Ben Harper in San Francisco, May 3, 1994. (Jay Blakesberg)
The guitar instrumental, a staple of early rock-and-roll and surf music, came roaring back in the 1980s and early 1990s. Whereas the pioneering instrumentals of Link Wray, Lonnie Mack, Dick Dale, the Ventures, and others in the 1950s and 1960s tended to utilize simple, straightforward melodies and one or two predominant guitar tones, metal-era instrumentalists sculpted their music from a much broader array of tones, techniques, and influences. Their styles ranged all the way from the studied, Paganini- and Bach-influenced “neo-classical” approach of Yngwie Malmsteen to the bold deconstructing and reconstructing of players such as Steve Vai and Buckethead. Among the new generation of guitar instrumentalists, none have eclipsed Joe Satriani. With sales in excess of 10 million albums, he claims the record for being “the world’s most commercially successful solo guitar performer.”1
Joe Satriani grew up in Westbury, New York. He took up guitar in high school, advanced quickly, and gave guitar lessons to fourteen-year-old Steve Vai. Moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, Joe continued to give lessons to up-and-coming young players—Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Testament’s Alex Skolnick among them. He played in a new wave band called the Squares and in 1984 released his self-financed Joe Satriani EP, to little fanfare. His next releases, Not of This Earth and Surfing with the Alien, on Relativity Records, skyrocketed him to the forefront of instrumental guitar rock. Poignant, lyrical, and provocative, the albums showcased music that Joe himself accurately described as ranging from “full-tilt boogie to ambient bliss, tongue-in-cheek psycho Western to dire metallic adagio, cerebral cool to visceral hot, two-handed fantasies to foot-stomping wanged and wah-wahed surf and roll, and possibly the only heavy metal instrumental about an insect!”2 Fittingly, he named his publishing company Strange Beautiful Music.
In 1987 Joe sent me a rough demo of Not of This Earth. Popping it into my cassette player, I recognized within moments that this was fresh, innovative, extraordinary music. The other editors at Guitar Player shared my view, and we offered Joe his first national cover story interview. My conversation with Joe took place at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco on the morning of September 6, 1987. When I arrived, he and his producer, John Cuniberti, were mixing “The Crush of Love.”
I was thinking of headlining this interview with a parody of the Star Trek intro.
[Joe laughs.]
“Space Guitar—The Final Frontier. These Are the Voyages of Joe Satriani . . .”
I like that!
His Lifetime Mission . . .” How would I finish it?
Lifetime mission? “To boldly go where no man has gone before! To seek peace and harmony.” Yeah, I suppose. In my own way, I suppose that’s what I’m trying to seek—peace and harmony.
What’s your favorite part of playing?
Favorite part of playing? Being paid. You mean in the process of learning how to play something or writing it or playing it, recording, performing—what’s my favorite?
Yeah.
When I finally write it. The first time I write it—the thrill of hearing it. The thrill of hearing myself play something that seems to have come from within. You know, without sounding spacey, it comes from I don’t know what, but it seems like it’s something that has to come out. And then when I finally hear it, it’s an unbelievable experience. The only close second to that is probably playing it live and seeing people really like it. Or just sitting there playing it and saying to myself, “Oh, my God—that’s it! That’s it!” And then it fades after you’ve perfected and you start to worry about, “Well, how am I going to record it?” Because in my head, it sounds completely different.
Do you tend to work on one composition at a time?
I’ve got hundreds of songs going all the time. Some songs I can finish in an hour, some songs would take me take a year, some songs I’m still working on that I started writing, I don’t know, maybe fifteen years ago. If I can’t seem to please myself with it, I’ll put it on the shelf. I’ll bring it back; I’ll try again.
Do you sometimes think of the mathematics of music theory as you’re composing?
Well, I wouldn’t really call it mathematics, although I am thinking of numbers. I’m not purely coming up with a numerical phrase and playing like that. If someone says to me or if it comes to my mind, “root, third, fifth,” I instantly know what that is because I was trained to tag that information onto the sound. So I have a memory of what that is. I don’t know. It’s very possible that some of the things that I’m writing or playing are starting out mathematical. I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s quite automatic now.
Does your knowledge of keyboards affect the way you play? Your left hand, especially?
Hmm. That technique wouldn’t affect me at all, because I’m a terrible keyboard player. Maybe. Maybe at some point the idea of the piano having the range that it has allowed me to experiment with consonance and dissonance and how that changes when it’s spread out over many octaves. How a D chord on top of a C chord sounds really awful when they’re right next to each other, but when those chords are spread out two or three or four octaves, it becomes more and more consonant—at least to my ears. That seems to be the application. And so when I realized that, then that helped me think about things, how I could actually play chords way up here [indicates the higher range of his fingerboard] while I had a basis. So I guess so.
