Steve Vai inspires these ideas in us, with his uniquely beautiful, human, alien music. Those days when we decide we’re going to learn For the Love of God in its entirely, as if doing so will open some magical door to another realm. I’m sure we’ve all had our Steve Vai moments throughout our years as players. I can never hear those songs again the same way I first heard them, but I can remember the seismic shocks that happened and continued to happen, and I get a kind of sense-memory of them each time I put that album back on. That was what was really happening, I think. There was just something about those songs and sounds that was beamed in straight from a different planet! It was a newness (to my ears, anyway), the opening of a door to an exotic place I’d never visited before.
I couldn’t believe what this man could do with his whammy bar, and instantly regretted blowing years of savings on a Les Paul copy. Was it the strange, wild noises? Probably. Was it the speed? Probably not, since an appreciation for the speed came later: it was too intimidating for my grungey 13 year old self. With no disrespect to those bands, you can just imagine the effect Vai’s otherworldly playing had on us by comparison. This was the mid 90s, and the guitar parts we normally heard on the radio belonged to the likes of Blur and Kula Shaker. He was a fellow guitarist and had taken a chance with his pocket money (that’s how young we were) to get the CD since Vai was on the cover of Total Guitar that month. My first experience of Steve Vai? I was a teenager and one of my school friends decided to put on Alien Love Secrets in Art class one day. Maybe you saw him playing Jack Butler, the Devil’s guitarist, in the movie Crossroads? (talk about perfect casting?.) Perhaps his tenure with Hard Rock legends Whitesnake? Maybe it was when he played lead guitar for David Lee Roth, which involved stepping into some of the most intimidating shoes in Rock history? Was it back when he played for Frank Zappa, and was tasked with transcribing near-impossible-to-play music at age 18?
The guitarguitar Interview: Steve Vai (Part 1)
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