For nearly 30 years, Joe Satriani has toured with a variety of guitarists on his G3 tour. However, one major name never made the lineup: the late Eddie Van Halen.
Though the collaboration never happened, Satriani made multiple attempts to reach out.
“I called Eddie’s number, office, whatever, almost every time,” he said in a recent interview on the UCR Podcast. “I didn’t want to be a pest, but I didn’t know him. So I couldn’t just call his house or stop by, because I don’t live in the same city. I would go through channels — I tried every angle to say, ‘We’ll take care of everything.’ Which we do, myself and my management. We took care of all of the technicalities of putting on this show. We made it so it was the easiest thing for the artist to come.”
Satriani said he always left the door open for Van Halen to join on his terms.
“In terms of Ed, we always made the offer that we could put the band together. He could play whenever he wanted. He could play for as long as he wanted,” he said. “This was basically the structure of the show, and I literally never heard back. So I suppose, maybe after six or seven G3 tries, I just thought, ‘Well, it’s cool.’ Because not everybody is comfortable standing next to two other guitar players every single night. They may do it once at a special show, charity event or something really big, but once you sign on to G3, it’s a responsibility to the audience to show up every night and play.”
Van Halen rarely worked outside of his namesake band, which Satriani believes may explain why he never responded.
“Certain bands provide enough for their guitar players to do whatever they want,” he said. “The Edge, right? He can do whatever he wants in U2, and so could Van Halen. It’s not like he needed G3, because he had all this other music he wanted to play or his band didn’t let him play guitar. I’ve always realized it’s not for everybody.”
Beyond Van Halen, another dream lineup slipped through Satriani’s fingers.
“The one that was so close to really happening was me with Jeff Beck and Billy Gibbons,” he said. “I think we were a week away from actually putting it in ink in the books. It was so close to happening. Then Jeff bailed at the last moment. I think he used the excuse that he thought it would be better if we toured with Prince. I took that as a really good joke, like, he just didn’t want to do it, so he came up with the most ridiculous suggestion.”