they're not happy. That's different.

(01:29:30):
But my oldest son, who's fifty two years old, he Aaron.
He saw the pors we were on well for he
was born in a county hospital and I was on
food stamps, you know, so he saw the whole process.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
He went right with it. You know, he's he.

Speaker 3 (01:29:47):
And he's the one that's really more of a spender
and does it put value on it than anyone. He
wants things like me. He wants my cars, he wants
you know, he wants all that. And he's talented like crazy,
and he does a great job with his hobbies. He's
turned hobbies into making a living. But as soon as

(01:30:09):
he got his trust money, the way I haven't set up,
my kids get their trust money at certain stages, they
get a certain amount of twenty five and then they
get the big chunk at forty and then they get
dressed when I die. So every time he gets his chunk,
he just blows done both through it. But I have
to stop him, Aaron. I know, you got a new car.

(01:30:29):
You got five cars already. You don't need another fucking motorcycle.
You know, he's the only one that I got to
slap around. Everyone else seems to be pretty cool. My
youngest boy, Andrew is singing and playing music and doing
a great job. He's awesome. He's got everything going for him.
He's a great songwriter. I just blew my mind how

(01:30:50):
he just exploded like that when he turned about twenty five.
He just decided before that he was a martial artist
and I wouldn't let him fight, so he became a trainer.
He had two or three fights and broke my heart.
You know, he broke his knuckles, you know, get banged up.
The UFC fighting type shit. You know, that's not the
mixed martial arts. So he became a trainer, and I
thought that's what he was going to do, you know,
get himself a big, nice gym. But now he started

(01:31:13):
writing songs and singing music. They're playing music and he's
really really good. And my oldest daughter, kam Up. She
just got her first trust. She's twenty five, twenty seven now,
she just got her first chunk, and she bought a
nice little house in Maui where she wanted to live.

Speaker 2 (01:31:29):
She has skincare products.

Speaker 3 (01:31:31):
She's got two degrees in business and in fashion, and
she's a meditation and yoga teacher and a complete holistic
little queen.

Speaker 2 (01:31:42):
Little she just wonderful.

Speaker 3 (01:31:44):
And my youngest daughter, who hasn't got anything yet, she
just turned twenty one. She's a barrel racer and she
likes my booze business, which is really finally, finally, you know,
someone like Andrew falling in my footsteps of music. I
pray for him because it's not easy. But my daughter,

(01:32:04):
I just I just pray that she will do it.
She's she goes out on trips with my head of
sales for the Beach Bark Cocktail Company, and she goes
into accounts and she just landed the mix She took
mixologist courses. She landed the mixology course at the a
Montage Hotel in Healsburg, which is a really super high
end place in the wine country. And so she's really

(01:32:27):
going down that road. She's got she got a palette
on her. You know, I use her with my products.
I said, what do you think of this? You know,
what do you think of this? She's she's awesome, and
she's Samantha Hagar perfect, She's Sammy, but she drives a truck,
she's got a horse. She's a fucking barrel racer. She's
as redneck as you get. You know, she's all about that.

(01:32:48):
Just it's they're all different. I mean, I'm talking about
not even from the same planet.

Speaker 1 (01:32:55):
Okay, you've been married a couple of times. You got
married before or you had your big success now, certainly
at the time before the internet and cell phones, a
lot of guys wanted to get successful so they could
have some of the perks the lot rock and roll, lifestyle, romance, sex, etc.

(01:33:16):
What have you learned about, you know, relationships, et cetera,
being on the road so much being famous.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
Well, Bob, you know I've saw both sides of that movie.
Let me tell you, I've been the worst husband on
the planet and I've been the best husband on the planet,
which I am now and have been for a long time.
For my second marriage, I learned you never lie to anyone,
to your children, and especially your spouse, your partner. You

(01:33:45):
don't lie to that person. And so once I've became
a rock star, we got married. We're high school sweethearts,
and I was completely not it. Never had a relationship,
but neversed another girl for seven years. And then I
start getting a montross around on the road. I start

(01:34:07):
becoming a rock star, and I started being a really
very unfaithful person that I'm ashamed of.

Speaker 2 (01:34:14):
But I was having the time of my life. I mean,
I'll admit that, you know I'm not. I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:34:20):
But I became into a situation where I was lying
all the time to her and I had to, and
it was It's what ended my marriage. If I wouldn't
have fallen in love with someone carry my wife now
of twenty seven, I don't know, gotta be careful getting

(01:34:43):
close to thirty with her. I had twenty four with Betsy,
my previous marriage. And but if I would have never,
if I could have got out of that lie, I
probably would still be married to the same person. But
I went and fell in love in the middle of
the lie. So I once I got out of that
relationship and the divorce and all that, I just made

(01:35:05):
a pat I will never lie again, because that then
you're you're fucked. You got to living a lie? Is
it ruins anybody's life. Some people just go through life
just lying, lie and lie and lying lying. And so
that's what I learned about a relationship. Don't lie to
your partner and if you can help, but don't cheat
on them. And if you do, you should probably come

(01:35:26):
clean with it sometime and hopefully it doesn't. You know,
they're understanding and you can work it out. But because boy, uh,
it's it's a big deal having a I feel terrible
about my former relationship, even though I had the best
time of my life from you know, being successful rockstar.

Speaker 2 (01:35:47):
I got to tell you, there is no better time.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
You can have fast cars, all the money in the world,
jet airplanes, you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll.
I never was a big drug guy, but you know
I did enough to have fun and I and I sexually.
I had more fund than anybody in the planets. That
probably Rod story he was He might have been the
most glamorous rock star, you know, him and Elvis. I

(01:36:12):
can't imagine how much fun they must have had. But
you know, I'm a very sexual person. I still am
at my age and very very sexual and I think
it's one of the most important things in the relationship
to me. When it's over in the bedroom, that's when
you start, you know, fooling around, looking around, looking at
other women thinking, you know, it's it's really important a

(01:36:35):
good physical relationship in a marriage.

Speaker 2 (01:36:38):
So that's what I've learned.

Speaker 3 (01:36:39):
Just don't lie to your partner and be as good
as you can and keep the sexual drive going in
the house.

Speaker 2 (01:36:47):
And usually you don't be looking around so much.

Speaker 3 (01:36:49):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):
Okay, so you have so much going on with busy, this,
et cetera. Where does music fit into all this?

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
You know, it's all built around music.

