Wednesday February 23, 2022 “All We Need Is an Island” Sammy Hagar & Nancy Wilson
This song pretty much sums up the week, “All We Need Is an Island”!
It was originally suggested to today’s songwriter Sammy Hagar that he do this song as a duet with Taylor Swift which, after some thought Sammy said “'Well, gee, what if someone wants us to do a video, then people are going to be going, 'Is that her grandpa?' I'm okay with being a grandpa but not Taylor Swift's grandpa." So it was decided that he would do it with the more age appropriate Nancy Wilson from the band Heart, and Sammy said of Nancy’s performance, “She killed it!”
Hagar is one of the very few impressive rock stars who not only have amazing musical credentials, in the case of Sammy. with bands like Montrose, Van Halen and Chickenfoot along with his solo work, but he is a very astute businessman who owns a tequila brand, Cabo Wabo, several restaurants of the same name and a resort ironically in Cabo Wabo.
Hagar has sold more than fifty million albums with twenty five of those albums that are platinum, one million copies sold.
Nancy Wilson is often overshadowed by her sister Ann’s remarkable voice, one of the best voices in rock music, but Nancy’s guitar skills are legendary. I was watching a video of guitarists who were discussing the best rock solos ever and then they would play each of them, but when they got to the opening rock solo from Heart’s “Crazy On You” the guitarists all said they would prefer to go to the video of Nancy playing it because it was so difficult.
Nancy played the iconic introduction to “Stairway to Heaven” when Led Zeppelin was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and the video shows Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones nodding their approval of her work and I’m pretty sure those are tears in Robert Plant’s eyes as he listened to the performance.
Stay safe and well…and let’s “get the cold-ass winter gone, so cold and so long”.
Today’s song is a simple one to play with just G and D and that’s it. You will need Nancy Wislon’s harmonies though to make it work.