Planet Us
| Planet Us | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Los Angeles, United States |
| Genres | Hard rock |
| Years active | 2002-2003 |
| Associated acts | Soul SirkUS, Van Halen, Chickenfoot, Montrose, Los Tres Gusanos, HSAS, Journey, Bad English |
Planet Us (pronounced Planet-uss) was a short-lived supergroup that formed in 2002 with Sammy Hagar on lead vocals, Neal Schon on guitar, Michael Anthony on bass, and Deen Castronovo on drums. The band later recruited a fifth member - famed guitarist Joe Satriani - when their original choice, Slash, turned them down. The band's name Planet Us has been alternatively spelled as Planet US in various publications.
In 2002, with some down time between Journey albums and Van Halen still unreformed at this point, the members decided to kickstart a separate project. The band was announced in early 2002 yet Schon and Castronovo were still recording and subsequently toured with Journey that summer, while Hagar was touring with David Lee Roth in the successful 'Sans Halen' tour. The new group then planned to reconvene in the Fall but the initial recording sessions scheduled in San Francisco were again delayed until January 2003 while Castronovo recovered from an illness.
In the end, only two songs were written and recorded under the Planet Us name: "Vertigo" and "Peeping Through a Hole" and neither was officially released by the band itself. "Vertigo" was originally intended for the first Spider-Man movie; however, it was turned down by Sony (correctly, says Sammy) for being "too f---in' heavy!" "Peeping Through a Hole," a very dark song about an abused child, was later re-recorded by another of Neal Schon's projects, Soul SirkUS with Jeff Scott Soto on vocals, and released as "Peephole" on the Soul SirkUS "World Play" CD.
In an interview from late 2005, Neal Schon described how material he had originally written for Planet Us ended up on the Soul SirkUS project instead: "There was a couple songs that did end up on Journey's Generations that I wrote during the same time period that I wrote that material like "Faith in the Heartland" and "Out Of Harm's Way". They were all written in the same month. I wrote about twenty songs that month and it was all going to be for the project that I was doing with Sammy Hagar. ... I wanted to do something with this material that I had written with Planet Us. So, I decided to re-group and put it out with some guys that I think are 'happening'. And that's what I did. I sent Jeff (Scott Soto) all my material and he wrote all the vocals. When he got eight songs done, we went into the studio and knocked it out in a couple of days."
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