Chickenfoot, 2009’s stand out rock collaboration comprised of guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith, and Van Halen front man Sammy Hagar and bassist Michael Anthony were named “Best New Band” at Classic Rock Magazine’s annual awards ceremony in London on November 2nd.

The guys take a moment out of a show to record a Thank You for being selected as “BEST NEW BAND” at the Classic Rock Awards 2009:

Chickenfoot has also received critical success:

“Hagar and Satriani have embedded plenty of hooks and compact solos in these tunes, and the refreshingly agile rhythm section motors them along.” – USA Today

“Chickenfoot’s self-titled debut favors straight-ahead rockers like the single “Oh Yeah” or the blues-fed “Sexy Little Thing,” and “Soap on a Rope” sounds like a Led Zeppelin outtake sent back from the year 2019.” –Billboard”

The album is an 11-song slab of raging rock.” –Guitar World

Also, dont’ forget Chickenfoot on TV tonight! Chickenfoot will be performing “Sexy Little Thing” and “Oh Yeah” on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Friday, November 6th.

From Spinner.com:

Guitarist Steve Vai has a new live DVD, ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ that highlights his 25 plus years of performing for sold-out audiences. Vai, who is known for his wild guitar licks onstage, was no match for the backstage antics he experienced on tour with Van Halen’s David Lee Roth.

“Actually, I was never really wild,” he tells Spinner. “I guess back in the ’80s when I was touring with Dave Roth, that was pretty wild. I was just a naïve kid and I’d been touring with Frank Zappa, which was tough enough but I wasn’t ready for the Dave Roth experience. We would pull into town and every night there was this tremendous party backstage because Dave really knew how to do it. There would be food and drinks and a big PA system and lights and there was usually 50 or so chosen girls from the audience that were very happy to be at the party. The techs would go out and invite somebody backstage or if somebody in the band saw a girl in the audience he’d give a cue to the tech or would go out and give them a [backstage] pass. Back then, we were playing those arenas [and] it was 80% girls in their underwear. It was crazy. I was like a bee sitting on the rim of the cup sipping the honey. I just had a taste now and then. It was really an amazing experience.”

Vai was just a wide-eyed 24-year-old when he rolled into town with Diamond Dave for the first gig, an experience that he could never have imagined. “I remember the first day on tour with Dave we got in Huntsville, Alabama or something in 1984 or 1985 [it was 1986 - VHND] and we would rent two floors of every hotel because one floor was all for us and the other floor was just a buffer floor so nobody would stay there. When we got there a few days early I was sitting in the executive lounge of the hotel and I see this smoke coming out from underneath this sink and there are two girls dressed like maids who had been sitting there for two days waiting for us to get the floor.

“That night when we came back to the hotel the entire floor was like a circus. I’ll never forget — I came out of my room and looked down the hall and saw one of the notorious techs and he’s walking down the hall naked with one of these girls I saw under the sink and she was naked. That was my introduction to day one with David Lee Roth on tour!”

From Eddie Van Halen’s Myspace:

“For those who have been asking - left handed EVH Brand Wolfgang guitars will become available as a special order from EVH Brand in January 2010. Official ordering procedures will be issued in late January 2010. Stay tuned and thanks for your interest and support in EVH Brand guitars!”

Gibson recently conducted an in-depth interview with Sammy Hagar:

By Russell Hall, Aug. 28, 2009

To paraphrase a well-known ad slogan, with a name like Chickenfoot they had better be good.

And are they ever. Comprised of guitar maestro Joe Satriani, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and Van Halen alumni Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, the star-studded Chickenfoot is one of those rare supergroups whose whole is better than the sum of its parts. First and foremost they are a band – a well-oiled unit that sounds as if its members have been playing together for years rather than just months.

Released in June, Chickenfoot’s self-titled debut rocks with a vengeance, mixing scorched-earth metal with good-timey riff-rock in ways that bring to mind more virtuosic versions of, say, AC/DC or Grand Funk Railroad. On tour, the band has been treating fans to a well-rounded set that includes such treats as the Montrose classic “Bad Motor Scooter” and Deep Purple’s “Highway Star,” as well as all the songs from the Chickenfoot album.

While recording the studio disc, Hagar left all the six-string duties to Satriani, but on-stage the charismatic frontman breaks out his trusty Explorer Pro and his Les Paul for several songs. In this first installment of a two-part interview, the veteran singer talks about the Chickenfoot’s chemistry, how Satriani differs from Eddie Van Halen, and his go-to guitars.

Click “Read the rest” for the full interview with Sammy.

For all you guitar players out there - there’s a brand new guitar instructional DVD that is much more in-depth than the Guitar Method In The Style Of Van Halen DVDs that have been out for years. This one is called Phrase By Phrase™ Guitar Method: Classic Van Halen and it looks like it’s the best DVD lesson yet for learning how to play guitar like Eddie Van Halen. Here’s the full description:

Phrase By Phrase™ Guitar Method: Classic Van Halen DVD

A five-hour long instructional DVD that breaks down the radical guitar methods of Eddie Van Halen in an easy-to-play format.

