Guitar Virtuoso Legend JOE SATRIANI Talks Growing Up, Influences, Creativity and much more

Summary

In this insightful episode of "In the Trenches with Ryan Roxie," Joe Satriani, the legendary guitarist, shares his journey from New York to becoming one of the most renowned guitarists in the world. With over 40 albums and 10 million records sold, Satriani delves into the influences that shaped him, his teaching stint with famous musicians, and the stories behind his iconic records. Among anecdotes of playing alongside rock legends and the creation of his breakthrough album, "Surfing with the Alien," he highlights the passion for teaching and creativity that has driven his illustrious career.

Highlights

• Joe Satriani talks about quitting football at age 14 after Jimi Hendrix's death to pursue a guitar career. 🎸
• His early band, The Squares, was influential, blending elements from various genres to create unique sounds. 🎵
• Joe Satriani taught famous guitarists like Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett, shaping rock history. 👨‍🏫
• The making of "Surfing with the Alien," despite a tight budget, became a milestone in instrumental rock. 🚀
• Joe's collaborations with artists like Mick Jagger, Deep Purple, and Chickenfoot showcase his versatility. 🎤

Key Takeaways

• Joe Satriani's journey from New York to music stardom is inspiring, illustrating the power of passion and perseverance. 🎸
• He has taught renowned musicians like Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett, making significant contributions to their careers. 🎓
• His iconic album "Surfing with the Alien" was crafted under financial constraints, showing creativity thrives even in challenging circumstances. 💿
• Joe emphasizes the value of ear training and preparation for seizing unexpected opportunities in music. 🎶
• The camaraderie of G3 tours highlights the importance of collaboration in the music industry. 🤝

Overview

Ryan Roxie's chat with Joe Satriani dives into the depths of the legendary guitarist’s life and career, highlighting his early days, teaching experiences, and work with rock royals. With vivid stories, Joe recounts his passion for music ignited by Jimi Hendrix’s passing, leading him from sports fields to the stage.

Throughout the episode, Satriani reveals his journey of mastering guitar and the art of teaching, which led to mentoring some of rock's greatest musicians like Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett. He shares the rigorous conditions under which his seminal album "Surfing with the Alien" was created and how it helped define a genre.

Listeners are treated to entertaining anecdotes and the philosophy that there’s no reward without hard work. Joe emphasizes creativity and the surprises it brings while expressing gratitude for the musical opportunities that have defined his career.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Episode Intro The chapter titled 'Introduction and Episode Intro' begins with host Ryan Roxy introducing a special 'secret sauce' episode of his show 'In the Trenches with Ryan Roxy.' He greets his audience and encourages viewers watching the live broadcast on Facebook or YouTube to subscribe to the channel by clicking on an indicated button.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Introduction of Joe Satriani The chapter introduces Joe Satriani, emphasizing the excitement and anticipation surrounding his appearance. Listeners are encouraged to listen attentively, as this episode promises to be special due to Joe Satriani's exceptional talents and achievements as a guitar player. The discussion aims to explore the driving forces behind his career and accomplishments.
• 02:30 - 08:00: Joe Satriani's Background and Upbringing The chapter delves into the background and upbringing of the renowned guitarist, Joe Satriani. Known for his significant influence in the realm of soul guitar music, Satriani stands out with nearly 40 album releases and over 10 million albums sold, solidifying his position as one of the most successful artists in his genre. The chapter introduces him by highlighting these accomplishments and mentioning his New York roots, setting the stage for a more detailed exploration of his early life and the factors that shaped his musical journey.
• 08:00 - 12:30: Early Musical Influences and Jazz Background The chapter discusses the early musical influences and jazz background of the speaker, who seems to be an artist based in San Francisco. The conversation includes a mention of Joe Satriani, likely indicating his impact or influence on the speaker's musical journey. The environment is tense with poor air quality due to fires, highlighting the uncertain and chaotic nature of current events.
• 12:30 - 20:00: Joe Satriani's Move to California and Formation of The Squares The chapter discusses Joe Satriani's move to California and the formation of his band, The Squares. Joe reflects on the importance of focusing on music and guitars as a form of escape from the outside world. He talks about growing up in the Bay Area and staying there since the late 1970s, where he built his life, career, and music empire.
• 20:00 - 28:00: Transition to Teaching and Mentoring Musicians The chapter explores the transition to teaching and mentoring musicians, beginning with an introduction to the speaker's background. The podcast host aims to provide a historical context, emphasizing the importance of understanding the speaker's past to appreciate their journey forward. The narrative includes personal anecdotes and insights, especially from the host's perspective, having grown up in the Bay Area and having prior knowledge of the speaker's early musical career.
• 28:00 - 35:00: Signing with Relativity Records and Early Career Challenges The chapter discusses early life interests, mentioning the narrator's initial involvement in sports, specifically wrestling and fitness, during high school at Carl Place High School on Long Island. Despite lacking skill, the narrator was enthusiastic about these activities before transitioning into a music career with Relativity Records.
