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97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda as the year.

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Turns over and we start out fresh with our resolutions and ideas about what's to come, it's important to remember that each and every good thing starts with the present moment and what you do with that moment. And there's a song for that, of course, and for a song about the Here and Now Right now by Van Halen took an awfully long time to write with Eddie Van Halen actually writing the piano part back in the early to mid-80s, well before Sammy Hagar put together the lyrics and the band recorded it for their 1991 album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. It just proves that sometimes the right time is worth the wait. If you liked this episode, don't forget to give it a like at the end and hit that subscribe button for Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is the ninth album from Van Halen and the third to feature Sammy Hagar as lead vocalist. By 1991, this era of Van Halen had silenced critics and fans who wondered how the band would work after the 1985 departure of David Lee Roth, who quit the band to go solo. The remaining members, the late, great guitar God Eddie Van Halen, his brother Alex on drums, and Michael Anthony on bass found themselves without a frontman, but not ready to roll over and die by any stretch. Enter Sammy Hagar, former frontman for the band Montrose, who then went solo himself to great success. Hagar and the members of Van Halen had crossed paths before, but Hagar says it was his mechanic who actually had a hand in him joining the band. The story goes that his mechanic was also Eddie Van Halen's mechanic, and it was while picking up his own car that he saw Hagar's Ferrari at the shop, the same Ferrari used in Hagar's video for I can't drive 55, and Eddie Van Halen asked the mechanic about the car. He was told it belonged to Sammy Hagar, and after hearing that David Lee Roth had quit the band, the mechanic advised Van Halen to call Hagar up and get him to join up, which he did. So Van Halen fans can thank that mechanic, a guy named Claudio Zampoli, for his help getting the red Rocker in the band. And we all know how well that worked out. Hagar and the rest of Van Halen were a complete fit. Besides the shared love of sports cars, Hagar was a Northern California rocker with a long list of successes, and he clicked seamlessly with the Southern California band that had helped make hard rock so very popular the world over. Their first album together, 1986's 5150, named after Van Halen's studio, went to number one and was followed by another huge album, 1988's OU812. Van Halen were riding high once again, and Hagar's addition seemed to give the songs a new dimension, a depth on some of the songs that had previously eluded the band lyrically. Hagar wanted to write lyrics for a song that specifically wasn't about partying or fast cars or girls. And he was going through something personally at that time, too, which had a dramatic effect on his lyrics. He was having problems with his first wife, Betsy, who he did eventually divorce after 26 years of marriage in 1994. He says he was lying on a beach trying to meditate after an argument with her, and the lyric, right now it's your tomorrow came into his head with the rest of the lyrics following. Quickly afterward, he took those lyrics to Eddie Van Halen, who separately had written an instrumental piece years before when he was scoring the music for a 1984 movie written by Cameron Crowe called the Wild Life starring Chris Pin, music that he kept coming back to over the years. Interestingly, when Eddie Van Halen had originally written the piece, David Lee Roth just wasn't interested in it. Van Halen said that after Roth left and before Hagar joined the band, he had envisioned an album with guest singers, with Joe Cocker in mind for the music that he was playing on piano. But we know now how that ended up when Eddie Van Halen played the piano part that he had written years before. Late one night in the studio, Hagar said that he realized they were both working on the same song with the lyrics that had come to him on the beach and right now came alive. That was mission accomplished for Hagar, who wanted very much to write a song that would reflect the seriousness of the state of the world at that time, especially after the somewhat recent fall of the Berlin Wall and a sort of sobering of public consciousness the World Over. Lyrics written by a man who was navigating marital trouble, having a moment of realization, accepting that change is inevitable. Definitely not a party song right now. Goes like this. Don't want to wait till tomorrow why put it off Another day One more walk through problems built up and stands in our way One step ahead One step behind me now you gotta run to get even make future plans or dream about yesterday Come on, turn this thing around Right now it's your tomorrow Right now it's everything Catch a magic moment do it right here and now it means everything. You miss the beat, you lose the rhythm and nothing falls into place Only missed by a fraction Slipped a little off your pace the more things you get, the more you want Just trade in one for the other Working so hard to make it easier Got to turn this thing around and the chorus repeats as the song ends, urging us listeners to catch a magic moment in the Right here and now it was such a lyrical departure from the band's typical songs that Sammy Hagar was about to be challenged by the video concept for the song. Director Mark Fenske, a Chicagoan who partnered with a Chicago ad man named Scott Burns on the concept, came up with a treatment for the video that would deal with modern issues and use a new approach that would be both cheap to produce and very high impact. A first time video director, Fenske proposed the idea of using a text on screen overlay while the song was playing, using themes of politics, religion, loneliness and more messages laid on top of footage of the band, interspersed with footage of things like tomatoes and and dogs, explosions and even Fenske's own mother. The overlaid messages said things like right now people are having unprotected sex and right now justice is being perverted in a court of law. Mixed with right now your parents miss you and right now Ed is playing piano. At the time, Hagar was furious about the concept. To his way of thinking, the director's idea would take away from the lyrics that he had actually written. He felt that his lyrics were an upgrade from the party fair that Van Halen was known for, and he thought fans would be confused by it all. He hated the idea so much that he flew to South Carolina for a quickie vacation and wouldn't take anyone's calls. It was only when Mo Austin, chairman of Warner Bros. Records, called him specifically to convince him to come back and shoot the video that he agreed to do it. Unfortunately, he'd come down with pneumonia while on his little retreat. So when he showed up at the video shoot, not only was he still in a bad mood, but he had a temperature of about 104. So the moments in the video where you see Hagar standing with his arms crossed, looking and even slamming a door are all very real. He has had to admit that that idea was a great one, though. It won three awards at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, including one for Best Video. Sammy Hagar has said many times since that he was wrong to have had reservations about it at first. While the official music video turned out to be a big hit, who can forget the song's use in commercials for Crystal Pepsi, a flop of an idea to make Pepsi a clear soda? The song's use in the commercials made some fans accuse Van Halen of selling out, but they said they had to do it because Pepsi was going to either use the song or get a sound alike group to record a version. So Van Halen decided to let them use it so they would at least get paid for it. Crystal Pepsi the product was such a joke that it was even lampooned on Saturday Night Live in a skit about a clear gravy product with Van Halen's song playing in the skit. But none of that really hurt. The song though Right now ended up going to number two on the Billboard Rock chart and for Unlawful Carnal Knowledge went to number one on the Billboard 200 album chart. Another success for Van Halen. This time they proved that they had grown past the party rocker stage and had evolved into a band who also wrote meaningful, thought provoking songs about being present in the moment, considerate of the world around them, and gave us fans an anthem to keep going as we wade through our own challenges too, and that even when the going seems tough at times, we can indeed catch a magic moment right here and now. I'm Janda and this has been behind the Song. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. Find us wherever you get your podcasts and on the behind the song podcast TikTok channel. You can also find me on the air at 97.1fm the drive in Chicago and at wdrv.com weekdays from 9 to 2. And on the way, much more classic rock and roll.