Joe Satriani recently reflected about being approached to reproduce Eddie Van Halen‘s guitar parts as part of an all-star VAN HALEN tribute project with Alex Van Halen and David Lee Roth.
Speaking with The Weekly Show With David J. Maloney, he recalled how the proposed pairing came about. He said that he initially felt he wasn’t the right choice and suggested Nuno Bettencourt instead, explaining that he had always tried not to sound like Eddie despite being a big fan.
The group rehearsed and nearly held their first show, but the project eventually began to fall apart for unclear reasons while Satriani was waiting for updates.
“Well, it started, really, when Dave and Alex had called, and they wanted to put together a band, and they were insisting that I was the guy to do it. And I kept saying, ‘I’m not the guy. Call Nuno [Bettencourt]. He can really do it.’ And there’s thousands of kids around the world who’ve dedicated their life to sounding exactly like Ed. And I said, ‘I’ve always tried not to sound like Ed.’ I’m a huge fan, but I’ve tried to respect that. But they were insistent. And we rehearsed. We came really close to doing our first show, but it all kind of started to fall apart, and I’m not really sure what happened with that. And I was busy as well, so I was just waiting to hear what was happening month by month.”
Joe Satriani stated that when tensions within the Van Halen camp became complicated, Sammy Hagar invited him to join the 2024 “Best Of All Worlds” tour with members of The Circle, including Michael Anthony.
Satriani liked the idea because the tour would celebrate music from multiple eras and projects—such as Montrose, Hagar’s solo work, Chickenfoot, and both the Hagar and David Lee Roth eras of Van Halen—without trying to replicate Eddie Van Halen’s style.
“When it seemed like what was going on in the [VAN HALEN] family and the bandmembers was getting really out of hand, Sam had called and he surprised me by saying, ‘Look, I know you’ve been going through this thing with those guys, and it’s insane and everything. How about if we did a retrospective tour — not an Eddie Van Halen tribute thing — but where we get to do Montrose, Hagar, Chickenfoot, my stuff and his era, and even some David Lee Roth era of Van Halen?’ And I liked that idea, because I know Sam and Mike very well — they’re just super-great people and they’re always fun to hang out with and play with — and then I liked the idea that we would create our own sound as a band. And we kind of had it with Chickenfoot, so it felt like we weren’t trying to copy anybody else. But still, just technically, I had to remind Sam, I said, ‘Sam, I’m gonna tell you what I told Alex, which is I don’t really play like Eddie,’ but he kind of knew it and we played for so long together. He said, ‘That’s not what it’s about. We’re not gonna do that. Let the imitators do that. Leave that for social media.’ And so I thought, ‘Cool. Okay.’ However, it was difficult to make the equipment transition, and that that required not only a lot of money, but just a lot of changing of direction, of equipment to try to figure out, how do you play stuff within one show that is so old, like the Montrose stuff, and then slowly transition… Even from ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love’ to ‘Poundcake’, the sound of the guitar is just so different. So we had long talks about that, like, literally the whole band’s gonna suddenly change their sound? And we thought, ‘No, we shouldn’t do that. We should just find a sound.'”
