Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani and Jason Bonham will perform in Holmdel, July 27.
Former Van Halen members Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony will be joined, next year, by guitarist Joe Satriani, drummer Jason Bonham and keyboardist Rai Thistlethwayte on The Best of All Worlds Tour, which will emphasize songs from Hagar’s albums with Van Halen in the ’80s and ’90s. Tour stops will include the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, July 27.
Tickets go on sale Nov. 17 at 10 a.m., with pre-sales beginning Nov. 15 at 10 a.m.; visit ticketmaster.com.
The name of the tour is a play on Van Halen’s 2004 The Best of Both Worlds greatest-hits album (featuring songs recorded with original Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth as well as Hagar) and follows the release, earlier this year, of the Van Halen boxed set The Collection II, which compiled the four Van Halen studio albums that featured Hagar along with rarities from that era.
“With Joe on board, we can take a deeper dive into those years,” said Hagar in a press release, adding that the tour with “touch on” songs from other parts of his career, as well.
Hagar, Anthony and Satriani have all previously played together in the band Chickenfoot. Hagar said, on an appearance today on SiriusXM satellite radio’s “The Howard Stern Show” promoting the tour: “Mike and I, we’ve been together now a long time, and we talk about (doing a Van Halen-oriented tour) all the time, but we’ve always kind of put it aside … But it’s just time. Nobody else is going to do it. If Dave goes out, he can’t sing my stuff. We can do a few of the early Van Halen songs. I got no problem with that. I did it when I was in Van Halen. We did ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love’ We did ‘Jump.’ … This is really a celebration of all of that.”
In the press release, Hagar said that he got the idea for the tour when he and Anthony performed at a “Birthday Bash” for his own 76th birthday, last month. He said that they “looked at each other and high fived, like ‘let’s do it.’ We pulled out a couple of (Van Halen songs) and it was an instant lovefest with the fans from our first riffs. The music we created is going to outlive us all. They deserve to be heard so it’s time we go out and serve the fans that music, while we still can.”
Loverboy will open shows on the tour, which is scheduled to begin July 13 in West Palm Beach, Florida, and end in St. Louis, Aug. 31.
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