Joe Satriani is in the midst of a tour with longtime friend, and former guitar student, Steve Vai – with whom he's just released their first ever single together, The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1. But when they're not on stage the two players are busying themselves preparing for their next gigs – Vai with Adrian Belew's King Crimson-saluting Beat and Satriani deep diving into Van Halen territory with Sammy Hagar's The Best of All Worlds tour in North America, which gets underway on July 13 in West Palm Beach, FL.
"My task right now is trying to unravel the mystery of Eddie Van Halen's strange guitar playing," Satriani tells Classic Rock. "I spent decades voiding how to learn this stuff so I wouldn't copy it, and now all of a sudden I'm doing a crash course on the idiosyncrasies and the genius of his guitar work. I know these songs but I've never actually played them. It's a task."
