Joe Satriani opened up about the Van Halen songs that proved most challenging to master during the “Best of All Worlds” tour, acknowledging how Eddie Van Halen’s career featured “a million sounds.”
When Sammy Hagar’s “Best of All Worlds” tour was announced, there was widespread consensus that if anyone could step into Eddie Van Halen’s legendary role, it was the celebrated virtuoso and longtime collaborator of Hagar, Joe Satriani.
The extensive tour demonstrated that Satriani’s approach—paying tribute to Van Halen’s material without directly mimicking it—was the right one. With Michael Anthony on bass and Jason Bonham on drums (for the majority of the tour), Satriani effortlessly delivered Eddie’s iconic guitar licks. He made it a point to avoid copying Eddie’s unique playing style, having steered clear of it for decades to avoid subconscious imitation.
However, certain licks still posed a challenge, as Satriani revealed in a recent interview:
“Opening with ‘Good Enough’, ‘Poundcake’, and ‘Runaround’ is amazing. But I quickly realized that the order of Eddie’s embellishments is really important to the fans. Even though Eddie would change things up, this audience knows the studio versions, and they expect the scream here, the harmonic cascades there, and the finger tapping at this point,” he explained.
He continued, “As for challenges, the ‘Poundcake’ drill is tough to nail. The beginning of ‘Summer Nights’ is tricky due to the picking and gain structure. I don’t think I got the intro right until halfway through the tour. It just felt so odd to my fingers.”
Satriani also shared his experience with replicating Eddie Van Halen’s tone, noting that it wasn’t as simple as it seemed:
“Eddie had a million sounds. Going from ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love’ to ‘Panama’ is a huge leap, then shifting to ‘Summer Nights’ is an even bigger jump. He moved from mono to mono with a bit of stereo from the Eventide to widen the pitch, and then full stereo,” Satriani explained.
“Eddie used Marshall, Soldano, Peavey, and EVH amps. That’s a major difference in preamp gain and compression. His sound ranged from a lot of midrange to something more scooped,” Satriani continued. “So I asked Dylana Scott at 3rd Power Amplification to help me out. Together, we went for the 1986 ‘Live Without a Net’ tone, which used all Marshalls but with added stereo width.”
Satriani’s collaboration with 3rd Power led to the creation of the DRGN 100 amp, which was born from a deep dive into Eddie’s tone. Reflecting on this pursuit, Satriani said:
“A few years ago, when David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen first reached out to me about a tribute, I began this deep search into Ed’s tone. His sound was lighter and thinner than my JVM, which I use to make my high notes super fat.”
“For my regular sets, I’m typically not playing many chords, but when I play with Sammy, it’s about 95 percent rhythm, with eight or sixteen bars of solo. A quick rip before returning to rhythm,” he concluded.
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