When Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Joe Satriani first embarked on their “Best of All Worlds” tour, Jason Bonham – the son of legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham – was pounding the skins for the Van Halen-heavy set. But somewhere along the way, Kenny Aronoff inexplicably started showing up behind the drum kit at tour stops. And now Hagar is finally explaining why.
“His mother had a stroke and went into a coma, and it’s serious,” Hagar says. “The whole family went over there, and he held out for two or three days. Then he says, ‘I gotta go.’ I said, ‘You go. Go.’”
Fortunately, Hagar already had a backup drummer in mind – the same one who replaced Chad Smith in Hagar’s band Chickenfoot. “So we told Kenny he had about 24-hour notice,” Hagar says. “And he came in for the first night at six in the morning. We played that night in Cincinnati, and he did a 90-percent perfect show. I swear to you, I make more mistakes every night than he did! So that’s a big hats-off to this guy.”