Speaker 3 (01:37:06):
Bob Shep Gordon, that's the my genius buddy, He's the
big I always say, checked the big brain out on Shep.
He said to me one time he came and saw
me when I first built the Cabo Wabbo and then
Van Halen, when I start wearing shorts and T shirts
on stage, you know, and I just didn't get dressed
up anymore, just walk out on stage the way I

(01:37:28):
was because I learned how to do that in Cabo.
I come off the beach in Avadian suit flip flops,
no shirt back in the day, and you know, I
just jump up on stage and start jam with the band,
you know, and it felt so good. You know, it's
like wow. You know, they didn't pay I don't have
to get fucking dressed up, you know. But I mean
I get dressed up a little bit now again, because
I feel like you kind of owe at least some

(01:37:50):
kind of glamour to the business. I like to keep
a little bit of that glamour going. I think it's
important showbiz. But when I first start doing that ship
and then I got thrown out of Van Halen, and
I said, I'm never gonna get dressed up again. I'm
never going to play with people that I don't get
along with. You know that people are gonna fuck me.
You know, I'm not gonna suck it away. And Sheep said, yeah,

(01:38:10):
you remind me of Jimmy Buffett. You know he came
down to Cowboys going. You remind me of Buffett. And
I said, Jimmy Buffett, you know that one hit wonder.

Speaker 2 (01:38:17):
You know. I mean, I had no idea that Jimmy
had this thing going.

Speaker 3 (01:38:20):
And and my wife Cary says, oh man, you you've
never seen Jimmy Buffett, And I said no. She goes, well, god,
you got to go see Jimmy Buffa. She was from Virginia,
you know, beach and shit. She had seen him a
hundred times. She took me to see him. And I
walk into this nineteen thousand seed amplifier packed, sold out,
fucking parrot heads and balloons and Frisbees, and it was

(01:38:43):
like a day on the beach man. And he comes out.
Nobody liked the grateful dead. Nobody's paying attention to Jimmy.
They got their own party going. He just playing the
background music. I'm going, this is fucking living right here,
and I'm going, I'm down with this shit.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:38:56):
So I kind of really rolled heavily into that line
lifestyle thing, and is what shef Gordon said.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
It was kind of managing me.

Speaker 3 (01:39:04):
He was co managing me and kind of executive managing
me at that time and helping me when I was
with the tequila. And he goes, he goes, man, you
rolled it all into one. He's going, you know, since
you don't have to put on different hats, you're not
a businessman, you know, make your business your lifestyle, Make
your lifestyle your business, and everything's related. So people drink
your tequila and they come and see your music, and
they have a better experience.

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
And that's what I figured with the Cobble Wobble.

Speaker 3 (01:39:27):
I learned that you have a better experience if you're
eating the same food I'm eating.

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
These are my menu there, you know, I don't. I don't.
I'm hands on with my restaurants.

Speaker 3 (01:39:37):
My food's got to be a certain you know, level,
and a certain stop, and the type of drinks.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
And then you're up there playing the media. You're all
drinking the same thing.

Speaker 3 (01:39:45):
It's like the old days, you know, in the Grateful
Dead and the old Fillmore, where everybody took the same acid,
smoking the same weed, and is this thing happens and
it's a deeper experience. It's not just let's go see them,
sit and seat, you know, drink a beer and go home.

Speaker 2 (01:40:01):
You know, you didn't that there's a better experience than that.

Speaker 3 (01:40:04):
So I I realized that that's where my music comes in,
is that it's still an integral part of everything I do.
I sit around and play music in my house more
than anything else except cook and sleep.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:40:18):
I spend more time with my guitar. I write songs
every day. This morning, I turned on my tape recorder.
I played this this little una like a stone's kind
of but can't you hear me knock it? I was
thinking about that song and I was kind of riffing
off of it. I had to turn my tape recorder.

(01:40:39):
I say, oh, this is really cool. Look, because when
you try to learn somebody else's thing, when you're like me,
you end up writing your own thing. Because I can't
ever learn to play somebody else's ship, right, you know,
I can. I hit this bad note, but well that's
kind of cool. Yeah, And that's half the way I write.
I play music all the time. It's and I you know,

(01:41:00):
I went down on my basement yesterday and sang for
an hour. Just always try to keep my voice where
for the emergency I had to jump on stage, I
can sing. My voice is more important to me than
my dick. And I'm not joking as much as I'm
you know, my dick's important. But if it doesn't work
for some reason, I say, well i'll work tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:41:18):
If my voice doesn't work, I'm going in.

Speaker 3 (01:41:21):
I'm fucked because you step up on stage and you
can't sing. That's the most embarrassing thing on the planet.
And I care about my voice and about my chops,
and I'm ready, and I'm I'm That's why I'm I
like to the idea of being able to jump on
stage stress the way you are, because that way I
feel like, well, I got all the other shit together
in case I just have to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:41:41):
Well, I'm ready.

Speaker 3 (01:41:42):
You know, I don't want to say well I couldn't
sing because I wasn't dressed, right, That would be kind
of funny.

Speaker 2 (01:41:48):
Okay. I love my music now, it's my basis.

Speaker 1 (01:41:52):
You've had this great success, but parallel to your success
in the twenty first century, the music business has changed.
I don't care if you're Paul McCartney or your Bruce Springsteen.
You make new music has a very minimal impact. Okay.
Whereas it used to be went all the radio stations
that we listened to the radio, there was a learned

(01:42:13):
amount of product. Then there was MTV et cetera. Has
this you know a lot of people stopped making new music.
Has this affected your motivation? No?

Speaker 2 (01:42:23):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:42:24):
The thing that affected my motivation was I felt like
I was dried up a little bit like I said,
pretty much said it on you. I'm a lyricist, so
I've written every lyric of every song.

Speaker 2 (01:42:35):
You know, I never have a lyricist for it.

Speaker 3 (01:42:38):
Well, a couple of times, but three out of five
hundred songs I've written, I'm the lyricist. It's hard to
find inspiration. So without inspiration, I won't just finish and
write a song.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
I said.

Speaker 3 (01:42:51):
I was jamming around today, but I didn't have the
inspiration to finish it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:55):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:42:56):
Sometimes a song like father Time, which is my favorite
song I've written in the last forty years, maybe maybe
my whole life. It was so inspired that I picked
up the guitar and just played it and say it.
And I had to actually turn on my little tape
recorder on my phone. I just had to say, fuck,
I better record this. It's coming. It's coming, the whole thing,

(01:43:18):
the words, everything I had a thought about. I told
you about the growing old, thinking, wow, how many more
years I got left. I started looking at the other
side and and and I just the words just came,
you know, And I just started talking about the situation
I was in, and you know, where I was sitting,
I hear the waves crashing I'm in my house in Maui.
I'm hearing the waves crashing on the shore. That's been

(01:43:40):
going on forever and more, you know, But there's something
about the sun in Mexico. It just burns different. Those
are lyrics that those were that was a thought that
I had right then and there I'm hearing the waves
crashing that's been going on for ever. Yeah, but I'm
in Hawaii, Mexico. It's different, you know what I mean.
And that's the kind of songs that I look for
nowaday and if they come, enough comes, I'll make a

(01:44:02):
record every time. And I'm sitting on about five of
them right now, and I'm sitting and thinking, I don't
feel like making another record, but I might have to
my last one. Crazy times, you know, I think it's
the best record I've made since Standy Hampton. You know,
it's maybe Chicken Floy the first Chicken Fit record. I
just think it's just fucking brilliant. I love that record.