Do you listen to much non-Western music?
Yeah. I listen to quite a lot of what was originally called Oriental music and Asian music—anything from Arabian music all the way to Chinese and Japanese and Southeast Asian. You know, I was exposed to a lot of things as I was growing up. It just seemed very natural for me to like it for what it was and, as a result, to reflect it, I suppose, in my style.
When you first start imagining a song or finding it on the guitar, how much of the final product can you hear?
That varies, differs from song to song.
Have any come to you fully realized?
Yes. Songs like “Brother John,” “Headless Horseman.” “Satch Boogie”—when I clicked on the idea of how I wanted the song to go, I knew exactly what it was going to sound like. Then, of course, John beefed it up quite a bit. [Laughs.] Sometimes I come in with an idea that I think is really heavy, and I’ll show it to John and he’ll [snaps fingers] really click with it. He’ll take it to the next logical dimension that will exceed my expectations.
Where did the idea for the middle of “Satch Boogie” come from—when everyone quiets down and you do the unusual solo?
It just seemed . . .
JOHN CUNIBERTI: Controversial.
JOE: The controversial section! Boy, oh boy, was it ever!
JOHN: We have people sending us tapes that have it cut out, suggesting that these would be good edits.
JOE: And we did that. When we did our first mix of that, for just a sampler for Relativity, we actually had three mixes: where the entire track was flanged during that middle part, where just the guitars were flanged and the only reverbs were on the kick and snare, and then where the entire part was missing.
Which version got on the record?
Another one altogether that had the entire solo in the middle.
Is that a left-hand finger-tapping solo?
Um, a two-handed piece. Pretty conventional, physically, although the chord pattern is very unusual. And it works out to a pitch-axis idea where the A is the constant note, but all these chords change around. But yeah, I think every time I’ve gone back and listen to the thing, that middle part makes it for me.
Me too. It almost starts out as a kind of supercharged blues, and then the middle section puts it in another dimension.
That’s exactly how we felt about it. Except without it, it wasn’t us. It wasn’t the Surfing with the Alien record. It was just a blues, a boogie. We didn’t think that we were mocking it. We just thought, “Now hear this!” You know? “Take this! Now take that!” And I just love the groove. I just thought it was a crazy groove.
Can you play most of your stuff onstage without another guitarist?
Yeah, sure. The only difficult part is, like, if I’m doing “Ice 9,” I can’t get that exact ice guitar sound for the two chords. [Demonstrates.]
What chords are those?
You might think of it—it’s hard to really describe—you might call it a Csus4 to a Bsus4. I should say Csus4 with a major seventh to a Bsus4. Or, since it’s over the C-sharp, I think of it as a C#maj7 augmented 11 to a C#m7 with an added 11. That’s how I hear it in my head.
I’ve heard people say they were disturbed by some of your music.
Oh, really? [Laughs.] We did something right then.
Some of it almost has a sinister kind of feel.
Yeah. I can definitely say “The Enigmatic” is sinister. “Ice 9” definitely has an edge to it.
Is “Ice 9” a reference to Kurt Vonnegut?
Yeah. Yeah. I’m a great fan of his.
Are you a science fiction fan?
Not so much. I’m not very well read with science fiction. I know there are some stories by Harlan Ellison I really like.
What was the inspiration for “Rubina”?
Just pure love for my wife.
Let’s talk about this song you’re currently working on, “The Crush of Love.”
That was a real intense feeling. It sounds more like a pop song, in a way, but it’s extremely lyrical. It was just so perfect—the writing of it, the way that I felt at that moment was just so complete.
What was happening at the time? If you can say . . .
It was one of those situations where I was sort of feeding off of a very simple emotion and I kind of blew it up into something that it wasn’t—on purpose, just to really feel it. We had finished doing Surfing. After not being around home for such a long time, just working on the record, working on the record, finally I get to be home. My wife had a very intense work schedule at the time, and so it was just one of those nights where I really wished that we were together. But she had to work late, so there I am, just kind of feeling sorry for myself, and I just kind of went with it and went with it until it got way out of proportion. It didn’t resemble what the original emotion was, but that sort of got me in the mood and I just went with it, as I usually do, just as a way to really feel something. I got this progression down—it just happened very quickly, just in the space of hours. I must have stayed up twenty hours because I had to go back to the tape recorder and listen to it one more time. [Laughs.] Louder, slower. I’d slow it down really slow. I’d play it really fast. I’d listen to it from every possible vantage point to get every last drop out of it. I love that.
What has experience taught you about getting a great guitar sound on record?
