Joe Satriani has looked back on the time he recommended Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal for the Guns N’ Roses gig – after hearing Axl Rose was on the look out for the “craziest guitar player ever” to join the band.
In 2006, Guns N’ Roses were on the hunt for a new electric guitar player, following the departure of Buckethead two years earlier. They didn’t just want any ol’ guitarist to step in and fill the role, though – they needed someone who could match their outgoing bandmate for both ability and eccentricity.
When Satriani caught wind of this search via producer Eric Cadieux, he knew exactly who to put up for the job.
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“One day [Eric] calls up and he says that Axl is looking for the craziest guitar player ever. It was one of the things that he was demanding,” Satch recalls in a new interview on the Appetite For Distortion podcast.
“And I think they already had Buckethead, and I was thinking, 'Who would I recommend? Who's the craziest and the best?' And I knew there was only one guy. It had to be Ron Thal – Bumblefoot.”
As Satch explains in the interview, he’d crossed paths with Bumblefoot years earlier, after a rather unfortunate communication error involving comments made in the press prompted the two virtuosos to smooth over the misunderstanding with an onstage jam.
Satch, unsurprisingly, was blown away by Bumblefoot’s abstract and expansive playing ability. He believed he would be perfect for Buckethead’s replacement.
He continues, “Ron came to my mind, and I said, 'Eric, you have to get this guy Ron Thal into Axl's band. And tell Axl that there's no one else who can stand next to Buckethead and look even stranger and play just as good,' because they're two premier guitar players.”
Satriani’s recommendation was taken on board, and he was given the green light to break the news of an audition to Bumblefoot himself.
“My conversation with Ron was pretty funny, because the last thing he expected was me to call him and say, 'How would you like to audition for Guns N' Roses?' He had accepted, I think, the fact that he was just the oddest guitar player.
“[He never thought] that the most accepted rock band at the moment was ever going to be calling him for an audition. But he did it anyway, I think as an experiment in life, just to see how much fun it would be. And he got the gig, because he was himself. And I think Axl could see right away he's a genius.”
Speaking about receiving Satch’s recommendation for the Guns N’ Roses gig, Bumblefoot once recalled to Guitar World, “He mentioned to me that he had dropped my name to someone in the Guns N’ Roses camp because they were looking for a new guy to replace Buckethead.
“He wanted me to know that if anyone from Guns got in touch it wasn’t a joke. And soon after that I heard from [GNR keyboardist] Chris Pitman.”
Bumblefoot ended up becoming a key part of the GNR legacy, contributing to Chinese Democracy and remaining a part of the touring band until his departure in 2014.
