“There aren’t many American guitar players that are well known for restraint”: Joe Satriani on Sammy Hagar’s underrated guitar skills
Joe Satriani has revealed what he considers to be one of the most remarkable yet underrated aspects of Sammy Hagar’s guitar playing
In a recent chat with Thinking About Guitar, Satriani – who’s spent the past few years sharing a stage with the Red Rocker on The Best of All Worlds tour – explains how Hagar’s greatest strength as a guitarist comes from the same place that made him such an effective frontman.
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“I always thought that one of the coolest things about his guitar playing was that he somehow took that knowledge of being a really good lead vocalist and applied it to the way he played guitar,” says Satch.
“And, you know, he’s kind of a crazy shred guitar player on the one hand. But on the other hand, he’s got this editorial process that I personally recognise as being a lead singer.”
According to the virtuoso, Hagar possesses an instinctive understanding of what a song needs, and just as importantly, what it doesn’t.
“I’ll play too many notes, but he won’t,” he says. “And I always ask him, ‘Well, what is that?’ And of course, he doesn’t think about it. It’s totally natural to him. He’s just a completely natural player. But he somehow plays the right notes with the right kind of vibrato. And that still fascinates me, as it did when I was a young kid growing up.”
“I was thinking, wow, restraint,” Satriani continues, adding that “there aren’t many American guitar players that are well known for restraint.
“I always saw that as something that would come from the UK or Ireland. You have these players like [Eric] Clapton or Brian May who just play the perfect notes. They don’t turn the amp up to eleven.”
Hagar, he argues, belongs in that conversation.
“Sam had this thing, because he really liked Clapton. I think he would take that one step back from the edge of the cliff and make sure that he could pull it off.”
“I hear it over and over again as a thing that really good lead vocalists have,” he says. “And they apply it to their guitar playing.”
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