REBEL MEETS REBEL: PHIL LABONTE INTERVIEWS SAMMY HAGAR

All That Remains’ frontman swallows the ex–Van Halen singer’s worm.



By Jon Wiederhorn
Illustration by Danny Hellman

Ask All That Remains singer Phil Labonte to name some of his all-time favorite acts and he’ll spit back some predictable stuff: At the Gates, the Haunted, Iron Maiden. Then there’s one artist he’ll mention that’s about as far removed from heavy metal as Bon Jovi—mainstream rock dude Sammy Hagar.

There probably aren’t a lot of All That Remains fans who also embrace the Red Rocker, and with good reason. ATR are all about uncompromising self-empowerment and raw aggression, while Hagar has always been more concerned with driving fast, falling in and out of love, and selling shitloads of records. The contrasts don’t stop there. After leaving Shadows Fall in 1998, Labonte managed to hold the loyalty of Shads fans by building his side project, All That Remains, into a full-time force of fierce metalcore, whereas when Hagar joined Van Halen in 1985, he managed to rile David Lee Roth–era VH fans by turning what had been a metallic rock group into an overtly pop hit-making machine.

Yet Labonte remains unashamed about his obsession with Hagar, and insists Van Halen blossomed musically—as they did commercially—under the guidance of the golden locked singer. Labonte was even planning to sign up for Hagar’s annual Cabo Cruise with a friend this year, but the event conflicted with All That Remains’ tour schedule.

“His songwriting is amazing,” Labonte insists a couple hours before interviewing his hero. “The songs he wrote with Van Halen were unquestionably the best the band ever did. And he’s a brilliant businessman.”

Although he’s not yet an entrepreneur, Labonte has come far in 10 years. As a teenager in the early ‘90s, he played in the death-metal outfit Perpetual Doom. He left the band to join Shadows Fall and remained with them for one album, 1997’s Somber Eyes to the Sky, before being replaced by Brian Fair. Undaunted, he came back in 2002 with All That Remains, and in 2002 the band released its well-received debut album, Behind Silence and Solitude. The savage, critically acclaimed This Darkened Heart followed in 2004, and the band’s breakthrough, The Fall of Ideals, hit two years later, debuting at No. 75 on the Billboard album chart; to date it has sold over 145,000 copies.

Hagar’s accomplishments are, of course, of a different order of magnitude: Numerous albums with bands and as a solo act; a Grammy award; a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; a famous nightclub; and, of course, that legendary tequila.

Labonte is clearly excited to meet Hagar, but he’s also nervous. Fortunately, Labonte has done his homework, familiarizing himself with Hagar’s lengthy résumé, including his stint in ‘70s hard-rock band Montrose, his successful solo career, his 13 years with Van Halen, and his outside business ventures, including the Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and his Cabo Wabo tequila company, 80 percent of which Hagar sold last year to Gruppo Campari for $80 million, a deal that landed him at No. 5 on Forbes magazine’s “Top 20 Biggest Celebrity Paydays of 2007” list.

While they may exist on different economic and musical planets, it turns out Labonte and Hagar see eye to eye about free enterprise, life on other planets, the power of music, and what makes for a good song, which makes the interview flow like—well, good tequila.

PHIL LABONTE I’m a big fan of your music, and the things you’ve done with Cabo are really inspiring.
SAMMY HAGAR Thanks, man. Everything I’ve ever done has always come from my heart. I just go, “I’d really like to do that,” and then I just try it, and when it happens, it’s awesome.

LABONTE I wish more people had that sort of attitude and understood that if you go out there and just work at something, you can succeed.
HAGAR Yeah, but sometimes you learn even more from failure. You’ve all heard about the stuff that worked for me. There’s a bunch of things that didn’t. And when that happens, it doesn’t feel as good, but man, you learn every time you try something, and learning is where it’s at, ‘cause you get smarter.

LABONTE You had a successful career before you were in Van Halen. Was it hard to join a band that had such a solid foundation?
HAGAR I was in a strange place in my life. I had been a solo artist for about 10 years, and that’s a weird amount of time for anything. By around the ninth year, you start to get bored. I had just finished touring for the [1984] VOA album, and I was supposed to do another solo album, but I was burned out and wanted to take a break. Then I get this call from Eddie Van Halen, and he’s going, “Hey, man, Dave quit. Why don’t you come down tomorrow and try out?” I was so not into it, but I figured I’d just go down and if Eddie was cool, I’d get him to play on my next record. I wasn’t even considering joining Van Halen, because I really didn’t like Dave. I thought, Man, if they want me to be like Dave—dress up like that and stuff, they’ll have to find another guy.