[Joe laughs.]
JOHN: The secret weapon.
What’s that?
JOE: Our Neve preamp. You explain it, John.
JOHN: It’s a microphone preamplifier and an equalizer. The signal goes right to the tape recorder, so we bypass that console, basically.
You go direct from the Neve onto tape?
Yeah, right onto the tape recorder.
Does this mean you don’t need amplifiers?
No. Microphones plug into this, essentially.
JOE: So if we’re recording, like, for “Satch Boogie,” using Marshalls with a Chandler tube driver and a wah-wah pedal and stuff like that, it will be a few mikes, but they’ll all eventually run through that. It just gives it . . .
JOHN: It has a sound to it you can’t find anywhere on anything. It’s a unique kind of sound.
JOE: And then when we go direct—“Midnight” was done direct—we went into that. It’s really just a beautiful sound, and it’s different. And you can make it sound fat or skinny or obnoxious.
JOHN: It’s ideal for guitar because it’s not electronic-sounding in any way. It’s very pleasing-sounding.
Is it a tube unit?
JOHN: No, it’s not a tube. It’s all discrete, though. It’s all Class A, so it’s all transistors. There’s no ICs [integrated circuits] in it. This does not sound electronic-sounding is the best way I can put it. It’s very pleasing-sounding. In fact, this record we just did, everything was recorded through it. The whole record. We can’t afford to have a console that’s got like fifty of those in it—those are very expensive. They’re a couple of thousand dollars apiece, each channel. So to have fifty inputs in the console would cost a fortune. In fact [points to device], that came out of a console in London. They built these consoles that became very expensive—too expensive to build anymore, because now they’re all automated. So they made the consoles cheaper so they can have them automated and bigger, but they couldn’t afford to make them sound like that [points to the Neve]. And so what people are doing is getting the consoles and they’re breaking them all up into individual modules, and engineers like myself buy the modules and then do the recording through those and then do the playback through the normal computerized console.
Do you use much direct signals on records?
JOE: Oh, yeah. All the synthesizer stuff, all the bass guitar.
JOHN: Most of the clean stuff.
Would that be like the chords in “The Snake”?
JOE: Yes. That was flat direct, as a matter of fact. Preamp right into the board. Other times we’ll use a Rockman. Sometimes we don’t. With “Midnight” we had a version recorded with the Rockman, but we just didn’t like the overall sound.
JOHN: We really try avoiding the Rockman when we can. If we can find something that sounds as good or better, we’ll go with it.
Did you use an electric sitar on “Lords of Karma”?
JOE: Yeah, a Coral.
Does “The Enigmatic” have an altered harmonic minor scale?
No, it does not. The basis of the song is the enigmatic mode, which is a root, a flatted 2nd, major 3rd, raised 4th, raised 5th, raised 6th, and major 7th. I discovered that scale in a John McLaughlin book—Birds of Fire songbook. Years ago, I was just looking through the music store and I saw it and said, “Yeah, I like that name!”
Do you think there’s an inherent mood in every key and every scale?
Not just one, no. I think in the hands of an artist, it’s almost limitless what you can do. I definitely operate on that assumption, because that’s why I’ve always adored major keys. Because I’ve heard so much beautiful music done in major keys, and yet very little of it is in heavy rock, exploratory jazz-fusion—whatever you want to call this sort of thing we’re doing. Most of the stuff is Dorian, minor key, or else it’s more “ethnic”-oriented. “Ethnic” maybe isn’t the best word, but that’s how it’s printed up in most books. You know, like they’ll call a Phrygian dominant mode a “Jewish” or “Spanish” scale. To answer that question, no, I think one scale can sound a lot of different ways, and that’s one thing on the last two records I’ve really tried to work with, like with “Always with Me, Always with You” and “Rubina,” trying to use those major scales to be tender and sharp and haunting—a whole bunch of things.
Is it the same approach with chords?
Yes, most definitely. Yeah, yeah. The fewer notes in the chords, the easier it gets. In my mind, I see the melodies and the solos and the rhythms as being in the chords. Maybe other people may think simply of the rhythm guitar part as the chord, and they write from that way. But I think in terms of, like, with “Ice 9,” it’s in sort of a Dorian mode, but at the end of that solo there, I just flip it around and use a major third because there’s no third being played. I’ve just tricked you into assuming that I wasn’t going to do that. And that way you can play the note. With playing with small amounts of harmonic information, you get more mileage. You get more freedom as far as writing the melody and the solos.
Do you hear melodies in your imagination before you find them on the instrument?