• 35:00 - 40:00: Career Breakthrough and Touring with Mick Jagger The chapter titled 'Career Breakthrough and Touring with Mick Jagger' covers the speaker's involvement in fitness teams and sports during high school in America, where being part of a national team was considered prestigious. The speaker and his brother were both active participants in the fitness team and also played on the baseball and football teams. The narrative suggests that significant involvement in sports and fitness activities was a pivotal aspect of their high school life, particularly around the age of 14.
• 40:00 - 47:00: Collaboration and Work with Other Artists The chapter 'Collaboration and Work with Other Artists' delves into the experiences of young musicians who showcase their potential at an early age. The narrator reflects on their journey, starting with playing drums at nine and highlighting the challenges faced while playing with peers. The talent disparity becomes evident as some peers excel significantly, influencing the growth and directions of others. The narrator's personal journey involves striving to challenge and redefine conventional expectations to carve their unique path in music.
• 47:00 - 55:00: Concept and Exploration of Instrumental Music This chapter explores the impact of legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix on individuals and their musical careers. It begins with a personal anecdote about the moment someone decided to pursue playing the guitar upon learning of Hendrix's death. The narrative further connects with the idea of how people's initial choices of instruments, influenced by their family, can shift dramatically towards new inspirations in music.
• 55:00 - 59:00: Founding G3 and Ideas Behind It The chapter titled 'Founding G3 and Ideas Behind It' begins with a musician's journey from playing the trumpet to exploring different instruments like the drums before finally settling on the guitar. The narrative hints at the various influences and decision-making processes that led to this realization, which likely connects to the founding of G3. The personal insight into the musician’s growth and choice of the guitar as the right path suggests themes of exploration and self-discovery foundational to the eventual formation of G3.
• 59:00 - 77:00: Audience Q&A and Personal Stories The chapter discusses an audience Q&A session where the topic of aging and its effects, such as shrinking, is humorously introduced. The conversation briefly touches on the experiences of musicians, specifically guitar and trumpet players, and how learning different instruments can influence one's understanding of music. Michael Anthony, a trumpet player, is mentioned as an example, illustrating how horn players may conceptualize music differently than those who play instruments like piano, where visual input is involved.
• 77:00 - 85:30: Guitar Gear and Equipment Discussion The chapter begins with a discussion about guitar players and their approach to gear, emphasizing the complexity of guitar playing due to the various shapes and fingerings involved. In contrast, the conversation highlights that horn players, such as trumpeters, rely more on brain work, due to the limited number of fingerings. There's an interesting mention of saxophones, which the speaker finds confusing. Personal anecdotes are shared, such as the speaker's grandfather playing the melody saxophone, indicating a deep-rooted connection to jazz music. The discussion concludes with the link between jazz upbringing and the speaker's decision to play guitar.
• 85:30 - 95:00: Joe Satriani's Approach to Creativity The chapter titled 'Joe Satriani's Approach to Creativity' likely begins with a discussion on the influence of jazz music in Joe Satriani's creative process. It appears that Joe Satriani had some exposure to amazing jazz players, indicating the significance of their influence on him. Among these influential figures were Billy Bauer, one of his teachers, and Lennie Tristano, noted for his unique approach to jazz. Joe reflects on his upbringing as the youngest of five children, which seems to contribute to his perspective and creative approach as he often observed from the sidelines. The chapter explores how these experiences and influences have shaped Satriani's approach to music and creativity.
• 95:00 - 106:30: Final Thoughts and Conclusion The author reflects on the musical influences in their life. They talk about how their older siblings, who experienced the late 50s through the 60s, significantly impacted their musical journey. As their siblings moved out in the late 60s to early 70s, the author inherited their records, which formed the foundation of their musical taste. Additionally, their parents, who were jazz enthusiasts, played a significant role in their musical upbringing by exposing them to jazz music during their childhood, including at parties where jazz was the main genre played. The chapter captures the sentimental value and nostalgic elements of having grown up in a musically rich environment.

