All he cares about is going out there with his Jack Daniels bottle. Nothing has changed. That’s kind of sad. If David was doing better than he used to be, then that would be different. But it was a joke and he made it that way.

Sammy Hagar is criticizing what he sees as a rival performer’s reliance on a familiar, self-caricaturing stage persona—symbolized by the ever-present Jack Daniel’s bottle—rather than artistic or personal growth. The remarks frame the bottle not as a harmless prop but as evidence of stagnation: “nothing has changed.” Hagar suggests that if the person in question had demonstrably improved or evolved, the gimmick might read differently; instead, it turns the performance into “a joke,” undermining credibility and pathos. The quote also reflects how rock authenticity can be contested: what one audience reads as iconic swagger, another reads as arrested development and a sad repetition of old myths.