On This Day in 1986: Sammy Hagar’s First Van Halen Show

31 years ago today, Sammy Hagar took the stage for the first time as the frontman of Van Halen.

Picture it: Hirsch Memorial Coliseum in Shreveport, Louisiana. The date was March 27, 1986, and the occasion was the first public performance of Van Halen since the departure of longtime lead singer David Lee Roth and the installation of Sammy Hagar as his successor. The crowd of Van Halen fans in attendance that evening was – as one might reasonably suspect – very much in the pro-Hagar camp. After all, who spends money to see someone whose very presence they’re rebelling against?

Van Halen, on the other hand, were clearly feeling quite rebellious at the time: they’d devised a plan which would have them playing the Roth-less material that they’d written for their new album, 5150, and nothing from the Diamond Dave days. That plan changed slightly, however, when the new album was delayed slightly, which meant that the crowd hadn’t had the opportunity to hear anything other than the first single, “Why Can’t This Be Love.”

“I remember during the last week of rehearsal that we decided to do ‘You Really Got Me,’ ‘I Can’t Drive 55,’ ‘One Way To Rock’ and ‘Jump’ – two of mine and two of theirs,” Hagar told Ultimate Classic Rock in 2014. “‘Jump’ was going to be the encore and I was going to bring a guy up to sing. I wasn’t going to sing it myself. It was stupid – even though it worked and we were extremely successful. We had our first No. 1 album, and we certainly had the biggest tour of the year. But it was stupid that we rebelled against our pasts. But you know, when you’re rich and famous rock stars and young and really in the middle of it, you make some stupid mistakes and ironically you get away with it half the time, which makes you even stupider – I’m talking about myself now – because it worked.”

It certainly did: after weeks of critics sneeringly using the words “Van Hagar” to describe the new line-up, Van Halen had proven that, whether with David Lee Roth or with Sammy Hagar, they were still Van Halen.