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 t’s been said that friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is the only truth. The bond between Sammy Hagar and Guy Fieri is a testament to that.

Both vividly recall the fated moment they met. The year was 1998. Or was it 1999? Whatever: they’re clear on everything else. Time is just a construct anyway, right? Former Van Halen front man Hagar announced a promotion: whoever sold the most Cabo Wabo — the tequila he launched in 1996 (the same year he left Van Halen, incidentally) — in Northern California could come backstage and not only meet the Red Rocker himself but win a signed guitar.

Way back when, Fieri was not the restaurateur, author, documentarian, Emmy Award-winning television host or Donkey Sauce creator he is today. The Next Food Network Star, which catapulted him to fame and fortune in 2006, was almost a decade in the future. He was just a guy who owned a few restaurants — the highly successful chain Johnny Garlic’s California Pasta Grill. He was a die-hard fan of Hagar’s (whom he’d met only in passing at fan meet and greets), and he was determined to win. Basically, there was no contest: that guitar was his.

“I don’t want to sound like too much of a fan geek, but that’s what I am,” Fieri confides during our Zoom interview. “When I was in school, elementary through high school, Sammy Hagar was — and still is — the greatest. I love the guy. I know all his songs, know all the albums, saw him play with Van Halen, the whole thing. [So when he announced the contest, I said to the Cabo Wabo sales rep], ‘Well, just go get that guitar, because I’m going to sell all of it.’ And I sold it all; I was the best. I won the guitar and the meet and greet with Sammy.”

Little did he know just how much he’d be winning: Hagar’s attention, admiration, eternal friendship — and, one day, a highly successful business partnership (the reason, might I add, that we’re talking in the first place). So yeah, a win-win situation overall.

Of that first meeting, Hagar, now 73, recalls, “He was just some guy. He’s got spiked-up blond hair, he’s got the same kind of sunglasses I’m wearing. He’s got a goatee like mine; he’s wearing shorts and flip-flops. I’m going, ‘Does this guy think he’s my twin or something? Is he my long-lost cousin?’”

But Fieri had a trick up his sleeve that was more impressive than mere twinning. While Hagar was in his dressing room cleaning up after the show, “Guido” (as he’s known to all his close friends but Sammy, who prefers to call him “Guy Bones”) took the opportunity to serve up some homemade sushi on the guitar Hagar had signed for him. It was an unforgettably baller move, to be sure. And it worked.

Or buy here : Guitar and wine make everything fine poster

Guitar and wine make everything fine poster

“I just went, ‘This guy is too cool,’ and we immediately became friends,” Hagar reminisces during a morning phone call. “He’s a car nut like me — he had a Corvette, and I had a Cobra — and we even switched cars one day and terrorized the back streets of these [California] mountain roads. We just like the same stuff. We’ve had a relationship kind of like best friends. I guess I’m kind of like his uncle.”

 

 

 

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