Heartbreaking: Van Halen Super Guitarist has involved in a ghastly car accident in the early hours of today along…

No one can say Joe Satriani went into Sammy Hagar’s Best Of All Worlds Tour underprepared. Playing Eddie Van Halen’s guitar parts was not a job Satch took lightly. Indeed, he took it so seriously he collaborated with 3rd Power on a custom tube amp just for the tour.

But as the tour rolls on and songs are swapped in and out of the setlist, new challenges keep coming up. Like when Hagar says they should revisit his final studio album as Van Halen frontman, 1995’s Balance, and put its most successful single, Can’t Stop Lovin’ You, into the set.

Speaking to Sirius XM’s Eddie Trunk, with a few shows under his belt, Satriani sounded wholly at ease with the gig, knowing where and when he had to nail Eddie’s solos just like the record and where there was room to put his own stamp on it, to “pay homage, be respectful, try just to memorise the stuff but at the same time celebrate it as it was intended”.

But Can’t Stop Lovin’ You is a problem. How to get that clean electric guitar tone with his rig? This was going to be the challenge, covering all bases, and even for Eddie Van Halen this is tone out of left field, a sort of gussied up Nashville tone, a little LA studio polish and ’80s pop on top. This, right now, is top of Satriani’s to-do list.

“When [Sammy] mentioned Can’t Stop Lovin’ You I realised it was a technical issue for me because it’s got that super-clean guitar sound,” says Satriani. “Eddie’s got one or two or three guitars playing super-clean on that song, and so when Sammy mentioned it I said, ‘You’re gonna have to give me a few weeks’ notice to do some tweaking with my tech to make sure I can get that guitar sound together.’”

Satriani says he is approached this tour with Van Halen’s 1986 concert movie, Live Without A Net, as the reference. This was Eddie Van Halen on the road, playing a little fast and loose with his arrangements because, as Satch says, he would never play the same thing twice.

“Once they took it out on the road, I couldn’t find one live clip of Eddie playing the same song that was remotely similar!” says Satriani. “He was just so creative.”