Sammy Hagar wanted to join Foreigner but Mick Jones couldn’t afford him.
“I’m going, ‘I sing a lot like (Lou Gramm). I’m broke off my a**, 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,’” the singer told Classic Rock. “But that’s the kind of relationship Mick and I have always had.”
Hagar recalled when his band opened for Foreigner in Flint, Mich., around 1978 during the tour for their second album, ‘Double Vision,’ “We bumped heads one time. They were starting to get big and I opened for them and I killed it.”
The rocker continued, “I went on to do an encore and they turned the lights on on me, and I said, ‘Hey, f*ck 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 sh*t, 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 sh*t,’” Hagar further remembered.
He added about his conflict with Jones, “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.”
Kelly Clarkson, Hagar, Slash, Chad Smith, and Demi Lovato recently paid tribute to Foreigner at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in Cleveland. Many original members were absent, including Mick Jones, who stayed home due to Parkinson’s disease.
His daughter spoke on behalf of the band. Lovato started with ‘Feels Like The First Time,’ followed by Hagar with ‘Hot Blooded.’ Clarkson stood out by duetting ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ with Lou Gramm and hugged him afterward.