GEN X REFLEX: I CAN’T DRIVE 55
Sammy Hagar, the Red Rocker, and Why Some of Us Aren’t Ready to Slow Down
There are certain songs you don't have to hear.
Someone only has to say the words.
55.
And somewhere inside my Gen X brain, Sammy Hagar starts screaming.
I CAN'T DRIVE 55.
That's a Gen X Reflex.
And for this California girl, it is a particularly strong one.
We grew up on highways and freeways. Driving was freedom. Getting your license was a rite of passage. Cars were part of the culture, and somewhere along the line, the powers that be had decided that no matter how much open road stretched in front of us, 55 miles per hour was enough.
There was actually a reason for it.
The 55 mph maximum came out of the 1970s energy crisis. In January 1974, President Richard Nixon signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act. Technically, states still established their own speed limits, but there was a rather persuasive catch: states that wanted federal highway funding had to adopt a maximum of 55 mph. The man had spoken. Everybody complied. The restriction began to loosen in 1987 and federal control finally ended in 1995.
But little Rock 'n' Roll Angel wasn't thinking about federal highway policy.
I knew one thing.
The speed limit was 55.
Image: California 55 mph traffic sign. Source: Z107.7 FM Joshua Tree
And then Sammy Hagar announced that this arrangement was unacceptable.
Then I Saw the Man
I heard “I Can't Drive 55” on the radio first.
Great song.
Loud. Fast. Catchy.
It had exactly the kind of hook that Sammy Hagar seems able to pull out of thin air.
Then I saw the video on MTV.
And...
Who is this guy?
There he was. Red clothes. Wild hair. Attitude everywhere. Cars, speeding, ridiculousness, rock and roll.
The song had caught my ear.
MTV made me curious about the man.
And I did what Angel always did when something caught my imagination.
I researched.
Now, young people, you need to understand that research was different then.
There was no Google.
No Wikipedia.
No Spotify page containing someone's entire discography.
No YouTube rabbit hole where you could begin with one video and three hours later somehow be watching an interview recorded backstage in Cleveland in 1978.
We had to work for our obsessions.
Fortunately, I had one of the greatest research institutions ever created.
Tower Records.
So I went hunting.
Albums.
45s.
Old records.
Liner notes.
Whatever I could find.
I started working backward through Sammy Hagar's career.
And that's when things got interesting.
Wait. That Was Sammy?
One of my discoveries was the soundtrack to Heavy Metal.
Wait a minute.
I knew this.
That was Sammy Hagar?
There is a peculiar joy in discovering an artist backward.
You think you've found someone new, only to discover that they've already been wandering around inside your musical life.
So I kept digging.
And eventually I arrived at Montrose.
Image: Montrose. Source: Far Out Magazine
Before the Red Rocker became the Red Rocker, before MTV, before 55 and long before Van Halen, Sammy had spent his youth working his way through California bands. By the early 1970s he had become the singer for Ronnie Montrose's new band.
Then came that first Montrose album.
And then I heard:
“Rock Candy.”
People.
My God.
That voice.
This wasn't Sammy learning how to become Sammy.
The career was young.
The voice sounded like it had arrived fully assembled.
Power. Grit. Swagger. Sex.
That enormous rock voice I had discovered through “I Can't Drive 55” was already there.
And Montrose wasn't merely some obscure early stop that became interesting after Sammy got famous. That first album became part of the foundation of American hard rock.
I had gone backward looking for the origins of the Red Rocker.
Instead I discovered that the Red Rocker had apparently been waiting there all along.
The Man Could Write a Song About Toast
There is a joke among some of us rockers about Sammy Hagar's songwriting.
The man could write a song about a piece of toast.
And we'd buy it.
Give Sammy breakfast, an amplifier and four minutes.
We'll have a chorus by noon.
Because Sammy has an extraordinary ability to take something simple and find the rock song hiding inside it.
A color?
“Red.”
That's it.
Red.
The man wrote a song about a color and loved it so enthusiastically that it helped become his identity.
The Red Rocker.
Image: Sammy Hagar, the Red Rocker. Source: redrocker.com
Who does that?
Sammy.
Driving too slowly?
“I Can't Drive 55.”
Want to rock?