LABONTE Were you a fan of the band?
HAGAR Musically, I loved them. So I went down there around noon, and they were so burnt out. They had been up all night trying to work up a couple songs. And I was thinking, Man, these guys are unhealthy. This isn’t gonna work too good. I was a real athletic guy, and [drummer] Alex [Van Halen] was sitting there pounding beers at noon, drunk off his ass, and he’s trying to talk business. Then Eddie says, “Well, fuck it, let’s play some music.” So they started playing “Summer Nights” and “Good Enough” from the 5150 record, which they had already worked out musically. And I started just scatting and singing to it. And it was so happening that I stayed all day, all night, and all the next day. Then I went home and listened back to the tapes we had made, and I went, Man, this is slammin’! I’m in.

LABONTE People liked David Lee Roth because he was so flashy, but I think Van Halen wrote their best songs after you joined.
HAGAR I’ve always felt that songwriting is the most important thing. It’s funny because I’ve always been kind of an image guy, too, especially early on with Montrose. In a lot of ways, Montrose was Van Halen’s hero. Producer Ted Templeton once told me, “We used to listen to that first Montrose album and tell Dave, ‘Hey, sing like that.’” And that’s why Dave hates me.

LABONTE He’s a great frontman, but he was kind of the weak link.
HAGAR Yeah, Dave was really limited. He didn’t have a vocal range, and he just had this persona and this attitude that he couldn’t break out of. And when I finally got with Eddie, he went, “Whoa, you can sing.” I totally brought Eddie out as a musician. At first, he was too unconfident to play keyboards, but shit, this guy was capable of playing as good as any keyboardist. He’s really incredibly talented; he just has issues.

LABONTE How is it that you and Michael Anthony are the only people who can come in contact with the Van Halen brothers and not walk away totally crazy?
HAGAR [Laughs] I gotta tell you, man, those guys can drive you totally nuts, especially now. And that’s why I’m not even interested in being in the band anymore. They just torture people because they’re so tormented. Not so much Al, but Al stays with Ed because he’s his brother, and that’s the way it should be. I’m all for those guys staying together, because if it wasn’t for Al, Ed would be dead. Al is his savior and I love Al for that reason. But Ed is a fuckin’ maniac, man. He gets all excited one day and he’s crying, “I love you so much, man.” And you go, “OK, let’s do this thing.” And you start doing it, and he goes against anything you try to do. He just flips on you all the time. He doesn’t want to get along with anyone, not even his brother. They go outside and they just go chingasos on each other. I hate to say it, but I believe Eddie’s got a serious, serious substance problem.

LABONTE Well, when he got on Howard Stern and said he’s got the cure for cancer it was like, All right dude, you need to take a step back and at least think about what you’re saying.
HAGAR Yeah, someone needs to really help this guy out, and if they don’t, I really hate to say what I think’s gonna happen. So I could still love the guy and everything else, but there’s no way I could work with him, because Eddie bugged out and went crazy.

LABONTE What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen Eddie do?
HAGAR I couldn’t put that kind of stuff on the street. But quite honestly, he does crazy shit every minute.

LABONTE I’m guessing you didn’t catch any of the reunion shows with Dave.
HAGAR No, but we’ve all seen the YouTube thing where Eddie played “Jump” in the wrong key for the whole fuckin’ song. Things like that shouldn’t happen. Someone gave Eddie his guitar tuned up wrong and he couldn’t get it together. Here’s Eddie Van Halen, one of the greatest guitar players who has ever lived.

LABONTE Your tequila is really good, and it helped you get onto the Forbes Top Five list last year.
HAGAR Yeah, that’s a trip. I made it because I’m a tequila fan. This wasn’t a business. I had the Cabo Wabo Cantina, which also wasn’t a business. I lost a lot of money for about five years, and all my partners walked out. Then all of a sudden it caught fire after everybody else left. But I made tequila strictly for the Cabo Wabo Cantina. There are these farmers in Mexico that grow the agaves [the plant used to make tequila] and sell them, but they kept the best ones to make their own tequila. They made about 20 cases a year for family and friends. And when I tasted that, I said, “Fuck, this is slammin’. I wonder if they’d make some for me?” So I hung out with these guys and we just hit it off and they said they’d make it for me. So they started doing it just for the club. People started tasting it and raving about it, and magazines said it was the best tequila in the world. So, I got all these phone calls from these distributors saying, “Hey man, we want to import it and distribute it for you.” I was going, Fuck, man. This is out of my league. How did I even get here?

LABONTE Those are happy problems, aren’t they?
HAGAR Yeah, but it was pretty spooky, because I had people that would say, “We can make it much cheaper, then we can sell millions of cases.” And I went, “Hey, man, fuck you. This is about the best tequila in the world, not the biggest tequila in the world.” So finally Campari came to me and said, “We want to buy your company and distribute your tequila worldwide.” And they offered me a ton of money and let me keep 20 percent of the company and make all the decisions I want. I put my hand out right away.