Yeah. It’s sort of like it comes to me. I hear it as being laid out, as being pretty obvious. But I do spend quite a lot of time editing. Like for “Always with Me,” I edited the hell out of that one, because it intrigued me how beautiful it was. I wanted the song to start with a melody, go into a slight improvisation, give a counter melody, go back to the original melody, do a little improvisation, go back to the melody. I wanted to be as cool as a sax player you’d see in a nice jazz club where there’s a piano player, bass player, and a drummer with brushes. And this guy just stands up with his sax. He plays the melody, he does the solo, he plays the melody, and the song’s over. No big rush, no ego solo, no exploding things, you know what I mean? I felt like, “Wouldn’t it be great just to play the song like that?” It took me a while to get all the little subtleties down to where I felt this was natural. I had to find that sort of player in me, those sensibilities, and figure out the technique—like how do you get notes that die out when you’ve got a lot of sustain, a lot of gain? It was hard. We actually sat here for quite a while. We used the Pultec and maybe the GML in combination with a Marshall, the Chandler Tube Driver, and the Rockman, just to get this particular technique to work, just so if I lifted my finger off the note would die out or if I kept it there it would keep going. And we played with how loud the monitor should be as I did this playing, because it had to be one long thing that was just one statement.
Are recording solos one of the most difficult aspects of the recording process?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Things like “Surfing [with the Alien]” and “Ice 9” were fun, because we’d fire up the amp, we’d get a sound, we’d be excited. Boom—we’d go and it would be there, and we’d go, “Oh my God, that’s great! Let’s do the next one!” We’d just kind of go through. And then other times, like “Always with Me,” to me, is a type of a solo that’s different from the other solos in the other songs in how it’s arranged. That took a lot of care. I didn’t even start recording that until hours went by. I was just playing little phrases and readjusting them, getting to the point where I could do those funny things with my fingers that I can’t usually do. So sometimes they come very quick—literally first takes. And other times it takes a long time to find it, and all of a sudden, bam!
Do you ever do splicing?
Splicing of solos? No. The only time we do splicing is when the two of us can’t physically mix something from one part to the next, like “Circles.” It was just impossible to turn off the rock band and bring in the ECM guys for the transition, or the vice versa.
Did you record the second album any differently than the first? Had experience taught you anything?
Yes! Surfing with the Alien was recorded with Dolby SR noise reduction, and the first record [the Joe Satriani EP], we didn’t use any noise reduction whatsoever.
JOHN: Hell, we didn’t know we were making a record when we made it!
JOE: Yeah. Joe’s credit-card project—that’s what it was. That’s exactly what happened. I didn’t actually even consider going through the humiliating process of sending it to record companies until I’d sent it to Steve [Vai], and Steve said, “I’m gonna send it to this guy Cliff Cultreri. I know he’s gonna love it.” So Steve sent it to Cliff, and Cliff called me back and said, “I do love it. It’s really wild. I’m gonna work it out.” And Cliff got together with his record company, Relativity, and we worked it out.
I have to admire that. You must have had a lot of dedication and feeling that you’re going to make it to do an album on a credit card.
[Laughs.] It was a sign from God! I wanted to do a project, and they mailed it to me—just completely at random. “Mr. Satriani: You have been selected because of your blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.” So this little light bulb went off in my head.
Have you had offers to play in a major band or is this something you’d consider doing?
It’s something I would consider doing, but I really would like to bring the Joe Satriani live experience around the world once. I would really like to.
An instrumental band?
Yeah. I really would like to do that. If people are ready to see us play and just have a really good time and be very live, then I’m into doing that.
Do you feel competitive with other guitar players?
No.
Does it bother you to see less inventive players gather a lot of success? It must be hard to have that talent but not have the audience for it at the right time.
Yeah. But over the years, it seems like I see success and failure as both impostors. They cannot be what you use for your standard operating procedure—how to write music, how to play. At least for me.
What’s important for you?
The songs, the music, what I’m feeling. I know that I’m not good if I’m really not into what I’m playing. If I don’t believe in what I’m playing, if I’m not excited about it, I couldn’t come here for twelve hours a day and be inspired.
Can you play all of your repertoire cold, or do you have to be in the right mood to play certain pieces?
Right now I’m ready to play. I’ve been psyched for years to do this. It really gets a bit more aggressive live, most definitely. People have told us that. Like when you saw us [at the 1987 Chicago NAMM show], it was the first or second time we ever played together. The shows in Japan were a lot better because Jonathan [Mover] and Stuart [Hamm] both had a little bit more time to see how they were gonna think about Not of This Earth and Surfing with the Alien. It was complete for these dates. When we played in Chicago and New York, the record wasn’t really done. They hadn’t even heard it, really. They’d just heard some rough mixes and stuff. I think live the stuff really opens up and becomes more interesting, and I’m always ready for that. It seems like I’ve got an enormous burst of energy when we’re about to go on because I really want to get to all these songs. And they’re always telling me, “Let’s do this one! Yeah, let’s do this one!” And it’s like, “Okay, but maybe we should have rehearsed it,” you know? Because we’re doing it as a three-piece. If we go to do “Echo,” we don’t have a piano player there or a Nashville-tuned guitar to strum some of the ambient things. But Stuart is really good at covering that ground.
