Rockin' Revenue Sammy Hagar's Cabo Wabo Cantina Has Been There Twice
By Tad Wilkes
“There’s a sleepy town south of the border; you go there once, you’ll
be there twice,” sang Sammy Hagar at the beginning of “Cabo Wabo,” the
laid-back, hedonistic track from Van Halen’s 1988 OU812 album. But any
real understanding of what makes Hagar’s rocking Cabo Wabo Cantina tick
— and what has brought it to its current level of success, including a
satellite cantina in Lake Tahoe, Nev., and a club-branded premium
tequila — must start at the beginning.
The inspiration for the song and the club began somewhere around 1981.
Hagar was no longer fronting his first band, Montrose, and had gone
solo. That solo career found Hagar going out of his way for inspiration
— down Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, way, to be precise.
“I fell in love with Cabo back in ‘81, so I bought a place down there
in ‘83 and started spending a lot of time down there,” he says. “And
back then, it was all dirt roads. There was no air-conditioning, except
in my condo unit.”
The town became Hagar’s main well of ideas in the coming years.
“Even later when I joined Van Halen (in 1985), we’d rehearse and kind
of write all the songs together, and then I’d go down there and write
my lyrics. That’s pretty much how I wrote those Van Halen lyrics all
those years.”
But man cannot live by solitary lyric-writing alone, and the Red Rocker got the itch to party.
Economy of Scale
“I’d get bored when I’d be there for two or three months at a time,” he
says. “So (the club) was strictly self-indulgence — a guy trying to
build his own little party place, with no idea of a tequila or
expanding.”
The Cabo Wabo tequila brand’s astounding stateside success is a story
unto itself, as chronicled in Nightclub & Bar pages in past issues.
But it started with a simple good time in a simple — but big — club.
“On my second visit, I met Jorge Viana, who now manages the cantina,
and told him that I wanted to open a tequila bar with a small stage so
I could perform there when the mood struck me,” Hagar says. “‘Any
musician who wants to will be able to play there,’ I told him.”
Marco Monroy was an architect who’d been involved in much of the
development of Cabo San Lucas up to the early 1980s. His son, Marco
Jr., worked for him, and was a friend of Hagar’s, so one of his first
projects was building the Cabo Wabo Cantina. What would become a club
out of proportion with the community began as a blown attempt at a
meeting of minds.
“I was talking 3,000 square feet, and he was talking 3,000 square
meters,” Hagar remembers with a laugh. “We never came together until
the whole damn foundation was poured, and I started looking at it,
going ‘What, does this include parking and everything?’ I know it
sounds like a joke, but I was that naďve about what the hell we were
doing.
“The thing was way overbuilt. The first three or four years you’d walk
in, there’d be 40 or 50 people, and you’d turn around and say, ‘This
place is scary.’”
After initial years in which members of Van Halen were involved in
ownership, Hagar assumed total control of Cabo Wabo and, in 1994,
brought Monroy in as his partner. The building was redecorated, the
restaurant was moved upstairs and a prime chef was brought in. Soon,
Monroy had the local population interested and coming in to enjoy
themselves.
'It
was a slow build with that kind of synergy; you can’t just start your
own restaurant and bar, your own tequila company and lifestyle
overnight.'
—Sammy Hagar
What Dreams Are Made Of Cut to the present, and Cabo Wabo is bursting at the seams, a party
destination in Cabo San Lucas. The town itself has tripled in size
since Hagar’s first visit. Cabo Wabo-branded Waboritas are the drink of
choice to sip while hearing Hagar and his solo house band called — what
else — the Waboritas. Corona reigns as the best-selling beer, great
Mexican food fuels relentless party people, and go-for-the-gusto Rock
is the order of the day — and night.
“I may have overbuilt it years ago, but it would be great to put
another story on this mother and get another 1,000 people in here,
because we need it,” Hagar says. “There are thousands of people out in
the parking lot that can’t get in every night. That’s a wonderful thing
on one hand, but on the other hand, it makes you feel horrible that
people spend their hard-earned money getting down there, and they don’t
get in.
“The club’s on fire. At 10 o’clock in the morning, with three cruise
ships a day sometimes, five days a week, it’s gotten so crazy that at 2
o’clock in the afternoon, people are dancing, eating and drinking like
it’s 2 o’clock in the morning.”
Can’t Fake It
Being at the epicenter of a constant flow of tourists, though, is not what keeps crowds coming into Cabo Wabo, Hagar says.
“You don’t get that kind of success (with most bars) without spending
millions of dollars on advertising, but we spend zero. It’s a great
place with word of mouth.”
That word of mouth, he says, is the product of an authentic good-time
vibe the club produces, something that cannot be planned or
manufactured. Hagar says the naturalness of the club — and the honest
enjoyment guest star musicians show when they pop in to jam — earns the
excitement of its patrons.
“I’m a fun guy, and I’d go there and play,” Hagar says. “My birthday
party has turned into two weeks of this unbelievable party. This year
we had Kenny Chesney, Smashmouth, Jerry Cantrell (of Alice In Chains)
and Billy Duffy (of The Cult). It’s become such a party, it gives the
place an image that this place is for real — and we don’t charge. How
about going in the door and seeing all that and going ‘Wait, it’s
free?’”
It’s safe to say that Rock ‘n’ Roll courses through the veins of Cabo Wabo.
Each year, Hagar holds the Mexican Meltdown, in which he finds a young
band he’s into that has just released a first album — a group he thinks
will be the next big band — and hires them to come down, so he can turn
his fans on to them. Thus far, Hagar’s instincts are razor-sharp.
