Rolling Stone's website has excerpts of Sammy Hagar's new book about his life as a rock icon, including his years with Eddie Van Halen in the band Van Halen:

[quote]He may have lost a chunk of his tongue to cancer, but he was still smoking cigarettes. He claimed the cancer came from putting the guitar pick in his mouth while he used his fingers to play. He walked around all day drinking cheap shiraz straight out of the bottle. That's why his teeth were all black. "Ed, why don't you get a glass for that?" I said. He held up the bottle. "It's in a glass," he said.

He was living with a pathologist, who kept taking slices off his tongue, to check for cancer. He beat the cancer. He told me he cured himself by having pieces of his tongue liquefied and injected into his body. He also told me when he had his hip replacement, he stayed awake through the operation and helped the doctors drill the hole. What a fruitcake.[/quote]