Guitar Virtuoso Legend JOE SATRIANI Talks Growing Up, Influences, Creativity and much more Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 in the trenches with ryan roxy hello hello hello ryan roxy here and welcome to another not just another this is a special one this is a secret sauce episode of in the trenches with ryan roxy um how you doing as you know if you are watching um on our facebook live or on our youtube live just hit that subscribe button right down there wherever i'm pointing my finger or wherever our producer vic will put the arrow at
• 00:30 - 01:00 and if you are in your car listening to us on apple podcast or spotify or any of those pull your car over because you're going to want to watch this one you're going to want to get in the chat and you are going to want to really listen to this one today because folks whenever i have a guitar player on um you know i get excited but on top of that this guitar player yeah this guy is something special it really is because you know at that on in the trenches that uh we try to dive deep into what drives our
• 01:00 - 01:30 artists and our entertainers to keep them inspired keep them creative but uh i don't really have to do that today because with nearly 40 album releases 10 million albums sold our guest today is no doubt one of the world's most well-known and successful soul guitarists so um all that and he's from new york so will you please welcome into the trenches joe satriani hey hey how's it going how are you doing today all that and i
• 01:30 - 02:00 still said it wrong joe i said joe satriani i said joe satriani there he is yeah that's that's okay you know they say it all different ways around the world uh you know it's okay how you doing man you holding up i'm good i am good today you know it's a little crazy out there i'm in san francisco uh i looked at uh my air quality index and it was in the red so i'm staying inside today uh we got lots of fires here and uh you know the world's going crazy it's
• 02:00 - 02:30 good thing we got music and we can talk about guitars and yeah forget about what's going on out there i always say that the uh that we never mentioned the c word inside this little dome that we have because uh all that stuff is out there but you know no doubt i grew up from the bay area uh you've been in the bay area since the late 70s so that's right yeah pretty much stayed out there and and made a life made a career built an empire
• 02:30 - 03:00 and we're going to go through all of that stuff because the first part of the podcast is always you know you got to go back to go forward and um i just like to give a little bit of history about uh who you are because i know there's a lot of people already that know your history but might not know the little intricate details and i have a a little inside uh information because being again that i grew up in in the bay area i knew you from uh from your earlier bands but
• 03:00 - 03:30 even before that like you know uh legend legend has it that uh you started playing guitar uh you initially into sports that's what you were into like were you a football guy yeah well you know i wasn't very good at any of it i was just enthusiastic i was just you know little kid growing up on long island so i went to a public high school called carl place high school and i did you know wrestling the fitness team there used to be a fitness team
• 03:30 - 04:00 back then this is ancient history though i i think my high school one oh god in america now fitness teams but i i think uh i mean they were uh it was national and we won four years in a row so it was a thing you know if you were able-bodied to try to to get on the fitness team so uh my brother and myself were both on the team uh we played baseball we were on the baseball team on the football team uh but you know when you're around 14 years old that's when
• 04:00 - 04:30 kids are going to be big start getting big and kids like me who were born to play guitar it starts to be obvious you know and it's it was harder to play against your your fellow 14 year olds because they some of them were just huge um so yeah i was into to that but i was um i was you know i started playing drums when i was nine so i was already thinking of subverting the norm uh and uh and and trying to create my own reality as a musician but it didn't
• 04:30 - 05:00 click in until the tragedy of jimi hendrix dying and i did find out as i was heading out to practice and uh i just i turned around i went to the coach's office and said i'm quitting uh jimi hendrix has died i'm gonna be a guitar player so the legend is true it's amazing to hear that because i i'm i'm a little bit like you i started off well my first instrument was the trumpet because my father played the trumpet and then i realized very quickly that there wasn't a career in
• 05:00 - 05:30 uh rockstar trump-ism hey whoa whoa uh being a trumpet player as a rock star and then i switched to drums i had a five-piece tama kit and then it was like the guitar that was always laying on the couch that i just kind of you know when i finally put everything down i said you know what that's the path because the guitar is the is the right path for me and again like you probably at on my tippy toes i'm five eight i think and that's full of this day
• 05:30 - 06:00 and now i'm shrinking why do we shrink as we get older as guitar players damn it yeah who knows but hey you know what i want to point out michael anthony uh trump a player as well and i gotta say you guys who learn how to play horn can can conceptualize music in your head better than those of us who start on an instrument where you can look at it you know it's different you're a piano player you're used to the
• 06:00 - 06:30 left to right your guitar player a little convoluted but still we can look at the shapes but a horn player it's really all in your brain isn't it because these fingerings are you know and there's there's not that many of them that's the cool thing is that you know with the trumpet there's not there's a lot of other grace notes especially saxophone always confused me my grandfather played saxophone and he played the melody sacks and stuff because jazz is has been part of your upbringing like once you decided to take guitar
• 06:30 - 07:00 seriously jazz music was kind of like the sort of uh focus and i i mean there was some amazing jazz players you had billy bauer that that you studied with and then lenny lenny tristano was that that's right yeah yeah we say cristano on long island just now i don't know yeah yeah you know i i grew up youngest of five kids so i watched uh from the side of the room you know as
