SAMMY HAGAR SAYS NEW BOOK “MAY PUT A FIRE UNDER THEIR ASSES,” ABOUT VAN HALEN. WHO SHOULD PLAY MOTLEY CRUE IN “DIRT” MOVIE? SCREENWRITER REVEALS. METAL MIKE 10 ESSENTIAL METAL RIFFS. “GOD BLESS OZZY,” FILM SHOWS DIFFERENT SIDE OF OZZY.

rbtaleman March 23, 2011 Leave a Comment

According to The Pulse Of Radio, former VAN HALEN singer Sammy Hagar thinks his newly-released autobiography, which spills a lot of dirt about his days with the band, will get them riled up enough to make a great record with original
frontman David Lee Roth. The group is currently in the studio with Roth for the first time since 1983, but Hagar told MTV
Hive, “I heard it’s not going so good. This is what I’ve heard through the grapevine, that they’ve already fired one producer and Ed [Van Halen] and Dave supposedly can’t be in the same room together. If they can’t be in the same room together, how can they make a record? I think I’m doing VAN HALEN a favor with my book. It may put a fire under their asses to swallow some pride and make another record for the fans.”

Hagar‘s last album with VAN HALEN was 1996’s “Balance”, but he says that his relationship with Eddie was already crumbling at the time. “Ed needs somebody to make decisions and a leader, you know,” he said. “He’s not a natural born leader kind of guy. And his brother [drummer Alex Van Halen] was always the leader before or Roth was the leader before, and when Roth left, his brother and him bumped heads so much, when I walked in it was like, ‘Well, what does Sam wanna do?’ you know. So it became kind of like, yeah, I was making all the decisions, so then on ‘Balance’ all of a sudden he didn’t like my
decisions and it was like really weird.”

Hagar and Roth actually toured together some years back, when neither man was involved with VAN HALEN, but Hagar shared his opinion of his VAN HALEN predecessor, saying, “Straight up? He’s not a friendly guy. He’s not a nice guy at all. And he’s no freakin’ fun. Here’s a guy who makes an image out of being a party animal, getting the babes and having a good time. But on tour, you knock on his dressing room door and he won’t come out . . . He is not the guy that I expected him to be. He’s just an act. Or maybe he just didn’t like me. Maybe I’m too much fun for him. Or maybe I sing too well and it scares him.”

Hagar‘s book, “Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock”, arrived in stores last week. Hagar repeats in the book his claim that he was once abducted by aliens.

He has recently started recording the second album from CHICKENFOOT, the supergroup which also features ex-VAN
HALEN bassist Michael Anthony, RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS drummer Chad Smith, and guitarist Joe Satriani.

VAN HALEN reunited with Roth in 2007 for a massively successful world tour, and announced in January that they were entering the studio to record the first album with Roth on the mic since 1984.

New York Times pop music writer Neil Strauss, who, along with the members of MÖTLEY CRÜE wrote a weighty collective biography of the band called “The Dirt – Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band“ in 2002, was asked in a brand new interview with MTV.com what the latest is on the film adaptation of “The Dirt”. “I know they’re looking at a few different directors for it,” he replied. “I gotta say, the screenplay is amazing. I really hope they make it. I think it will be great.

I think they’re just scared because it’s obviously going to be a hard R-[rated] movie. I think they’re worried they won’t make enough money off it.” When asked if he had any thoughts or preferences on whom they might cast, Strauss replied, “No, but I got a text from the screenwriter, Rich Wilkes, and he told me who he’d love to see in the film. Here’s who he sees: Brad Pitt as David Lee Roth, Jared Leto as Vince Neil, Jack Black or Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Patrick or Justin Timberlake as their first manager (a guy called Alan Kaufman), Sam Rockwell as Mick Mars, Ashton Kutcher or Russell Brand as Tommy Lee. He’s
got it all thought out. That would be amazing.”

Rob Zombie recently denied the widely reported story that he was going to direct “The Dirt”. Zombie told Australian web site Undercover, “No, I’m not doing the MÖTLEY CRÜE movie. I don’t know where that rumor came from.”

“That rumor” appeared to originate in a Billboard interview with CRÜE drummer Tommy Lee, in which it was reported that Zombie would direct the on-again, off-again movie. Zombie has been attached to several projects over the last few years, including a remake of “The Blob”, but his name has never come up in connection with “The Dirt”.

It was reported in 2008 that MÖTLEY CRÜE was trying to extricate itself from a deal with MTV Films, a
division of Paramount Pictures, to make the “The Dirt” movie.

A deal was first announced for the film version in 2006 but has since gone nowhere. Bassist Nikki Sixx told Reuters that MTV was “a channel that used to be hip and has now actually become unhip…They are not the right partner.”

Metal Mike‘s “10 Essential Metal Riffs”, an exclusive feature found in the holiday 2010 issue of Guitar World magazine can now be found via the magazine’s official interactive site.

Dubbed “10 licks that any metal guitarist should have in their bag of tricks,” the 10-part lesson features Mike demonstrating licks across several styles incorporating many aspects of current and classic metal guitar techniques.

