Rock legend Sammy Hagar has led an extraordinary life - but did he really have a close encounter of the third kind back in the ’60s?
In an interview with Classic Rock in 2013, Hagar insisted that the story is true.
“It was for real,” he said.
The incident, as he recalled it, happened at night at his home in California.
“I was at my house in the foothills of the San Bernadino Mountains,” he said. “I was just lying in my bed, when I felt something weird going on, like someone was tapping into my brain. At the time, I didn’t know how to fucking explain it. But they were downloading or uploading – that’s the simplest way to put it.”
Hagar claimed he saw alien figures close by.
“Oh, I could see them,” he said. “Two guys on this little hillside.
“They were playing with a numerical code but it wasn’t from our numerical system. And then, suddenly, this telepathic connection broke. And I could actually see them go back to their ship in a beam of light – zap, like lightning.
“For a second there was an infinity of white. I couldn’t move. And then it was over. It scared me nearly to death. It was an experience I couldn’t understand.”
It was also an experience that Hagar put to good use.
“My ego was telling me: These aliens have programmed you to be a rock star!” he recalled. “So I used it as a tool to write songs about outer space and the future, songs like Crack In The World and Silver Lights, which is about the second coming of Christ – Jesus coming back in a spaceship.”
Silver Lights featured on Hagar’s first solo album, Nine On A Ten Scale, released in 1976. Crack In The World was on his third solo record, Musical Chairs (1977).
Hagar explored similar themes with his first band Montrose - whose self-titled debut album from 1973 includes the classic track Space Station #5. And on his first album with Van Halen, 5150, the hit ballad Love Walks In had Hagar singing about “contact” and an “alien”.
As he told Classic Rock, that night in the ‘60s had a profound effect on him.
“Before it happened, I didn’t know about the planets, about psychic phenomena, I wasn’t interested in any of that," he said. "But from that point on, I became extremely interested in outer space, started reading books, reading Einstein… I went on a quest, and I’m still on it.”
