JOE SATRIANI Says MICHAEL ANTHONY Was Underutilized In VAN HALEN

Michael Christopher of Examiner.com recently conducted an interview with legendary guitarist Joe Satriani (CHICKENFOOT). A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On how CHICKENFOOT was formed:

"Sammy [Hagar] invited me to do this jam a show he was doing in Vegas back in February of 2008, and I really thought I was just walking into a little celebrity jam at the end of a crazy Cabo Wabo show. But the chemistry between us was just something completely unique. It was like the early THE WHO or something — it was out of control and wasn't just like four professional guys writing some songs or jamming or something like that."

On CHICKENFOOT being called a "supergroup":

"A lot of those supergroups are put together by the labels, by managers and whatnot. CHICKENFOOT was really the three of those guys just jamming for about six months down at Sam's club in Cabo in Mexico. When Sam brought me in, they weren't really thinking about it because obviously it's an impossible task for all of us to form a band and record a record and go on tour because we already have bands and responsibilities. And when we did that first jam, we came off stage and we looked at each other like, 'Oh — this is gonna be impossible, guys.' You know you're about to do something that you're not supposed to do, but you do it anyway."

On Sammy Hagar stating in an interview that CHICKENFOOT's music was so good, it "could rival" LED ZEPPELIN:

"To know Sam is to love him, and he says things like that every once in awhile. He is one of the most passionate musicians you're ever going to meet, so if he's excited about something, he'll just go on and on. I figured when he did that interview he had a few shots of tequila in him and he was feeling really great cause he just got finished listening to one of our demos and he wanted everyone to know about it. I think he was really trying to keep a lid on it, but he couldn't, and when it exploded it would come out like that, you know?"

On the change in his approach as a guitarist during the songwriting sessions for the CHICKENFOOT album:

"I wanted to try to avoid what Sammy did with Ronnie (Montrose) and what he did with Eddie (Van Halen). And from just a real guitar geek's point of view, I thought Eddie really kind of pioneered that approach where he was going crazy all the time, from the beginning of the song until the end. It's almost like an Eddie solo with vocals on top — and I love that because I'm a fan, but I'm not gonna enter into his territory there; I'm gonna be more like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page and create a real rhythm guitar approach so that I can have a different guitar sound for each song."

On his CHICKENFOOT bandmate, ex-VAN HALEN bassist Michael Anthony:

"Why in VAN HALEN was Mike Anthony not allowed to play more... he's a fantastic musician and an enormous force on that bass guitar. Every day we would record I would go, 'This is amazing!' I never knew he could fill up this void so much, because I'd be used to hearing him on VAN HALEN tracks where he basically just followed Eddie. It was great to hear the real Michael Anthony just come alive on the record and take up all that space."

Read the entire interview from Examiner.com.