Lesson Contents

Lick #01 – Late ’80s Bay Area Thrash
Lick #02 – Classical-Style Arpeggios
Lick #03 – Melodic Theme
Lick #04 – Combining Two Pentatonic Scale Positions
Lick #05 – Phrygian Dominant Lick
Lick #06 – Speed Metal
Lick #07 – Two-Note Power Chord Riff
Lick #08 – Dimebag/Pantera Style
Lick #09 – Odd Time Arpeggios
Lick #10 – Jake E. Lee Style

Born in 1971, Mike Chlasciak originated in Poland. He was transplanted to the U.S. in 1984. He attended Berklee School of Music, graduating top of his class in 1994. He formed bands called ISOLATION CHAMBER and PAINMUSEUM and has over the years released five solo-based albums. He is currently playing guitar for HALFORD, led by JUDAS PRIEST frontman Rob Halford.

Metal Mike pens his own guitar column for Guitar World magazine called “Metal For Life”. In addition, he is preparing a
solo record called “The Metalworker” featuring DAATH‘s Kevin Talley and vocal siren Carlos Zema.

Hollyscoop.com spoke to Ozzy Osbourne‘s wife/manager Sharon and son Jack at the Los Angeles reception for the Tribeca Film Festival on Monday, March 21 at W Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, California.
You can now watch the chat below.

“God Bless Ozzy Osbourne” (formerly “Wreckage Of My Past”), the much-anticipated “intimate” documentary that delves deep into the life of heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne, will be shown at the 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival,
which runs from April 20 to May 1 in New York City.

“God Bless Ozzy Osbourne” will be the first release from Jacko Productions, a company started by Ozzy‘s son Jack Osbourne.

“It’s something that came from our hearts,” Sharon told Hollyscoop.com about the film.
“It’s about my husband, Jack‘s father. We [took on] the project with great passion and we feel that Jack managed to get a different side of Ozzy on film, somebody where it’s not really Ozzy Osbourne, it’s really the father on film.”

When asked what parts of Ozzy‘s life he was trying to highlight in the documentary, Jack said, “We go back to him being a school boy, all the way up to… He got sober about five years ago, and it’s all about everything kind of culminating up to that moment when he decided that… enough of the partying and let’s see what life has to offer in a kind of a sober realm. So it’s very much about him coming to terms with the fact that you can’t keep going at that level for so long; eventually you’ve gotta get
sober.”

Description of the film, provided by the festival’s organizers, appears below.

“God Bless Ozzy Osbourne”, directed by Mike Fleiss and Mike Piscitelli. Produced by Jack Osbourne, Marc
Weingarten and Jordan Tappis. (United States) – World Premiere, Documentary. Ozzy. For four decades, the name has been synonymous not just with a singular brand of blistering heavy metal, but also with a life lived to the extreme. Made for fans and the uninitiated alike, this definitive portrait of a troubled star — told in part through the eyes of his family —
relives Ozzy‘s artistic triumphs while chronicling his arduous journey to sobriety and peace.

Ozzy‘s four-decade track record as a culturally relevant artist is unprecented, but his personal struggles have been
shrouded in myth and secrecy. Featuring never-before seen footage uncovered from the archives and interviews with Paul McCartney, Tommy Lee and others, “God Bless Ozzy Osbourne” is the first documentary to take viewers inside the complex mind of rock’s great icon.

Emerging from a working class family in war-torn England, Osbourne and his neighborhood friends formed BLACK SABBATH and invented heavy metal. Plagued by self-doubt, Osbourne the solo superstar went on an epic binge that lasted
40 years. “God Bless Ozzy Osbourne” will relive the highs of his artistic triumphs as well as his fraught journey to sobriety, which Ozzy regards as his greatest accomplishment.

Filming for “God Bless Ozzy Osbourne” began in January 2008. The documentary will reportedly include additional interviews with all the principal members of BLACK SABBATH, the various incarnations of Ozzy‘s solo band, family and friends.

Ozzy said in a recent interview that he was hoping the film would include footage showing the singer in “a bad mood” — so fans can see Ozzy‘s real personality. “I said to [my son], ‘Jack it can’t be how wonderful I am all the time because I’m not that way all the time, everybody wakes up in a bad mood, everybody is a bit of a dick sometimes and everybody has a good day,'” he explained. “I’m human, you know.”I’m hoping he’s put a bit of sweet and sour in there,” Ozzy added, “A documentary about my life is great but for every good thing there’s a bad thing you know. When I was out there drinking and doing drugs I don’t suppose I was Mister Charming.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Jack stated about the movie, “The hard thing is getting people to be honest and not have it be a fluff piece, because that’s not what we’re trying to do. I’m trying to paint a realistic picture of who my father is. I think ‘The Osbournes’, to a degree, tarnished the public’s perception of my dad as a bit of a senile, funny, bumbling guy. Yeah, my dad can be that guy, but it’s not him. I think that almost discredited who he is as an artist. My dad’s not an idiot — he’s nothing
short of a genius, in my opinion. He does have huge flaws, and we’re trying to really paint an honest picture of that.”

According to Variety, Jack Osbourne filmed several of his father’s concerts, compiled early archive footage, and was hoping to secure an interview with Ozzy‘s first wife. He was planning to put the footage together with Piscitelli and Tappis before talking to distributors.

“I want people to see John Osbourne as the guy I grew up with, the tormented, complex musician whose personal demons manifest themselves in so many crazy, unique ways,” Osbourne said. “He’s agreed to it but is putting up his guard, massively
afraid of putting his true self out there on display for people to see.”

Published by rbtaleman

Heavy metal (fiend/friend?) Writer, frustrat(or), frustrat(ee), decorated U.S. Navy veteran, Husband(twice), father(three times), grandfather(of seven), FM radio veteran, Concertgoer, music collector, muscle car aficianado. Grown up since five. Child since 45. View all posts by rbtaleman