'This is unbelievable.' Sammy Hagar learns that his Rochester roots run deep
It’s well-known that Salinas, California, native Sammy Hagar lived here briefly in 1969, during which time he acquired a taste for Garbage Plates from Nick Tahou Hots.
“Boy, I loved those Texas hots,” he told the Democrat and Chronicle in 1979. “I ate there every day when I was in Rochester.”
Only recently did he discover that his Rochester connections go much deeper.
Sammy Hagar on 'Finding your Roots'
On the Jan. 23 episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” the Red Rocker and former Van Halen frontman learned that his great-grandparents on his mother’s side, Giacomo and Gertrude Naruck Alessi, lived in Rochester.
Gertrude was born in Rochester; Giacomo came here from Italy. In the city’s 1900 census, he was listed as a fruit dealer, as were his brothers Joseph, Samuel and Antonio, series host Henry Louis Gates Jr. told Hagar.
But an incident that happened here July 17, 1899, changed the family’s story.
On that day on North Street, Joseph Alessi shot a man named Joseph Lombardo in a dispute over a $13 debt, according to a Democrat and Chronicle story Hagar read aloud on the show.
“These guys were mobsters! I should have known,” Hagar, 76, said with a laugh.
A year later, Lombardo died of sepsis caused by the injury, and Joseph Alessi was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor at Auburn state prison.
Soon after, Giacomo moved his family out west, where Hagar's grandmother would be born.
However, Joseph’s family remained. And on Feb. 26, 1911, by which point they had adopted the last name Ollis, Joseph’s 28-year-old son, Antonio, was slain in an act of revenge, the newspaper reported.
Antonio was found dead in a barn at Portland Avenue and Bay Street, his throat cut "so viciously that his head was nearly severed,” Gates said.
Eighteen months after that, on June 7, 1912, Antonio’s brother, Paul, 33, was gunned down on Scio Street.
“Your great-grand-uncle Joseph lost not just one, but two of sons, in brutal homicides,” Gates said.
Hagar told Gates he knew nothing about previous generations of his mother’s family and that while her parents were a part of his life when he was a kid, “My grandparents were quiet. I think they had a lot of ghosts.”
“Well, now you know why,” Gates said, to which Hagar replied, “Yeah, this is unbelievable.”
One thing the show didn’t mention, but the Democrat and Chronicle reported, was that at the time Paul Ollis was killed, Giuseppe Galbo, the son-in-law of Samuel Ollis, “the banana king,” was awaiting trial for the murder of Francesco Manzella. Manzella’s headless, mutilated body was found in a barrel in a ravine near Float Bridge — now Empire Boulevard — in the fall of 1911. Police believed the homicide was a result of a feud that had started in Italy.
Sammy Hagar reflects on his time in Rochester NY
Unlike his ancestors, Hagar’s life took a turn for the better in Rochester, he said in an Aug. 4, 2022, story in the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal.
Hagar, who had played in bands in California, arrived here by Greyhound bus with his first wife, Betsy Berardi Hagar, who was pregnant, and they moved into her parents' Rochester home. This followed an argument in which Hagar’s mom and stepdad told him to get a haircut and a real job, he told reporter Thom Jennings.
Hagar worked two jobs in Rochester, as a garbage collector and in a print shop, and he worked on his music.
“That part of my life was a real lesson to me, that with hard work, and whatever it takes, I can do it,” he told Jennings.
Several years later, having returned to California, he got his big break as the lead singer of Montrose.
“After the Rochester experience, I never fell down again,” he said.
Reporter Marcia Greenwood covers general assignments. Send story tips to mgreenwo@rocheste.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @MarciaGreenwood.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Sammy Hagar learns that his Rochester NY roots run deep
