Joe Satriani discussed the difficulty of maintaining his style when performing songs written by other musicians. He is presently required to perform songs by Eddie Van Halen. In a recent interview with GuitarWorld, he stated that replicating Ritchie Blackmore’s sound during his Deep Purple days in the 1990s was difficult.
He said, “This is purely mental for me.” And I went through the mental torment of performing ‘Smoke on the Water’ and having my guitar not sound like Ritchie Blackmore‘s when I was with Deep Purple. ‘It’s not right,’ I kept thinking to myself. It should be a Marshall into a Strat.’ Even though I attempted to calm myself down by thinking, ‘It doesn’t matter; it’s the notes and the phrasing,’ as a fan, I wanted to hear the proper sound… That is the situation here, where I want to acknowledge the sound but without losing myself in someone else’s sound.”
According to Eddie, the most difficult aspect of capturing his sound was”The most awkward part was not doing the melody and stepping in first on top of the beat.” Eddie accomplished that, yet he never sounded rushed.”
Joe Satriani then stated that he needed to alter his cognitive approach in this regard.”I need to stop arguing with myself about how it doesn’t sound right.” I’ll have to go through some mental treatment and accept that I’ll sound a little different.”
Joe Satriani ‘Screwed Up’ Playing Van Halen’s ‘Mean Street’ Live
Joe Satriani recently went on the Howard Stern Show with his colleagues from the current Best Of All World tour (Jason Bonham, Michael Anthony, and Sammy Hagar) to discuss the tour and play Van Halen tunes. However, the song Mean Street, which Hagar characterized as “impossible to play,” must have been pretty tough to play live, as he remarked in another Guitar World interview following the concert.
He stated, “I royally screwed up, which hurt like a thorn in my side, but I’ll get over it.”
