“When it fell apart, I was kind of relieved”: Joe Satriani on the Eddie Van Halen tribute tour that descended into dysfunction — and why Sammy Hagar’s version made more sense

No one plays a guitar melody quite like Joe Satriani. His lyrical turn of phrase on the instrument has helped him carve out one of the most legendary solo careers in guitar history, making him a master of his craft to millions for nearly 40 years.

Solo career aside, Satch has also done his fair share of successful sideman work. He got the call from Mick Jagger just as his instrumental career was starting to take off, and later stepped into Ritchie Blackmore’s shoes for a run of Deep Purple shows in the early ’90s.

Now, as he approaches his 70th birthday this July, Satriani is taking on another loaded guitar role: standing alongside former Van Halen frontman and Red Rocker Sammy Hagar on the Best of All Worlds tour. Having spent the past couple of years bringing the show to audiences across the States, the band are finally bringing it to the UK this July for a run of shows, with fellow Van Halen alum Michael Anthony and drummer Kenny Aronoff completing the lineup.

In Satch’s words, it’s another “pinch-me moment.” But the job also comes with the obvious pressure: Eddie Van Halen’s parts are not just guitar parts to a lot of people. Taking on those legendary lead lines and riffs was always going to bring its own set of concerns — especially for a player who has never been interested in simply imitating someone else.

But this was far from the first time Joe had been asked to plug into King Edward’s rig. Following an aborted attempt at a Van Halen tribute tour headed up by David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen, Satriani tells Thinking About Guitar that the whole thing eventually “descended into dysfunction.” When Sammy called with his version of the idea, however, it made far more sense.

“It’s a great show,” Satriani says, describing the gig. “I still get a thrill when we start the show and I look over and there’s Sammy Hagar, there’s Michael Anthony, and I’m on stage with them. It’s like, wow — this is a pinch-me moment again.

“They bring with them all the history, the mystery and the crazy rock ’n’ roll fun of all the music that I grew up listening to. And especially since we share so many of the same roots, it makes the experience that much more powerful and I know people feel it, because we’ve been touring quite a bit for the last two years, and I experienced it with Chickenfoot too. They bring this power and energy, and all that they lived through, and all the music they’ve created — they bring it all to bear at every show.”

For Satriani, that thrill comes with a fair amount of weight attached to the music. Alongside Hagar, Anthony and Aronoff, he is helping bring life back to a catalogue of songs that mean everything to multiple generations of guitar players — including himself.

But surprisingly, more than 30 years ago, David Lee Roth had already called him about doing something similar.

“I remember in the mid-’90s, around ’95 or ’96, David Lee Roth called me and he wanted to put together a band to do Van Halen songs,” Satriani recalls. “He went on and on about how we were the only guys who could really do it right.

“He had all these crazy plans, and I said, ‘But Dave, Ed’s still alive. He’s still making amazing records. He’s still on tour. What guitar player would ever try to imitate him while he’s still working?’ I said, ‘It makes no sense.’ And of course, I said, ‘Look, I’m not the guy.’”

Ultimately, that project came to nothing. But following Eddie Van Halen’s passing in October 2020, Satch was clearly still Dave and Alex Van Halen’s number one choice when the idea of an official tribute came back around.

For years, fan speculation around an Eddie Van Halen tribute has tended to circle the idea of a one-off show — maybe a couple of special nights in the spirit of the Taylor Hawkins concerts — rather than a full touring proposition. Satriani, however, says the plan was much bigger than that.

“No, they wanted to do a tour,” he reveals. “When he and Alex called me after Ed had passed away, it made a little bit more sense, even though I tried to convince them I was not the person who could do it justice. I told them I had tried to avoid playing like Ed for so long that now I really couldn’t.”

Satriani even felt there were players whose style sat a little closer to Eddie’s language. Nuno Bettencourt and Steve Lukather were among the names he put forward, but apparently Roth and Alex had their minds made up.

“It was all David Lee Roth-era stuff, which was really different,” he says. “As I said before, a couple of times I called and said, ‘Really, are you sure you don’t want to call Nuno or Steve, or someone obviously more well-suited to sound like Ed? Someone who has demonstrated playing this stuff live?’ But they were adamant that I was the only guy who was going to do it justice.