LABONTE I read an article that said they wanted to keep you in because they thought you made some really good business decisions.
HAGAR It was the coolest deal ever made, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m proud of it, but it’s almost embarrassing, because I have plenty of money and it doesn’t change my life one single bit. But everybody around me is coming around saying, “Hey, man, can I borrow a couple million bucks?” And I’m like, “Hey man, go fuckin’ earn your own money.”

LABONTE There are so many people who are willing to separate other people from their money. You have to step above that and say, “I’m gonna do the right thing and work for what I get.” I mean, I still have friends who think I’m gloating when I talk about what my band is doing, but it’s like, “Dude, I still live in my mom’s basement. I don’t even have a car.”
HAGAR Yeah, I know, it’s…wait a minute, you live in your mom’s basement?

LABONTE Yeah, I do. I tell you what, Sammy, there’s not a whole lot of money in yelling at people. [Laughs]
HAGAR Hey, believe me, there were plenty of times when I was lean. When I left Montrose, I had zero money in the bank. I had $150 in my pocket. I was married and had a kid, and I had rent due in a month. But fuck it, you roll up your sleeves, man.

LABONTE And you go to work. My dad owned a business and he always said, “Go work for yourself. Don’t work for someone else. Go make your own life.” And that’s one of the things I really admire about you. You’ve never had sour grapes no matter what the press or anyone else was saying. You just went, “You know what? I just wanna go out and play some rock and roll and have a good time.”
HAGAR Well, thank you. There’s nothing better than music, man. I don’t care how much money you got or how broke you are. I’ve been both. But when you walk out onstage, you feel the same. You feel like a king. When I was on tour with Montrose and I knew my phone was shut off back home with a wife and a kid, when I got onstage, none of that mattered. Afterwards, I’d lay in bed worrying my ass off, but onstage I was a rich man doing exactly what I wanted to do, and it still feels the same.

LABONTE You’ve spoken about your fascination with UFOs.
HAGAR I was 4 years old when I had my first UFO experience, and I didn’t know what a flying saucer was. I called it a “car with no wheels.” I just can’t begin to understand how there are people that are still closed to it. There are two different kinds, from what I can tell. First there are robots in little saucers, and they go around and take samples and send them back. They find some guy, pick him up, shove probes up his ass and then send him on his way. Then there are the real creatures in UFOs who have mastered space travel. They go beyond the speed of light where time doesn’t exist. They go in time warps and all of a sudden they’re 30 billion miles away in a couple seconds, and they start exploring. But also there are spiritual creatures that slip in and out of dimensions, and they’re around all the time. And every now and then when you’re asleep and you’re in a certain frame of mind, you’ll have a little glimpse where you move into the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, or even ninth dimension, which is supposed to be what God is.

LABONTE I watch a lot of theoretical science shows ’cause I’m a super nerd. And I was watching a program on the multiverse, and they were talking about how there could be infinite universes, like bubbles in a bath. And our universe is just one of the bubbles.
HAGAR Totally, and if you’re a creative person and you’re open minded, you get glimpses of it every now and then. But the whole UFO phenomenon comes from those three categories. And those gray ones are trippy little guys. I had my own encounter with them before Montrose.

LABONTE What happened?
HAGAR I was 20 years old, and one night while I was sleeping, these guys plugged a wire into me, and I don’t know if they were feeding me information or downloading my information. But I sensed what was going on and I was trying to wake up. As I was waking up, these two creatures shouted out a numerical code, and everything started disconnecting. I opened my eyes, and my room was pure white—as bright as you can imagine. My eyes were open, but my body was completely paralyzed. And I sat there for about 30 seconds while these cats got their whole thing unplugged, and then all of a sudden the white light went black and I could move. I didn’t know exactly what happened, but I was loaded with information, and have been ever since.

LABONTE Did you feel like they meant you harm?
HAGAR No, it was just scary. Up to that point I had never really thought about UFOs. Then, after that is when I remembered the other sighting, and it all started coming together. And I’ve just been led to things ever since. It’s almost like I saw the map and then went on a quest.

LABONTE That’s awesome. The closest thing I’ve ever experienced to that is having a really frightening feeling in a room. But I’m kind of jealous of people that have had UFO experiences.
HAGAR Yeah, it’s a trip. And I think it’s really cool, even if it scares the shit out of you, to experience something that really makes you feel. Like a guy punching you in the face, you feel that. Going through life and just being numb is boring.

LABONTE I’ve never put any thought into Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan, but those three words explain how people who seem normal and unassuming will suddenly go do something heroic or extraordinary. I think that’s what people need nowadays—to be inspired—to feel like they can really achieve something as opposed to getting a job or doing whatever they’re expected to do, because it’s very rarely fulfilling to do what you’re expected to.
HAGAR Well, Phil, there you go, man. Now you’ve got a mission, if you didn’t already have it. You’ve just reinforced your own mission for yourself. Go out there and make people feel good or make them change their lives. Give them something to think about. Give them something to feel. Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry. Whatever you gotta do, man. Go out there and do it.