• 07:00 - 07:30 my older sisters my older brother had the most fun late 50s all the way through the 60s and as they started to leave the house in late 60s early 70s i would inherit all their records and i that just became my foundation along with my parents who were jazz age kids all the beautiful jazz music that they had collected and played throughout my entire childhood in the house even when they had lots of parties it was all jazz and so yeah i heard wes
• 07:30 - 08:00 montgomery and coltrane and miles davis and all the way up to those retail records you know stanley turn team you know no one ever talks about that no one ever talks about you know being the youngest of a big family they always talk about how um when they're talking about being the youngest of the family they talk about that uh they get the the hand-me-down clothes but they don't talk about the the pros of it which you get all the hand-me-down records right yeah good stuff that's a good point to
• 08:00 - 08:30 make man so everyone that's in the chat that's the youngest of any family you got all the good records how about that yeah and it was phys you know it was physical back then it was literally you know stacks of scratch 45s but i love them i loved all the beatles and the stones dave clark five all the motown james brown all of it uh it it's you know i just have great memories of sitting there with a portable record player in the corner and just playing that stuff over and over again thinking this maybe
• 08:30 - 09:00 headphones like this you know like big old 70s headphones i call them you know yes yes pioneer headphones you know but the cool thing is i have a 15 year old daughter and and what her biggest uh wish was for christmas last year was it was a vinyl player so i love that it's coming back i mean have you been able to re-release a lot of your albums on vinyl lately yes as a matter of fact i'm glad you said that because i just happened to have this shameless plug i love it shameless plug look at that who is that is that shape-shifting is that the
• 09:00 - 09:30 newest one that came out in 2020 okay yes it came out april april 10th what a what a lucky time to release a record but uh people need music you know what i mean we're musicians it's our job to make music for people so i i you know along with the guys at sony we just said no this is our job uh we're gonna make music and we're gonna release it so yeah we've just been moving forward although we've been stuck in our little respective homes and rooms doing it but um yeah we you know uh legacy
• 09:30 - 10:00 sony has been really wonderful in releasing almost all of my catalog on vinyl and we usually take record store day or something like that to sort of usher in the new one that we're putting out and they they find uh great pressing plants and we release the really fat beautiful sounding vinyl so i'm going to talk about the shape i'm going to talk about shape shifter a little bit and especially the newest one that you have is which is the the stripped x3 which actually has a shape shifter on it
• 10:00 - 10:30 as well as part of the backing tracks we'll talk a little bit about that but i mean a little bit of controversy is is shapeshifter your 17th or 18th studio album i don't know but i i first the first controversy is that when i chose this script i realized people would not realize that it actually says shape-shifting shifter oh of course there it is i'm the one yeah and guilty shape-shifter you can't imagine had to create
• 10:30 - 11:00 you know correct people on that we should have done it in block letters right but it is i have it in big font on my notes right here it's shape shifting and i'm still going shape shifter yeah well you know maybe i'm just thinking of an electro harmonix phase shifter oh yes i know i know isn't that funny guitar players everything is funneled through our pedal memory that was my first pedal that i got that was my first sort of cool effect like one that i got was a small stone phase shifter
• 11:00 - 11:30 i think they had two of them they had maybe different stats small stone and then they had uh maybe it was it came along with the big muff it was just there was a yeah electro harmonix made a bunch of stuff back in those days and they were all kind of 70s and kind of cool like that my first one was the the big muff and i think yeah i think that my second pedal may have been that big maestro phase shifter you know the black one with the three buttons on it ah sounded beautiful noisy is all hell
• 11:30 - 12:00 but they are always noisy yeah yeah yeah i can still hear it the little big muff that was the that was the one i had because then they came up with a smaller version called the little big muff imagine that's right so joe i'm i'm impressed with your business acumen since since the beginning because you know you're you're studying school you're studying music with these jazz teachers but then you start teaching guitar right away you're going you're going to school at uh i think
• 12:00 - 12:30 what was this college at five points five towns college was that well i started teaching when i was still in high school so uh that would be car place high school um i was taking lessons of music theory lessons actually classes from a guy named bill westcott a young juilliard graduate who was just really brilliant and i went through bill's classes as well as steve i was about three years younger than me you guys went to the same high school i i didn't know that going through this research that you guys actually went to the same
• 12:30 - 13:00 high school and yeah did you end up did you end up teaching him some stuff obviously later on you know your whole catalog of musicians that you have groomed and the ones that you have actually uh been the your proteges if you will you've been their mentor the list is crazy i mean i'll go on into that for a little bit but i'm impressed that you know you're you're learning from the jazz guys but then you're passing it on to everyone that's up and coming
• 13:00 - 13:30 and all these yeah it was a beautiful time to learn uh music uh for for two funny reasons that seemed to be opposing one was i had these you know this opportunity in this public high school to get a world-class university music education from this juilliard graduate who was stuck in this little public school in the middle of long island and only had three students in his class so the attention i got especially in in my
• 13:30 - 14:00 last year of high school where i graduated a half year early so i took two of every class every day first for six months and graduated early um but were you 17 when you graduated i guess yeah but yeah it had been about 17 because that's that's the age i was because i did like when i hear your story i'm like going well damn if i would have had everything except the actual talent that you had playing guitar at that age everything we're on the same pace
