Sammy Hagar Taps Joe Satriani for Van Halen-Focused 2024 Tour

Sammy Hagar has recruited guitarist and Chickenfoot bandmate Joe Satriani to join him on a Van Halen-focused 2024 tour. Hagar’s Circle bandmates, bassist Michael Anthony and drummer Jason Bonham, will round out the lineup.

“We’re gonna go deep into the Van Halen catalog,” Hagar told Howard Stern on Tuesday. “If you’re gonna go deep into the Van Halen catalog, you need Joe Satriani.”

Hagar noted that he and Anthony typically play “five or six Van Halen songs” on the road with the Circle. This time, he’ll flip the script and play “five or six of my songs” alongside Van Halen classics and deep cuts.

“When we go out next year in July, it will be almost exactly 20 years since Mike and I did a reunion with Ed and Al in ’04,” Hagar said. “Mike and I just said, ‘We can’t wait another 20 years. How long can I even sing these songs? How long can I do this stuff? I just thought it’s time to serve the fans.”

Hagar said that working on the recently released Collection II Van Halen box set inspired him to put this tour together. He also named “Seventh Seal” and “Amsterdam” as deep cuts he’d be excited to unearth.

Read More: All 48 Sammy Hagar-Era Van Halen Songs Ranked Worst to Best

“There’s stuff we’re going to do on this next tour that we haven’t played since that tour in 2004,” Anthony added.

Satriani, meanwhile, acknowledged that learning the Van Halen catalog is a Herculean task, but he’s up to the challenge. “There are things that are so iconic, you have to nail it,” he said. “But if you go deep with what he did live, he never played the same thing twice. He kept evolving, he kept pushing. He’d do the recorded version a little but but then he moved on.

“It’s a daunting task when you do the deep dive into what he did,” he continued. “But it’s good to start at the beginning, and then you just learn all his little improvs and you get the idea of what he was trying to do. It’s thrilling, it’s fun.”

In October, remastered editions of all four Hagar-era Van Halen albums were released in The Collection II box set, which also included a disc of rarities.