Rap and dance music dominated the pop charts. It had been more than a year since a rock album had reached No. 1.

Rock was dead. Sammy Hagar heard that talk for the past year while Van Halen

was in the studio recording For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. He knew the band’s hard-rocking record, which would be released in late June, would zoom past everything else on the charts. He was

confident.

“Sure was, man,” the singer says. “I was looking so forward to it. There were times we would sit back, hearing what we were doing, knowing in our hearts that it was great. And that’s not an ego rap.

That’s honest.

“We were real proud of this. We’d sit there and watch MTV and we’d be going, `Boy, can’t wait to blast them (bleeps) out with this (bleep).’ It was almost like we were loading our guns, getting our ammunition ready so we could just hit ’em.”

The album reached the top of the charts in the first week of its release.

Now Van Halen’s guns are ready again, this time for a tour that brings the group to Deer Creek Music Center on Saturday.

“Everyone’s chomping at the bit,” says Hagar, who replaced David Lee Roth as the band’s frontman in 1985. “We haven’t played in almost three years.”

He promises fans “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll show they’ve ever seen in their . . . life,” a show that in rehearsal has been

lasting more than two hours.

“And I’m not even talking in between songs,” he says. “Once I start getting long- winded, I’ll say about anything to anybody. That could add another 45 minutes.”

He’s not exaggerating. During this interview, while alternating the personas of a rock ‘n’ roll wildman and a laid-back concerned citizen, he’ll discuss subjects ranging from his childhood to personal experiences with UFOs.

Hagar says during the 45-minute conversation that he loves the members of Van Halen, loves being in the band and is thrilled with the loyalty of its fans, who made him feel welcome as Roth’s replacement.

“The fans that liked Dave, they split. Now, seeing what’s happened with Dave, I think it’s obvious: We don’t need him,” he

says, referring to Van Halen’s massive success and Roth’s recent poor showings on the charts and at the box office.

Sammy the crusader

“Right now, if I split and Dave came back, my gut feeling is that it would hurt the band. First of all, the band would not do

it. If I left the band, Dave would not be the guy who came in. There’s not a happy mutual thing going on there.

“Second of all, these guys would have to cut my neck and throw me out of the band. That isn’t even an issue.”

That settled, Hagar turns his attention to a developer’s plans to build 17 homes _ “big houses on stilts” _ on a two-mile stretch of beach adjacent to his home and that of guitarist Eddie Van Halen.

If the plan is successful, he says, the houses will destroy the public beach, create an environmental hazard and block his view of the ocean.

“My kid has to sit here and look at the house (that would be built),” he says. “All right, it’s a tough life, great. But

(bleep). It’s bad for the environment, too. The guy’s going to be flushing his sewage into the ocean, and there’s no beach there then.”

Death of a dream

This issue is addressed, albeit subtly, on the new Van Halen album. Hagar says the new record has a concept: The American Dream is over.

“All the promises? They’ve all been raped,” he says. “And I’m not anti-American. I’m very pro-American. I’m saying, `Hey, the jive (bleep) you’ve been fed, if you go to school and get a good education you can have this. (Bleep).”

He says the overall point of the album is that people need to become more conscious. Conserve. Recycle. Ask questions. Respect each other.

“I don’t believe you should sit there and say this is the way to go,” Hagar says. “There’s way too much responsibility to that. I wouldn’t want to be in that position, because I’m not sure I’m right all the time. But what you can do, what the artist’s job is, is to paint the picture. Just say, `Here’s the way I see it.’ ” 

Hagar, 43, has a perspective different from that of most rockers. He grew up in a poor family in the industrial town of

Fontana, Calif.

`Give them hope’

“My father died in a park as an alcoholic at 56 years old,” he says. “A bum, a derelict in the streets. My father. He never got to see what I’ve done. He never got to see me as a man.” His childhood made him sympathetic to the downtrodden.

“I’m so adamant that each man take care of himself, but everyone needs compassion or a reason to get them to do it,” he

says. “The whole key to taking a person that’s down and out and getting them out of that is hope. You have to give them hope somehow. . . .

“You give them that and they’ll lift themselves up by their bootstraps and go out and start do it. Without some kind of hope,

some kind of compassion from another man, they won’t have it.” But not everything about Hagar is deadly serious. These

subjects just came up in the course of conversation. So did UFOs. 

Sammy meets the aliens

Hagar says he’s had a nearly lifelong fascination with extraterrestrials. He tells this story of his 1967 encounter with

aliens:

“I’m in my house in Fontana, Calif. I’m asleep. It’s the middle of the night. And all of a sudden, I almost felt like there was

this cord in me, in my head, and it went up on this mountaintop behind where I live. It was like an electrical connection. . . 

“It was connected to these three creatures which, I can’t even explain what they look like, but when I think it you can just sort of see them almost like just a glowing being. . . .

“They said, in their own way _ there was no speaking, they were far away, they were a mile away _ `He’s waking up.’ They yelled out a numerical system, like a code that was my code. None of the numbers were from our numerical system. I can’t even tell you what they were, but they were numbers.

“It was this code, and all of a sudden it just went ZAP! and I opened my eyes and my room was just completely white. It was just light, as if the biggest light in the world was in there.

“I couldn’t move my arms or anything. Just my eyes were open. And then _ BANG! _ my eyes closed and I just went back to sleep. I woke up the next day and remembered the whole thing. It was not a

dream.”