“So I just thought, okay, I’ll keep working on it. And when it fell apart, I was kind of relieved, because I was really concerned about how we were going to do it justice as a show, top to bottom, and not reflect Sammy’s period in the band.

“That was huge. I think they got more number one records than the Roth era. So it was confusing to me that they wouldn’t want to reflect that at all. But that’s a whole other story, and it’s not my place to get into.”

Where the guitar player’s role was locked in, less clear-cut was who’d be on bass duties for the shows. For Satriani, the obvious answer was Michael Anthony. But that, apparently, was not on the table.

“They didn’t know,” he explains when asked who Dave and Alex wanted. “That’s why I suggested Jason. Because they asked me, and I was like, well, that’s weird. It’s got to be Mike.

“But they said, ‘No, it can’t be Mike.’ So I thought, well, I knew Jason [Newsted] was a crazy Van Halen fanatic, besides being an awesome bass player. He had so much experience playing in super-large venues around the world.”

The story goes that after months of phone calls, planning and uncertainty, the whole thing slowly became a non-starter — something Satriani admits came as something of a relief.

“That whole period took maybe four or five months for it to start, reach a fever pitch, and then slowly descend into dysfunction,” Satriani says. “You have to understand, I was just still at home working on an album. It would keep swirling around, and I’d get phone calls and hear about plans and all this stuff, but I had no control over it.

“Very different from my life as a solo artist, where I have control over everything. Here, I was in control of nothing. I was just the recipient of phone calls and messages about what was going to happen. So when it fell apart, I thought, well, great.”

More than five years on from Eddie Van Halen’s passing, the thing that seems to split Van Halen supporters more than whether a tribute show or tour should still happen at all is who should actually be part of the lineup on stage.

For Satriani, though, it’s a no-brainer.

“If anyone’s going to do this kind of tribute tour, it should be Wolfgang,” he says. “He’s the only one people really want to see do it, and he’s the only one who actually does it all right.

“He can do all of his dad’s stuff. So why shouldn’t he do it? And if he doesn’t want to do it, then that’s the end of that. It should be his decision.

“But that was family business, and I had no business getting involved in that.”

That, ultimately, is why Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour made more sense to him. It was never presented as a straight Van Halen tribute, or as a need for an EVH clone. It was Sammy’s story: Montrose, the solo years, Chickenfoot, Van Halen and everything in between.

“Then Sam called, and he had a totally different idea,” Satriani says. “He said, ‘I want to put a band together to do Hagar, Montrose, Chickenfoot, and a lot of Van Halen from my era.’”

This version also gives a tip of the hat to what Hagar sees as the best parts of the David Lee Roth era. And, as Satriani tells it, Sammy was happy for Roth and Alex Van Halen to join the ride in whatever way they wanted.

“Sam’s not one to hold a grudge,” he says. “He invited everybody — Alex and Dave — to be a part of it in any way they wanted.”

That was the version Satch could get his head around.

“That made more sense to me, because then I could apply myself to Montrose, to Hagar’s solo material, to playing a Chickenfoot song or two, playing one of my songs, and then this really fantastic catalogue of Van Halen songs, plus a new song. So it all worked out.”

For Satch, then, the Best of All Worlds tour is just one part of a very busy year in 2026. In October, his long-awaited full-length album with Steve Vai will finally arrive, and while it’s doubtful that we’ll ever see another Chickenfoot record — due, as Satriani tells it, to Sammy Hagar “enjoying life without having to work so hard trying to recreate stuff he’s already done so many times since the ’70s” — when it comes to new solo material, Satriani is much more optimistic.

“The SatchVai album comes out October 30,” Satriani says. “That’s totally in the can — artwork, everything is ready to go. Then I do have to start thinking about another solo record. I’m not sure when I’ll get to record that, but I’m coming up with different ideas about where I would do it and with whom.

“I feel like basically getting in a room — a big room — with musicians and recording more in a live vein, more like The Extremist experience than the last couple of records.”

Four years on from his last solo album, The Elephants of Mars, Satch sounds ready for the next challenge. After a couple of records shaped by remote recording, the energy of these live shows appears to have reminded him what can happen when musicians are back in the same room.

However it turns out, this is Joe Satriani we’re talking about. It will be worth the wait.

Joe Satriani will be on tour with Sammy Hagar as part of the Best of All Worlds tour this summer.

For more information, visit joesatriani.com and redrocker.com.