Sammy Hagar Celebrates Turning 79 With Star-Studded Bash, Shares Hopes for a Van Halen ‘Unification’
Categoria: Musica
Hagar's rollicking Birthday Bash is underway in Mexico.
Por Billboard | 13/10/2026
For a 36th year, Sammy Hagar is gearing up for this week’s Birthday Bash at the Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. But while Hagar is celebrating 79 in style over three nights — Oct. 9, 11 and 13 — of guest-filled rock n’ roll festivities, he already has his eye on turning 80 with a different kind of party next year. “My dream would be to play somewhere where I can accommodate every ticket request, and everybody who never got to be at the Bash could come to this final bash,” Hagar tells Billboard via Zoom from Southern California ahead of his birthday on Tuesday (Oct. 13). Hagar says that this year he received 100,000 requests for about 1,600 tickets over the three nights, a number that continues to grow every year. “I would love to be able to say to everyone, ‘Guess what? You’re all gonna be able to get a show.’ If I have to play four or five nights somewhere, maybe I play a big stadium, maybe we block off the whole town of Cabo and do it for free. I don’t know what we’re gonna do yet, but I do know for my 80th birthday, that would be the dream.” For Those About to Bash… As he ponders that, Hagar has plans in motion for the upcoming birthday bash — as much as one can plan for an event that routinely brings surprise performances from some of music’s biggest names — including, in the past, Kenny Chesney, the late Toby Keith, Alice Cooper, members of the Grateful Dead, Metallica, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Alice in Chains. Their appearances are often spontaneous; “Belinda Carlisle comes last year,” Hagar remembers, “and, ‘Well, shoot, I’ve got to get her on stage, so what are we gonna do?’ So, boom, we just learned ‘We Got the Beat’ and ‘Heaven Is a Place On Earth’ backstage, finishing our cocktails, and then just ran out there and did it. “That’s part of the charm of the Birthday Bash. It’s not rehearsed, and we never know really what we’re gonna do. I don’t invite people; I just invite kind of a house band, you might say. I’ve got a repertoire of about 400 songs, and if somebody says they know one of them we throw it together real quick and go out and do it.” For this year’s Birthday Bash, Hagar has assembled a house band reuniting him with members of his Waboritas — guitarist Vic Johnson and bassist Mona Gnader — joined by drummer Kenny Aronoff from Chickenfoot and Hagar’s recent Van Halen-oriented Best of All Worlds band, and guitarist Stevie Salas. (Van Halen and Best of All Worlds bassist Michael Anthony, Hagar’s regular sidekick, is on a family cruise to celebrate his wife’s birthday.) “I’m really gonna focus on the Red Rocker years this year, and the Montrose stuff,” Hagar reports — which, he adds, will include the entire Montrose debut album from 1973. Opening night, in fact, featured a half-dozen