• 14:00 - 14:30 you know i benefited from the funniest set of circumstances uh i did take about i think three lessons from billy bower and that happened only because uh my mother was talking to somebody uh and just mentioned that her youngest kid was looking for guitar lessons and somebody knew somebody um i wound up uh when i graduate well first of all so during that period where i'm just playing black sabbath and zeppelin in my high school bands that was me bro jumping jack flash and
• 14:30 - 15:00 all that stuff yeah yeah it's great great fun uh a few years younger than me uh is steve i so we've known each other since we were kids and the singer in my band had a younger brother who was the singer in steve's band so there was this funny little connection between the two of us i taught steve for about two and a half three years while i was in high school uh when i i spent a almost one semester at five towns college did not get along with the staff at that school and then
• 15:00 - 15:30 just went out on the road i was in a disco band at the time but in the interim between that that stage of being at five towns and then going out on the road i did take a few months of lessons from lenny trustano you know the father of cool jazz one of the the greatest musical figures of the last century uh and he did sort of reorient myself uh about how to be a musician how to practice how to face up to what you think you know and what you do know what you don't know how to
• 15:30 - 16:00 approach playing uh and music as a lifelong quest you know in other words he was a little bit strict as well crazy strict i swear i had a couple of lessons that were no longer than 45 seconds because if you made a mistake he would get up he'd walk over to his braille accounting book and just sit there and that meant you had to go and lay down the money and leave and you'd leave and it would be like a walk of shame because you'd walk out of the door and in the hallway there'd be six other
• 16:00 - 16:30 students waiting there and they'd look at you like ah don't worry about it you know happens to all of us did that carry on to your students would you would if i was to interview any of your other students and like i say i will mention those names in just a little bit folks because the list is very impressive would they think you were a strict student or were they thinking well some of them yeah i mean if if uh you know like i had students who came in and and they'd say i want to be great i i want to be the greatest i can be i want
• 16:30 - 17:00 to be the greatest guitar player i want to be famous that kind of stuff then i'd say okay i'm just gonna turn the screws uh i you know i did teach eight-year-old kids who would come in with action figures and put them on the app you know so of course i wouldn't lean on them i i taught you know doctors lawyers race car drivers you name it construction workers who would come in you know dirty with with injured hands after a hard day work and they you know and they just want to play some credence clear water so i'm not going to
• 17:00 - 17:30 lean on them they just were you tough on steve i it was impossible it was a he was so good every time that i would teach him something he'd come back and he'd have it down and i'd be looking at him thinking you know next week he'll do that better than me i'm guaranteed you know so with steve it was like i was i was just barely ahead of him i mean i think i'd only been playing about a year yeah maybe a year before him so it
• 17:30 - 18:00 wasn't like i i was uh an advanced player i was just a little bit ahead and uh you guys were just pushing each other up up up up i think yeah he was so much fun because he's just the natural musician and he's really driven that's always the case you know if the student like you take kirk hammett he came already he could play great he really was a good musician naturally could pick up a guitar make music and put a smile on people's faces right
• 18:00 - 18:30 that's our job right kurt is only the only guitarist in metallica folks in case of those of you that just you know you saw joe just say the name and slide off his tongue but no it's the it's the guitar it's the metallica and here he is teaching him and you know he worked he worked really hard he showed up as much as he could uh sometimes his mom would come to pay for the lessons i mean this is you know this is real
• 18:30 - 19:00 neighborhood stuff you know what i mean but he he worked really hard and the thing that really helped besides his obvious talent uh was that he knew what he wanted and so he could express to me this you know joe this is what i like i like these players how do i do that what's the what's the what are they doing what what's what are the ingredients and that that's really my job is to provide the ingredients and not to affect the student's style i don't want them to play like me
• 19:00 - 19:30 at the time as you mentioned i i was in the square so it was a completely different style from all my students most of my students were young and they were about to change the world with thrash metal and and and coming out of the area yeah so it was very exciting so by the time you're teaching kurt you have already moved from the east coast you moved to california and this is basically late 70s um early 80s that you start
• 19:30 - 20:00 teaching and you decide to move to berkeley berkeley california for those of you that don't know berkeley is a very esoteric place it's like i used to go as a kid i grew up in a little bit more east bay i grew up in pleasanton right but uh i would go to berkeley because i'd go to rasputin's records because it was the cool it was it was a place that had all the bootleg records i remember getting my cheap trick bootlegs there because they were my beatles back at that point and um i in berkeley is a very
• 20:00 - 20:30 for lack of a better term back in those days it's it's very uh progressive it's very almost hippie-ish a little bit and um you fit right in with that right i mean then you still have a very cool mellow type of zen vibe i feel well i wound up there by accident really it's because my uh my two oldest uh sisters had uh landed there uh they were both professional artists
• 20:30 - 21:00 and so they reported back to uh their younger brother that berkeley california was a crazy place and you could just come and do whatever you want and i think a lot of uh us from new york were really trying to figure out how to escape right um and and i already you know i've been on tour with a disco band i'd seen enough of the east coast as a young kid i've been working in bars since i was 14 you know and so i felt like i need a vacation