(01:44:23):
But I had a guy like Joe Satriani. It's like
when you got a Eddie van Halen or Joe Satriani,
it's much easier to be a lyricist, trust me, because
they bring you a piece of music that just speaks
to you. So I'm fine with making records. You know,
I don't care about money I spent. I've probably lost
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars on my last record.
I paid for it, you know, I didn't care. I

(01:44:45):
don't need a record company anymore. I mean I need
them to distribute, but I don't need them to give
me money to write.

Speaker 2 (01:44:52):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:44:54):
Okay, on this last record, you work with Dave Cobb,
who's the hottest, most respect producer national does Chris Stapleton
along with a million other things. How did you hook
up with Cobb? And what did he add?

Speaker 3 (01:45:08):
Oh, he's the greatest producer on the planet. Man, He's
He's right up there with Templeman. You know, Ted Templeman
was a great producer because because he produced you, he
didn't make you come to him. You know, he took
your music and just made it better. That's what Cobb does.
He's brilliant. He's fucking the best. I've said I couldn't
work with another producer ever, I don't think if I'd

(01:45:29):
make another record have to be a cop. Well, he
came to me, he said, he reached out to my
management company and said his manager said, said, Dave wants
to produce a Sammy Hagar record, and is he interested?
And I said, look, yeah, you know, so I talked
to him on the phone. I told him I wanted
to make At that time with the Circle, when we
were brand new, I said, I want to make a
Maricana record. I want to make a record like the band,

(01:45:52):
you know, like I want to write that kind of music.
I want to be very acoustic and heavy harmony, very
you know, Americana.

Speaker 2 (01:46:00):
You know, to the bone and bluesy folky.

Speaker 3 (01:46:05):
And he said, oh no, man, he goes, I grew
up on fucking Stanley Hampton and fifty one fifty. Get
the fuck out of here, he goes, I make those
kind of records.

Speaker 2 (01:46:13):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:46:14):
I want to make a record of you because I
want to make your record. I want to make the
definitive Sammy Hagar record. I want Montrose, Sammy Hagar, Chicken
Foot Van Halen, I want everything you did in that.
I want to make it just you know, blah blah blah.
I want Michael Anthony in there with you, with those harmonies.
And I'm going, shit, Well, I just don't really want
to make a record like that right now. And then

(01:46:35):
a couple of years later, I started writing these cool
songs I got, I got riffed out. I started playing
these badass guitar riffs, and father Times was in my pocket.
I'm going to have to record this song soon because otherwise,
you know, it's just I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:46:52):
Not going to be in love with it the way
I am now.

Speaker 3 (01:46:54):
It was a song that every time I sang, I
got goosebumps and choked up. That's the kind of song
I want to write, and that's what I want to sing.

Speaker 2 (01:47:03):
Goosebumps.

Speaker 3 (01:47:04):
It can be because it's so bad ass, and I
could get tears of my eyes because it's so bad ass.
It don't have to be a sad song, you know
what I mean. But so anyway, so I said, okay,
I want to do it, and he said I can
do it, and blah blah blah, blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (01:47:15):
We went back and it was the quickest record ever made.

Speaker 3 (01:47:17):
My life is right up there with fifty one to
fifty in the first Montreals record. Those records are just
done in ten days, you know, And god, it just
he's so good. He pick up a guitar. He was
the fifth beatle. I didn't even play guitar on a
freaking record. He played all my parts and reinvented a
lot of them, and him and Vic just smoked on

(01:47:37):
guitars live as fuck. I sang every song live except
for a couple of them Pump It Up. I couldn't
sing the lyrics because I was trying to read them.
There're too many lyrics. I didn't know him well enough,
so I had to overdub those. And then the last
two songs that we wrote, I didn't have lyrics for
him because we wrote Crazy Times and we wrote Slow Drain,
the opening track on the Spot. He co wrote it

(01:48:01):
with me and Uh. I had to go home and
write the lyrics that night, and I did and came
back the next day and sang them, and we were
done with that freaking record.

Speaker 4 (01:48:09):
And then.

Speaker 3 (01:48:12):
Mercuridius said I played it for him because I wanted
I wanted an opinion. I would have wanted your opinion, Bob.
I'm not just saying this because I'm talking to you now.

Speaker 2 (01:48:21):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:48:22):
I wasn't thinking he was reaching out to me at
the time because he wanted to hear the record. Because
of David Cobb. A lot of people were saying, hey,
we want to hear what you guys are doing. It's
a country what is it? No, it's rock, man, It's
fucking right. And anyway, so I took it this house.
I played it for him and he said that last
song is just classic childhood's end. He goes, you need

(01:48:42):
to take a piece of that and re record it,
running through some effects way in the backgroun. He just
came up with this wild idea and put it at
the beginning, just for a few seconds, and then you
have a concept record. And I said, wow, you're right,
I do because it was it is a concept record.

Speaker 2 (01:48:58):
It's about Covid child who's.

Speaker 3 (01:49:01):
In Man, we're all grown up now, went we all
went through that shit together and nobody, We're not fooling ourselves.

Speaker 2 (01:49:06):
Man, this is real, uh, hard times.

Speaker 3 (01:49:10):
And so I re recorded that thing and Cobb did
it in the hotel room. He was on tour with
Chris Stapleton. He was in Vegas in a hotel room.
I told him what I wanted to do. He got
acoustic guitar. He put it on his frecking iPhone. He
played the acoustic guitar part. He said, I want to
do it different because I want to put it in
a different key so that you don't have to scream it.
And I said yeah, yeah, yeah, and then he sent
it to me. I went into my studio played his

(01:49:32):
thing back, saying it sent it to him. He's on
the front of the record and we have a concept record.
I mean, that's how brilliant he is. He's just ficking good.
I never see a guy work so fast and don't
he don't get hung up. He never says hmmm, let
me no, no, He just fucking you know, yeah, boom,
let's do there. Okay, don't play let's watch out, watch

(01:49:54):
out your drum part there to go back to the bridge,
play the bridge?

Speaker 2 (01:49:56):
Good? Yeah, Well, you know he's like that.

Speaker 3 (01:49:58):
He just bam bam, bam bam and just orchestrating and
has his shit together.

