Remembering “Give to Live” by Sammy Hagar

We were pulling out to a field like I had never seen before. Planted in neat rows, with weeds darting in and out, were these plants that looked like onions.

My friend and neighbour Bill must have been reading my mind.

“They aren’t onions,” he said. “They’re leeks.”

Yup, he had somehow got this job hoeing this field of leeks by Iron Springs, about 40 minutes north of where we lived. However, he could not finish in the time he had, or the boss wanted.

So, for a week, he would pick me up, and we would drive to that field, talking about girls, and cars and TV, and everything else teenaged boys talked about.

When we weren’t talking, we were listening to music.

The first day we pulled up to that field, we were listening to Casey Kasem’s Coast to Coast Top 40 Countdown.

The song playing on Bill’s radio as he turned into the field, and the one place we could park, was “Give to Live” by Sammy Hagar.

I heard that song the other day when I found an old recording of Casey Kasem’s Coast to Coast Top 40 Countdown from September of 1987 on YouTube. It was just a few weeks after our time in the leak fields.

It reminded me of what was going on in my own life, and in Sammy Hagar’s.

Van Hagar
When I started high school in 1984, Van Halen’s album “1984” was all the rage, with the number one song “Jump” as well as “Hot for Teacher”, “Panama” and others. They seemed to be on top of the world.

Looks can be deceiving.

As soon became evident, Eddie Van Halen the founder and leader of the band that bore his name, was not getting along with David Lee Roth, the lead singer who in many ways had become the face of the band.

Roth would release an EP, a term I did not recognize at the time, but is a short record. In this case his EP, entitled “Crazy from the Heat” had just four songs.

Two of them, a remake of “California Girls” by the “Beach Boys” and “Just a Gigolo (I Ain’t Got Nobody)” were hits.

I am not sure if Roth had left Van Halen before “Crazy from the Heat” came out, or after, but he was done as lead singer of Van Halen – for the time being. The rest of that story stretched well beyond the 1980s.

Meanwhile, Eddie Van Halen had begun the search for a new lead singer.

Rumours started to surface he was considering a singer named Sammy Hagar.

I recall thinking, “Who’s Sammy Hagar?” and even asking one of the guys at school who knew more about that kind of music than I did.

“He sings ‘I Drive 55’,” he said.

“I don’t know it,” I responded.

“You know ‘I Drive 55’,” he just yelled.

Louder and slower didn’t make me know it.

I would eventually hear “I Drive 55”, but by that time Sammy Hagar was firmly established as the new lead singer of Van Halen.

They would soon be dubbed “Van Hagar”.

5150
My Grade 11 year was in so many ways a watershed year for music for me. It spanned the fall of 1985 to the summer of 1986, and a lot of good music came out.

In early 1986, maybe March or so, talk began to increase that Van Halen was releasing a new album – their first with Sammy Hagar at the mike.

Soon, it was no longer a rumour. The album was out.

It was called “5150”, which I later discovered was the name of Eddie Van Halen’s home studio. It was also the Los Angeles Police Department’s code for the criminally insane, or disturbed.

The first single had that Van Halen sound, but the vocals were just different. Hagar wasn’t David Lee Roth but his voice did jive with the play of Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, and Michael Anthony.

The song was called “Why Can’t This be Love” and it was absolutely awesome. I recall hearing it full volume cruising down Mayor Magrath on a Friday night in my friend Dave’s truck. We also listened to it on the speaker system in the gym of the Lethbridge YMCA while we played basketball Fridays during “Teen night”.

“Why Can’t This be Love” went all the way to number three on the Billboard Hot 100, but that would not be the only single off the album. Instead, “5150” had a lot of staying power.

The next two songs, did sound a bit the same, but maybe only initially when I hadn’t heard them enough. Besides, I really didn’t care because I liked them both.

“Dreams” came out after “Why Can’t This be Love” and it was awesome. I liked the message. It also went up the charts, peaking at number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Next was “Love Walks in”, which was a true ballad, and maybe my favourite song off the album. It too was a chart success, also going to number 22 on the Hot 100.

Eat ‘em and Smile
While Sammy Hagar seemed to have the magic touch with his new band, David Lee Roth had set to assembling a new band to back him on his new solo career.

He found a number of musicians who had made their names elsewhere, guys such as Billy Sheehan on bass guitar and Steve Vai on guitar who came to be called the “Power Twins”. Gregg Bisonette rounded out the band on drums. I only know any of this because my cousin Fred was big into heavy metal music at the time, ad these guys were a big deal in that genre.

So, in 1986, David Lee Roth also released his first album since leaving Van Halen.

It was called “Eat ‘em and Smile”, and led off with a single that had one of the most unique openings I had ever heard.

“Yankee Rose” begins with a guitar strumming, but almost sounded like a voice, maybe an alien talking. Then, David Lee Roth starts talking to it, the same way an owner talks to their pet.

The song was a success, going all the way to number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

I imagine it galled Roth that his solo project was not as successful on the charts as his former band with his replacement at the mike.

Flying solo again
There was no strife or turmoil, but Sammy Hagar was back in 1987 with another solo effort. This time he released the single “Give to Live” in June of 1987, not too much before Bill and I heard it on the radio. It went all the way to number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number one on the Mainstream Rock chart.

Starting a band
Bill and I had a lot of time to talk and joke in the leak fields. We started to joke about starting a band, a spoof of heavy metal bands, called “Garage Door Opener”. We were “This is Spinal Tap” without even knowing it. At the time, Iron Maiden had this creature named “Eddie” on its artwork, so we thought we’d have one named “Stanley” – which was the company that made garage door openers.

We also had a name for an album. Casting a gaze around the field we were hoeing, we came up with the name “Taking a leek”. On the front of the album would be a cartoon character like the Hamburgler from McDonald’s, bending down and stealing a leek out of the field. On the back would be a picture of a guy from the waste down, wearing jeans, with his legs spread as he was you know…

We thought it was pretty clever.

Parting thoughts
Working with Bill for Bill Stronks in the leek field near Iron Springs was a time of transition. Once we finished up, we headed back to Coaldale where we had a big pizza at Dilo’s in Coaldale. That may have been the last time I ate there.

Maybe two weeks later, I was off to university never to look back. Bill was heading back to high school and another year in the sun.

It was a simple time, when all we cared about was girls, music, and having fun.

Every time I hear “Give to Live”, my mind drifts back to that time.