Summer Nights

Album: 5150 (1986)
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Songfacts®:

  • This was the first song Sammy Hagar recorded with Van Halen when he joined the band in 1985. Hagar recounts in his memoir Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock: "We started playing, and the engineer Donn Landee recorded everything we did. I made up the first line on the spot: 'Summer nights and my radio.' It just popped into my head the first time I heard that riff. The rest of the song I scatted my way through. I really had my scat together. Eddie couldn't believe it. Dave apparently didn't have good rhythm and wasn't a great singer, didn't have any range. I was singing Eddie's guitar licks with him."

Comments: 2

  • Mickey from BavariaI loved that song back when it came out (yeah yeah, I know, it's girly music xD) and played/sang it for my gf (now wife) over and over - recently heard it again by chance, so I picked up my guitar after years of "abstinence" to suprise her. Big success - takes us back to a simpler and friendlier time when people could just enjoy their lifes.
    Wish I had a Steinberger!
  • Englishjello from CanadaJust a fun party song about chasing girls (This was the sexist 80's). The most interesting thing about this song is that Eddie is using a Steinberger Trans Term guitar that was invented in 1984 (No headstock). It has a vibrato system which Eddie was a massive user of. So it opened a world of creativity for him. He also used it on "Get Up", "Pleasure Dome", "Me Wise Magic" and "Fire In The Hole"
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