Nowhere is a guitarist with a realistic attitude towards his own voice: "I know where to hold a note in my face." Jon Lewin talks to Sammy Hagar about singing for Van Halen, guitar playing on his own albums, and standing up in front of 80,000 people.

The 'Heavy Metal A-Z' encyclopedia talks at some length about Sammy Hagar. It mentions the fact that he was lead singer with the innovative Montrose in the early 1970s, lists the ten or 11 solo records he's had out, and describes him as "undeniably one of the leading lights of American hard rock". And that was before he joined Van Halen.

Sammy's recent visit to Britain was occasioned by the need to promote his new solo album. This as yet title-less platter (the guitar in our pics was a prize in a 'Name The Album' comp) was coproduced by Hagar and colleague Eddie Van Halen, who also played on the LP.

Your new album is very live sounding.

"It's a great big room, no electronic messing, effects, a stone big room. I used a pedalboard in the studio as I wanted to use as little EQ, to have the guitar running through as few things as possible before it went to tape.

"That's my theory for this album — as close as you can come to being direct to disc, running through the least amount of effects, it's going to be realer and richer. There is no sophisticated echo on the drums either, it's just a big giant room. We picked the studio for that reason."

Did you record digitally?

"Digital's just too clean, it sounds like you ran it through a bunch of shit."

You've got a great guitar sound on the record — the slide work on 'Crossroads' sounds just like prime period Jimmy Page...

"You're the third person who's said that shit to me. Now, I love Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, but I got it from the same place he got it, like Elmore James, Robert Johnson. I'm the same age as Jimmy Page, man, he just had a little tougher life.

"The slide was played on a '53 Gibson lap steel, like a Hawaiian guitar with no pedals, tuned to open E. That's the guitar that was used in Montrose in 1973 in 'Bad Motor Scooter'. That's my guitar, and I've been using it in concert ever since. On stage I do this little piece which never appeared on record. It got onto this one because I was in the studio getting ready to do a slide solo on 'Privacy', and I was playing around, just getting a sound, and Eddie was going 'God, this sounds great, you gotta hear this', and I said let me just put some down so I just jammed onto tape, and put this blues piece down. Then I went in the other room and wrote some lyrics real fast... the whole thing, including lyrics, was done in like half an hour.

"As for the sound, I ran the guitar through a Marshall head, and four Marshall bottoms. One of those came straight from the Marshall, and the others ran from my pedals. The equipment we use on stage is all really studio quality, like Eventide, and Lexicon. It's not the best to take on the road as it breaks real easily, so you gotta have backup, which is real expensive, but it sounds so good..."

The riff in the intro of 'What They Gonna Say Now' sounds like John Lennon's 'Cold Turkey'.

"I'll copy anything, but I didn't get that from anywhere. I'm a big John Lennon fan — he may have been the biggest influence on me as a songwriter, but that riff is a kind of cross between Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. The vocal on that song is live, all the way through.

"You never plan on getting anything first take, though we did a lot on this album — it usually takes until the third take to get it right. That song wasn't going to be on the album, as I'd just sent it to Hank Williams Jnr to do on his album. But I said to the band I think we should jam this song, see how it goes. We learnt it in the studio, but the structure is odd as it was written on bass — that and 'Privacy' are the only songs I've ever written on bass. So rather than them sitting counting, I sang a vocal, and that was the one we used. The solo was live too — I turned the volume back a bit there to get a cleaner Stevie Vaughan sound. We overdubbed the rhythm, backing vocal, and keyboard, and that was it. 'Hammer' was like that too, almost live."

How do you keep your voice working on tour, with all that screaming?

"The more I sing, the better it gets. After rehearsals, when my voice is really rough in the mornings, I sound great by the night."

Do you exercise your voice?

"No. I don't breathe right. I know where to hold the note in my face. It takes me about a month to get my voice together — but I know how to do it now. I have to blow my voice out four or five times before I get it right."

Do you have any advice to aspiring screamers?

"You get to find your own style, which is more important to me than technique — like Joe Cocker, he had style. Sometimes losing your voice or being hoarse is a real important part of your style."

What's your opinion of your predecessor in Van Halen, David Lee Roth?