Speaker 2 (01:50:04):
He's a bad motherfucker excuse. And so is Chris Stapleton,
by the way.

Speaker 1 (01:50:11):
Okay, so you make new music when you go play live,
it's like Jimmy Buffett. There's a core number of songs
that he has to play every night. Okay, do you
find that your audience will listen to the new music.

Speaker 3 (01:50:28):
Absolutely, I didn't this new record. I wanted to go
out and play the whole damn record. But I took
the year off, you know, I did. I did a
quick tour with George Throgod last year and then and
then this year I wanted to take off. And so
the record's coming gone now and we never got to

(01:50:50):
rehearse and build a new show.

Speaker 2 (01:50:52):
We just do spotty shows.

Speaker 3 (01:50:53):
And I said, oh, I'll take that weekend like we're
playing Vegas and Tahoe in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:50:58):
And I say, well, I guess got to do the
same show. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:51:01):
Maybe we'll throw one new song, because this band can
learn in the dresser and we can play a new
song just like and we we do it constantly. We
always sew a new song or two, and especially the
van Halen stuff. We got a reservoir of van Halen
that we can play. Sometimes we go out and say,
let's just play a fucking hour of van Halen. This
fuck with these people hard, you know what I mean,
They keep it hit you know, fifty one, fifty oh

(01:51:22):
you know, oh you wait one too, you know, four
and off gone out. So we'll play a record a
song from all these different things, and you know, the
audience goes crazy, they lap it up. They'd rather hear
that than anything. But my songs are I can deliver.
I'm a I'm a performer, you know, I'm more than
an artist. I think it being such a performer. I'm

(01:51:43):
such a performer. That has kept me from getting artists respect,
like you know, like these guys that just stand there
and sing, and you know, I never get that respect.

Speaker 2 (01:51:51):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:51:51):
They always talk about my show and my rap, what
I sit on stage, and my antics and and this
and that. So I jump around and run around. I
can deliver a song, a brand new song, as good
as I can deliver. I can't drive fifty five, so
so I don't worry about new songs and my fans
if I'm not opening for someone, which I never do.
If they're all my fans, and they'll they love anything

(01:52:13):
because they're used to be in cabbo where I go
on stage and I'll play two hours, but not even
play one of my own songs, you know, for two
ficking hours with the right guys, you know, so they're
used to that. You know, I'm almost like the grateful dead.
They're used to saying, well, these you don't know what
you're gonna get, but you know you're going to get
a party, you know. And I like being that guy.
I love it, and I of course I play. I

(01:52:35):
always end the show with mas tequila, heavy metal, one
way to rock or if I can't drive fifty five.
Almost always end my set that way. I don't do
encores anymore, haven't done on Coors for fifteen years since
I left fan Hanel, and I don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:52:49):
I don't leave the stage. I finish my show.

Speaker 3 (01:52:53):
There's an hour and forty minutes whatever it is, and
I stand there and I've opened up a cocktail or
make mix myself a drink right out stage. We fuck around,
Everybody goes to towels off, Mike and I do a toast,
do a couple of shots, a couple of pops.

Speaker 2 (01:53:06):
Drummer walks around. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:53:08):
I talk to the people and they don't even bother,
like yeah me. You know they know that we're not done,
you know. And then when I feel like it, then
we just start playing encores.

Speaker 2 (01:53:17):
And I usually like to end my whole show of
all together.

Speaker 3 (01:53:22):
Before you walk out that show, you're gonna hear either
Eagles Fly, Father Time now or when it's Love by
Van Halem, and it's usually Eagles Fly or Father Time,
and then when it's love and then it's all like,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:53:38):
This is what it's all about. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:53:39):
That song it's one of the greatest ballads ever written
in the history of rock, I think. And I'm proud
of that lyric. I'm proud of that music Eddie wrote.
And that song gives me the goosebumps every freaking time.
So that's playing new songs, it just would just be
it's just part of the event because it's an it's

(01:54:00):
not a show, it's not a set, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:54:03):
And I can't wait to go back out again.

Speaker 3 (01:54:07):
And I'm really interested in really really digging deep into
van Halen. See I've shied away from doing that because
of now you know, the friction between us and you know,
and there was van Halen. But now that Eddie's gone
and I've hit al a hundred times out, call me.

(01:54:28):
Let's get together. Let's make some music, you know what
I mean. It's not about trying to be van Halen.
It's about give a servant the fans, and let's play
that music together. For God's sakes, how could you not
when you're the least singers still alive. You've got two
of them that are still alive. One of them is
less user friendly. But Mikey and Alan myself just let's

(01:54:50):
just go play music, you know, And he just won't respond.
Since Eddie's death, he's been really shut down with me anyway.
So I'm gonna go out and play that fucking music,
you know what I mean. I feel like it's well,
I can still sing it. I got Michael Anthony, He's
the other half. We call ourselves the other half, you know.
There's ed All and Sam and Mike, you know, and

(01:55:11):
we've roomed that we've traveled that way too. So I'm
really horny after taking this year off to do some
of them, more of even more than I've ever done,
because I think the fans need it, you know. I
just hope I can sing long enough to be able
to play my greatest hits, A little Chicken Foot, a

(01:55:31):
little Montros. Always got to play one Mantro song, you know,
Space Station of five, rock Candy or Bad Motor Scooter.
I mean, I have to do that, and I don't know,
so if I can my voice a hold up to
be able to sing two.

Speaker 2 (01:55:44):
And a half or three hours.

Speaker 3 (01:55:46):
Maybe taking a break in between, maybe Mikey sings a
few of the old Van Halen songs and like we
do now, he sings around with the Devil, or he
sings Ain't talking about love in the middle of the show.
Maybe he sings a few more of those and I
take a little break, but somehow so we can get
it all in to the definitive Sammy show. You know,
let's you know, finish what you started here, you know

(01:56:07):
what I mean. It's like Eddie's death really really made
it so dysfunctional because either you know, him and I
were the fearless leaders, you know, really, I mean, roth
was a leader in his day. I was a leader
in my day, and then Eddie became the leader, you know,
after I was gone, and it's like without a leader,
there's no one hurting the cats, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:56:28):
And Wolfey it's not his job. You know, I love
what he's doing.

