Sammy Hagar - Standing Hampton

Good old Sammy. I knew of Sammy at least a year or two before I ever heard the opening riff to "Heavy Metal" from the sountrack album. It was a song I should have loved, but it always sort of stuck in my craw like a spoonful of cinnamon. It should have been tasty ... 

I'd seen Sammy's name in the credits of a couple albums I had back in the day: I think the first time I saw his name was in the credits on a Servant record. Servant had incorrectly attributed "Rich Man" to Sammy on their debut album Shallow Water ... I was this many days old when I learned Dan Hartman wrote the song, not Sammy. His name also popped up on Working Class Dog. Rick Springfield covered "I've Done Everything For You" and absolutely made it his own. A few years later when Sammy replaced Dave in Van Halen everyone knew who the Red Rocker was.

Sammy is cool.

Absolutely and unequivocally cool.

For whatever reason I never really clicked with Sammy's stuff. I had all of the Van Halen albums, and the Sammy era albums were good, sometimes awesome, but it wasn't because of Sammy. I tried, dagnabbit I have both Chickenfoot albums, I mean I really tried. 

Now that I've been a douche, allow me to back pedal a wee bit to the point where I'm contradicting myself. Standing Hampton isn't my first Sammy solo record, that honour went to his '87 release I Never Said Goodbye the one with Eddie on bass. I don't really remember much about that one ... I think there was a song I liked. Standing Hampton is really the first time I've really spent time with Sammy in a long, long, time. There are times when Sammy absolutely hits it out of the park. Standing Hampton was an album I found pretty cheap, and by golly it had "I'll Fall in Love Again" which was worth it for me right there. It also had "Heavy Metal" a song that over the years I have actually come to like a fair bit ... see, time heals all wounds. I also figured Standing Hampton was a dirty euphemism, and sure enough it's a penis joke. 

Score one for Sammy. Sammy is cool. Unequivocally cool.

The album, produced by Keith Olsen who also co-engineered things with Chris Minto, sounds great. Good gravy, when Sammy played a riff he put some balls into his playing. "There's Only One Way to Rock" is a face melting song, and one I'd forgotten about. It's one of the album's highlights. This is the kind of Sammy I love. So why am I so disparaging to a guy who clearly has chops and the ability to deliver? The whole thing is slick.

Didgeridoo.

I suppose the reason for my ambivalence is present on many of the songs on Standing Hampton. The album opens with a killer one two punch, "I'll Fall in Love Again" and "There's Only One Way to Rock" and by the time I got to side two the album has settled into a paint by numbers collection of songs. He used the same ingredients but the songs just seem sort of phoned in. They're decent but there's no pulse. It's strange. I have to remind myself this was 1981 and frankly a lot of the songs here hold up better than you'd expect ... even with my pissy comments. There's often a lot of smoke, but no spark or fire. The first side is stacked with all of the killers, and closes with "Heavy Metal" that is so close to the version on the soundtrack I don't know why he needed to re-record the song. They're both good (I did say I like it now) but I'll give the edge to the other version, it has MORE guitar. The "Meh" side was decent enough but not particularly memorable, I can say it was smokin' and not have it be a compliment. The song that stood out was his cover of "Piece of My Heart" that I'm not sure is cool or shit.

Standing Hampton was a pretty big deal though for Sammy and would end up going platinum. I think a lot of people felt the way I did. No, that is not contradictory ... I said from the onset that I was happy to get "I'll Fall in Love Again" and ended up getting a few really great rock songs. Which was actually more than I was expecting.

For all that I still think Sammy is cool. Unequivocally cool. 

P.S. I know I show the release year as 1981 as that's what is printed on the jacket and stuff. However for the purists this was indeed released early in 1982. I guess Geffen wanted to avoid the Christmas rush.