Sammy Hagar has always refused to perform before or after AC/DC, due to how well they go down with audiences. And his thoughts on the matter were cemented when he witnessed an unpleasant situation involving his former bandmate Ronnie Montrose in the mid ‘70s.
“I just left a band called Montrose… we were like the American Led Zeppelin type band,” the singer says in a new interview with the Bon Scott Estate. Even though Montrose had fired him, they were still on speaking terms when the guitarist launched an instrumental project.
“AC/DC opened up for him in our hometown of San Jose, California. And I went to see AC/DC. It was AC/DC’s first time over here, I think, and they opened for Ronnie – and they killed it. I’m just going, ‘Oh my God.’”
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He remembers standing with Montrose as they watched the show. “Angus got on Bon’s back, and he went through the audience. I mean, they just ruined it! It was a small place, about 2,000 people, and Ronnie was getting ready to go on.
“I said, ‘Ronnie, you want me to come out and sing Bad Motor Scooter or Rock Candy or something with you? ‘Cause, dude, you’re gonna have a hard time.’ It was horrible. I had to leave in the middle of his show. It was embarrassing.”
He adds: “AC/DC did that to everyone. Anytime they opened for someone, you were in trouble. Later on in Van Halen we used to get offered festivals with AC/DC – they did it one time before I was in the band. [After that] we always said, ‘No, no, no. We don’t even wanna be on a show with AC/DC. I’ll pay money to go see AC/DC, but we don’t wanna be before them. We don’t wanna be after them.’”
Hagar confirms himself as a Scott fan, explaining: “He was always on the edge of his voice cracking; fust one more step and he’d lose it. It’s like a car driving on the edge in a race and almost losing it in every turn, and that’s how you win a race. So I really liked that about him.”
He compares his situation as David Lee Roth’s replacement in Van Halen to Brian Johnson’s replacement of Scott in AC/DC. “There’s always that stigma,” he admits. “Brian pulled it off, the same way I pulled it off.
“But you ask anyone, they’re gonna say, ‘Well, if Bon wouldn’t have died…’ He was AC/DC, man. That early stuff is just so badass. It’s so just in the pocket – he’s just screaming his guts out, screaming his lungs out over the top of that. That is rock ’n’ roll.”
