Chickenfoot III

Chickenfoot III, released on 27 September 2011, is the second album. Not the third. The title is a joke — Chad Smith pushed for IV, and III is where it landed. Sammy Hagar called it a working title and guaranteed it would stick, which it did. Rumour had run so far ahead that the official announcement had to specify "not IV as previously implied." Mike Fraser produced: the man who had taken the debut over from Andy Johns and finished it. Recording started on 29 January 2011, and the record came out through eOne in North America and earMUSIC elsewhere, in a 3D package. Joe Satriani, by his own account, put a proposition to Hagar — your voice has shades nobody has ever recorded, let me hear you sing differently. Hagar's answer was: fine, but you do something new too. Play not as Satriani, but as part of this band. Ten songs. The lyrics of "Three and a Half Letters" are taken almost verbatim from letters that struggling fans had sent to Hagar. The subject is the economy, and for a man known as a party animal it is unusually political. "Come Closer" reversed the method: Hagar wrote the words first and Satriani set music to them. "Up Next" deals with mortality, "Different Devil" carries a Nashville tinge, and the Delta-blues feel of "Something Going Wrong" closes it out. "No Change" is hidden at the end. Smith could not tour behind it — the Red Hot Chili Peppers' new album arrived on 30 August — so Kenny Aronoff took the stool. The band has been quiet ever since.