Sammy Hagar & Friends

Despite his hard-partying image, Sammy Hagar is a smart and savvy businessman who, like Jimmy Buffett, has turned partying into a full-time business empire. He’s also made enough friends in the music business to include an eclectic mix of rockers from different scenes. Getting Kid Rock and Toby Keith was likely somewhat easy, while Chad Smith and Michael Anthony were probably already sleeping in the studio. But also corralling Journey’s Neal Schon, The Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, and Joe Satriani into a studio is quite the feat. Taj Mahal’s nasty blues “Winding Down” might be expected, but to hear Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” transformed into an electric blues-rock tune took some re-imagining on Hagar’s part. “Knockdown Dragout,” with Kid and Satriani, is a classic hard rock shakedown in little more than two minutes, while Buffett’s “Margaritaville” gets an unexpectedly slower groove for Hagar and Toby Keith to play around with. Overall, these are professional partiers making a record that wouldn’t have sounded out of place back in the \'70s, before Hagar became a national landmark.