Speaker 3 (01:56:32):
He's he's killing it out there by himself, you know,
playing all the instruments. You know, he doesn't want to
carry on the vand Handle legacy, but it has to
be carried on. Some of the greatest songs in rock
ever written, and for nobody to be able to go
out there and do the whole thing is crazy. You know,
Roth can't sing my song, so he you know, I
don't want to say it, but you know he he

(01:56:52):
doesn't do that great of a job on his own,
so he don't want to. He don't want to mess
around with mind. But you know I can sing his songs,
and Mikey can sing his songs. It's like, you know,
if he wanted to join us, oh, I'd say, come
on in a minute, but I already tried that. He's
not so user friendly. But they're not criticizing him at all. Man,
those songs are great. The early fucking van Halen. Van

(01:57:16):
Halen don't have a stinker in their whole fucking catalog.
You know, even stupid songs like on the Inside that
we did on fifty and fifty, it's still great. You know,
ice cream, man, it's still great. You know they're they're
they could do no wrong. You got fucking Eddy van
Halen playing guitar. It's got to come out pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:57:38):
Okay, speaking of songs, and you mentioned Murk, which has
the company Hypnosis, who owns your songs.

Speaker 3 (01:57:43):
Now, I sold a great deal of my early catalog
to Warner Chapel, which was my you know label for
most of the years for all that, and they've always
been my publishers, and I sold a lot of it
to them, but not my new stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:57:59):
I still own all my new stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:58:01):
And when I say my new stuff from about Chicken
foot on.

Speaker 1 (01:58:08):
Now you sold the stuff, do you regret selling it?

Speaker 2 (01:58:13):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:58:14):
The I mean if I needed money, I would regret
because the amount you can sell it for today from
what I sold it for is like ten times. But
I don't need money, so I don't regret because the
amount of money those songs were earning and for compared
per year, it would have taken me twenty years to

(01:58:35):
get the money that I sold them for. And I thought, well,
why just sit and collect them little trinkets when I
could have a big chunk and I can do something
with that, right, And that was my philosophy way back then,
way before these people were selling their kind of like
boy was the only guy that you know, I remember
Bowie sold his rights years ago. First got to do that,
and that impressed the fuck out of me. But I

(01:58:56):
didn't know how I was going to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:58:57):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:58:57):
It's like nobody was beating on my doors saying hey,
So Warner Chell said hey, we want, you know, want
to buy you your songs, and I thought, well, maybe
they'll do something with them. You know, that would be
great because the music just kind of sitting there dying.
Things were changing, records weren't selling. So I thought it
made a good deal. And I did make a good deal,

(01:59:19):
but not by today's standards. So I'm like Mark, you know,
I'm sure he would be right there in line. He's
a fan, and we talked about it.

Speaker 2 (01:59:29):
Believe me.

Speaker 3 (01:59:29):
You know, it's like, yeah, if I needed money, I'd
be kicking myself and the assid right now.

Speaker 2 (01:59:34):
I'll just sell another tequila company. What the hell?

Speaker 3 (01:59:36):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:59:38):
Okay, going back to Van Haalen, Legendarily, you were hooked
up by your mechanic. Yeah, you had been with mocros
on Warner Brothers. You were then with Capital, you'd switch
to Geffen. You really had some emphasis, you were really
going you go to play with the boys and ye,

(02:00:00):
well wait a second, you know I got something going
on with myself phone. Do you immediately say I'm all in.

Speaker 3 (02:00:08):
Boy? Bob you're telling it like it is. I didn't
plan on joining that band for five seconds. When Eddie
called me, I thought, oh, this is great. Because I
was talking to Ted. I was getting ready to start writing.
You know, I've just come off tour, but I was
gonna start writing, and Ted was coaching me all the time. Hey,
you know, how about this song? How about that song?
With a song like this? I was sending him little

(02:00:29):
snippets and we were talking about doing a new wear.
So I thought, oh, fuck, man, I'll get Eddie to
play on my record. This would be like the shit. Yeah,
oh boy, but what was it. I wouldn't even considering
joining that band. You know, I was selling double arenas
almost in every city at that time, and Platt every
album was platinum, you know, so uh I it was

(02:00:50):
so weird. I thought, well, Eddie says, well, just come
on down. I said, oh, man, I just got off
on tour. Just cut all my hair off. Man, I
need a break, man, fuck, I said, But I got
to come down and get my car anyway, because he
had seen my car in there. So I thought, well, okay,
I'll come down.

Speaker 2 (02:01:07):
I come down. I walk in the studio. It was
a silly thing.

Speaker 3 (02:01:11):
I'm sure everybody's heard this story reading in my book
and stuff. But those guys have been up all night
playing working on songs. Summer Nights and good Enough and
a couple of little other jams that were both on
fifty and fifty. And they were burnts in that place,
smell like booze and cigarettes. And I actually wore a suit.
It was a cool suit, you know, like a Versace suit.

(02:01:34):
I wore a fucking suit down into them, and Alex
has got a contract. You have to sign this, a
non disclosure or anything.

Speaker 2 (02:01:40):
You're here, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:01:41):
And then I'm going, what the fuck are these guys are?
These guys are crazy, you know. But finally I said, well,
let's just play some music, you know, and they said okay,
you know, so we went in and we started playing
did you sign the NBA bok No. Alex is funny.

(02:02:02):
Back in those days, he was really trying to be
a businessman. He was trying to, you know, be kind
of like the band leader, you know, because especially after Roth,
he thought he was going to step in there. And
I walked in and we started playing music. I heard
those Eddie and Now play together, and you know, never
mind Mike. You know, it was the magic between those

(02:02:24):
two guys. Mike was just filling in the holes on base.
That's the way you have to play with those two.
It was the most loosest, greasiest fucking groove I've ever
heard in my life in rock. It reminded me so
much of Cream, my favorite band ever, much more than
that Zeppelin. I love Cream because Cream always played things
slow and the way Ginger Baker played and it was

(02:02:48):
always slow, Budy, It's not slow like Sabbath, but just
slower like I'm always hyper.

Speaker 2 (02:02:57):
I'd always say, you know, I'm.

Speaker 3 (02:02:58):
Speed it up, you know, right, But they alan ed
kept it down in that deep, greasy pocket. I fell
in love the same thing. When I went to Cabo.
I just said, oh fuck, I'm in this band. You
know what I mean? This is And I just started singing.

Speaker 2 (02:03:12):
Summer Nights and my radio.

Speaker 3 (02:03:15):
And everybody's going whoa, and you know, look at goosebumps.
There they are again, here they come. You can't. You
just can't describe how it was, like, oh fuck, you know,
I want to be in this van. I don't care.
My manager goes, are you crazy? I go see David Geffen.
Are you crazy? He goes, you realize you're gonna you're

(02:03:37):
gonna take a pay cut. You know, you make more
money your SOULO wars they got to and he goes,
those guys are a mess, you know. And he tried
to talk me out of it. And I'm saying, no, Dave,
you don't understand ed Leffer and me sitting there and
David Geff and he's sitting on his desk, scratching his head, pacing.

Speaker 2 (02:03:55):
He goes, you're my biggest artist right now. You know.
He went on this.

