Why Can’t This Be Love: Sammy Hagar’s Maui Cliffside Home Hits Market
Share News:
Nine years before Sammy Hagar purchased nearly 10 acres on Maui, he helped pen Why Can’t This Be Love for Van Halen’s “5150” album, perhaps presaging the purchase. It was the band’s first album featuring Hagar, who had replaced David Lee Roth. Oddly enough, it was about this time that I’d run into Hagar at the Versace store in Chicago.
A friend and I were upstairs in the men’s department trying on fabulous, though gawd-awful-expensive clothes we had no hope of buying. All the while, our salesman/friend plied us with (free) champagne from the store’s bar. A fun Saturday. Hagar and entourage came in and set up shop at the other end of the room. We were laughing and carrying on while another salesman helped them. A very staid group, they kept looking over, we assumed wondering who the heck we were. Being more Eurythmics than Van Halen, we didn’t really pay them any mind. Such was life at 24.
Anyway, he purchased the Maui retreat at the end of his last Van Halen world tour in 1995. The story goes that he intended to stay a week and stayed 22 years. While Hagar wanted 10 acres of land, the home is far from the over-the-top 29,000-square-foot city house built by Deion Sanders. At just 2,247 square feet in the main house with an additional one-bedroom guest house, this is a livable home. There are three bedrooms, plus two full and one half bathrooms. As you might imagine, all manner of musician has visited the home.
The location is spectacular and located off the famed “Road to Hana,” about 20 miles from Maui’s Kahului Airport. The home is being marketed by Becky Hanna from Sotheby’s Island Realty for $3.299 million. While the home truly is oceanfront, sitting on a cliff, it’s hardly beachfront. With nothing in front of you, the views are endless across the water.
The living room hints at the open concept layout of the home with views aimed towards the sea. The vaulted, wood-beamed ceilings offer counterbalance to the tile floors that are so cooling in warmer climates. In the distance is the breakfast nook off the kitchen.
Seen from the other end, the framing of the view is more obvious. The formal dining area is in the distance. I might remove the columns and expand the living room into one larger space nearer the windows.
The dining room, simple for a couple and their adult children, opens up onto the grounds. That’s the thing about well-designed Hawaii homes … they know how to blend the indoors and outdoors with seamless transitions. In many respects, the indoors is where you go only when it’s raining.
Hagar is also a chef and has remodeled the kitchen to his advantage. It’s sited between the breakfast nook and the family room. There’s a full-fire gas range and large refrigerator … something you need when you’re 20 miles from town and the nearest provisions.
There are two large sinks in the kitchen. Hagar is picky about water. He bored a 400-foot well into the lava to secure his own water well of ultra-pure water. And that’s not counting the pool, tilapia pond, and natural waterfall on the property.
The home is the unassuming retreat Hagar wanted and the master bedroom is no different. A simple room that carries the living room ceilings over that’s only embellished by the ocean views.
The master bathroom is no temple of the gods that many would expect a celebrity to have … something I find refreshing. It gets the job done without fanfare.
The home and guest house flank the 1,500-square-foot pool to maximize the water view. The palm tree growing in the middle is a bit of whimsy that should punctuate a location like this. What you see in the foreground is an outdoor dining pavilion that houses a rather large pizza oven.
The pizza oven’s chimney cuts a figure on the pool deck and is reportedly one of Hagar’s favorite tools for entertaining. Back to his chef inclinations — Emeril, Sam Choy, and Roy Yamaguchi have all enjoyed meals from the pizza oven.
Remember I said the grocery store was 20 miles away? Seen here is the Tilapia pond, and the estate is filled with vegetable gardens and fruit orchards. Between a secured water source, locally grown food, and solar power, this would make a great place to wait out the apocalypse … whether it ever came or not.
Hagar’s “top of the world” observation deck
Speaking of the apocalypse, here’s where you’d watch it unfold (or not) as you sipped Cabo Wabo tequila or Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum, both Hagar business ventures. If the view doesn’t inspire enough, while on Maui, Hagar opened restaurants at both the Maui and Honolulu airports called Sammy’s Beach Bar. All profits from the operations are donated to local Hawaiian children’s and animal charities.
Remember: When I’m not stirring up trouble in Dallas, Texas or Honolulu, Hawaii for Candysdirt.com and SecondShelters.com, I’m off scouting interesting locations for a second home. In 2016 and 2017, the National Association of Real Estate Editors has recognized my writing with two Bronze (2016, 2017) and two Silver (2016, 2017) awards. If you’re a Realtor with second home clients who’d like me to feature their journey, shoot me an email sharewithjon@candysdirt.com