• 21:00 - 21:30 from the east coast and so i go to berkeley and of course the first time you go to california if you're from the east coast it's go it's the most exotic experience ever and the sense of freedom and how you feel like you can really spread your wings it's really intoxicating i spent about six months in japan i came back and i finally settled around 77 i thought i'm just going to stay here in berkeley and i was there for about 12 years before coming here to the city right across the bridge
• 21:30 - 22:00 um but had a wonderful time you know i had an apartment right across the street from this little guitar store uh called second-hand guitars owned by a guy named jim larson and you know that wasn't that far from rasputin's if i remember if i remember correctly it was pretty close right it was yeah small town you know berkeley that that not that far from keystone berkeley or as well yes yes maybe about with the pole you know the pole well right that's what i said
• 22:00 - 22:30 you can play slide guitar on that i've done that many times so weird gesture folks for those of you watching on the uh on our youtube channel everybody that does keystone berkeley does that thing because it had a pole in the middle of the stage yes i saw motley crue there i think on the first there they're too fast for love tour it was 1982 or something like that two 82 or 83s right before i split and moved down to los angeles and decided to go for my thing but keystone uh keystone pilot keystone
• 22:30 - 23:00 berkeley keystone palo alto in the stones those are all uh clubs and we'll talk about that because at that time you're touring in this or not touring but you're you form this band called the squares and for those of you folks that are um not familiar with the squares the squares i i have a personal personal love for because my band at that time very oh my god you have that out you have that cd as well i was so happy to find that you guys
• 23:00 - 23:30 released the album because i've been looking for that those songs for years on the dark web i've i've literally gone down there folks the squares were the perfect blend between the police and van halen and and perhaps the beatles or eisley brothers they they all sang they sang great it was it was power pop but heavy pop songs all i can tell you is go check it out because i know that you look at that i know that you uh played
• 23:30 - 24:00 with with jeff campanella campinelli and campatelli another former another uh italian uh that i'm sure you've worked with on other records i think you worked with them on some of your solo records and you had andy milton on the vocals as well in base and i remember the power trio folks because i opened up for them at a club in danville called the stage many a time and that's when i studied joe's rig before you know joe didn't know i was studying his rig but he was
• 24:00 - 24:30 the one that turned me on to the two martial half stacks and an echoplex and a i think a boss ce1 course that drove the two together and that was yeah and you had a strat like a kind of a cream strat i think with a i don't even remember i had a black one and a red one yeah they were put together from parts yeah yeah there's the black one i still have that one that one's still yeah and then you had and then then you guys in squares during at least in those days
• 24:30 - 25:00 you would all wear trench coats that was that am i am i close did you no i mean that would be a couple probably just a phase maybe it was a phase i think andy looked pretty good in the you know andy was like 6-1 so he looked good in a big long coat you know what's funny is i you mentioned that i have the squares one of the squares marshall heads that was stolen from our you know living in berkeley was crazy it was a rough town in many ways and we rehearsed in a pretty bad part
• 25:00 - 25:30 of town and one one night all of our gear got stolen that head right there uh of a friend of mine um he was a fan greg montgomery he lives up in i think in eugene oregon this goes back a couple of years um he meets me at a meet and greet and he says i think i have your marshall and he shows me all these pictures of this 100 watt head and it's got remnants of orange paint all over it he tells me this story about he was he was a fan of my rig
• 25:30 - 26:00 as you described it and one day he he's uh he works in i.t or something like that he's talking to a friend he wants to put together a rig that's just like you know joe's from from the old days and the guy says oh i have this head but it's orange so he he buys the head from the guy and he says i got to get rid of the orange paint he starts to strip it and he sees the square stencil get out he compares the plexi
• 26:00 - 26:30 the crack plexi in the front to all the pictures he took of us playing at the keystone berkeley berkeley square keystone palo alto you know oh yeah and and it's the one and the guy gives it to me he finally after all these years he gives it back to me and and i've been using it on on the albums ever since oh this you're showing that illustration you know it's my son's birthday today zizi satriani turns 28 today so happy birthday birthday hey there you go um anyway so that's
• 26:30 - 27:00 that's the head uh and i'm so happy that i still have it that's one of the things i still have from this i also remember the fact you turned because you were one of those bands that i i looked up to so i would re i remember that you had those half stacks in anvil road cases because that was because that was an important thing you know that you have an anvil road case first because you could you wanted to make your marshall amp heavier if you wanted to turn a 100 pound amp into a 200-pound app just get an anvil road case for it
• 27:00 - 27:30 now it's perfect oh god try fitting that in the back of a ford courier i did that for many many years i i made the mistake of being the guy in the band that owned the van and so i had to show up first and i got home last every night that's usually the drummer that's usually that's fine so northern cow you're growing up in northern cal you get to play um the squares
• 27:30 - 28:00 it kind of ran its course i i understand that i mean i was such a huge fan i thought it was again another smart business decision you had decided to start this band with your brother-in-law he would be the manager he would sort of write the lyrics and then you'd form this band and you had success maybe maybe two two before your time or whatever but it didn't pan out as much as you thought it would but you still get asked by the greg kin band at that point too yeah yeah for them which is which is
