is a one-man institution. He’s fronted two of America’s greatest bands, worked with an array of musicians that reads like a of rock and, in his eighth decade, can still show rock stars half his age how it’s done onstage. He’s set up his own night club, launched his own brand of tequila and entertainingly bad-mouthed everyone and anyone whose crossed swords with him during a career that stretches back to the late 60s.
Yet his name doesn’t carry quite the same clout as, say, Steven Tyler or . This curious state of affairs could be partly down to the fact that Hagar has never been one to bask in his own glory. After paying his dues in such long-forgotten late 60s/early 70s Californian bands as The Fabulous Castilles, Manhole, the Justice Brothers and Samson & Hagar, he got his big break when he joined Montrose.
The combination of Hagar’s powerhouse vocals and ’s incendiary guitar attack put both the band and the singer on the rock’n’roll map. But in a taste of what was to come later in his career, Hagar butted heads with the guitarist and walked out halfway through the tour for their second album, . Embarking on a successful solo career, Hagar released a string of albums that chimed with the feelgood, party-hard times of the late 70s and early 80s, setting him up as a solo star on both sides of the Atlantic.
All that was rudely interrupted in 1985 when he got a call from asking him to replace the ousted Dave Lee Roth in . Lesser personalities might have been ov.