Can you give players suggestions for unorthodox approaches to guitar? Things they can do to open up sounds?
Yeah, yeah. One is a very practical musical way. And that is to pick something you hear on the radio that you like, perhaps just for one particular element, like if a guitar player is more of the heavy rock player but he’s wondering about blues or soul or how these players feel a solo element. Get a tape recorder—get a four-track. I think this helps a lot, because we’re in the age of recording. People’s sounds are built around their records, not so much their live performances. They’re lasting impressions. So put down a mock soul piece and retain your personality, but try to go with the track. And then pick out lots of different things. I just used those two different styles as an example. And it’s similar to someone who plays B-boy music or stuff like that wanting to get involved with stuff that he hears, let’s say, Ralph Towner play or maybe some thrash band or something that he’s heard—Possessed or something, where the whole band is just really killing a speed groove. The thing to do is to just set up a little parameter, a little fake song, and just work on it until you find your own voice in that particular form of music. It will be at first maybe a little unusual, but eventually once you make an association with it, that’s your approach to it. It’s like—what was the old phrase?—“copping a feel,” if I can use it that way. It’s more of just sort of finding out how you can find a personal voice through all styles, because it’s music. You have to think of it simply as music.
What advice would you give players who spend all their time on techniques? How can they get more feeling in their playing and become more distinctive? The young Yngwie clones and people like that.
Yeah. Well, on one hand I really admire anybody who puts a lot of time into practicing and comes out with such a good result. It’s really amazing that there are guitar players like Yngwie Malmsteen and guys like him. It’s really good guitar playing. It’s hard to say anything negative about it, because it’s just so incredible.
I meant people who spend all their time mimicking one player.
Yeah, yeah. I understand. Gee, I don’t know. I’ve always tried to go the other way. Sometimes I think it comes down to personality—if people are open to lots of ideas, lots of different ideas and views, if they have an open mind with what comes by them in life in general and they try to keep themselves interested.
Were you raised with that?
Yes.
Was anyone in your family a musician?
My mother and my three sisters and my brother—as a matter of fact, quite a few. Except for my father, everybody. But no one took it seriously. One of my older sisters, Marion, was probably my first influence on guitar. She was a folk guitar player and singer, but it was just for fun. She played in school and stuff like that. I have three older sisters, and the oldest of the three, Joan and Carol, were schooled on piano, so there was a piano in the house and my mother can play. My brother and I were the only ones spared music lessons. By the time we came around, my parents had given up trying to force the kids to learn how to play. And so my brother and I used to sit down and we used to play something called “Constrati and orchestra,” which was a little game we invented. Constrati was this ridiculous, pompous conductor. We made him up. And we would sit down and go, “Ladies and gentlemen, Constrati on piano!” And we would just bang away together on the piano. That’s as far as it went. My brother went on to play blues harp and flute and a little bit of guitar, and I stuck with the piano, but my technique was just awful. Instant tendonitis, you know, with the left hand. So I can only play bass and chords. I can’t play like real keyboard players, but I know the keyboard. And guitar was just quite natural. I just fell into it because I was just completely floored by Hendrix. The first time I ever heard him on the radio, it was like a psychedelic event. And I was just a little kid, but it just seemed like the whole room was spinning when I heard the music.
Something was really different about the music.
Yeah. Yeah, all at once. It was wonderful. He was one of those guys who, from song to song, would change his guitar sound or change direction. Those first two records were very radical in terms of how eclectic they were, and the variety. It was great. It was such a great stroke for a new type of technique. I’m sure guys like Harry Partch must have loved Hendrix.
Harry Partch?