• 28:00 - 28:30 another great bay area band folks if you don't uh if you're not familiar with northern cal rock these are all straight ahead great rock and roll pop hooky songs and how was your experience like with greg ken well you know we had opened for them quite a bit so we were lucky uh the squares you know we we were just not successful you know and we tried the hardest we rehearsed like crazy but you know my guess is the songs weren't right for the time and we weren't as
• 28:30 - 29:00 good as our uh our comrades you know our competitors uh i thought you were great i mean who were your competitors back then i mean because in the bay area do you remember bands like um were you playing with bands like bonnie hayes in the wild combo yeah playing with were okay benny in the jets without another one that might have been yes uh the lloyds all of them uh and eric martin is that you know musicians we compete with each other all the way to the top because when you
• 29:00 - 29:30 you know uh here's a funny thing so john carter who was sammy's manager before his uh untimely passing he was one of the chickenfoot managers he was also a r at capital and he turned the squares down many times we we often laughed about that as we became very close friends later in life um but you know from his perspective when he goes to see a brand new band that band is competing against whoever is number one
• 29:30 - 30:00 you know so in in effect all of us you know you and me included in our respective bands back in the early 80s we were competing with the police and van halen and ozzy and true all of them yeah and and so the competition thing really doesn't matter just you know you just didn't win and so that was the end of that now uh uh i think great can did win they were a platinum selling uh band they had a really couple of really successful singles and um they were a crazy band that's for
• 30:00 - 30:30 sure i turned them down two years prior um when they had to get rid of their uh one of their guitar players i forget who who was bailing um right but here's the here's the drama around this whole thing is i decided to using a credit card that got mailed to me just anonymously uh from a bank in i think north carolina or something like that to to max out i would imagine wilmington delaware
• 30:30 - 31:00 whatever anyway i didn't even question it i just went to hyde street and i said i'll prepay everybody so what's the deal you know can i get 50 off on all the studio time and everything i got my first full-length album not of the sort none of this earth recorded i was just about to go to manufacturing release it on my own label rubina records and steve i said please let me send it to this nut case cliff culture at relativity records because he's going to put out flexible
• 31:00 - 31:30 and if he's going to sign me with flexible he definitely would sign you for not of this earth so it did work out but the problem was that before that happened i was in debt for that five grand that i really couldn't come up with at the time and that week when it was going to go to a collection agency i got a call from steve and greg from the great kin band saying please say yes this time we're desperate come down to the studio help us finish the album
• 31:30 - 32:00 and so of course i said yes you needed five grand they in three hours all my problems were solved i was in a band i i had employment for a year they paid off all the problems that i had dealing with the the recording of not of this earth and suddenly i realized wow this is gonna this is gonna work out and i was able to hold on long enough to get not of this earth uh released about a year later on relativity records
• 32:00 - 32:30 and um and about a month later uh i signed on to do the next series of records the first of which was going to be surfing with the aliens so it was fortuitous but it was it came at a very a very tumultuous time a very difficult time where i didn't really know where you know if i was going to get a break or where the next dollar was going to come from uh so very exciting time really would you say your career was in jeopardy yeah
• 32:30 - 33:00 that's a great kid that's a great ken joke all right you got to go real deep inside and be a great fan to actually appreciate that folks honestly i didn't write that stuff you can't write that stuff um we're here with joe satriani um you know i would i would like to say you know band member but you are the guitar you're a solo guitarist but you've also been in so many big bands we've talked about you know trust me i'm so happy that the squares record is out right now
• 33:00 - 33:30 but the ones that the people perhaps in the chat right now and you're gonna check out the squares right there in the chat aren't ya but uh the thing is you've also played with uh greg ken and i'm looking at uh mick jagger's first solo record as well so things are working on the first tour and and you've and then all of a sudden you're associated with a ton of great bands and then obviously you're putting out your solo stuff uh
• 33:30 - 34:00 all in between making this huge name for yourself but you've been associated with huge bands as well because chickenfoot who you just mentioned uh with sammy hagar you just said sammy but folks that's sammy hagar um chickenfoot goes on to make two records um and uh they have superstars in it super you got sammy hagar you got michael anthony chad smith on the first album i believe that kenny aronoff has been your drummer since um perhaps maybe there's uh maybe a reunion
• 34:00 - 34:30 in the works at one point you never know you never know you never know never say never you know it's funny you you mentioned you know you're jogging my memory about you know just that moment when i got that call from uh great canon and that was i was teaching at the time at secondhand guitars i i remember jim larson saying hey the guy's from you know greg's on the phone you know great ken ben and uh and back then i never would have
• 34:30 - 35:00 thought that i would have been you know spending a year playing with mick jagger uh six months uh on tour with deep purple i certainly i never thought i'd be you know in a band with chad smith michael anthony and sammy hagar uh and these things it's so odd how that how they happen uh but you you know it's like what i told a lot of my students at the time uh who had questions about how do you become famous you know they're always how do i become famous right and i always say what is that secret what is