In this Phrase By Phrase™ Guitar Method: Classic Van Halen DVD, you’ll learn what it’s really like to play guitar like Van Halen. Mark John Sternal at MJS Music Publications dissects Eddie Van Halen’s inventive guitar style which redefined how rock guitar was played. Learn to play all of the leads, rhythms, and fills to popular songs from the albums Van Halen, Van Halen II, Women and Children First, Fair Warning, and 1984.

The Phrase By Phrase Guitar Method explores some of the greatest guitarists of all time, breaking their complex styles into simple, recognizable phrases. Thorough, easy-to-understand tutorials teach proper finger placement and techniques, followed by half-speed practice tempos and combined sections that are played at full speed.

Features:

Song lessons:
1: Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love
2: Runnin’ With The Devil
3: Somebody Get Me A Doctor
4: Beautiful Girls
5: Everybody Wants Some!!
6: Romeo Delight
7: Unchained
8: Panama

Bonus guitar solo lessons:
9: Eruption (Complete Guitar Parts)
10: Hot For Teacher (Intro Guitar Solo)

If you’re interested in learning to tear up the fretboard like Eddie Van Halen, then this is the DVD for you.

Get The Full DVD
10 Song Lessons - 5 hours!

List price: $24.95 Just $19.95 at Van Halen Store

Click here to ORDER IT NOW at Van Halen Store and SAVE $5. They’ve got the guaranteed lowest price, and it’s in stock & shipping now.

From TMZ today:

Eddie and Alex Van Halen came from the same womb, played in the same legendary rock band … and now they’re driving identical $120,000 silver Audi R8s.

We’re told the rock star brothers purchased their new rides last Friday at Keys Audi in Los Angeles — but for some reason, Eddie was sent alone to ink the deal.

While Eddie may be the generous type, sources say the brothers each paid for their own.

Nothing like dropping a quarter mil on some family bonding.

Chickenfoot update:  We’ve compiled three recent Chickenfoot interviews for this update. Two with Michael Anthony and one with Chad Smith:

Chickenfoot interview #1: A recent 6 minute interview that Michael did with Dunlop TV:

DunlopTV had a sit down with the one-and-only Michael Anthony. Chickenfoot was playing a gig at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, California. Michael treated us to some of the best wine we have ever tasted and gave a great interview as well. There was backstage jammin, hot chicks, Joe Satriani, Sammy Hagar, and the formidable Chad Smith… I even got to try on the Jack Daniels bass! It was everything we could have imagined. Good times. Good times.

Chickenfoot interview #2: From NoiseCreep.com:

Chickenfoot Will Go On, Says Michael Anthony

Posted Today by Steve Baltin

Maybe the most surprised people on the planet when Chickenfoot — the band featuring former Van Halen boys Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, as well as Joe Satriani and Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ Chad Smith — entered the Billboard top 200 in the top five was Chickenfoot themselves. “It blew my mind when we debuted at #4, because in this day and age, especially a lot of so-called supergroups, people know for the most part it’s just something that’s thrown together. Try to throw the best musicians together or something for something that’s got sellability and it’s not a long-term deal,” Anthony tells Noisecreep.

But Chickenfoot is a long-term deal, he insists. But as has been well-documented, Smith is back in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ fold. So how does Chickenfoot deal with the hiatus while keeping going? “It won’t be until he’s in the studio with them and sees what they’re gonna be doing. Then it’ll kind of determine what we’re going to do,” he says. “We worked it around Joe’s schedule last year when we were doing the album. Chad’s schedule might be a little bit more intense than Joe’s, but we’ll make it work because that’s how we did it in the first place.”

While they’re figuring that out, Anthony has some plans of his own. “Sammy and I have been playing together and we’re always thinking of putting some things together. I’d actually been thinking of doing a thing with a bunch of different musicians and doing some cool cover songs,” he says. Who’s on the wish list then of guys it’d be cool for him to “jam” with?

“I know Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. It’d be really cool to do stuff with him. I’ve jammed with him a couple of times. And then there are a lot of younger musicians, too; I’m good buddies with Mark Tremonti, who’s in Alter Bridge and Creed and we talked about doing a couple of things together,” he says. “Obviously, I could say Paul McCartney, this guy and that guy and it’d be a great experience, but someone like that? I’d just want to sit and talk with him about a bunch of s—.”

With the success of Chickenfoot, though, and the great response the band had on the road, that remains Anthony’s priority. “As far as going out and touring, I love this right now. That’s why I hope it continues on,” he says. “I know it will continue on. It’s just a question of when and it could be later than we think or a lot sooner than we think.”

Chickenfoot interview #3: Chad Smith on the Free Beer & Hot Wings Morning Show:

This is a 15 minute Chad Smith interview that was done August 25. It’s a couple months old, but it’s funny. Listen now!

Click the banner above for exclusive official Chickenfoot merchandise at Van Halen Store.