14 June 2025
REVIEW AND IMAGES BY FRASER ALLAN
The queue appeared endless as fans, seemingly of all ages, secure in the knowledge that they were about to witness something quite special, made a slow procession into the hallowed entranceway of Hammersmith’s London Eventim Apollo. This was only the second night of the ‘Surfing With The Hydra 2025 Tour’ —it sold out a while back—and everyone here was clearly excited to witness this: the first time that the virtuoso talents of both Joe Satriani and Steve Vai had come together to form the SatchVai Band. As if that wasn’t good enough, the band also featured the awesome talents of Marco Mendoza on bass and vocals, Kenny Aronoff on drums, and, as if Steve and Joe weren’t enough, you also got the amazingly talented ‘guitar nerd’ himself, Pete Thorne.
The band took to the stage and went straight into their recently released single ‘I Wanna Play My Guitar’, with Marco taking on Glenn Hughes’ vocal parts. Both guitarists got plenty of opportunity to show off their chops, with Joe and Pete both adding great harmonies as required. It really was quite special to see Joe and Steve weaving their intricate and individual styles throughout this new material. The instrumental track ‘The Sea of Emotion Pt. 1’ was the next song, featuring some beautiful Satriani-style melodic playing from both players. When it came to solos, both Steve and Joe got the chance to really open up, and it became very clear that their styles, although very different, worked beautifully together once again.
At this point, these two tracks formed the total released output of the SatchVai Band, but new material should be on the way, hopefully in the form of a new album, which was slated for release alongside this tour.
Joe then left the stage, and Steve performed ‘Zeus in Chains’ from 2022’s Inviolate album, with Kenny and the rest of the band doing a fine job. Pete effortlessly harmonized along with Steve during the first half of his solo. The song built to its climax, and Steve then went into ‘Little Pretty’, from the same album. Throughout ‘Little Pretty’, a different style of song, starting with some very clean playing, Steve sported a very different style of guitar, an Ibanez Scofield hollow-body—a very different look for Mr. Vai, but a wonderful sounding instrument.
Steve Vai’s ‘solo’ section came to a close, and Joe once again came on stage as the full band kicked into a great version of ‘Ice 9’. Steve, back with a familiar Jem-shaped Ibanez, harmonized along with Joe and even took a solo spot for himself. It was a real change of feel as Joe’s more ‘sing-along’ style of melodic guitar filled the theatre. But little Stevie Vai certainly can play, and the two of them jammed out for a good few minutes, the song weaving into Vai’s ‘The Crying Machine’ and then back and forth into ‘Ice 9’ again.
It was then Steve’s turn to leave the stage as Joe gave a beautiful rendition of ‘Flying in a Blue Dream’, with the rest of the band doing a stand-up job. It was then time for the always awesome ‘Surfing With Alien’, the opening track from the 1987 album of the same name.
The guitar-shaped greatness continued as Joe and Steve performed a powerful version of ‘Sahara’ from 2022’s The Elephant of Mars, with both taking turns to abuse their whammy bars!
Steve then gave us a beautiful version of ‘Tender Surrender’ from Alien Love Secrets, after which a strange object was delivered to center stage. Steve pulled back the covering to reveal his triple-necked (12-string, 7-string, and a half-fretless bass, as well as a 13-string harp!), vacuum-tube-equipped Hydra guitar, upon which he proceeded to play ‘Teeth of The Hydra’ from Inviolate.
Satriani’s ‘Satch Boogie’ was next on the list, which never disappoints a crowd. Joe followed this with 2004’s ‘If I Could Fly’ from Is There Love In Space, with both Pete and Steve playing duet solos with him throughout the song. Steve and Joe then played the beautiful ‘For The Love of God’ from Steve’s 1990 masterpiece, Passion and Warfare, Joe adding some really nice textures under Steve’s playing—simply mesmerizing! The end of the song saw a pretty fantastic extended jam between the once teacher and pupil.
A quick change of guitar, and the pair then played through a beautiful rendition of Joe’s ‘Always With Me, Always With You’, officially the last song of the set. The band morphed the song into a jam of the Beatles classic ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, with Marco Mendoza once again on vocals.
The first encore was a somewhat unexpected and really quite good version of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’, followed by Steppenwolf’s ‘Born To Be Wild’, when finally the crowd got to their feet and enjoyed a good singalong.
The musicianship on display here tonight was, without a doubt, about as good as it can get. I really enjoyed the intricate reimagining of the songs to allow both guitarists to shine through, but I would certainly say that, as good as those reimaginings were, I would have liked to hear more new material from the SatchVai band and I most certainly have my fingers crossed for a future release.
That being said, it was an awesome show that fans of both artists will have really enjoyed. I certainly felt that there was so much involved that I missed half of what was going on, and maybe I should go back and watch it all again so that I can fully absorb that wave of outstanding musicianship that just crashed over me!
The ‘Surfing With The Hydra 2025 Tour’ heads out across the UK and Europe, so if you love guitar, get yourself a ticket; you won’t want to miss this one. You might even want to go twice!
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