SAMMY...

Sammy Hagar gets no respect.

Listen to the Red Rocker HERE.

The self-styled Red Rocker is a blue-collar, workingman's rock star from decidedly down-market Fontana, a hardscrabble old Southern California steel town that makes Asbury Park look like the beach resort it once was. He does not summer in the Hamptons visiting the Spielbergs or make the jet-set scene with Mick or Elton. But as of Monday, he will belong to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"Would you have ever guessed?" he says. "I wouldn't have either. I think I carved out a real stupid career in the sense that I was never loved by the press. I've received some awards with Van Halen. We got a Grammy, an American Music Award, MTV Awards and all that stuff. But Sammy Hagar is not the Bruce Springsteen kind of guy.

"I don't know how I screwed up. I haven't screwed up actually. I always had the reputation as a goofball, no respect as an artist, things like that. I never earned that," he continues. "I told my band when I left Van Halen: 'I'm going to warn you guys about one thing -- the venture we are going into now, this party we are throwing, we are never going to get respect from anyone. But the fans are going to love us. The fans are going to flock to us. We're going to be as big as anyone, but no one is going to respect us for doing it.' And, sure enough, I was right."

It is pouring rain outside Hagar's Mill Valley mountaintop home, where he has lived for more than 30 years, and his wife, Kari, is building a fire. But Hagar is wearing shorts and a T-shirt from the cantina he owns in Cabo San Lucas, Cabo Wabo, with a tattoo of the Mexican cantina's logo peeking out under his rolled-up sleeves. "I'm in denial," he says, glaring at the downpour outside.

Tanned, trim and sporting dyed-blond shoulder-length hair and a shaggy goatee, Hagar, 59, speaks in staccato bursts, punctuated by laughter. He radiates maniacal energy and talks quickly, as if he can't quite keep up with his own thoughts.

He only recently returned to the Bay Area after spending a year living in Mexico with his wife and their two young daughters (he has two grown sons from a previous marriage). In May, he celebrates the third anniversary of his second Cabo Wabo at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe. He is building another in Fresno -- Fresno? "I've been to Fresno. There's nothing to do. I'm opening a Cabo Wabo. They're going to have something to do." -- and is looking at other possible locations, especially beach resort towns. He is also planning a resort of his own in Cabo.

"If I was ever a genius at anything," he says, "I found everything I like to do and where I want to live and I rolled it all together. I got a business. I can play music at my business. I love tequila and that whole lifestyle, the Mexican food. I've got a Mexican restaurant. I have the tequila that goes with it. I have the whole lifestyle rolled into one. I love that Cabo Wabo lifestyle, which is beach all day, party all night."

His Cabo Wabo brand tequila is the No. 2 best-selling premium tequila in the United States. He has made, he says, "way more" in the liquor business than he ever did in music. But Hagar went into the tequila business more an enthusiastic fan than anything. He first tasted the nectar of pure agave during his first visit to the sleepy Baja California fishing village in 1982. He began producing handmade tequila for his bar, which he opened 10 years later, and started importing in 1999. He sold 140,000 cases last year. But tequila is more than booze to Hagar.

"I swear by it," he says. "Tequila's a great high. Every booze has got a different trip. Beer's got a thing. Wine's got a thing. Champagne has a nice bubbly thing, but it's a short window. It's a quick up and down. Tequila, if you maintain it when you're drinking it and you don't get too plastered, get over that crazy edge, and you just keep that good buzz going -- wait in between shots, do a couple shots, wait awhile, just sip -- you can last the night. It's really an up high. It makes you want to have fun. It makes you want to jump on the table and start dancing.

"And when you play for an audience of 10,000 people that are all on the same drug like the old Fillmore days -- where everybody was on acid and smoking dope and they were all in tune; the band would go up and play, everybody went up with them and came down with them -- you get on that emotional ride. Tequila is the only one that I think does that and because my brand is so strong with my fans, I get to experience that. So when we play, especially in Cabo, everybody's drunk on tequila, including my band, and it's an awesome experience. It's like wow."

Hagar's tequila got something he never had -- good reviews. Cabo Wabo consistently wins awards and blind taste tests, Hagar says. This month, he will introduce a limited edition, Cabo Uno, made from only the heart of the agave plant that will come in a crystal decanter and sell for more than $200.

"No one can do what I do because to everyone else, it's a business," he says. "For me, it's become a business, but originally rock 'n' roll was my business. And so when I made tequila, I could do everything the right way. I could waste product. I could throw a lot away. You drain off the barrel. The bottom of the barrel is worse. You want the middle cut. We've always done it that way.

"For me, it was like a hobby. I had rock 'n' roll money. So I did it as a luxury and that's half the reason why Cabo Wabo is so good and pure because, like I said, I never had to make any money with it. I just got lucky. I didn't have to. I just wanted to make the best tequila in the world -- big ego trip. It's like the Rothchilds of wine. Like the Rothchilds need money. They try to make the best frigging wine in the planet. They raised the bar is what they did."

For all his business expansion plans and aspirations to start a charitable foundation for children's charities, Hagar is still all rock 'n' roll. He returned the night before from performing in front of 87,000 NASCAR fans at the California Speedway in Fontana. He played a brief set before NASCAR's Auto Club 500 and Fox TV broadcast him playing "I Can't Drive 55" live before the race. The speedway stands on the site of the former Kaiser Steel plant where Hagar's father worked, the stage right about where the open hearth was, reckoned his brother-in-law, whose father also worked at the plant.

