Cabo Wabo is a nightclub, restaurant and bar company founded in 1990 by American rock musicians Sammy Hagar, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, and Michael Anthony. Located in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Sammy Hagar bought out the rest of the Van Halen members in 1996 after several years of bad management. Franchises exist along the Las Vegas Strip and on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.^[1] It also has its own signature brand of tequila with the title of same name of the company.^[2]

Cantina

Hagar, who already had a successful music career, first visited the Mexican town of Cabo San Lucas in the early 1980s, before joining Van Halen in July 1985 after the departure of their founding singer, David Lee Roth. Seeking a place for himself and his friends to relax and play music, Hagar, and his long time friend, Marco Monroy, partnered up with fellow Van Halen members Michael Anthony and Edward and Alex Van Halen and opened a large bar, restaurant, and performance space named after the band's 1988 song "Cabo Wabo."

Launched in April 1990, the cantina was initially a financial failure, leading Hagar to buy out his bandmates. Under new management, the bar became popular with both locals and tourists as the town quickly grew into a major resort. In 2004, after plans fell through to open in Las Vegas, Hagar opened a second location in the basement of the historic Harvey's casino on the south shore of Lake Tahoe. However, that location has since closed. ^[3][4] A third location was opened in Fresno, California in 2008,^[5] but had its license pulled by Hagar at the beginning of 2009. Cabo Wabo Las Vegas opened in The Miracle Mile shopping center at Planet Hollywood in November 2009. The club typically attracts an older adult clientele with its mostly rock music selection.^[6]

Hagar claims he coined the name after watching a man walk unsteadily along a local beach after a heavy night's partying. Using the town's nickname, Cabo (which means "cape" in Spanish), and shortening "wobble" to "wabo" he said of the man that he was doing the "Cabo wabo." Hagar later used the phrase in his lyrics and title for the Van Halen song.

Tequila

In the late 1990s, Hagar began selling his patrons a house brand of hand-made tequila he commissioned from a family-owned distillery in the state of Jalisco. In 1999, Winston 'Win' Wilson of Wilson-Daniels, a fine wine and liquor importer and distributor from Napa Valley began to import the tequila into the United States. An instant success, sales rose from 37,000 cases the first year to 140,000 cases in 2006, making it the second-best selling premium tequila in the United States.^[7]

Several of the Cabo Wabo offerings have performed quite well at international spirit ratings competitions. The añejo offering received three silver, one gold and one double gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition between 2008 and 2012.^[8] Its reposado tequila received a score of 92 from the 2008 Beverage Testing Institute.^[9] The blanco tequila received a gold medal at the 2020 New York International Spirits Competition. ^[10]

In May 2007 it was announced that Hagar would sell an 80% interest in Cabo Wabo Tequila to Gruppo Campari, the world's sixth-largest spirits company, for $80 million. Skyy Spirits of San Francisco, a vodka producer and subsidiary of Gruppo Campari, planned to market Cabo Wabo globally, with continued participation by Hagar. Gerry Ruvo, president and chief executive of Skyy Spirits, said, "Sammy has done a fantastic job building the brand, so we are going to obviously spend time with him and work with him to continue our efforts to take the brand to an even larger level, both here in the US and, more important, globally." Ruvo said Great Britain, Spain, Australia, Southeast Asia, Japan, Germany and Italy are considered key expansion markets for tequila.^[11]

Logo

In 1990 Noel Vestri was hired to design the original logo for the cantina.^{[citation needed]} The logo for the tequila has since changed. Its newest iteration occurred in 2009 with a minimalist design featuring the letters in a weathered western font of silver.^[12]

1985–1996: Sammy Hagar era

Eddie invited Patty Smyth of Scandal to replace Roth, but she declined.^[42] Daryl Hall was also offered the lead vocal position in 1985, but also declined. Hall verified to Hagar, his musical guest in the May 2015 season premiere of Live from Daryl's House, that he was approached after a Hall & Oates concert.^[43]

Eddie was introduced to Sammy Hagar in 1985, via their mutual Ferrari mechanic. Hagar was the former frontman for the hard rock group Montrose, and now a solo artist coming off a very successful year. His hit single "I Can't Drive 55" came from his 1984 album VOA, produced by Ted Templeman, who had also produced Montrose's first album Montrose, as well as all of Van Halen's albums up to that point. Hagar agreed to sing as well as play rhythm guitar.