"Well, he's got a real good band — the second best players in the world, ha ha. I don't know him personally... I listened to his record, and I think it's pretty good, except I can't stand 'That's Life' and 'Just A Gigolo' and all that shit — that's vaudeville.

"But he's a real stylist. Now that I'm in Van Halen, I'm careful not to criticise him too much as it's a slap to the fans... they made great records, and that's unfair to knock that. I used to say that Eddie and Alex are great musicians, and I couldn't understand why they put up with this guy making a joke out of everything. Eddie's a very serious musician, and he didn't like the way Dave just made a joke out of everything..."

"I just try to write good songs within a metal format. Even if you're a screamer, it's nice to scream a melody."

How has your own music changed over the years?

"I'm becoming more confident to express myself how I want, and not listen to other people's opinions. My security's become more intact with each record. But I'm not a planner, I just try to write good songs within a metal format. Even if you're a screamer, it's nice to scream a melody.

"Right now my next priority is a Van Halen record, and a world tour. After all that's done, I might make another solo record. I'm so pleased with this, you can't imagine. That's the honest truth. I'm not trying to sell this — I don't have too."

Why not?

"Well, a good record is always more commercial, but with this one, I didn't have to make compromises for singles, so I've been fortunate that this one seems to be so popular — this is the biggest record I've had so far."

'Hands & Knees' has a very Robin Trower guitar sound...

"That I will cop too. I was a real Trower fan. He did it with a pedal, but I used a wiggle bar on an octave thing, which gives it a real fat sound. That was the last song to be written for the album, and it was questionable that it would even make it onto the record, but it's my best guitar playing. I thought I really played a good guitar solo. It was done on the basic track, as well.

"I used a Kramer for most of the album, but this song I used a Hamer like the one we have here with a Kahler tailpiece which bends up and down. The Kramer sounds best with the tailpiece down, so you can only go down. The Hamer doesn't stay in tune or sustain too well, as the bridge is so loose, but it worked on this track.

"Every album I've ever done has usually been done on one guitar. You can spend two or three hours or days trying to get the sound you like with all your guitars there, and you'll find that one always sounds best. Each studio is different — I've never used the same guitar on two albums, and I've made plenty — the studio, the engineer, the board, all make a difference. I quite often bring the volume on the guitar down to make it crisper — it wipes out the bottom end, as there's a little chip in there for that purpose."

Did the album take long to record?

"Took about a week to do the basic tracks, then we took a month off to decide what to do. I never had the luxury of that time before. Eddie and I took tapes home, and that's why the album doesn't have many overdubs, as Eddie and I decided that the basic guitar/bass/drums tracks sounded so good, we didn't want to fuck with that. Overdub on them, and they seem to lose the feeling. We tried stuff, dubs and vocals for about ten days, then we took another month off, and took another ten days to mix, a song a day. So it took a little time over a long period."

How about live work? Are you planning to tour this record?

"No. We start work on the new Van Halen album in September, and we'll be taking Van Halen on tour next year, playing some big festivals in the US, and trying to cover all those places around the world that we missed last time. We should be in Britain next summer."

What size venues will you be playing?

"The smallest gig on the last tour was an 8,500 seater on the opening night. The biggest I've ever played was the Texas Jam — 85,000 people."

What's it like playing a huge stadium? Is it really better than a small club gig?

"Fantastic — it's bullshit playing for 500 people. I could do it today, it's fine, but it's not like a big place. The people who say that shit are the ones who can't sell 80,000 tickets any more.

"I really prefer a giant stadium — the energy level's so high. You get that from the audience — I don't feel like I'm Godzilla though, you feel the audience is, so you get a big energy rush off it. You don't control an audience like that, you just let them go — that's half the fun. I get off on running 40 yards across the stage and climbing 60 feet up the lighting rig. It's one of my fortés making big places feel small.

"The big shows are so expensive to do. You make a lot more money playing 10,000 three times than one 80,000. Insurance is so expensive, but I still prefer it. But there's never any sense of violence at a Sammy Hagar concert. It's incredible.

"'Hey, you people thirsty? Fuck man, bring in the truck, man, take 20 minutes, back the truck up to the back of the stage, take a firehose squirt the whole goddamn audience as far back as I can get...'

I'm always talking to the people in the back... I invented the wireless headset mike for that, so I could get places you couldn't normally go."