Harry Partch is an experimental composer and instrument builder of this century. I think he’s dead now. Harry thought that our system of music was just awful. It was a prison, and getting people to practice was the worst thing that you could ever do—it crushed all forms of human expression through music. So he went about building a lot of instruments and writing his own way. And when Hendrix came along—if you look at all the other guitar players who had come up, let’s say, for twenty years up until him, all these really smoking jazz guys—very few of them touched me. Wes Montgomery, to me, was perfect. The first time I ever heard him, it was like I needed no convincing, no introduction. My mother and father used to play these records, and I said, “I love this! What’s this guy doing? It’s beautiful!” And Hendrix, to me, sounded exactly the same way. It was like he took all the technique out and he said, “Man, I’m just gonna play the way that it comes.” I don’t know these guys, so I don’t know what they went through, but as a listener, it just hit me as so natural and so off the wall and so anti-technique that I loved it. It sort of gets back to your question about the people who may try to sound like Yngwie Malmsteen. Yngwie is Yngwie. I mean, Yngwie is a person, and his personality drives him to sound the way he does, to write the kind of music he does. That’s what’s so great about him—when you put on an Yngwie record, you get Yngwie, and it’s great. It [copying Yngwie] is pointless. It would be almost as if upon hearing Hendrix I decided that I’m gonna become Hendrix—it’s a dead end.
Were you playing guitar at the time you first heard Hendrix?
No. I was playing drums. I played drums and then I quit music for about a year. I decided to start playing when Hendrix died. I actually quit the football team the same day, which was great because I was a lousy player—a little guy, destined to be destroyed! [Laughs.] It was a great excuse, a great time.
So you decided on September 18, 1970.
Yeah. A lot of people did. I’ve found so many people who just made the decision like [snaps fingers]. I knew: “That’s it. I’ve had it now. If there isn’t that one guy left in the world to make me feel alright, then I’ve got to do something about it.” That’s what it felt like to me.
Were you inspired from the beginning to find your own way?
Yes! I think my parents encouraged my brother and my sisters all to be individual as much as possible. To seek out what it is you want to do and don’t give up no matter what.
What effect did your teacher Bill Westcott have?
Tremendous.
Did he come along in your life right when you started playing?
Before. It must have been before. Oh, I was a snotty little kid. In high school I gave him a hard time. I think he had just come to Carle Place High School in Long Island. I quit the first year of music theory—I believe it was ninth grade or something. I just couldn’t sit still. I just couldn’t. I said, “What is this stuff you’re playing for me? What does this mean?!” I think I was there for three days and I said, “This isn’t for me, bud.” I stayed in the chorus, however, singing in the chorus, because I did enjoy singing. It made no sense, because I was wearing big motorcycle boots and beat-up denims and a big floppy hat and I had hair that was way too long. But I liked singing in the chorus and I had a good time doing that, but I couldn’t sit still for his theory class.
The next year, though, I sat through it. He is an amazing teacher because of what he was able to transfer to me as far as feeling about music goes. And at the same time, he taught me, hands down, all the theory that there is—how to read, what’s music theory, what modes sound like. He brought to my attention Harry Partch, the best of Bartók and Erik Satie and Chopin and Handel, everybody. And he could sit down and play it. But when he played it, he’d look at you. You’d sit next to him and he’d get into it. And that’s what was great: you could be with him and you’d see him get into it and you could feel him get into what he was doing. To me, it was like, “That’s how you play!” I never played piano like Bill, but he said you could feel this way about music, you can write this way. He said early on, “You know, Joe, it may turn out that you’re not really gifted on the guitar, but don’t let it stop you from writing and imagining whatever it is you want.” And so he would introduce techniques, mental ways of approaching writing or just getting out pieces of paper and writing total nonsense, putting it away, and picking it up the next day and reading it and then fixing it. It was a way of second-guessing yourself or surprising yourself with things. He was just Mr. Inspiration. And plus he taught me all there is to know to get 90s in band theory and pass the Regents exam in New York and feel very confident—to the point where when I got to music college, there was no point, absolutely no point, in being there.
What did Lennie Tristano give you?
Oh, wow. He was another guy that was great just to be next to because he was so intense. What Lennie showed me was that technique was not music. But when you’re practicing technique, don’t fool around. You just do it right or you’re doing it wrong. And don’t play things until you’re ready to play them. And if you play it and you make a mistake, it’s because you weren’t ready to play it and you shouldn’t have played it in the first place.
Did timing come naturally for you or did you have to teach yourself?
I taught myself, I’m sure. I think timing is natural, but I think you have to practice it. You have to work it to convince yourself that it’s there so you can find it. When I was a young kid listening to the Beatles and the Stones or something, I didn’t say, “Boy, you know, he could have played groups of five there.” I wasn’t thinking about that. But once you get exposed to it and a knowledgeable person says, “You can feel groups of five and you’ll like it and you may use it with discretion and taste.” Timing comes later. Plus, I’ve learned a lot from other people’s timing, like the timing of Hendrix or the timing of Stevie Wonder or Larry Graham, who I’m copying right there [indicates “The Crush of Love,” which is playing over the studio speakers] for this Sly Stone groove. You go back and you listen and you say, “Yeah. They’re late here and they’re early here, and that creates a sound. Some people push the beat when they’re creating this kind of a song. Some people drag, some people are right in the pocket.” I think as you get better with your sense of time, the idea of a beat, instead of being a little dot, becomes this huge circle or this line—however you want to look at it. But it’s a big thing, and you see that you can play with it and you can use that as a tool to get a song to come off a certain way, to evoke a certain emotion—especially with bass.
