Joe Satriani Says Sammy Hagar Is A Great R&B Singer

Joe Satriani recently joined an interview with Made in Metal YouTube channel and talked about the making process of his upcoming album. He also revealed that Sammy Hagar is a great R&B singer, although he doesn’t show much.

Satriani has been readying to release his eighteenth studio album, ‘The Elephants of Mars,’ on April 8, 2022. Three singles off the album, ‘Sahara,’ ‘Faceless,’ and ‘Pumpin’,’ is already dropped, and the fans have been excitedly waiting for the new album to arrive. As the guitarist stated a few times during his previous interviews, he intended to try different ideas on this album and is very satisfied with the final work.

Besides his solo career, Joe Satriani also joined the supergroup Chickenfoot in 2008, which features Sammy Hagar as the lead singer. The two had also collaborated before for the short-lived band Planet Us, formed in 2002. Chickenfoot released their self-titled debut album in 2009. It was followed by the band’s second studio album, ‘Chickenfoot III, ‘ two years later.’ However, the album sales didn’t meet the expectations, and the band members have been busy with other projects for a while.

Sammy Hagar and Joe Satriani have known each other for a long time now, and Satriani had a chance to closely observe Hagar’s singing style. The guitarist revealed that he wrote a song for Chickenfoot and thought Sammy Hagar would enjoy singing it. When the guitarist was around Hagar, Satriani realized that he is a great R&B singer, although he doesn’t show it much. Satriani hasn’t finished the song and offered it to Hagar yet, but he thinks that it would be a good match for him.

Joe Satriani’s statements on the song he wrote for Sammy Hagar are as follows:

“I did actually write a song thinking about my good friend, Sammy Hagar, because I thought this could be really good for Chickenfoot. As the song progressed, it got more and more Joe-like. It still had elements that I thought Sammy would love to sing because he is a really great R&B kind of singer. He doesn’t show the world that much of it, but I know from hanging around with him that he’s a great R&B singer and can sing that kind of rock and roll.

I’m happy you picked up on that because that’s actually what I was trying to do was to try to vocalize, especially the chorus, where I imagine Sammy singing something like, ‘I can make you feel good, I can make you happy.’ I never finished the lyrics enough to show him, so it kind of wound up in the instrumental category for me.”

You can watch the full interview below.