The first conversation I ever had with a professional musician took place in a hardware store parking lot.<\/p>\n
It was fall 1979 and I was on the cusp of turning 17, driving home after hanging out with my friend Neil at his house over in Mill Valley. I can\u2019t remember what music we listened to at Neil\u2019s that day, but there\u2019s a solid chance it included something by Sammy Hagar, the local-guy-making-good hero of many of our friend group\u2019s adolescent rock and roll fantasies. (And in fact, a group of us had spent the previous New Year\u2019s Eve at Hagar\u2019s headlining gig at the sold-out, 16,000-seat Cow Palace.)<\/p>\n
At the time, Hagar\u2014among Mill Valley\u2019s growing number of musicians-in-residence\u2014had recently issued his fourth studio album Street Machine<\/i>. The most-likely-to-please-his-fanbase third track, \u201cTrans Am (Highway Wonderland),\u201d was a hard rock anthem manifesting all the single-minded exuberance of his earlier mission-statement songs \u201cRock And Roll Weekend\u201d and \u201cTurn Up The Music.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not content just to put his brand-new cherry-red ride on the back cover of the album, though, the never-lacking-for-confidence Hagar used his alpha-bro vanity license plate\u2014\u201cIEATZ28\u201d\u2014as the punchline to the first verse of \u201cTrans Am.\u201d It\u2019s the kind of decision you make late at night in the studio when you\u2019re young and feeling untouchable.<\/p>\n
By now you\u2019ve probably guessed what appeared right in front of me that day as I cruised down East Blithedale Avenue minding my own business: a cherry-red Trans Am with the license plate \u201cIEATZ28.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mesmerized by the good fortune the universe has sent my way, I follow until the Trans Am cuts left across the opposite lane into the parking lot of a hardware store. Pulling in a couple of slots over, I leap out of my car to intercept the shaggy blond driver before he can disappear into the store.<\/p>\n
\u201cUh, uh, Mr. Hagar?\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s wearing big sunglasses and his expression and body language are giving strong \u201cWhy the fuck are you in my way?\u201d energy. But it\u2019s absolutely him, and I\u2019m absolutely not stepping aside, not yet.<\/p>\n
The problem is, I don\u2019t have so much as a slip of paper on me to ask him to sign, and no clue what to say. In this moment, I am quite literally the dog who caught the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cUh, uh, I\u2014I just wanted to say hi.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sheer innocence of this request seems to defuse the moment. He relaxes and gives a little grin. \u201cHi.\u201d<\/p>\n
With no idea what else to say, I stick out my hand for a soul shake. He obliges.<\/p>\n
\u201cTh-thanks!\u201d I blurt out as he\u2019s already moving past me, off to search for galvanized nails or a spool of wire or whatever he headed into town to pick up that day. I stand motionless in the parking lot for a count of five, staring at my hand. <\/p>\n
And, scene.<\/i><\/p>\n
It occurs to me, though, that you probably came here looking for an album review. Alrighty then. <\/p>\n
After three enthusiastic but stylistically all-over-the-map studio albums, Sammy Hagar\u2019s post-Montrose solo career was on the verge of foundering when he issued his 1978 live collection All Night Long<\/i>. Collecting all of his best solo songs to date, plus a couple of Montrose classics, All Night Long<\/i> felt more focused on Hagar\u2019s natural audience\u2014the melodic hard rock crowd that still adored those first two Montrose albums\u2014than his previous studio efforts, which veered into pop, r&b and power ballads in between headbangers.<\/p>\n
Street Machine<\/i> was his first opportunity to capitalize on the lessons learned… and also a lesson in how hard habits can be to break. On the band side of things, Gary Pihl (guitar) and Bill Church (bass) were back, but Hagar and Church\u2019s fellow Montrose alumni Alan Fitzgerald (keys) and Denny Carmassi (drums) had moved on, with the latter replaced by another Montrose connection, former Edgar Winter drummer Chuck Ruff. <\/p>\n
The producer\u2019s chair saw an even bigger change, with Hagar himself taking over from Capitol A&R man John Carter, who had produced all three of Hagar\u2019s previous studio albums, as well as co-writing a number of songs on them. You might think the change to self-producing would result in a more cohesive, coherent, confident album, free of the sort of labored, too-obvious attempts at generating a pop single that were Carter\u2019s stock in trade\u2026 but you would be only partially right.<\/p>\n
On the plus side, Street Machine<\/i> is somewhat more focused than previous studio outings and plays to Hagar\u2019s strengths with hard rock tunes like punchy opener \u201cGrowing Pains\u201d and the chunky, ringing \u201cFeels Like Love.\u201d And while lead single \u201cPlain Jane\u201d feels like a no-apologies grasp for a radio hit, its abundant hooks are delivered with undeniable enthusiasm. <\/p>\n
You could say much the same of \u201cTrans Am (Highway Wonderland); it\u2019s as obvious as they come, and I laugh out loud every time they get to the goofy-as-hell \u201cT! – R! – A! – etc.\u201d chant at the bridge, but are you not entertained? \u2019Cause I have to admit, I am. Ditto for \u201cThis Planet\u2019s on Fire (Burn in Hell)\u201d; lyrically it\u2019s as profound as a silly-string battle, but musically it\u2019s the year 1979 poured into an incendiary, balls-out rocker.<\/p>\n
The rest of the album is spottier fare. \u201cChild To Man\u201d presents one of Hagar\u2019s more serious and grounded lyrics, but ends up feeling gawky. The Bad Company-flavored blues-rocker \u201cWounded In Love\u201d flips that script with solid music and squishy lyrics. Melodramatic mid-tempo grinder \u201cNever Say Die\u201d offers a nice Steve Douglas sax solo, but that\u2019s about it. Still, it\u2019s a cut above \u201cFalling In Love,\u201d a saccharin power ballad so formulaic it verges on parody; not even guest harmonies from Brad Delp, Barry Goudreau and Sib Hashian of Boston can rescue it from itself.<\/p>\n
Closer \u201cStraight To The Top\u201d bolsters the back half of the album with an upbeat early-rock homage that reminds you how well the early Elvis single \u201cGood Rockin\u2019 Tonight\u201d fit into the track list on Montrose\u2019s hard-rock-perfection self-titled debut.<\/p>\n
Street Machine <\/i>suggested Sammy Hagar had diagnosed the biggest problem with his earlier studio efforts\u2014lack of focus\u2014and was working on solving it. This is a solid album with more good songs than bad, even if none qualify as standouts. Street Machine<\/i>\u2019s most glaring weakness falls to Hagar himself; never a brilliant lyricist, here he leans on cliches even more than usual and ends up with an album that feels both vibrant and rather generic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5845],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-47156","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sammy-hagar","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47156"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}