Apparently there is only one way to accomplish that.
😂
It sounds almost ridiculously simple until you think about what good songwriting actually requires.
The subject doesn't have to be complicated.
The point of view has to be clear.
Millions of Americans knew what 55 meant.
Sammy turned their irritation into four words everybody could scream.
That is songwriting.
But Before 55, There Was the Scooter
During my archaeological expedition through Sammy's past, I found another song.
Montrose.
“Bad Motor Scooter.”
And there was Sammy, years before he told America he couldn't drive 55, already singing about getting on that bad motor scooter and riding.
Ronnie Montrose even made his guitar sound like a motorcycle.
I loved it.
There was something wonderfully consistent about the whole thing.
Cars.
Motorcycles.
Movement.
Freedom.
Go.
Ride.
Drive.
Rock.
Do something.
I didn't know it then, but those two songs would eventually connect for me in a completely different way.
We'll come back to that.
The Red Rocker Had a Fan
By then, I was done.
Sammy had himself a fan.
Not a casual fan.
A fan fan.
I loved the man.
I loved the voice.
I loved the music.
And he was one of ours, a California rocker with deep ties to the Bay Area music world.
I saw Sammy perform so many times I honestly couldn't tell you how many.
He threw down.
Every time.
There is something about seeing an artist live that changes your relationship with the music. The record tells you what they made.
The stage tells you who they are.
Sammy was built for the stage.
And I was delighted to go along for the ride.
Then rock and roll did what rock and roll does.
It blew something up.
Wait. Sammy Is Joining WHO?
Van Halen was one of the staples of rock.
And Van Halen had a problem.
David Lee Roth was gone.
Now, we are going to talk about Van Halen.
Oh yes.
We are going to talk about Van Halen.
But not today.
That band deserves its own trip around the fire, because people have feelings about Van Halen.
Strong feelings.
Possibly unreasonable feelings.
I may possess some of them.
😂
For today, all you need to know is that David Lee Roth left, Van Halen needed a singer, and then came the announcement:
Sammy Hagar would become the new frontman of Van Halen.
Excuse me?
MY Sammy?
In 1985, Hagar officially joined Van Halen. What followed wasn't a little transitional period while everyone waited to see whether the experiment would work. The Hagar lineup produced four consecutive No. 1 studio albums: 5150, OU812, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance.
And suddenly I had been drafted into one of the great rock arguments of my generation.
Image: Van Halen with Sammy Hagar. Source: www.muzines.co.uk
Van Halen or Van Hagar?
David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar?
Original recipe or the Hagar years?
People.
We are not opening that can today.
Because once we do, somebody will start yelling, somebody else will bring up Eddie's keyboards, someone will scream DAVID LEE ROTH in all caps, and none of us will get home before dark.
😂
We'll come back to it.
I promise.
What mattered to me was that Sammy didn't disappear inside Van Halen.
He brought Sammy with him.
That voice opened different musical territory for the band. The sound changed. The songwriting changed. Van Halen didn't simply hire someone to imitate the guy who had left.
The band evolved.
And Sammy's already extraordinary career got another enormous chapter.
And Then He Just...Kept Going
That's the part of Sammy Hagar's story I appreciate differently now.
The man has enough past to live on forever.
Montrose.
The solo years.
The Red Rocker.
“I Can't Drive 55.”
Van Halen.
Chickenfoot.
Tours.
Businesses.
Restaurants.
Tequila.
Rum.
Cabo.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The man could spend the rest of his life polishing the trophy case.
But one of the things I've always appreciated about Sammy is his resistance to treating his creative life like something that already happened.
And that isn't merely my impression.
When Van Halen was preparing its first greatest-hits project in the 1990s, Hagar was openly hostile to the idea. In a 1997 interview, he said he wasn't interested in making a greatest-hits record and questioned the point when the existing albums were still available. Years later, discussing remasters and repackaging, he again expressed far more interest in leaving the old work where it belonged and moving on than continually reselling the past.
I love that.
Not because there is anything wrong with celebrating a career.
Not because anniversary tours are bad.
And certainly not because I don't want to hear the old songs.
Play 55, Sammy.
We have business to attend to.
😂
But there's something about refusing to behave as though your creative life has reached the credits.
