Sammy Hagar has shared his hard-rocking cover of Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up”, taken from Crazy Times, his second studio album with Billboard chart-topping supergroup, The Circle. You can watch the song’s official video, directed by Travis Detweiler, below.
Taken at face value, Costello’s new wave classic might not seem like an obvious track for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-inducted, Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter, performer, entrepreneur, and New York Times No.1 best- selling author to reimagine. However, as Hagar says in an exclusive interview with uDiscover Music, “Pump It Up” is a song he’s loved for many years.
“Well, that’s a hard rock tune and it’s a rock of a tune too!”, he says with some relish. “I’ve been trying to do that song for a long, long time – ever since I started Chickenfoot in 2008.”
“I played with Elvis Costello on a TV show in 1977 or ’78, somewhere in England and we were hanging around together all day”, Hagar adds. “Elvis played “Pump It Up” on that show and seeing him live in a studio and being around him all day had a big effect on me. I just loved “Pump It Up”, I thought it was the greatest punk song. I think [our version] is a pretty cool cover. I love singing it.”
“Pump It Up” is one of the key tracks on Hagar and The Circle’s new album, Crazy Times. To put the new record together, Hagar, along with fellow Hall of Famer and longtime bassist Michael Anthony, Grammy-winning drummer Jason Bonham and Grammy-winning guitar virtuoso Vic Johnson travelled to Nashville to record the album with 8-time Grammy Award winning producer Dave Cobb at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A. The album is set for release on September 23 and its title song was released as its first single on July 29.
“It’s hard for me to talk about this album with as much passion as I feel without sounding like I’m hyping it or bragging about it or trying to, you know, get people to buy it”, Hagar recently told uDiscover Music. “I love this f_king record. I mean, I just don’t, I don’t even know how the hell we made it because this band we’ve been together almost 10 years, but we’ve only recorded once before. But yeah, we did it. I think this song and this record holds up. I’m very proud of it.”