Sammy Hagar: 4 Discoveries From his Uncensored Autobiography

The AARP-eligible rocker, 63, has finally produced ‘Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock’

How to build a wine collection for free.

As a solo artist in the ’70s, Hagar stocked his wine room by having his tour rider include a selection of fine wines for his dressing room. When promoter Bill Graham found out, he ordered the bottles uncorked.

Backup plans.

Even after his solo album, Standing Hampton, hit it big in 1982, Hagar still didn’t think he would have a long career as a singer, so he got his contractor’s license and invested in apartment buildings. After persuading officials in Fontana, Calif., to let him install sprinklers in a building rather than build a fire hydrant, Hagar started American Fire Chief Inc. It became the second-largest fire-sprinkler company in the U.S.

Van Hating.

He wants to settle scores with Eddie and Alex Van Halen. He uses the occasional nice word (Eddie was “one of the sweetest guys I ever met”) to stick the shiv in and twist. The brothers are greedy, paranoid and jealous. They are crappy businessmen who only make money when Hagar joined the band, and only occasionally are good businessmen.

Business mogul.

In 2007, he sold 80 percent of Cabo Wabo, the tequila brand he started in the late 1990s, to Campari for $80 million.