Claudio Zampolli aiding and abbetting Sammy Hagar?

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Hey its Red430 back in the day: Steve you never mentioned any thing about being in a rock band.

 

I use to be in a rock band on Capitol Records back in the early 90's and we recorded part of our first album at Eddie Van Halen's house, Sammy came up there one time in that exact car...

 

Sammy is an Uncle to a friend of mine, I'll ask him about it this weekend.

 

HAHA! That is AWESOME!

 

Taylor, I thought he had a 512BB?

 

So that's why he always gets Rockstar Parking!

 

Actually it's a Boxer most of the time and a 308 some of the time. Almost all the wheel shots are of a 308 (5 bolt) I guess they did the shoot, then needed some more footage afterwards. And figured nobody could/would tell the difference.

 

Claudio mentions that most of the driving shots are him with a 'Sammy style' wig on.

 

Well, it was back in 1990 I think think he may not remember that day, and now that I think about it, it was a red Ferrari, maybe the 512??? BUT, he may remember some of the other details.. Andy Johns, the guy that was going to produce our album was running overtime on mixing the Van Halen album so he brought my drummer and I up to Eddies house to check out what he was doing and while we were up there, Sammy came by to pick up a rough mix DAT of the song Poundcake which was the first single off that Van Halen record, he had Ted Templeman (Warner Bros) in the car. Eddie and Alex said Sammy would get the tape and leave and hardly say anything, but he actually stayed for over an hour and talked to us the whole time, nice as can be! Invited us up to Cabo (we never went).. The name of our band was Wildside, he may not remember us, but he may remember some of the other stuff...? Then when he was finished with VH, we started recording our album at another place and eventually ended up at Eddie's house for about 3-4 months, Eddie had lots of cars, he had a Lambo Muira I think and while we were there one day he was getting delivered a brand new Diablo, probably the first one in the US at that time, the painted the side mirrors red with black and white stripes like his guitar, Valerie came up to the studio with the just born Wolfgang Van Halen and complained to Eddie about getting "another" car... The good 'ol days!

 

Wow cool story. Andy Johns engineer of my favorite album of all time, Exile........

Nice

 

Yeah, Andy did alot of big albums back in the day, Engineered a couple early Zeppelin albums and so on...
He was fun to work with, drank like a fish...

 

http://www.sfweekly.com/1999-05-26/news/the-red-menace/full

One afternoon, Eddie Van Halen dropped by a Los Angeles sports car shop to have his Lamborghini serviced. He noticed a black Ferrari 512 Boxer on display in the showroom. Shop owner Claudio Zampolli said it belonged to Sammy Hagar. Van Halen borrowed a phone, and called Hagar.

 

The difference is that mine was red and it was Claudio that sold it to me in '84. My rock band career was only temporary.

 

Band Name

 

On a sidenote....

Anybody know what the reason and outcome of this was? (from November, 1999)

Car Designer Sues Leno

Exotic car designer Claudio Zampolli has sued Tonight Show host Jay Leno for $150 million, claiming that Leno defamed him when he called him a crook at a classic car show in Van Nuys, CA last year. Leno allegedly made the statements privately, but an attorney for Zampolli said that, since the world of car collectors is small, repercussions from comments by a television star like Leno can be "very serious." Leno maintains a collection of 54 cars and 53 motorcycles.

 

More insight from a recent article:

http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071110/LIFESTYLES0101/711100305/1051/lifestyles0101

 

My Dad used to sell cars to Claudio and owned the EPA lab that did some work with him back in the day. I remember going to Claudio's shop when I was a kid and hanging out in Stallone's Countach with my brother. I still have a Polaroid of it somewhere with us in it. The good old days....