Although considered to be one of the greatest electric guitar virtuosos of all time, Joe Satriani admits that he isn’t happy about how his performance of Eddie Van Halen’s music sounds. Speaking to Guitar World in a recent interview, Satch also compared this challenge of playing Eddie’s guitar parts to his stint in Deep Purple back in the 1990s when he wasn’t satisfied with how a seemingly simple song like “Smoke on the Water” sounded when he played it.
At the moment, playing Eddie Van Halen’s music is what he’s focusing on the most since he’ll be touring with Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, and Jason Bonham, playing all the Van Halen classics in 2024. Reflecting on these challenges, Joe said:
“I have to get over arguing with myself that it doesn’t sound right. I’ll have to go through some mental therapy and be okay with sounding a bit different.”
“I spent decades sitting way back in the pocket because I was playing melodies,” he added. “To get melodies to work, you’ve got to sit back and let the band get things established to where the groove and rhythm guitars push.”
But on the other hand, playing Eddie’s music is a whole different thing. Sure, you’ll find plenty of talented young guitar players easily performing “Eruption.” But giving it that real old-school feel that Eddie had takes years, if not decades, of studying his work.
And even with his skill and experience, Satriani admits that he wasn’t able to get things right. In fact, some fans were a little dismissive of Joe’s performance when this newly formed lineup played together at the “Howard Stern Show” recently.
“But suddenly, I’ve got to play these parts that Eddie wrote,” Joe said, “where he was functioning differently. He was pushing with this incredible architecture of chord work, like in a song like ‘5150,’ where Sammy gets to sit back as he’s doing the melody.”
There are a lot more challenges to playing Van Halen other than fast shreddy runs. A seemingly simple part — be it riffs, chords, or melodies — can actually be much more difficult to pull off than it seems. Joe explained his point by offering:
“So, the most awkward thing was suddenly not doing the melody and stepping in first on top of the beat. Eddie did that, but he never sounded like he was rushing.”
Discussing the thing further, Satch compared this to his brief stint in Deep Purple back in the mid-1990s. At that point, Joe was an already established name among guitar fans. However, going into a band like Deep Purple and replacing Ritchie Blackmore, who just left the lineup at the time, is just something else.
“This is a mental thing for me,” he explained. “And that’s something I experienced when I played with Deep Purple; I went through the mental torture of playing ‘Smoke on the Water’ and having my guitar not sound like Ritchie Blackmore’s.”
And sure, it might seem odd that a beginner-friendly song could be that challenging to perform. However, there’s more to “Smoke on the Water” than one might think, and making the riff and the entire song sound like Blackmore intended to is not simple at all. Joe added:
“This thing in my head kept going, ‘It’s not right. It should be a Strat into a Marshall.’ It affected how I played, even though I tried to sort myself out, saying, ‘It doesn’t matter; it’s the notes and the phrasing,’ but, as a fan, I wanted to hear the right sound… That’s the case here, where I want to honor the sound, but I don’t want to lose myself in somebody else’s sound.”
Earlier this month, ex-Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar revealed that Joe Satriani, bassist Michael Anthony, and drummer Jason Bonham, the son of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, will be going on the road playing Van Halen songs. The tour is set to start on July 13 and will go all the way to August 31, with a total of 28 shows across the United States. These are the only plans so far, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they announce a few more dates or even a European tour.
Along with the announcement of the tour, which is dubbed “The Best of All Worlds,” came Hagar’s statement:
“It’s crazy to think that it’ll be 20 years since Mikey and I played these songs with Van Halen on the ’04 Best of Both Worlds Tour. With Joe on board, we can take a deeper dive into those years.”
The “Best of Both Worlds” tour was at the time when Hagar got back into Van Halen back in the 2000s. It was in celebration of a new compilation that featured songs from both David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar eras of the band. He continued:
“We’re going to touch on some hits from my entire career, but seeing fans old and new really embrace [The Collection II, a new box set featuring remasters of Van Halen’s four Hagar-era albums] set off something in Mikey and I. We were at my Birthday Bash in Cabo for my 76th and looked at each other and high fived, like, ‘Let’s do it.’ We pulled out a couple of them, and it was an instant lovefest with the fans from our first riffs.”
Photos: wimayr (Satriani Super Colossal Tour (Barcelona’06) (195303655) (cropped)), kitmasterbloke (Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow headlining the Stone Free 2017 Festival at the O2 (35251322881))