How long have you been playing bass?
About as long as I’ve been playing guitar, but it’s a casual thing. I did teach bass for a while, but I always told my students, “There will be a time very soon where you will be as competent as myself, and I urge you to move on to a real bass player.” But I have found very few good bass players who are really good teachers who teach steady. I don’t know why. I think it’s the nature of the instrument and how it’s used in the music world. To be a guitar player, you really have to work on being exceptional to be popular. Being a bass player, you just have to be really good. You have to be solid, and you’ll work forever. So as a result, it would appear on the surface that there isn’t much to learn. I would disagree with that, because I know the difference between myself playing a groove perfectly and someone like Stu Hamm playing it perfectly—it’s something I can’t even come close to. He has it. He is bass incarnate. And certain bass players are like that, and if I was a serious bass player, I’d find those people. I’d hang around with those people and I’d take lessons, just to kind of absorb what it is that makes them think so bass-like and always find the right place to be.
At what point in your development did you start giving guitar lessons?
Very early. Steve was one of my first students. I’d been playing only a few years, although I’ve only taught a few people. Steve, his friend, maybe two other friends, something like that.
Some of your music seems to have its closest equivalent in some of Steve Vai’s Flex-Able material.
Yeah. We share a certain sense of the absurd, I guess. And then at the same time, some of the most tender things I’ve ever heard out of any guitar player have been some of Steve’s playing. That energy, that intensity, can go in any direction. It’s frightening. He keeps getting more and more amazing. [Laughs.] He’s great!
Where was Steve at as a player when you met him?
He was a complete beginner. Guitar in one hand, no strings, and a pack of strings in the other. [Laughs.]
By the time he left, where was he?
By his last lesson, he was doing things that I wasn’t doing. And I’m sure he could play as fast as I could. And at the time, I was on this campaign just not to play fast anymore. I had just gotten so sick of it.
Was he doing a lot of whammy by then?
Yeah. We had gone crazy with the whammy. He was getting into the whammy a lot, and he was doing two-handed stuff. Our lessons were long. You know, the last lessons were just these long jams because he’d developed so quickly into a confident player and a really good improviser. He could just sit there in a room, and before you know it, we’d be playing, and before you know it an hour would go by and we’d have gone through all these things.
Did he strike you as being a special musician?
Right away.
What was it?
His ability to hear notes to tune his guitar, his choice of music, and his personality. He was just completely honest and straightforward. And he was just a little kid. I mean, I was a young guy, but he was really little compared to me. I think he was like fourteen or something—that’s pretty young.
He has an amazing mind.
He does! He does. And it seemed to me that was there. Because he would bring in music or I would play him something, and I would think to myself, “Oh, I just played this for some other kid, and it went right over his head.” Steve would hear exactly what it was that I wanted him to hear, and he’d say, “Wow! This part is great,” or, “This thing they’re doing . . .” Or he’d come up with a question that was the perfect question, that was the reason why I put the record on in the first place.
Did a lot of kids come in with parts they wanted to know from Van Halen or whomever?
Back then, definitely not, because it was the early ’70s. Steve—what was he into? Bad Company, Kiss, Bachman–Turner Overdrive, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, of course—all that stuff. I had lots of strange records. I think I played Zappa a few times, and then he slowly got into Zappa—or quickly, I don’t know, but it seemed like all of a sudden he was really hearing something.
Would you slow down records to hear parts?
No, I couldn’t do that on my deck. I never had the ability to do that. Bill Westcott trained my ear and taught me how to complete the training by just singing scales.
Why don’t you sing on records?
Listen to this. [As Joe said this, the solo on “The Crush of Love” came over the studio speaker.] I can’t sing as good as that. You know what I mean? To me, that’s a voice. When I go to open my mouth, I’ve got to convince myself. Like John says, if it’s not right, I just freak out. It may take me a while to write the kind of songs that I think I can do justice to with the vocals.
Were you experimenting with finger taps before Van Halen came along?
Sure! Oh, there were a lot of people who were. A lot of people. Yeah. But I’m a huge Van Halen fan. When I first heard their first record, I just loved it. I just love that thing! I thought, “Wow! This is great.” It was sort of like saying, “This is exactly what I wanted to hear that I haven’t heard.”
