During an appearance on SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” on Thursday, July 25, Joe Satriani discussed his involvement in Sammy Hagar’s summer 2024 tour, which began on July 13 at the 20,000-capacity iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida.
For “The Best Of All Worlds” tour, Hagar and his band THE CIRCLE—featuring ex-VAN HALEN bassist Michael Anthony and drummer Jason Bonham—are joined by Satriani, who has previously collaborated with Hagar and Anthony in the band CHICKENFOOT, along with multi-instrumentalist Rai Thistlethwayte.
The tour’s 21-song setlist largely features VAN HALEN material, including the opening track “Good Enough” from the 1986 album “5150,” as well as two tracks from the 1991 album “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge,” namely “Poundcake” and “Runaround.” The set also includes classic David Lee Roth-era VAN HALEN songs such as “Panama” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” and a segment of “Jump.”
Additionally, the setlist incorporates Satriani’s “Satch Boogie,” the influential rock-swing guitar instrumental from 1987 that boosted his second album, “Surfing With The Alien,” to platinum status, along with several of Hagar’s solo hits like “There’s Only One Way To Rock,” “Eagles Fly,” “Heavy Metal,” and “I Can’t Drive 55.”
When asked by “Trunk Nation” host Eddie Trunk how the initial shows of “The Best Of All Worlds” tour have gone, Satriani replied (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Oh, it’s a thrill. It is so difficult to explain the complexity of emotions that I have playing this role in the band. First of all, they’re just fun shows. They’re just completely rock and roll fun shows with an amazing setlist to play with every night. I mean, that’s obvious, and the fans are right there with us celebrating all this great music with us. But just me being with my buddies, celebrating Sam’s legacy and Mike’s legacy—we have a lot of years together, so there’s this great feeling of friendship, and I’m just happy to be there to help them celebrate. And I’m a huge Eddie Van Halen fan, as you know, and so I approach this gig with this feeling of a huge responsibility to do it right, to be respectful, but to keep the spirit that Eddie invented alive when I play these songs.”
Satriani also admitted that while preparing for the tour, he watched YouTube videos of other guitarists playing Eddie Van Halen’s parts. When asked why he chose this approach rather than focusing solely on videos of Eddie himself, Joe explained: “Well, here’s the interesting point about some of the simplest pieces that Eddie would do, is he’d do the album version, and from the stories that I’ve heard from the bandmembers there was that Eddie and Alex [Van Halen] would work on these things, let’s say, one song for two or three weeks, and then the other guys would come in to add to the track. And so the recordings would be like this culmination of the brothers jamming. And then once they took it out on the road, I couldn’t find one live clip of Eddie playing the same song that was remotely similar. He was just so creative, every show he would just do it a little different. And so I thought, ‘Okay, I should just embrace every different version. And I really do wanna see how other guitar players work around the fact that their hands are not Eddie’s hands.'”
Joe continued: “Eddie held his guitar in a certain place. A lot of guitar players don’t hold it like that these days. He would hold his pick in a different way. He would pick in a different way. And there were all these things that were part of his physicality that were quite different. So when somebody does, like you go and you check out a VAN HALEN tribute band, you’re looking at a different person with a different body and they have to deal with the fact that they’re different, they hold their pick differently, they position the guitar and their body at a different height or something. It all makes a difference. It all adds up to creating that right vibe, the rhythm, the tone. And then there are the amps. I mean, my god. There’s a great picture of Eddie’s rig from the mid-to-late ’80s, and it’s insane what he put together. He was so gifted in pushing the envelope of how he put his gear together to attain this really unique sound. And I think that there’s that—I’m gonna say maybe 50 percent; maybe this is a bold statement, but I think 50 percent of what we hear really came from his hands, because when you really do the deep dive into the amps and you realize, well, he’s played all these different amps in the course of a couple of decades, but he never lost that intensity, the snap, just the overall aggressive-yet-beautiful sound that he created. So it was in his hands. And so you can get the amp—the EVH amp, the Soldano, the vintage Marshalls—but you’re not gonna be there; you’re not gonna be able to really do a great impression of Eddie Van Halen without his hands. He was that special, that unique. And I would think anyone who’s done it, and I saw it online, which is basically anyone who’s decided, I’m gonna try to play, let’s say, the first VAN HALEN record live in front of an audience for a tribute, they realize this right away that it’s impossible to copy that element of him. So you learn the songs, you try to learn the fingerings and then you go, ‘Now, how am I gonna do it, ’cause these are my hands?’ And I think Eddie would have wanted anyone who played any of his music to inject a healthy portion of their own personality and not to try to imitate him. So maybe that’s the thing—don’t imitate, but pay homage, be respectful. Try to memorize the stuff, but at the same time celebrate it the way it was intended. Don’t be like a parrot.”
