“Satch Boogie” by Joe Satriani

"Satch Boogie" sits fifth on Surfing with the Alien, Joe Satriani's 1987 album, and alongside the title track it's the piece his reputation gets hung on. Satriani wrote it and handles guitar, bass, keyboards and a share of the percussion, with Jeff Campitelli on drums and Bongo Bob Smith and engineer John Cuniberti joining in on percussion. Cuniberti co-produced with Satriani, and Jeff Kreeger added production.

The showpiece is the tapped bridge, played entirely on the fifth string, a textbook case of pitch axis theory; Guitar World readers later voted it the 55th greatest guitar solo ever. Deep Purple played it regularly while Satriani was in their ranks, and the video games turned it into a final exam: Guitar Hero rates it the hardest guitar song in the set, and Rocksmith 2014 calls it the toughest to learn on lead.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.