During a recent chat with Loudwire, Steel Panther’s Satchel looked back on some of the most fabulous ’70s hard rock albums in history, arguing that “boomers got it right” when it came to heavy music.

He said:

“I had older cousins that played that for me while we all sat around and did cocaine. That was the one with ”Smoke On The Water.” And I know everybody says ”Smoke on the Water”… ‘We’re tired of that song…’

“You can’t get tired of ”Smoke On The Water”! I’m sorry, it is what it is for a reason. It’s only got seven songs, by the way. A lot of records come out, they’ve got like 17, 18 songs on them.

“More than ever, a band should be cutting songs out. Cut out the fat. Put like 6 or 7 songs on. People don’t have an attention span. Deep Purple figured it out in 1971 or whatever it was.”

About Van Halen, the guitarist also said:

“I think I heard ”Eruption” before I picked up guitar and I just thought ‘Well, I guess I shouldn’t really play guitar because this guy just did everything that you could do on a guitar. But I picked it up anyway and now I’m making dozens of dollars a week.

“We’re carrying the torch. Eddie passed the torch and we said, ‘You know what? We’re gonna keep on rockin’ for you, Eddie.’ Because somebody’s gotta keep on rocking. And I’ll be dead very soon, in the next few months, and I’m gonna pass the torch to some other kids.” […]

More, he continued on Rush:

“The next album I would say that had a really big influence on me was the band Rush and ‘2112.’ So far, every record that I’ve named, people are like ‘Oh, okay… Okay boomer.’ Right?

“Yeah. Yeah, boomer. The boomers got it right, okay? ‘2112’ by Rush was an incredible record for a lot of reasons. From the very first notes of that record, you cannot stop listening.

”This entire record was inspired by a book by someone named Ayn Rand. And if you’ve ever read Ayn Rand, set out and read some of her books because it’s really boring.” […]