Chickenfoot

Chickenfoot is the debut album, released on 5 June 2009. It began at Cabo Wabo, Sammy Hagar's cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where he jammed in front of the crowd with his old Van Halen ally Michael Anthony and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. When people kept asking when the record was coming, Hagar reasoned that doing it properly meant finding a guitarist — so they should call the best one in the world. That was Joe Satriani. The four first played together in February 2008, three songs inside a Hagar show in Las Vegas. Anthony has explained the name: a chicken's foot has three talons and there were three of them. "It was just supposed to be a bullshit name we used for a while." Andy Johns produced — the man behind records by Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Free and Jimi Hendrix. Anthony said he was like a fifth member of the band. He did not finish it, though: Johns fell seriously ill partway through, and Mike Fraser, of AC/DC and Metallica, took over. Cut at Skywalker Sound, the eleven songs run 57 minutes from "Avenida Revolucion" to "Future In The Past," with "Oh Yeah" as the single. The first pressing carried heat-sensitive artwork: below 29°C only a white logo on black, above it the four faces appeared. It entered the Billboard 200 at number four, went gold in October, and Classic Rock magazine named them best new band of the year.