Hagar made it a family day, entertained many nieces and nephews and spent the night in the guest room of a niece in nearby Riverside. He got a thunderous roar from the hometown crowd, larger than either race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. or grand marshal Kevin Costner (or any of the other TV and movie stars also appearing, whose names he could not remember the next day).

He keeps a band on salary year-round and rehearses two or three days a week. But he is bowing out of the record wars, after putting a year's work into last year's "Livin' It Up," which lofted three Top 10 radio hits, but still sold only a paltry 57,000 copies. "The record industry sales for a guy like me are over even though my records are as good as they've ever been," he says.

Instead Hagar thinks he'll give away new recordings to fans on the Internet and just keep touring. He envisions a world dotted with Cabo Wabos scattered across his favorite places -- Atlantic City, Orlando, Hawaii -- where he plays extended runs. Fans already flock from all over the world to cram into his 1,000-capacity club in Mexico for his notorious annual birthday parties, which last for days, where there is never any admission charge. The city of Cabo San Lucas gave Hagar an award for his contribution to tourism.

"I want more of them, so I can go play those places," he says. "Wouldn't it be great? I can play any of these places as many nights as I want. I can go to town, stay there and play every night until I'm tired of that town and then go back home and then go to another one. That's my concept. That's my retirement instead of playing golf."

Retirement is a long way away; enshrinement comes next week. Hagar will be inducted in the Hall of Fame as a vocalist for Van Halen, who were the most awesome Top of the Pops heavy metal heroes going in 1985 when the group jettisoned vocalist David Lee Roth in favor of Hagar, who had already established a successful solo career following his spell as lead vocalist of '70s heavy metal prototype Montrose. Hagar rode that juggernaut down the backside of the bell curve for 11 years, including four multiplatinum albums. He returned to the fold for one eventful 2004 tour. Otherwise, Van Halen after Hagar has not amounted to much. There was talk of a reunion tour this summer with Roth, who hasn't exactly prospered since leaving the band, but Hagar says that has fallen apart already. He doesn't know if erstwhile band mates Eddie and Alex Van Halen will even attend, but Hagar says he will go to the ceremony with former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony.

"He's my good buddy," Hagar says. "It's not him and us against the others. He got thrown out of the band, too. I don't think Ed and Al are going. The word I got from our management is that now they said they're not going. Roth'll be there. S -- , he's there right now. He's already got a room. I'm fine with him. I'm fine with Ed and Al. I don't talk to Eddie. I'm not mad at Eddie. I still love the guy. He's just hard to get along with.

"When we were all going, when they were gonna do their tour with Roth that just blew out -- I could have told you that; I bet money that would never happen. I would love to see it. They owe it to the fans. They should do it. I believe it's the right thing for Van Halen to do is to do a David Lee Roth reunion. Look how long it's been. It's never worked. This is the fourth abortion. There's a lot of fans out there and they've been waiting a long time for this. And it's gotta happen someday. We did it -- they should do it. Before it blew out, everybody was going. But the word now was, from Ed and Al, 'we're not playing.' "

The band will be inducted by Velvet Revolver (after Red Hot Chili Peppers were unavailable), who will perform a medley of Van Halen music.

Hagar praised the other 2007 inductees. "I'm really happy about Patti Smith," he says. "That's one thing I like about the Hall of Fame. I never expected to be inducted. I really didn't. I knew Van Halen would eventually somehow, someway, but it was still hard for me to imagine Sammy Hagar being part of it. But it is. I'm so honored. But someone like Patti Smith, who really had such a short, intense career. She did it so cool. She really deserves it for being such a rebel and being a girl at that time. She was cool. I think it's cool that they honor those kinds of people. Some awards shows don't. They go with the most commercial. Half the people don't know who Patti Smith is, but I think it's awesome. She was a true artist, a Neil Young kind of artist, where, s -- , man, you do it my way or forget it. I like that. I'm almost that kind of artist. For some reason, my art doesn't project that. But I'm that kind of person. I never cop out. I never sell out. I never endorse things. It's so funny. What did I do wrong? Or right?

"R.E.M. -- another artsy band. I like R.E.M., they're not my kind of band, but they made some great records. Grandmaster Flash. I don't own a Grandmaster Flash record, but he was really the innovator. I like who they're recognizing this year. The Ronettes. How long have they been waiting? For Sammy Hagar to be a part of that crazy, eclectic group, I like that part of it. If it was Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Sammy Hagar, I'd be this thin, little guy -- oh, man, I'm going to get no respect at this thing. But with this eclectic group, I kinda fit in, quirky-wise."

For Hagar, this is a happy ending, unequivocal and undeniable recognition and acknowledgment, permanent vindication, a Get Out of Jail Free card that trumps a lifetime of naysayers and petty bourgeois critics. At long last ... respect.

"This is something that is so etched in stone that when you say I'm a Hall of Famer," Hagar says, "you have to live up to it. I think that every time I step up to a microphone from that day on, I have to live up to it. I think I'm going to have to be a f -- Hall of Famer."