Songfacts®:

• Many know "I've Done Everything For You" as a Rick Springfield song, but Sammy Hagar wrote it and was the first to release it. Hagar issued it as a single in 1978 and included it on his live album All Night Long that same year. The studio version shows up on his 1982 compilation Rematch.
  
  Springfield released it as the first single from his 1981 album Working Class Dog. It didn't move the needle, but then the next single, "Jessie's Girl," exploded. "I've Done Everything For You" was then re-released and rose to #8 in the US, higher than any of Hagar's singles (as a solo artist, anyway) ever charted. The royalties were a nice payday for Hagar, providing another stream of income in a portfolio that includes his Cabo Wabo tequila empire.
• Like most successful rock musicians - and successful people per se - Hagar would have met his fair share of fairweather friends, or gold diggers in this case, who could have inspired this song, which tells the story of a very one-sided love affair. That being said, Hagar married his first wife in 1968 and they didn't divorce until 1994, so it seems unlikely it is based on personal experience, unless of course the love affair in question is actually a metaphor, perhaps for a relationship with a manager or record company, something that is far from unusual in the music business. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• This song was never a hit for Hagar, but he often played it in concert the first few years after it was released and it's made sporadic appearances in his setlists since. When he released it, he had left the band Montrose and had yet to join Van Halen.