Speaker 3 (02:03:58):
Whole guilt trip on me. And then he finally he goes,
you know what, it sounds like, you really want to
do this. I said, I really do want to do this.
He goes, I would never stop an artist from doing
what they want to do. And I went, wow, what
a good man. And he said, I mean it. I'll
take care of this. Let me talk to Mooston and
we'll figure this out. And then he went put a

(02:04:19):
gun to Mosad, said you want to see me in
your band?

Speaker 2 (02:04:23):
This is my biggest artist. I want half the record.

Speaker 3 (02:04:26):
This is a rumor I heard he got half of
the fifty one to fifty record and he got another
Sammy Hagar record, a solo record without giving Warners half
of it, because that's what their deal. And then he
moved on to Universal after that. But at that time,
that's what he got out of that deal. I'm thinking, Yeah,
you would never stop an artist from doing with there

(02:04:48):
as long as it's good for you. Na, David Geffen
was He broke me, you know, worldwide. And I never
forget that man. They believed in me, you know, Carter,
I mean fucking Carter. I love Carter more than any
other person, and that in this business for what he
did for me, and what he did for Tina, what
he did for Bob Seeger, how many people, what he

(02:05:10):
did for the motels, he did it. He stood up
for you, you know, against the corporate put his neck
on the line.

Speaker 2 (02:05:17):
Nobody does that, none of them other A and R guys.

Speaker 3 (02:05:21):
John Klardner was good for me, same way, but he
wouldn't put his neck on the line. He'd go, yeah,
ain't gonna happen. You know that's single. He go, No,
that single's not going to be a hit. And I'd
say why not. They say they're not gonna put the money.
Come on, you gotta be getting. He wouldn't go in
there and go to batle like Carter Wood. So even

(02:05:41):
though I had hits on jupping it out with Carter
but anyway.

Speaker 1 (02:05:46):
Okay, so ed Leffler, Okay, he had a legendary reputation.
How did you hook up with him? How good was he?
What was his magic? Noel was pushed aside. Edward was
the manager van Halen? Then ed and to what degree
did that break up van Halen?

Speaker 3 (02:06:03):
It totally broke up Van Halo. Ed Leffler was the
best manager on the planet. He was a one man dog.
He had Juice Newton for five minutes and he you know,
but he really he managed van Halen and he was he.

Speaker 2 (02:06:14):
He lived and breathed van Halen. You know.

Speaker 3 (02:06:17):
Every Tuesday night they get together all the promo guys
at his house with all the hookers in the freaking
drugs and rock and rolling, and they would have the
time of their lives to be getting your airplay for
the next week. I mean, he lived and breathed it.
And when he when Eddie and I we never we

(02:06:40):
never had to discuss anything between us except music, and
because ed Leffler took care of it. If we had
a problem. We took it to Ed and Ed would say, well,
Eddie's not going to like that. I'd say, yeah, but Ed,
you know, I want to do this solo record, you know,
blah blah blah. I'm getting a divorce and and I
can use that money, you know, pay my wife off.
You know, so I want to do the greatest hits record.

(02:07:01):
Edie's not gonna like it, you know that. I'm going, yeah, well,
can you fix it? He could fix it right, and
then you know, nothing to be said. Ever, I never
mad to talk to Eddie about it. When Ed Lefler died,
I had to talk to Eddie about things, and when
he had to talk to me about things, and it
was like, what.

Speaker 2 (02:07:17):
The fuck are you talking about? No fucking way am I.

Speaker 3 (02:07:19):
You know, So he kept the band together absolutely, one
hundred percent. And then you bring in a new guy
who kind of poisons the brothers seeing where the power
is at this time. Now they were kind of going
against me. We all know that there was a you know,
like I was the outsider guy. So you know, he

(02:07:41):
went with them. They said, we don't want Sammy to
do solo records. Okay, I'll fix it. Goes to Warner Brothers,
take his name off. No more solo records of Samy.
I had a contract record do a solo record after
every band, Halo record if I wanted, and I never did.

Speaker 2 (02:07:53):
But it was a.

Speaker 3 (02:07:54):
Huge deal Leffler made when I joined the band, so
they took that, you know, it just start all that
kind of poisoning stuff. And then as soon as I
got thrown out of the band and he brought Gary Sharona,
and we all know about that, he got thrown out
with Gary.

Speaker 2 (02:08:10):
So it just was a shame the way it all
went down.

Speaker 3 (02:08:13):
Leffler, if he wouldn't have died, Van Haler would still
be together, absolutely and still the biggest band in the world.
But Ed I met Ed, he had that band Sweet,
and I was just signed to Capitol and Sweet was
on Capital. So they were playing their their American debut
at with their big hit ballroom Blitz or whatever. It
was their first one and at the Santa Monica Civic.

(02:08:38):
This is a great story, Bob, I got. I gotta
go in one step deeper because this is a great story.
Paul Kossoff from Free who was had a real bad
drug problem and I I was opening for him at
that that old rock and roll place down on Santa Monica.

Speaker 2 (02:08:57):
What was that rock club? Our Wood? Yeah, maybe it
was a star War?

Speaker 3 (02:09:03):
Was it the Star War? That's not on Santa Monic.
I mean that's not on Sunset. The star Ward was down.

Speaker 1 (02:09:08):
Not on Sunset, it is on it was on Santa Monica.

Speaker 2 (02:09:11):
Yeah, that's it. Then by the Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (02:09:13):
Okay, So I'm opening for Paul Kossoff there doing my
Capital debut. I'm I'm auditioning for a Capitol deal. Paul
Kossoff was wasted. I killed it for one thing. Leffler
was there, saw me, right, and they said, we want
to We're gonna sign that guy, uh, Carter and all

(02:09:34):
those guys. So they said, we want to sign that guy,
meaning me, and maybe you can put him on tour
with Sweet And Leffler said, quote unquote them, you think
I would let that fucking wild ass, blonde, fuzzy haired
motherfucker play before my band? You're crazy, right? And Carter
told me this story. Ed told me too later, so
they said, oh, fuck, you know whatever. So I did

(02:09:55):
get to meet it, none of that. The next two
days later, Paul coss Up was on an airplane the
next day to San Diego for another show. He died
on the plane of an overdose and there hat attack
whatever happened to him. He was opening for Sweet, so
they go, hey, you know, hey, that guy you saw
get him on the show. Head's going fuck yeah, he's

(02:10:18):
all you know, I guess he was all pissed off
and he let me do it. I killed it. I
jumped off the stage, went into the audience, fucking you know.
I did every trick in the book. And Sweet comes
on stage. They did good, but you know, I did
really good, and and ed after the show, he asked

(02:10:38):
if somebody to bring me into the dress room to
meet with Sweet, and he I walk in. He's got
the lead singer in the fucking corner. He's smoking a cigarette,
he's got his finger in his face and he's telling him,
you see.

