Sammy Hagar on trash-talking Foreigner and the audition that wasn't

Sammy Hagar with original Foreigner members Al Greenwood, Lou Gramm and Rick Wills, and Mick Jones' daughter Annabelle Dexter-Jones — Backstage at the Hall Of Fame: Sammy Hagar with (L-R) original Foreigner members Al Greenwood and Lou Gramm, Mick Jones' daughter Annabelle Dexter-Jones, and Foreigner's Rick Wills. (Image credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fam)

Were it not for a little maturity and forgiving natures, Sammy Hagar might not have been the man to induct Foreigner into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame over the weekend in Cleveland.

Hagar and group founder Mick Jones have been good friends since the Red Rocker and Montrose supported Spooky Tooth back in the early 70s.

"We must've done a while year, 150 shows with those guys," Hagar tells Classic Rock shortly after singing Hot Blooded as part of the star-studded Foreigner performance during the Rock Hall's induction ceremony. "We just hit it off. I dug his guitar sound. I love Spooky Tooth; if you listen to Foreigner, you'll hear Spooky Tooth in there. They always did the half-time choruses (sings a bit of Feels Like the First Tim'), so you hear a lot of Spooky Tooth in there, and I was a Spooky Tooth fan. When Mick quit, I kept in touch."

In fact, Hagar says he used to joke with Jones about not inviting him to sing for Foreigner. "I'm going, 'I sing a lot like (Lou Gramm). I'm broke off my ass, man!' (Jones) said, 'Me too. You were on the West Coast, I was on the East Coast. I couldn't afford to fly you out for an audition.' But that's the kind of relationship Mick and I have always had."

Except...

"We bumped heads one time," Hagar says, recalling an opening spot for Foreigner with his own band circa 1978 in Flint, Mich., during the band's tour promoting its second album, Double Vision. "They were starting to get big and I opened for them and I killed it. I went on to do an encore and they turned the lights on on me, and I said, 'Hey, fuck it, I'm doing it anyway.' And we stayed out and did an encore and really got the people, like, 'Now we gotta get behind Sammy, 'cause he got robbed!'

"The next day I'm at a radio station in Detroit because we were there the next night. I’m sitting there talking shit, Sammy '78, beating my chest -- 'Yeah man, we blew 'em off the stage. They turned the lights on and we did it anyway, doing that rock'n'roll shit.' I come walking out of the room and Mick Jones is sitting right there, getting ready to go on next. And he looked at me and just put his head down, and I said, 'Aw man, aw Mick, y'know...' But we patched it up; he ended up producing Van Halen's 5150. That's the only time we had a little rub, really."

Hagar acknowledged that it was "intimidating" to be singing original Foreigner singer Lou Gramm's parts on Hot Blooded, "'cause he's one of the great rock singers of all time. We were running through it... one of the verses, I was reading it so I didn't have it in the right time, and he reaches over and points to his foot and starts tapping, like, 'You're off-beat, man.' But it was cool. He was messing with me, we know that."

He expresses great kinship with Gramm as well. "We have similar styles of singing; we both go for it. When he was young he was going for those big notes and I was going for those big notes, and the first thing we've talked about is how we both painted ourselves into a corner in our 30s and 40s, and now we've got to deal with it in our 70s! (laughs) But it's all good. I love pushing myself."

In addition to Hagar, Foreigner's Rock Hall performance featured the current lineup of the band and included guest appearances from Slash, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith, Demi Lovato and Kelly Clarkston. Jones missed the ceremony due to his continuing struggle with Parkinson's disease, but Gramm and fellow inducted members Al Greenwood and Rick Wills joined the troupe during I Want to Know What Love Is.

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Gary Graff is an award-winning veteran music journalist based in metro Detroit, writing regularly for Billboard, Ultimate Classic Rock, Media News Group, Music Connection, United Stations Radio Networks and others. Graff’s work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Guitar World, Classic Rock, Revolver, the San Francisco Chronicle, AARP magazine, the Detroit Jewish News, The Forward and others. Graff has co-written and edited books about Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. A professional voter for the Grammy Awards and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Graff co-founded the Detroit Music Awards in 1989 and continues as the organisation’s chief producer.