Songfacts®:

• Part of the eponymous Montrose debut album, "Bad Motor Scooter" has the distinction of being the first song Sammy Hagar, the band's lead singer, ever wrote. It finds him inviting a girl to jump on her bad motor scooter and pay him a visit. He'd go to see her, but is afraid of her dad.
• Unlike "Leader Of The Pack," which used an actual motorcycle, this song revs up with a slide guitar lick played by the group's namesake, Ronnie Montrose. It sets the tone, simulating the bad motor scooter on the road.
  
  Another song that pulled off the motorcycle sound with a guitar and some distortion effects is "Bat Out Of Hell" by Meat Loaf, with the guitar played by Todd Rundgren.
• San Francisco has a rich musical history of psychedelic rock, but Montrose was the first band to emerge from the city with the pedal to the metal. Ronnie Montrose, who played a far more delicate guitar on the Van Morrison albums Tupelo Honey (1971) and Saint Dominic's Preview (1972) formed the group in 1973, recruiting newcomer Sammy Hagar as frontman. They released the Montrose album that year and quickly earned a reputation for their adrenaline-fueled live shows. Hagar lasted just one more album, leaving the group in 1975 and starting a successful solo career. In 1985, he took over as frontman for Van Halen, another group named after its guitarist. He kept "Bad Motor Scooter" in his setlists throughout his solo career.
• Soundgarden named their landmark 1991 album Badmotorfinger as a play on "Bad Motor Scooter."
• Sammy Hagar included a live version on his 1978 All Night Long album on which he did most - but not all - of the axe work. Towards the end of this track he relents, "I been hoggin' all the lead here, I gotta let my man have some," and there follows a short but amazing duel with second guitar Gary Pihl. This version also features bass from Bill Church (The Electric Church), also ex-Montrose. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• Ted Templeman, who produced the Van Morrison albums Ronnie Montrose played on, was the producer for Montrose. According to Ed Rivadavia of the AllMusic Guide, Templeman wasn't impressed with this song until Ronnie came up with the open by messing around with a fuzz box. He was just improvising, so they weren't rolling tape. Templeman quickly had the engineer hit record so they could capture the magic.
  
  Templeman went on to produce albums for Van Halen as well as Hagar's 1984 solo effort, VOA.