Speaker 2 (02:10:49):
What that fucking guy did. You see what that fucking
guy did.

Speaker 3 (02:10:51):
And you're standing up there, you know, like some fucking pompous,
you know, asshole Rock started.

Speaker 2 (02:10:55):
He was chewing him out hard. Man.

Speaker 3 (02:10:57):
I walk in and there goes, hey, just a minute,
and I want to see you, And I said, okay.
I mean he was so mafiosa. I fell in love
with him too. I was like, oh God, I got it.
This guy's got to manage me. So he came in
and said, okay, I'm gonna sign you and going to
get you a deal with the Capital and then and
that's that's the way it happened. He became my father,
my mentor everything. If I had a business problem, I

(02:11:21):
called ed Leffler. If I had a marital problem, I
called ed Leffler. If I had a legal problem, I
called ed Leffler and he fucking fixed it. He was
the king. He was so hot headed though he hid
be I remember Bill Graham. Eddie Money opened for me
on a Bill Graham show, and Bill Graham managed Eddie
Money and conquered and we had all these special lights,

(02:11:43):
you know, I from my headline too. We had four
spotlights on stage operators behind me and Eddie Muddy's opening
the show and Bill Graham's telling him, hey, get them
spotlights on telling the lighting guy said you can't do it.
The left and said, fuck you, those are our spotlights,
you know, And they got into it, him and Bill Graham.
I'm gotting a freck and fistfight, all rolling, all over
the backstage area. And I mean he just was that

(02:12:06):
kind of guy. He was not going to say roll over.
He was tough man, he was awesome. I love that man.
I'll tell you I still dream about him. I have
dreams of him. I have dreams of Carter too. Just
every now and then they come to me and just
have a nice little dream. It's really cool.

Speaker 1 (02:12:25):
Just to go back to the beginning for a minute.
So you're a sharp dressed kid in school. Everybody likes you.
How did you get into playing music? And the Beatles
didn't hit till seventy four sixty four when you were seventeen,
so what was going on there?

Speaker 2 (02:12:42):
You know?

Speaker 3 (02:12:43):
The crazy thing is I was more of a Stones
guy than the Beatles. But I did learn I want
to hold your hand, my mom. I wanted a guitar.
I decided I was gonna I could sing. See And
I had this older friend that was in my brother's age,
three years older than me. He had a car, he
had a guitar, an amplifier. He was kind of a
rich kid, and he liked me because I was I

(02:13:06):
was cool. I looked like a rock star and he
had met me through my brother and he he you know,
it's just really a funny thing.

Speaker 2 (02:13:13):
A guy named Ed Mattson, he taught me how to
play guitar. U.

Speaker 3 (02:13:17):
He taught me how to drive a car, and he
would he brought his guitar and ample over my house
and he said, man, your mom would get you a guitar.
And I said, my mom, she said, if you learned
how to play never on Sunday, I'll get one from
the series catalog.

Speaker 2 (02:13:31):
It was thirty nine ninety five, you know that one
in the case. I bought it.

Speaker 3 (02:13:34):
I bought one recently for eighteen hundred fucking dollars right
because I had to have it.

Speaker 2 (02:13:41):
But and I learned how to play it.

Speaker 3 (02:13:42):
My mom bought me his guitar, and him and I
started a band, just the two of us, and we'd
go play parties, you know with you know, one of
my girlfriends or something, have a birthday part in her garage.
And I'd say, me and my my well, my band
will play. And we played instrumentals. We played Dick Dale
and we played you know, soft wipe out and songs
like that without a drummer. And I want to hold

(02:14:03):
your Hand, I think was the first Beatles song. And
then when the Stones record came out, we fucking learned
the whole Stones record. But I could sing, so, you know,
I decided I was going to be a singer because
I'd be hanging around with my buddies in the car
and and you know, I'd start singing any song came
on the radio. I could sing it. I knew the
lyrics and I could sing the melody. And they and

(02:14:24):
they used to get pissed out. I say, how do
you know all these fucking songs? I'm saying, I just
know them, you know, and I still do. I never
used teleprompter, And so he goes, oh yeah, they'd shut
the radio off, okay, sing Satisfaction by the Stones, and
you know, I'd blow it out man, you know, acapella,
and then they'd have contests and'd be like trying to
stump Sammy. Man. I was like rain Man. So I

(02:14:45):
could sing. So everybody thought I was going to be
a rock stars. So I started telling people rockstar winn
at words. I start telling people I'm gonna be you
know things, I'm gonna be like Mick Jagger, you know,
it'd be like Elvis, and everybody believed me around town.
I was one of those guys. I started dressing apart,
so they said Mattson guy. He thought I was really cool.
He said, yeah, this guy's got it.

Speaker 2 (02:15:02):
Man.

Speaker 3 (02:15:02):
I started a band with him. He's like and so
because he was a really good musician. He could play anything.
He's really smart guy. So he took me to see
Donovan first American parents, at a place called The Trip
in La.

Speaker 2 (02:15:16):
Do you remember the Trip? I don't know if you know.

Speaker 1 (02:15:19):
Before I know the Trip, but I didn't live in
La then.

Speaker 3 (02:15:21):
So Donovan was playing there by himself, and it was
the most magical thing I've ever seen in my life.
I was too young to get in and got a
fake id ed could get in. He was eighteen. I wasn't.

Speaker 2 (02:15:32):
I was. I guess I was fifteen if he was eighteen.

Speaker 3 (02:15:36):
But anyway, we got in and Donovan sitting there in
a stool and velvet and lace, big oh, just fucking
velvet and lace and his hair and the way he
had a you know, fucking poofed up like Bob Dellan.

Speaker 2 (02:15:51):
But he was gorgeous. He was like an angel.

Speaker 3 (02:15:54):
And he's setting on a stool with acoustic guitar with
a spotlight on him, and it was the most magical
thing I'd ever seen in my life. I thought, this
guy looks like God, he looks like an angels Jesus.

Speaker 2 (02:16:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:16:06):
And he was just mesmerizing. And then he took a
break and he came back with a band. He played
Sunshine Superman, and I was fucking done.

Speaker 2 (02:16:15):
That was it. I was. I wanted to be Donovan.

Speaker 3 (02:16:17):
If you know, I've recorded Donovan, two Donovan songs on
my records. Early Carter introduced me to him finally one
day and just a huge Donovan fan. Over Dylan Stones,
over beetles Ford, over Chevy, you know, but you know
the but so that kind of set me on my
path and and s Ed Matson guy really coached me along.

