London Free Press

Sammy Hagar says he had no choice but to write his warts-and-all memoir, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, which recently became a No. 1 New York Times best seller.

"I started forgetting a lot of early stuff. I'm going, 'I have to do this now,' " said a tanned and friendly Hagar, 63, dressed in his trademark T-shirt, shorts, and plastic shoes (no socks) in an interview with QMI Agency in Toronto.

"I don't have a diary. I never kept notes. (But) in my head I'd store things. When something would happen I'd go, 'This is going in the book!' So I thought, I had to do it and if you're going to do it, then you have to be honest."

Man, is he ever.

Fans will eat up all the behind-the-scenes dirt on Hagar's 40-year rise up rock ranks first with Montrose, then as a solo artist, the tumultuous years as frontman of Van Halen and his ill-fated 2004 reunion tour with the band, and an equally disasterous trek with David Lee Roth, and now as the frontman of Chickenfoot with Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony (see accompanying book excerpts).

Hagar said he didn't give any of the parties involved a heads up about the book, except for Anthony, who wrote the book's forward, and doesn't know how they will react.

"It's none of their business. It's my book. They can write their own books and say whatever they want about me. I'm sure there will be some kind of reaction. I don't know what to expect.

But reading the gory details of backstage life with Van Halen, one senses Hagar might have finally put the nail in the coffin of any hope of reunion, although he recently told Rolling Stone magazine there was as much as a 90% chance it could happen if Eddie Van halen "was totally cool and was back to the guy I used to know, or a new guy, not the guy I knew the last time."

Hagar last spoke to Eddie during Thanksgiving 2004 and Van Halen has reportedly been back in the studio with Roth in the past year attempting to make a new album.

"When him and Al's mother died about a year later (in 2005), I left them both extended messages on their voice mail," said Hagar. "And I never heard back. I love Al and Al loves me but he's loyal to his brother and his brother hates my guts and why, I don't know, but he does. When my mother died, Al sent flowers."

Sex, drugs, rock' n' roll and maybe one alien encounter aside, the Hagar faithful may even be more surprised at his hardscrabble life as a child growing in Fontana, Calif.

The book publicly details for the first time Hagar's poverty-stricken but happy - he insists - childhood, where his beloved mother and three siblings were constantly on the run from his alcoholic father, who often physically (and even sexually) abused his mom, before eventually dying a homeless drunk in the backseat of police car.

"Man, I would just hope and pray that they would get back together," said Hagar. "As a little kid, oh man, that's all I wanted, hmmmm (he pauses, coming close to tears). You're going too deep on me, girl. I think the childhood thing, the reason I felt comfortable writing about it is because I know there's worse off kids in the world today."

It's shocking, he admits, but his fans will understand him better.

"I was less than blue collar," said Hagar. "The cool thing about being poor, growing up and having parents that love you, my mother was such a great mom.

"My dad was a crazy guy but he was a wonderful, bighearted guy. When someone makes you feel loved, the hardships aren't there, I swear."

There's also details about Hagar's phenomenal success as a businessperson, from early fire sprinkler and mountain bike companies to later having three Cabo Wabo restaurants and a tequila brand, the latter which he recently sold off the majority of to Gruppo Campari for $80 million.

"I was kind of desperate and my career didn't take off instantly so my mom had instilled in me, 'You gotta have a fallback, you got to invest your money,'" said Hagar, who bought his first house (designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright protege) in Mill Valley, Calif., with a $60,000 down payment after a whiff of early solo success and in which he still lives today.

"So as soon as I got any money I thought, 'I got to invest this. I may not ever get another cheque.'

"It was almost out of fear. But I think that's what drives me today still, the humiliation and being deprived of things like a stereo and car. I had to bust my ass to get everything. I want to still be somebody. It's so crazy - I love being somebody."

Suprisingly, the toughest stuff to write, said Hagar, was about his philandering and drug-taking during his rocky 26-year-old marriage to his psychologically troubled first wife, Betsy, who gave him two sons but suffered from agoraphobia and separation anxiety.

He has since married second wife, Kari, with whom he has two daughters.

"For my nine-year-old and 14-year-old daughter, I don't like talking about all my sex encounters and I didn't like talking about some of the drug use I've had, too, and some of the partying I did. But I had to.

You have one shot at it. I'm not going to come back 10 years from now and go, 'This is the s--t that really happened.' I ain't going to do that.

"It's done. I'm done."

jane.stevenson@sunmedia.ca