Songfacts®:

• In 1986, Joe Satriani was set to tour Europe with the Swedish bass player Jonas Hellborg, but he got in a nasty car accident and had to return home to America with a big neck brace and a bottle of pain pills.
  
  In our interview with Satriani, he explained how it led to this song: "I couldn't really do much, so I just stayed home for a week, and as I sat with my guitar, I couldn't look down at my guitar because of the neck brace. I was thinking, 'I might as well just write some music as I'm sitting here,' and I had this crazy idea about what it would sound like if there was a horn section trying to play with Gene Krupa on the drums, as his set was falling down a flight of stairs. And I thought, 'This is the kind of thing you only think of if you're on painkillers and in a neck brace!'
  
  So I wrote 'Satch Boogie' with that image in my mind. It took a very long time to work that out, since I couldn't look at the guitar neck because of the neck brace. I remember it vividly, that whole process."
• "Satch" is Satriani's nickname.