(02:16:40):
He turned me on to the Donovant I mean little
He turned me on too, Bob Dylan then and he
turned me on to you know, the Stones of course,
but I had already seen the Stones. Him and I
went to see their first America performance. George Babcock brought
him to the Swing auditorium and Semragi and we snuck
in and saw the Stones.

Speaker 2 (02:16:56):
I said, I want to be micking Keith together.

Speaker 3 (02:16:58):
Then I then I saw Creams performance at the Whiskey
and then I said, I want to be I want
to be Eric Clapton, and you know, I just jumped around.
But that's in the beginning. I was like a chameleon, man,
I could. I could really absorb things from these rock
stars people that I would see. And then I became

(02:17:19):
a Rod Stewart fanatic too for a long time, and
that's when I really started performing more. I started, you know,
running around on stage and saying goofy things and throwing
a party. Rod in the Face's best party on the
planet at that time. I think Paul Rogers, those kind
of guys really all influenced me. Gary Broker from Proc o'harum,
I still think one of the greatest singers ever. He

(02:17:39):
could just keep going higher and you go, fuck you
take away the higher. And I learned how to sing,
you know, the way I sing dreams and those songs
that way, or just go hire and hire. I learned
how to do that from him. And I don't know
how I did it, but I didn't learn anything. I
just pushed myself to do it, you know. But I'm
otis Redding. All those people have really influenced and they

(02:18:00):
still do I'm a sponge A boy always said that
about himself, you know, people said, don't ever wear a
new pair of shoes around boy Mick Jagger hurting quotes.
He said he'll have them the next day. I'm a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (02:18:15):
Like, okay, switching gears. Just back to No. You were
talking about guy, you were talking about trust, etc. We
have a very divided country. You're one of the few
people who can appeal to both sides. Is there any hope?
And if you could snap your fingers, what would you

(02:18:38):
do to bring us together?

Speaker 2 (02:18:40):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (02:18:41):
If I knew how to do that, Bob, I would
run for president. If I were in my sixties, even
right now, I would run for fucking president. And I'm
dead serious, and only agenda I would have. I would
have one fucking agenda, and that would be to unite
this country. How I would do that, I'm not sure,

(02:19:03):
but that would be my only agenda. I'd say, don't
talk to me about foreign policy, none of that right now,
because this country needs to be at least seventy thirty,
you know, get over this fifty to fifty divide. If
we could get eighty percent of the people behind the president,
and we could say we're united. Okay, this country united

(02:19:26):
can change the world. We could there would we would
cure the homeless situation, which is a big problem which
I would want to cure. I would want to cure
hunger and crime in this country. And but if we
were united, we would do it together.

Speaker 2 (02:19:40):
See if we.

Speaker 3 (02:19:42):
Could reunite this country, the United States of America. I
want to My platform would be I want to get
rid of red and I want to get rid of blue.
Let's be the purple country. And I know it's nothing
to do with Prince Purple. Red and blue make purple.
Let's unite and get rid of this big divide. It
breaks my heart to see what's happening in this country.
And as long as the people that are running this

(02:20:04):
country are running it the way they are and trying
to squash the other side. You know, it's like the
right is trying to kill the left. The left is
trying to kill the right. You know, they're throwing a president,
a guy that was president, you know, indicting him, trying
to get him in prison so he can't run again.
I mean, it's so dirty. Politics have always been dirty,
but the way that each side is treating each other

(02:20:26):
it's just never going to stop the divide. We've got
to stop that shit. And I would be independent, and
I would I would just say I'm running for the purple.
Just make this country purple, and and just stop. That's
you don't know how how it breaks my heart because
I'm too old, you know, I can't run.

Speaker 1 (02:20:47):
Okay. And do you own any electric cars?

Speaker 2 (02:20:50):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (02:20:51):
Three, both both two of them are in my wife's
name and ones on ones in both our names. Listen,
you can only drive one car at a time. I
got a bunch of cuts and I said, will you
own all those gas customers, all those smug making deep cars.
I said, no, yeah, I own them, but I only
drive one at a time. I'm not out there driving

(02:21:12):
twelve cars and once fucking the environment, you know.

Speaker 2 (02:21:16):
So that's my excuse.

Speaker 3 (02:21:17):
But yeah, we have a Tesla and it's our second one,
and we have an Audi or eight or whatever it is,
eight hundred full electric. And I'm i gotta tell you,
I give, I give. Once you've driven and gotten used
to an electric car, it's the only way to go.

(02:21:40):
It's so unbelievable. You stop looking at gas stations, you
stop looking at you know you're going, you know, you
don't have to take it in and get the oil change.

Speaker 2 (02:21:47):
It's like, it's fucking brilliant.

Speaker 3 (02:21:50):
And if the electric company doesn't stick us up so
bad that electricity we can't afford electric cars the way
they've done with gas, then that would be the worst
thing that could happen.

Speaker 2 (02:22:01):
But it's probably gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (02:22:02):
But we put electric solar panels in the house, put
the electric plug in, and we basically drive for free.

Speaker 2 (02:22:08):
And I'm telling you right now, you can't beat that.
And our man.

Speaker 3 (02:22:15):
Musk has done a brilliant job with putting charging devices
around and places where you can go charge your cars,
so it's no longer like, well, I can't go anywhere
on a long trip. You know, yeah you can. If
you can do, it's the future, There's no question about it.
I would give up and I'd put my cars. I'd
probably have to build a museum though, so I could

(02:22:36):
put my cars in, so I could go look at
them and sit in and put a big movie theater.
I always said, if I can't drive my Ferraris and
my really exotic cars and they're too valuable or the
government won't let me drive them, I'll get myself a
really cool museum. I'll put a big giant screen up
in there, and I'll go sit in them and eat

(02:22:58):
popcorn and watch movies.

Speaker 4 (02:23:03):
I'm that note, Sammy. I think we're gonna wrap it up.
I could talk to you for all all day. I mean,
it's easy to see why you're successful. Is there anybody
you don't get along with?

Speaker 3 (02:23:16):
Alex van Halen right and Diamond Dave, we don't seem
to get along. I can get along with him, but
he can't get along with me.

Speaker 2 (02:23:26):
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 (02:23:30):
I hope to bury the hatchet with Alan, if there
is a hatchet to bury it, and I buried it,
and so Alan I can do it too. I hate enemies.
I don't go through life making enemies. It's not my game.
I'll bend over backwards. Y's guilty, wrong, I'm sorry. I
will say I'm sorry so fast you wouldn't believe it.
So yeah, I just want to see this country come together.
We'll leave it on that and yes, that's where my

(02:23:54):
heart's at.

Speaker 1 (02:23:55):
On that note, we'll leave it till next time. This
is Bob left set

Speaker 3 (02:24:22):
S

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Bob Lefsetz

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