Most fans know Joe Satriani as the guitarist David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen approached for the post–Eddie Van Halen tribute tour that never got off the ground.
But according to Satriani, Roth first tried to recruit him decades earlier — for a band that would play Van Halen songs while Eddie was still alive and active.
Speaking to Thinking About Guitar, Satriani recalled receiving a call from Roth in the mid-’90s.
“In the mid ’90s, David Lee Roth called me; he wanted to put together a band to do Van Halen songs,” the guitarist says. “He went on and on about how we were the only guys who could really do it right, and he had all these crazy plans.”
It’s unclear exactly when the conversation took place. Roth briefly reunited with Van Halen in 1996 before the band moved on with Gary Cherone, whose stint as frontman led to the release of Van Halen III in 1998.
Whatever the timing, Satriani says he immediately questioned the premise.
“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? It makes no sense.’
“‘Of course, I said, ‘Look, I’m not the guy.’”
For Satriani, stepping into Eddie Van Halen’s role while the guitarist was still recording and performing was unthinkable. As a lifelong admirer of Eddie’s electric guitar work, he had no interest in trying to recreate it while its creator was still actively pushing the instrument forward.
The idea resurfaced years later under very different circumstances.
Following Eddie Van Halen’s death on October 6, 2020, Satriani was contacted by Roth and Alex Van Halen about participating in a tribute project honoring the late guitarist. Reports later emerged that former Metallica bass guitarist Jason Newsted had also been approached, though the project ultimately stalled. Alex Van Halen would later place the blame on Roth.
“When he and Alex called me after Ed had passed away, it made a little bit more sense,” Satriani says. “Even though I tried to convince them I was not the person who could do it justice.”
Rather than take the role himself, Satriani suggested two guitarists he felt would be better suited to the challenge: his former student Steve Vai and Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt. In the end, the project never materialized.
Satriani would eventually find himself playing Van Halen music onstage, albeit in a different setting. In 2024, he joined Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour, performing material spanning Hagar’s tenure with the band and the broader Van Halen catalog. While Hagar says Satch isn’t the best man for the job, he credits him with bringing “his own thing to the music.”
The tour was widely praised by fans and critics alike, but Satriani’s latest recollection reveals that his connection to Van Halen’s legacy almost began nearly 30 years earlier — thanks to an unexpected phone call from Roth and a proposal he simply couldn’t get behind.
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