Sammy Hagar Reflects on Red Rocker Roots and How Fontana Hometown Shaped His Art
variety.comSteven Gaydos Executive VP of Content They say, “If you remember the ’60s, you weren’t there,” but newly minted Hollywood Walk of Fame honoree Sammy Hagar not only remembers the ’60s, but the ’50s as well.
As someone who grewup in that same era in Hagar’s hood, the former hometown of America’s biggest steel mill west of the Mississippi and birthplace of the Hells Angels — Fontana — I can attest to the veracity of Hagar’s crystal-clear total recall.
Now a bustling metropolis (well, bustling mostly with logistic centers aka shipping warehouses,) back in the ’50s Fontana had a population of just under 10,000 and Kaiser Steel had a payroll of about that same number.
It was more “Deer Hunter” than “Surf’s Up,” with a richly diverse blue collar, working-class hamlet of transplanted Rust Belt Slovenians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians as well as Dust Bowl refugees, Black people and Latinos.
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