The sound of that record when you first heard it was amazing. No one had a sound like that.
And he put together that little double hammer-on thing, two-handed thing in such a great way.
“Eruption”?
Yeah. It was so gutsy. It wasn’t progressive rock. It was really like a go-for-the-throat kind of thing.
He could make a song like “You Really Got Me” sound brand new.
Yeah. Really great. As a matter of fact, all of their records I find really special. He always does something. I find their records to be unusual—the way they do the drums, and how he uses some of the guitar and bass sounds and stuff like that. I really like that. I think that he must be definitely crazy, and I like that. And they must try unusual things that people must have said, “No, you can’t do that,” and they went ahead with it anyway. [Laughs.]
Do you ever play acoustic guitar?
Yeah, I do, although I’ve never owned one that I’ve been very happy with. They’ve all been nightmares with their intonation. And they always seem to be completely unbalanced as far as low-end, high-end. And then I don’t get the range I like. I have so many complaints about it, but when I hear other people play their kind of music, I love it. Who that’s guy that was on your cover a while ago?
Michael Hedges?
Yeah. Amazing. Amazing sound he gets out of that. It would take me years to get that kind of power.
What do you do when you practice?
Most recently it’s been with specific things. When you start doing records, you wind up with deadlines. You come up with a great idea and you say, “I’ve got to practice this because I want it to be killing so I can put it on this record by such-and-such a date.” And so sometimes I’ll play one one-minute piece for eight hours a day every day. I won’t play anything else. Other times I’ll only play rhythm and the bass and fool around with the synthesizer or drum machine, just because I’m thinking about music. Sometimes I’ll put down the guitar and I just won’t play it because I’m being too repetitive with myself or angry with myself for being so stubborn, for not moving on. I’ll just say, “Okay, I’m just not gonna play it then.” And then I’ll pick it up and I’ll hear something that I didn’t hear before and it’ll go on. And then other times it’s just non-stop and Rubina will have to come and say, “You better stop playing. You’re playing too much.”
Do melodies ever come to you at odd times, such as when you’re sleeping or without an instrument?
Yes. Most definitely. I’ve had songs come to me in the middle of guitar lessons, in the shower. I’ve had them come to me in dreams.
Do you write them down?
Yeah. There’s a song called “Saying Goodbye” that I knew what I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what it was as far as melody. And I’ve never been able to do this—so it’s not any kind of special Joe power or anything—but I just said, “I’m going to dream this. I’m going to go to sleep with the idea that I’m going to wake up and play it.” Sure enough, I woke up the next day, and there it was. I just got right up out of bed, went to the guitar, and wrote this thing down.
You have to be in sync with your spirit to do that.
I think so, yeah. It’s been rare with me that I’ve been able to do that with sleeping. Usually dreams are really bizarre. I’ll write from them, but they’re not musical dreams.
Do you have to do anything special to protect or engender your creativity? Are there sacrifices involved?
Yeah. Yeah. I probably seem like a recluse or an eccentric to some people at certain times. And then they wonder why at other times I’m suddenly not a recluse anymore. So I guess that’s just because when I put my mind to something, that’s the only thing that I’m gonna do. And if it’s a song, I will stay in and I’ll do nothing but play the song over and over again for hours and hours a day. I will disregard time frames of night and day—you know, “Now is when you get up and eat lunch” or something like that. I’ll just forget about that whole thing, and I’ll just operate on my own schedule. When you do that, of course, you can’t go out with people. You do different things. And so when you say, “No. I’m staying home and listening to a tape,” they say, “Well, listen to it when you get back or in the car.” They don’t understand. It’s got to be under strange circumstances. They don’t realize that I play things in multiple speeds and I change things. I will listen to a song and watch any TV program and every commercial go back and listen to the song. Sometimes I’ll just listen to it once. Other times I’ll listen to it for three hours and go back. I just need the freedom not to be bothered.
CODA: In 2015, Joe Satriani wrote his recollections of this interview: “It was Jas Obrecht who first contacted me about doing an interview. I was still giving lessons at Second Hand Guitars in Berkeley and recording solo guitar music at night. The interview experience was so exciting because the journalist asked all the cool questions. They don’t do that anymore. When GP put me on the cover and had my new song ‘The Crush of Love’ inside on the Soundpage, it had an enormously positive effect on my career. The song went on to become a radio hit for me, and GP can take credit for ‘breaking it’!”3 Today, Joe Satriani retains his position as one of America’s foremost rock guitarists. He’s received fifteen Grammy Award nominations, and in 2014 he published the autobiographical Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir (BenBella Books).
Ben Harper in San Francisco, May 3, 1994. (Jay Blakesberg)