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20 май 2025
Former ROUGH CUTT And MICKEY RATT Guitarist CHRIS HAGER Dead At 67
Hager met Pearcy in 1976 and the pair formed MICKEY RATT a year later. Hager eventually left the band in 1981 and joined ROUGH CUTT as the replacement for Jake E. Lee.
Earlier today, Pearcy shared the following statement via social media: "I am very saddened to hear about the passing of our dear friend, guitarist and musician Christopher (Chris) Hager today.
"Chris and I started MICKEY RATT together in San Diego 1977 and in moving to L.A. really created the band RATT in 1981. He was an amazing person, a great guitarist, songwriter and so committed to being just that. Chris went on to create projects over the years with ROUGH CUTT, WOOP AND THE COUNT and PEARCY/HAGER. We were actually working on new songs recently.
"I'm at a loss my friend. God bless you brother. As of this time the family would respect privacy."
Erik Ferentinos, the guitarist in Pearcy's solo band, posted the following message on his official Facebook page: "RIP Chris Hager. This is very sad news. I've known Chris for over 30 years! From recording my first band's demos in the late 80's at Pearcy's to playing in the solo band. My condolences to all his friends and family!"
In a 2021 interview with VinylWriterMusic, Hager stated about MICKEY RATT's formation in part: "Stephen and I go back to about 1976. I was living in South Carolina at the time; we moved back there for, like, five years, and that's where I went to high school, started playing and all that. I came back to San Diego, and I had this one childhood friend, and it turned out that he started playing guitar at the same time I had. He was just doing jam stuff, and I had already been in three bands at the time, so I had played with some better players than me who had helped season me a little bit. So I said, 'Look, man, we gotta put a real band together. Do you know any singers?' He said, 'Well, I met this one guy named Steve at the boardwalk.' I said, 'Well, let's get him over here.' So, we were just rehearsing in my friend's garage, just doing covers at the time, and we brought Stephen in. He was just kind of this trippy guy; he was kind of shy, and he came in and stood in the corner. We couldn't really hear him that well, but we could tell that he could sing; he looked great. The funny thing about it is that he asked me for a ride home, and I said, 'Sure.' So, on the way home, he really opened up. He goes, 'Man, this could be done.' And I was, like, 'Man, what are you talking about?' And he's going, 'This could be done, man. We can do this. We could be huge.' I had never heard anybody talk to me like that before, ya know? He definitely had the fire. It was sort of the perfect combination, and so he and I became fast friends. About a year or so later, we broke off, and that's when he came up with the name MICKEY RATT, which was from a comic book; we just added another 'T' to avoid copyright infringement. This Mickey Ratt was sort of the antithesis of Mickey Mouse, right? He was sort of this dope-smoking, womanizing, beer-drinking glut. It was sort of funny because there were a few parallels there. [Laughs] So, we started doing the rounds in San Diego, and we became the house band at some of the San Diego venues. But the thing about San Diego was, even though it's only 120 miles from L.A., it's like two different universes. Culturally, it is really lacking down there, and I would have to say it still is, especially when it comes to rock music. Basically, Stephen said, 'Look, we gotta move to L.A. if we're gonna get anywhere.' He had been going up there and met Eddie Van Halen and was all fired up. It took him a little while to convince me, but once I decided to do it, there was just no going back. So, we moved into this little garage that was sort of fixed up into a room, and this lady, who was the mother of an old friend of his, was kind enough to put us up in there; we rehearsed in there, we slept in there, we partied in there. That's when we shortened the name; it was M. RATT for a while, and then it became MICKEY [RATT], and then it finally became RATT, which is about the time that I left. It was amazing because we were playing all the clubs that were around at the time in L.A."
Regarding his departure from MICKEY RATT, Hager said: "I essentially left the band. It was just sort of a difference of opinion musically that we were having. I wanted to do something a little more melodic; the stuff we were doing at the time was kind of heavier. Not that it was bad or anything; I just wanted to do things a little differently. So, basically, I left in late '81, and Jake [E. Lee] came after me; he replaced me in the band. Then there was a whole bunch of other people that went through that band — and this is where you get into the whole musical chairs because a lot of the same guys who were in ROUGH CUTT were also in RATT.
"Sometimes people ask me, 'Man, don't you ever regret leaving that early?' And I say, 'You know, kinda,' but the thing is, you never know; RATT had a chemistry. With me in there, it would have been different people, and you never know if it would have worked out the way it did. So, the way I look at it, Stephen and I remained great friends. In fact, we got together ten years down the line and recorded a bunch of stuff together. We did some demos and stuff that you can actually buy online on Amazon right now, just demos that we did with drum machines. So, he and I stayed close. Once ROUGH CUTT got signed, it was cool because Stephen would be out on the road, and then they would come home. Then in the meantime, ROUGH CUTT would be out, and we would come home. I didn't really have a place to stay, and Stephen would say, 'Hey, man. Pull in over here.' He bought this house in Coldwater Canyon, and it was sort of a mansion type of deal, and we called it the White House. It was all white, and it was like this three-story deal; it was cool. There's just so many stories of parties and just the craziness that went on there. Eventually, even he had to move out of there. [Laughs] He moved down south just to get away from it, maybe around '86 or '87."
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