When Warner Bros. president Mo Ostin came to the band's 5150 Studios to hear the band's progress, Hagar said the band played "Why Can't This Be Love" live with Eddie on keyboards, after which Ostin proclaimed: "I smell money."^[44]

The 1986 Van Halen album 5150 was a huge hit, becoming the band's first No. 1 album on the Billboard charts, driven by the keyboard-dominated singles "Why Can't This Be Love" (#3 U.S.), "Dreams", and "Love Walks In" (Top 30 U.S.). To further introduce the new era for the band, a new Van Halen logo was put on the cover. The new logo retained elements of the original, but now the lines extending from either side of 'VH' wrapped around and formed a ring.

Following the release of the 5150 album, the "5150 Tour" was launched to support it across North America. Footage was released on VHS and Laserdisc as Live Without a Net. The band minimized the use of pre-Hagar Van Halen songs in the set.^[45]

All four studio albums produced during this period reached No. 1 on the Billboard pop music charts and 17 singles breached the top 12 of the mainstream rock tracks chart. During that era, a single taken from 1988's OU812, "When It's Love", reached the Top Five, peaking at No. 5. In addition, Van Halen was nominated for two Grammy awards. The band won the 1992 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance ^] Van Halen continued to enjoy success throughout the mid-1990s. They recorded a live album and concert film at tour shows in Fresno, California called Live: Right Here, Right Nowand the live album supporting Live: Right Here Right Now tour, Night Ranger's Alan Fitzgerald played keyboards offstage every night allowing Eddie to concentrate on guitar. Fitzgerald would return to play offstage keyboards on the 2004, 2007, and 2012 tours.

In 1995, Van Halen released the album Balance and supported Bon Jovi on their European Summer stadium tour. The Balance Tour was nicknamed "Ambulance Tour" by the band due to an amount of physical ailments, as Hagar had throat problems during the first concerts, Eddie suffered a hip injury caused by avascular necrosis, and Alex wore a neck brace due to ruptured vertebrae.^[47][48]

During the recording of songs for the film Twister, escalating tension between Hagar and the Van Halen brothers boiled over^[49] and Hagar departed on Father's Day, 1996.^[50] Hagar would claim he was fired, and Eddie would claim Hagar quit. The band had recorded "Humans Being", a song for which Eddie, unhappy with Hagar's lyrics, retitled the song and wrote the melody.^[51] This upset Hagar,^[51] and when they were to record a second song for the soundtrack, Hagar was in Hawaii for the birth of his child. It was not an easy birth as the baby was breech, so it needed to be delivered via C-section.^[52] With Hagar back in Hawaii and against the idea of doing the project,^[51] but having another song left to contribute, the Van Halen brothers alone recorded the instrumental "Respect the Wind". The performance, which featured Eddie playing guitar and Alex playing keyboards, was nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards.^[53]

The band was also working on a compilation album. This led to conflicts with Hagar and the group's new manager, Ray Danniels (Ed Leffler's replacement and Alex Van Halen's former brother-in-law), even though it was Leffler who had renewed their contract with Warner Bros. Records and had added in the Best Of album option years before. Hagar was reluctant to work on a compilation album before a new album came out, but if the rest of the band and Danniels insisted on going forward with one at that time, his preference was that it should include only Roth-era songs, or as a third choice, that two volumes should be released, one of Roth-era songs and one of Hagar-era songs. During this same period, competing personal priorities and creative differences contributed to increasing interpersonal tensions within the band, particularly between Eddie and Hagar. The relationship between Hagar and Van Halen broke down.^[51]