Sammy Hagar has never seemed particularly interested in becoming a museum dedicated to Sammy Hagar.
There might still be another song.
Another collaboration.
Another stage.
Another idea.
Another road.
And That's Where Gen X Comes In
Sammy Hagar isn't a Gen Xer.
He got here before us.
But there's something about the way he has moved through age that feels deeply Gen X to me.
Because people have started talking about us differently too.
Gen X has become nostalgic.
Our music.
Our television.
Our movies.
Our clothes.
Our record stores.
Our MTV.
Our childhoods.
And obviously I love revisiting those things.
You're reading Rock 'n' Roll Angel.
I am literally digging through the attic of my cultural memory and bringing things downstairs to show you.
But there's an enormous difference between remembering yesterday and deciding your best days must therefore be behind you.
Gen X isn't ready for the reunion tour.
The band hasn't broken up.
We're not ready for the greatest-hits album.
We're still recording.
We're still building careers.
Changing careers.
Starting businesses.
Making art.
Writing books.
Making films.
Playing music.
Raising families.
Starting over.
Falling down.
Getting back up.
Trying ridiculous things.
Discovering things we're apparently supposed to have figured out twenty years ago.
We still have songs to sing.
We're not ready to turn the rest of our lives into an extended marketing campaign for yesterday.
Yesterday was great.
My God, we had a soundtrack.
But there are things ahead of us that may turn out to be every bit as important as the things behind us.
Get On and Ride
And that's when those two old Sammy Hagar songs come back to me.
The first came before I even knew his name.
“Bad Motor Scooter.”
Get on.
Ride.
Then came the song that made me go hunting for the man.
“I Can't Drive 55.”
Don't tell me how fast I'm allowed to go.
All these years later, I look at Sammy Hagar and realize something.
He apparently meant it.
Keep moving.
Keep making something.
Keep finding another road.
Don't let somebody else decide when you're supposed to slow down.
That means something different to me now than it did when I was young.
Back then, 55 was a speed limit.
Today?
It feels a little more like a philosophy.
And maybe that's why Sammy Hagar still makes sense to this Gen Xer.
We're old enough now for people to start putting up cultural speed-limit signs.
Slow down.
You've had your turn.
Tell us about the old days.
Play the hits.
Take the victory lap.
Enjoy the reunion.
Thanks.
But no thanks.
We're not done.
So maybe Sammy gave us the instructions decades ago.
Get on the bad motor scooter.
Ride.
And when somebody decides you're getting a little old and perhaps it's time to slow down?
Turn up the radio.
You already know the answer.
I CAN'T DRIVE 55.
🤘🔥
A Little More to Explore
The 55 mph limit wasn't quite the simple “national speed limit” we remember. The Federal Highway Administration explains how federal highway funding was used to bring every state into compliance beginning in 1974, how states later regained authority, and why the rule existed in the first place.
For the Hagar years of Van Halen, the Recording Academy has a useful career overview, including the four consecutive No. 1 studio albums recorded with Sammy and his later work with Chickenfoot.
And for the philosophy behind the man, Sammy's interviews about Van Halen's greatest-hits battles are fascinating reading. Whatever else was happening inside that famously complicated band, Hagar was remarkably clear about one thing: he wanted to make something new, not spend his time endlessly repackaging what had already been made.
**
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or turn up an old favorite song, share it with someone who remembers too.
Follow and subscribe to Rock ’n’ Roll Angel for more music, memories, pop culture, and wonderfully strange adventures from growing up Gen X.
Come find me beyond the memories:
🌐 DrAYHeath.com
▶️ YouTube: @TheMysticScribe
📱 Instagram: @ayheath
📱 TikTok & X: @drayheath
📚 Books by Dr. AY Heath available on Amazon
Until next time...
Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
#SammyHagar #RedRocker #ICantDrive55 #BadMotorScooter #Montrose #VanHalen #VanHagar #ClassicRock #RockNRoll #RockMusic #GenX #GenerationX #GenXReflex #GenXNostalgia #GenXMusic #MTVGeneration #TowerRecords #80sRock #CaliforniaRock #BayAreaMusic #StillRocking #StillCreating #WereNotDone #KeepRiding #RockNRollAngel #MysticScribe