Speaking recently with Guitar Player, former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar looked back on the creation of the band's 1991 hit, "Right Now", from the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album.
Following is an excerpt from the step-by-step process.
Hagar: "Sometimes you’re able to write a song that expresses how you feel, and it strikes a nerve with other people and they say, 'Yes. That’s exactly how I feel, too.' For a songwriter, that’s an incredible response to your work."
As the singer-guitarist recalls, during early album writing sessions, Van Halen played him a piano part – one the guitarist had been toying with since 1983 – to see if he would spark to it.
“I liked it, but I didn’t know what I could do with it,” he says. “Eddie was hearing it like the song 'Feelin' Alright?' We tried to get it going, but nothing felt right. We just sort of left it and he played me something else, and that became 'Poundcake.'"
Several weeks later, Hagar was laying on the beach and trying to avoid going to the studio.
"It was such a beautiful day, and I thought to myself, 'I don’t want to go anywhere else. I just want to be right here, right now.' Eddie kept playing me the piano part, trying to inspire me. I heard him play it probably 100 times. Then one day I started singing to it, and I had it. Everything fit and made sense. The lyrics came to me, and I told Eddie, 'This thing’s written. Let’s record.'"
The second he heard a playback of the finished recording, Hagar knew "Right Now" was a hit.
"The chorus, that iconic piano part. It was in the bag," he says. "The song would have been great if I sang about cat food."
Read the complete report here.
