November 9, 1997
As shows go, Hagar's was just horrible

Sammy Hagar must have felt like he had a lot of catching up to do at the Warehouse last night.

Maybe a little too much, as a jaunt through his lengthy career -- first as the lead singer of '70s band Montrose, then as a solo artist, then as the frontman for Van Halen, then as a solo artist again -- turned into a three-hour opus, a virtual-reality box-set collection nightmare of unending Samminess.

This, of course, shouldn't have been such a bad thing for hardcore fans, at whom the show was aimed.

But Hagar, who replaced David Lee Roth in Van Halen in 1985 and was summarily sacked by the group in June of last year, never really got around to delivering much of a show.

Instead, the singer stalled between songs, spinning long, laid-back yarns about how he met his bass player, religion, drinking in Mexico, turning 50 while drinking in Mexico ...

"You should feed candy to women, it fattens them up and makes their (breasts) bigger," went one particularly memorable epigram.

Hagar's four-person backing band even took a breather during a half-time intermission.

Not Sammy. He demonstrated how to make a really bad-ass margarita.

"This is like coming over and seeing me in my backyard," he kidded while mixing cocktails.

"Most bands would be out of town by now. We're just getting started."

Actually, Hagar would have been out of town too were he not bent on bending the ears of his fans.

Not surprising were the number of protests he received from the extremely well-lubricated crowd to just "shut up and play."

When Hagar did -- hair bouncing, mike stand twirling, banshee-wail piercing -- he had no trouble finding his stage legs.

And the audience seemed happy enough at other times to talk amongst themselves for the interminable waiting periods between Van Halen tunes like Why Can't This Be Love, and the appropriately titled Finish What You Started.

An acoustic ballad, Who Has The Right, from Hagar's current solo album Marching To Mars, barely carried past the first five rows of Bic lighters.

Hagar's band seemed to gradually lose interest as well, and were a shambles by the time they reached a pre-intermission mauling of Bo Diddley's Bo Diddley.

Color me humorless, they'd have been better off saving that one for Vegas, where it would fit in nicely alongside Hagar's cracks at stand-up comedy.

JAM! Rating: 2 out of 5