From: Guitar For The Practicing Musician
February, 1988. (Vinnie Moore Cover)
In The Listening Room.
Steve Vai & Joe Satriani.
Musical Selections by John Stix.
Note: “Ignoble” is the name of Guitar FTPM’s annual poll. IGGY, being a slang version.
Steve Vai has become the most talked about and scrutinized guitarist in recent times. As our “Top of the Rock” winner, Vai was the largest vote getter in this year’s Ignoble poll. Not surprising, since he was selected into our Hall of Fame in last year’s balloting. His quick ascendance into the realms of the gods prompted us to wonder what he would have to say about other string benders who have also been at the head of their class. In a poetic twist only a poll winners issue could provide, we offer along with Steve the views of his good friend and guitar teacher, Joe Satriani, who won this year’s IGGY for “Fusion Guitarist of the Year.” With the release of ‘Surfing With The Alien’, Joe now puts in his bid for next year’s rock award. But before those ballots are printed, Joe would also have to serve his time in the Listening Room.
1. “Elephant Talk” from ‘Discipline’, by King Crimson / Warner Bros.
JOE: I love this. This is my kind of music. It’s got a groove. Bill Bruford is great. It sounds to me like he is trying to get away with the smallest part out of everybody in the band. I can’t imagine what else he would have done other than fill up some space. But now he’s created all of this room for the stick bass of Tony (Levin) and guitars of Adrian (Belew) and Robert (Fripp). I like Adrian Belew singing like this as well. The type of song it is and the sound of his voice seem to meet up. The guitar playing is perfect. I love the ringing chords with two sounds happening, dirty and clean. I know there is a better way to describe this, but Adrian is a noise orientated player. To a certain extent I am the same way. This is music concrete with noises. He takes in the whole world and puts it in his music. When he does it I like it. When other people do it, I’m not convinced – it sounds kind of noisy. This is a song I wish I had written.
2. Paganini’s Caprice #5 from ‘24 Caprices’ by Itzak Perlman / Angel
STEVE: This is in the movie ‘Crossroads’. I took two bars of the fast part and put it in Ralph Macchio’s guitar solo, where he beats Jack Butler in the cutting contest. It’s just the first two bars, then I went off on my own rendition of it. The first time I heard Paganini is when one of my students brought me a tape. I heard it and was blown away. I appreciate it because it puts time frames into perspective. You see what’s popular nowadays and what was popular back then. You can get a real taste of how important a lot of things that were popular back then are to today’s music. I think a lot of guitarists can learn from listening to violinists and sax players. Yngwie is one of the guys who made one of his major influences a classical musician. I think you’ll see a lot of that coming up because of Yngwie’s influence on the guitar. I listen to the 24 Caprices at least once every two weeks. As a matter of fact I have the scores and I read through them whenever I listen to the music. I don’t get to read through the scores as often as I’d like to. Any musician can learn a lot from that. I used to get hung up on composing music, thinking when you write a piece of music and put it down in notation it was just the end. That was the greatest thing. You have to follow it strictly. When you read through a Paganini piece like this, the written music is just a device for these guys. It sounds like something that came right from their heart.
3. “Reelin’ in the Years” from ‘Can’t Buy a Thrill”, by Steely Dan / ABC
JOE: For me this was sort of a landmark. I was pretty young when it came out but it was refreshing to have a guitar come out and be very melodic right at the beginning of the tune. Plus the chord progressions they used in Steely Dan were nuts. I’m a real fan of the Mixolydian mode and as soon as I hear it I like it instantly, as long as it is done well. Wasn’t that Elliot Randall? He used a Fender Champ or a Pignose, something small. You can sing the whole solo. It’s one of those things that sticks in your mind. I’m wondering if he ever did anything else like this? I’ve heard stories that during these sessions these guys exerted a lot of pressure on the players and most of the time for the better.
4. “Have You Heard” from ‘John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton’, by John Mayall / London
STEVE: That guy had some serious blues happening in his life. It sounds like somebody took his house, his car, his wife and his dog. One of the reasons I like this is because I can’t play it at all. That style of blues takes a real attitude to play. It goes to show you that technique is just a device. It really doesn’t matter what your technique is like. You can get your point across without it if you’ve got the right attitude and you don’t worry about your technique. That song had some serious attitude to it. It sounded like what he was playing he was really into. I wouldn’t want to meet that guy right after that take. I’m not a big blues fan. I probably lost a lot of fans by saying that, but the old I IV V progression never really kicked in with me. Unless of course it’s done with conviction, as this was.
GFTPM: That was Eric Clapton.
STEVE: Your kidding. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Eric Clapton really play. I always listened to Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. For some reason Eric Clapton’s music never made it’s way to me. I had ‘Wheels of Fire’, but I’d never know that was him from that. I’m impressed.