“The first year we did it, it was Nickelback and Godsmack,” he says.
“The next year was Smashmouth. Last year was Silvertide, which opened
for Van Halen on this tour.
“It would be really hard to invent what’s happened here,” Hagar says of
the club’s continued vitality. “You’ve got to come up with something
that’s great and build it slow. If you come up with even something
great and try to shove it down people’s throats, it doesn’t taste as
good when it’s being force-fed. I think that’s the key.”
While Hagar’s main interest in growing Cabo Wabo was as a home base for
an unequaled party, it hasn’t taken long for opportunists to come out
of the woodwork with dollar signs gleaming in their beady little eyes.
But the key, he says, is staying true to what brought him here.
“I’ve turned down so many opportunities to expand Cabo Wabo,” Hagar
says. “I’ve got every person on the planet who’s tried to give me
hundreds of millions of dollars to make 30 of them, and I’ve always
turned it down. I don’t want it to get out of hand, and I don’t want to
have one bad one.
“This is something that took 10 to 12 years to happen. It was a slow
build with that kind of synergy; you can’t just start your own
restaurant and bar, your own tequila company and lifestyle overnight.
It would look so commercial and so stupid if somebody just popped up
with a tequila named after the nightclub.”
Tahoe Wabo
He may not want Cabo Wabo to become the new McDonald’s, but he’s dipped
at least one toe into new waters — the waters of Lake Tahoe in Nevada,
a longtime resort community now augmented by a thriving gaming scene.
Christophe Jorcin, vice president of food and beverage for the Harrah’s
and Harvey’s casinos in Lake Tahoe, both owned by Harrah’s Corp., was
looking for something to bring a new level of excitement to the
properties. The area had skiing and snowboarding in the winter and lake
beach fun in the summer, but, Jorcin says, no wild Rock ‘n’ Roll place.
During a trip to Cabo Wabo in Mexico, Jorcin and Hagar hit it off.
Around the same time, Hagar talked to longtime friend Don Marrandino,
senior vice president of Harrah’s Northern Nevada. “Sammy called me and
asked what I think about Lake Tahoe,” Marrandino says. “Several months
later, I ended up here and saw Christophe’s dream and my relationship
with Sammy, and we said, ‘Let’s go.’”
The Cabo Wabo is the connection between the two casino properties, replacing the former restaurant that occupied the space.
“We took a restaurant that was doing about $1.5 million a year and
we’re turning it into a restaurant, bar and nightclub that’s going to
do $6 million a year, in 4,500 square feet. It’s the largest seller of
Cabo Wabo tequila in the world.” As of November 1, 2004, the Tahoe
location had sold around 10,000 bottles of Cabo Wabo in the form of
shots and drinks.
The initial investment in the club, Marrandino says, was around $2 million.
The opening of the Tahoe location in April 2004 was anything but soft.
“The opening was typical Sammy style,” Marrandino says. “We had Ted
Nugent, Toby Keith, Ronnie Montrose, Jerry Cantrell, Billy Duffy, Bob
Weir — a cast of characters. Toby played three nights in a row and hung
out. It was the most amazing three days of a party only Sammy could
throw.”
The vibe is infectious; in fact, two of Keith’s latest hits, “I Love
This Bar” and “What Happens In Mexico,” were inspired by his time at
the cantina.
The Cabo Wabo spark also proved to be just the shot in the arm Harrah’s needed for its entertainment offerings.
“Food and beverage in the whole casino (before Cabo Wabo) was nothing
very exciting,” Jorcin says. “The casino is gorgeous, but there was
never anything that was an attraction to get people to go just for
that. We decided to put in Cabo Wabo because you have three different
pieces. You have the food and beverage piece, you have the
entertainment piece, and you have the late-night piece. You’re creating
a place where people can have a good time until 3 a.m.”
Every night brings a different special, with a local DJ on some nights
and live music on others. But the most exciting aspect, perhaps, of
both Cabos is wondering just who might show up for an impromptu jam.
John Mayer showed up at Cabo Wabo the night before a concert in Tahoe,
got onstage and played. Guitarist Nils Lofgren from the E-Street Band
has been known to bust out some licks, and one night Mark Cuban, owner
of the Dallas Mavericks, got onstage with Charles Barkley and a bottle
and sang. Grateful Dead frontman Bob Weir, a friend and collaborator of
Hagar’s, also has played the cantina unannounced.
“It’s kind of a place to jam, like in the old days,” Marrandino says.
Right Menu, Right Now
Menu pricing is not just for rock stars. “We keep the menu prices
$12-13 for dinner,” Marrandino says. “You can get a Corona beer for $4
with Sammy Hagar playing in a 4,500-seat room.” Female servers in
G-string bikinis keep the sunny feeling going.
Fajitas and fish tacos are the top-selling menu items, Jorcin says.
Salsas made in Cabo San Lucas spice the dishes, served on plates that
are oversized and full of color, none the same. Video screens in the
restaurant with different reels going maintain a fluid excitement
level, even while dining.
Flame-throwing bartenders, hundreds of bras decorating the backbar and
body shots help make the unit a worthy bearer of the Cabo Wabo name. A
private room and the Red Rocker Room are available. Fans also can pick
up any of Hagar’s many CDs or DVDs and other merchandise in a retail
store adjacent to the venue.
In front of the Tahoe unit’s entrance, at any given time, one of
Hagar’s classic cars may be on display. At press time, the man who
can’t drive 55 featured his classic Shelby Mustang (check out the car
and its story at redrocker.com). NCB
