Before making his way to the stage, Joe Satriani worked as a guitar instructor. While those years are behind him, former students like Kirk Hammett, Charlie Hunter, and Alex Skolnick went on to have moderate success in the music industry. As for Satriani, his career took him a different route as he performed alongside Mick Jagger and Deep Purple. Recently, Satriani opened up about how he constantly went back and forth when it came to being part of Van Halen’s kitchen sink tour.
Sitting down with Guitar.com, Satriani held nothing about when discussing Alex Van Halen and David Lee Roth. Although taking part in Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour, the guitarist said he called Alex and Roth to tell them “No Way. I can’t do this. This is too hard.” He added, “[Alex] convinced me that I could do it, and then another couple of weeks later, it was the same kind of thing – I thought, ‘Man, some of these songs are … they’re just not me.’ Eddie played in a completely different way … it’s so different from what I cultivated in my playing for decades. So that was the hardest part.”
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Joe Satriani Doesn’t Want To Be In A Tribute Band
When pressed as to why he decided to join Hagar’s tour, Satriani insisted, “Because it was a friend calling about a retrospective of his whole career. It did happen to involve anywhere from 15 to 20 Van Halen songs – and they were different from the songs that Dave and Alex wanted to do. Dave was not going to do any Van Hagar stuff, anything from after he left the band.”
While wanting to honor the legacy Eddie Van Halen left behind, Satriani noted, “Eddie went through a real shift. He became far more progressive – a different world for me to jump into. But I also reminded myself, ‘That’s not the show. This is not a Van Halen tribute. This is a tribute to Sammy’s legacy that happens to include this huge chunk of music by Van Halen.’ … I want to do it right. I spent all this money on gear and want to make it a great night to celebrate these songs. And I think everybody gets it.”
With Satriani promising he is not in a tribute band, the musician concluded, “I’m throwing in all the stuff I normally would. But I’ve added some things I never really did because I thought, ‘Well, that’s Eddie. I’m not gonna copy that.’ It doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’ve made it work.”
(Photo by Daniel Knighton/Getty Images)
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