5. “You Shook Me All Night Long” from ‘Back in Black’, by AC/DC / Atlantic
JOE: I love Angus Young, his tone, his vibrato, his note selection. He keeps out of it quite a lot, then he comes in and hangs on a note. It’s right up my alley. I’ve never seen the guy live, but I saw a movie of their live show and I was so impressed with his performance, how could he go out there and entertain the way he does and make what he does on record come out live. It’s a good song, the guitars are clear but punchy. The production those guys get is always great. You can hear everybody. I actually like the new singer as well. It’s got to be the most horrible thing to go through, losing a friend, a comrade. It takes guts to come back with a new singer and move on, and they came back with good songs. I get the same feeling from this song as I get when I’m listening to Van Halen, that it’s the solo they recorded, and if they did it again it would have been a different solo. I like that. I seem to think or imagine that what I’m hearing is solo #17 out of 400 that he could have done. He wasn’t going to duplicate the performance. I understand that in rock there is a certain amount of conformity. If a song has a riff, you’ve got to stick with it. One of the good things about rock is that it’s like jazz, you have to interpret it. They want to you to mess with it. You’ve got to screw it up on purpose.
6. “Satin’s Doll” from ‘Progressive Pickins’, by Chet Atkins / RCA
STEVE: I like that. It kind of reminds me of when I was at Berklee. The same thing holds true for this type of jazz as I was saying about the blues. It eluded me, but when it’s done with real soul by real jazz players who know how to express themselves best in that realm, it’s a pleasure to listen to. I’ve been getting more into big band jazz stuff which is slightly reminiscent of this. In my car I have the Barbara Streisand Broadway album and three Sinatra records. I have Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman tapes. There is such a great attitude to that stuff. This cut was like easy listening jazz. It had fat body guitar tone.
7. “Pinball Wizard” from ‘The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball’, by Pete Townshend / Island
JOE: Isn’t this Pete Townshend at the Secret Policeman’s Other Ball? Pete Townshend is great. I admire a lot of musicians who don’t have a lot of technical ability. They try so hard and take more risks than guys who can really play well. I can’t get myself to believe that it’s a trap or a problem that comes along with being technically blessed. But some very technically gifted people get lazy when it comes to writing. They simply want a vehicle to show off. Pete Townshend can’t do that, so he’s got to keep writing. As a listener, not knowing the behind the scenes stories, I like most of what he’s done. His energy on this comes right through and that energy is real important. Plus he’s got a killer right hand. He was a big influence when I was young. His parts are understandable and energetic. It sounds like a bunch of D and E chords but somehow he makes it very musical.
8. “Burning Heart” from ‘Vandenberg’, by Vandenberg / Atco
Steve: Bad Company? No, is this Vandenberg? I know this song very well. I like the way it builds. A lot of rock songs don’t do that, especially ballads. The cool thing about the solo was that it was very classically orientated. I know he’s capable of doing some real quick stuff. In this solo he chooses not to and it sounds like a real paragraph. It’s well constructed. It’s got sentences and periods. It built to a nice climax. He wasn’t concerned with a completely overdriven tone. He wasn’t concerned with playing real fast and it was still good. He spoke well.
9. “Little Guitars” from ‘Diver Down’, by Van Halen / Warner Bros.
JOE: This is the acoustic Van Halen. I don’t remember the name of this one. It’s the Montoya thing. It’s good to have guys like Van Halen out there making music because he hits me as being a fearless guitar player. He’ll do anything for a laugh or a rave. Then he plays introspective like here in the second section. I almost expect him to be chuckling off to the side as he’s doing it. Him and his brother are a great rhythm section. At one live performance I heard just the two of them do “Sitting On Top of the World.” It was great. He gets a really nice tone on this with a heavy stereo chorus. This is actually a pretty song to hear Dave singing over and it’s Mixolydian mode as well, at least for a section. The first half of the verse is in Lydian, Did he do this on a little guitar? That’s the mark of a clever, fearless guitar player. It sounds to me like he’s playing slide with a beer bottle here. It seems like there is a lot of scraping on the strings. It’s a very subtle solo section. I haven’t heard this in a long time. It’s a bright sounding song. I like it. I’m curious as to what kind of limiters he uses on his guitars. They capture a really good amp sound on all their records.
10. “Yankee Rose” from ‘Eat ‘Em and Smile’, by David Lee Roth / Warner Bros.
JOE: It’s such a joy to hear and see Steve doing this. Steve really can use that wha wha and it doesn’t sound old. I knew Steve when he was just a little kid. I remember when he was shorter than me and just a sweet little guy who wanted to play guitar. Every time he plays I’m completely interested in whatever it is he’s doing. I guess when you know somebody it affects you that way. The song is great. The B section is perfect, exactly what the song needs. The whole band cooks. I love the solo section. That short little spaced out section where he solos with echoes reveals a part of Steve that is perfect with his personality. The guitar playing is excellent, very loose. Steve’s got a very unusual rhythm style. Unfortunately, most of the magazines focus on his soloing all the time, just like they did with Hendrix. Jimi was known for being this outrageous guy who jumped around and played with his teeth, but he revolutionized the way guitarists play the rhythm on records. Steve has the same approach. He figures out a way to play rhythm that includes a larger orchestration. It’s not just power chords and overdubs.
