CHICKENFOOT THE KINGS OF 21ST CENTURY ZEP ROCK

Going back a while ago, I wrote a blog about the return of the he `real Van Halen`, not the 2nd tier version of the band which was fronted by veteran singer Sammy Hagar from 1986 onwards, after original vocalist David Lee Roth quit in a cloud of acrimony and disillusionment. 

You may have got the impression, if you happened to read this particular
blog, that I was not a fan of Hagar and I didn`t like his way of performing rock music, and that I thought the sun shone out of Roth`s backside. 

As far as showmanship goes, Roth was always more of a natural than Hagar ever was, but in musical terms, Hagar was the most gifted of the two, and by a long way. 

Roth simply fluked it with Van Halen, if he
would have been singing for them after 1986 when Hagar was, chances are that not even Diamond Dave would have saved the Van Halen show from becoming a workmanlike
bore like it did with albums such as 5150 and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, the latter album not only bearing a sleezy title but also an extremely forced and over produced soundscape as well. 

Roth was just lucky enough to be the lead singer of the band before the booze got Eddie and when the band was young, fresh and exuberant. The truth is that Diamond Dave wasn`t the one who gave the early Van Halen albums the edge that they have over the Hagar era VH albums, it was Eddie Van Halen himself. 

It was almost like when Roth quit the band in 1985, that Eddie just got musically lazy and Sammy Hagar`s more song based approach suited his new found attitude to a tee. 

He turned into a soft cock, no other way to put it. I never did like Sammy Hagar in Van Halen, not just because of grubby album titles, but mostly because the band become just another bunch of big chorus rockers like Foreigner or Survivor. 

And the fact is that Sammy Hagar was never a Lou Gramm, he could sing as good as Robert Plant or any one of about twenty 70`s rockers, but his voice was not magical or anything. 

If you wanted to hear workmanlike rock
ballads, Foreigner was doing it better than anyone else in the 80`s. 

Van Halen Mark 2, or Van Hagar as it was cynically called by music critics in the 80`s, was simply an inferior and second generation version of AOR bands such as Foreigner, especially on the first Hagar album `5150`.

Ironically, Foreigner`s lead guitarist Mick Jones was the one who produced that album. I am not keen on Sammy.Hagar`s stuff with Van Halen, I think I have made that obvious, but if I`m going to be fair to Hagar, some of his solo work prior to him joining Van Halen is a lot better and more genuinely bluesy than anything that Roth recorded as a solo artist after he left Van Halen. 

Hagar started out in a proto-metal band called Montrose in the year of 1973, the band being named after co-founder and guitarist Ronnie Montrose. 

The band`s debut is a masterpiece of 70`s heavy rock guitar, Eddie Van Halen himself was influenced greatly by Montrose`s style of guitar playing.

The song `Bad Motor Scooter` off the first Montrose album was in fact written entirely by Sammy Hagar, and it remains a classic rock song of that period, even though you will never hear it on the radio, at least in Australia. 

In 1974, Montrose released a second album by the name of `Paper Money`, but it just wasn`t as good as the first effort.

Hagar quit Montrose after the second album, and Montrose made two more albums with a
new vocalist, who was as weak as piss. 

Hagar went on to have a modestly successful solo career, both before and after his long stint with Van Halen, and made some truly great hard rock songs along the way, like `Red` that come off the album of the same title, the self explanatory `Heavy Metal` and `I Cant Drive 55` off the album VOA in 1984. 

The only questionable aspect of Hagar`s
songwriting style was his very outspoken endorsement of smoking cannabis, never more evident than on songs such as `High Hopes`, `Fast Times At Ridgemont High`
and on the Van Halen song `Amsterdam` off the album Balance from 1995. 

The latter song is rumoured to have been the catalyst for Eddie Van Halen telling Hagar that he couldn`t write songs for shit, apparently he was furious with Hagar for writing a totally dumb downed song
about smoking dope. 

Hagar was gone from the band by the next year. Hagar made some more solo music in the late 90`s and early 2000`s, and then he was somehow roped in to make a comeback to Van Halen in or around 2005, to sing three new songs which were tacked onto.a new VH greatest hits release. 

He brought Michael Anthony with him, the Van Halen bass guitarist who unbenown to a lot of people hated David Lee Roth all those
years more than Eddie or Alex Van Halen. 

It`s hard to believe that four years later, these two old ex-Van Halen farts would make up half of a band that is probably 

the best supergroup in the history of hard rock. 

This group is called Chickenfoot. I would class Chickenfoot as a lost treasure in Australia, even though they have done very well in the US with their self titled debut album. 

They`re already a lost treasure here because the band has already been swept under the carpet, almost as uncool as another brilliant retro-inspired rock band, Wolfmother.

Chickenfoot is an accidental band if there
was ever one - Sammy Hagar on vocals and Michael Anthony on bass, that`s seems to be a match and pretty kocha, but the two unwieldy additions in a Led Zeppelin like retro-blues rock band is definitely lead guitarist Joe Satriani and even more bizarre, Red Hot Chilli Peppers drummer Chad Smith. 

But I tell you what, it just gels for some reason. I dont think Chad ever belted the drums this hard on any RHCP song. 

Satriani is an absolute genius on this album, for once he doesn`t sound like some immature geek playing on yet another boring instrumental album. 

For once, Satriani is up there with Jimmy Page or Peter Green, and he is playing music which people will remember in thirty years
time. 

Satriani has recorded more classic guitar riffs on one Chickenfoot album than he has fart arsing around recording instrumental albums for over twenty years.

I think the time has come for Joe to give instrumental albums away and concentrate on recording as a member of a band, Chickenfoot or otherwise. 

I wont bother listing every song individually, because anyone can do that very quickly on the internet. 

All I`ll say is that the song `Soap on a Rope` is classic post Zep blues rock`n`roll, `Get It Up` is a spacey atmospheric gem which is
so much in the Led Zep mould as well, `Turnin Left` is an eclectic jamfest of the best kind, `Down The Drain`grinds and pounds away from start to finish, and the
ballad `Learning To Fall` shows a depth to Hagar`s voice which I have never heard before, so much like Robert Plant singing `All My Love`. 

A great supergroup, and one which I hope brings out a second album very soon. Have a listen to `Soap On a Rope` by clicking on the link. Chickenfoot rocks man!



YouTube - Chickenfoot - "Soap On A Rope" Music Video