Rolling Stone spoke with 14 legendary artists like Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Earth, Wind and Fire’s Phillip Bailey, and The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, and the magazine asked them if they are willing to go on the road again before there is a vaccine for COCVID-19.
The road is a place that is more like their first home than their second one. David Crosby of Crosby, Stills & Nash says his house is in jeopardy because he is not making any money. However, he wants you to know, “I’m not whining about it, though — it’s what we have to do, or we can’t beat the coronavirus.”
While he is willing to put other people’s lives ahead of his own, Sammy Hagar is not:
I’ll be comfortable playing a show before there’s a vaccine, if it’s declining and seems to be going away. I’m going to make a radical statement here. This is hard to say without stirring somebody up, but truthfully, I’d rather personally get sick and even die, if that’s what it takes. We have to save the world and this country from this economic thing that’s going to kill more people in the long run. I would rather see everyone go back to work. If some of us have to sacrifice on that, OK. I will die for my children and my grandchildren to have a life anywhere close to the life that I had in this wonderful country. That’s just the way that I feel about it. I’m not going to go around spreading the disease. But there may be a time where we have to sacrifice. I mean, how many people die on the Earth every day? I have no idea. I’m sorry to say it, but we all gotta die, man.
Thankfully, not all artists feel the same way as Hagar. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty said, “And I don’t want to be the guy who contributes to that. You go do a concert with 10,000 people, and then find out afterwards that some of them died?” Then he added, “Maybe some other guy thinks it’s a good idea, but I’m not dying for Donald Trump. I’m not dying for the economy.”
We all miss concerts, but none of them are worth dying over. Especially, Sammy Hagar. I saw him with Van Halen and he sucked. He was so awful that he forgot the words to Right Now. How do you forget the lyrics to the biggest song you produced with the band months just after you released it? He is no David Lee Roth.