• 35:00 - 35:30 that special sauce that gets you to that point right i always have good news and bad news i said the bad news is is there's no reward for good behavior so i said you could practice like crazy and you know get a good haircut and a good lawyer and just that you know no one knocks at the door and that's all there is to it so you better love what you do because that's that's the payoff but there's no reward really uh but the other thing i'd say is you have to prepare for good luck because you just you have no idea how it's going to arrive it just might arrive in the
• 35:30 - 36:00 weirdest package that you could have never imagined but if you're not ready to show what you got then that opportunity passes by in a split second so uh you know that call from great kin was funny i just said yes before i even knew what it meant and what i and i drove across town very not very far to go to fantasy studios back then down in the flats of berkeley i walk in there i plug in i start tuning i'm playing over a song i never heard
• 36:00 - 36:30 before you get to the end of it and they say we got it joe that's great let's go to another song and i realized wow this is how it might happen i'm going to be recording on an album and they're just taking first takes they're not even letting me listen to the material and like plan or take up the appropriate pedal they're just like winging it i recorded it i think it goes back to your preparation man your preparation that you learned and you're you're already prepared so what you think might be the first take they're thinking
• 36:30 - 37:00 like [ __ ] this is this is the vibe already because you've already in your mind prepared that and it goes back to ear training in high school bill wescott training my ear and you know teaching me relative pitch and telling me look you know you may at 21 it may turn out you don't have fingers over virtuoso but your brain can keep going your musical brain the powerful musician inside of you can keep going into old age so you just work that
• 37:00 - 37:30 and and he was right you know because you don't know what's going to happen to you physically when you're a young person but you can really bet on your musical mind to carry you through uh and any physical impediment you might come up against when you're at that music store teaching those students and i and now i'm looking forward to rewinding this podcast for myself just so i can get some of those last nuggets of information and all of you should in the chat as well but this is sort of information uh golden type of
• 37:30 - 38:00 stuff that you're telling these names that you're teaching and correct me if i'm wrong at this point are you teaching the likes uh we already talked about uh kirk hammett from from metallica but uh dave bryson counting crows right uh yeah kevin kevin catagong from from third eye blind larry lazande um you have alex from testament i mean these these names are just like they're huge bands that you're
• 38:00 - 38:30 able to not just mentor but then you move on and show his example of like what you end up doing and at the end of the day there's a good picture that's our vic our producer always comes up with some really great photos he combs the internet he goes on the dark web sometimes and to check out some of these things but um yeah i mean it's incredible that you've been able to have this business mindset of being a teacher and a mentor but also keeping your eye on
• 38:30 - 39:00 your career as well and it all comes back and it all fast forwards to you uh with your association with my boss alice cooper you end up you and steve vi end up trading solos on like uh hey stupid feed my frankenstein how did that whole thing come together and how was your experience with alice oh well see that picture there that is a real wonderful spinal tap moment because my
• 39:00 - 39:30 guitar actually never made a sound on that particular live show it was it was a moment of humility where you get invited out for an encore and the amp doesn't work and no matter what all the techs did they couldn't get the amp to work and alice had to start the song you know i mean there's thousands of people waiting for the song um but besides that um i have to tell you that when i was in high school um you know i was suspended and thrown out for a week because
• 39:30 - 40:00 i did an impersonation of alice cooper shirtless covered in blood and my friends boa snake and i terrorized uh the the theater full of younger kids uh just in an effort to try to get my friend elected president i mean we were completely unelectable as kids did you play that did you play this song elected by alice cooper we i think it was uh i think that he had just come out with that because he was in town playing at the long island coliseum that week so
• 40:00 - 40:30 when i appeared on stage and they're playing alice cooper and there i am a lot of people thought it was alice cooper for a second because from far away my really long you know mid 70s hair and i had the snake and everything um but uh yeah explaining that to my parents was difficult uh but i i love dallas cooper i used to see him i saw him at the long island coliseum i had a great poster of him hanging himself in my bedroom which you know caused my
• 40:30 - 41:00 family much grief because they were always worrying about me but um i just loved it he always had amazing guitar players in his band the music it was always interesting and i always got the joke uh and so um i've always been a really big fan and uh when i got connected with him through bob pfeiffer who i think had signed him to hollywood records i think that was the connection or was it epic was it hollywood or epic epic
• 41:00 - 41:30 he signed hollywood he had hollywood records like basically when i right before right during the time i was with alice when i joined in 96 so it had to have been epic before because bob has been around bob pfeiffer folks has been around longer than uh rock and roll i think um anyway so yeah he got us connected and and i i had the this distinct pleasure of playing on four or five tracks or six or something on the hey stupid record um it was just for me it was so
• 41:30 - 42:00 important just to make that connection uh to to to work with him and uh you know him he's just an amazing human being a great artist and we're lucky to have him and it's so cool that he's still giving us you know performance music i thank you joe i thank you joe because i've studied your your music for years off those albums and i've always tried to make it my own after getting frustrated trying to learn your parts for fandom no one can play that that uh sort of off
• 42:00 - 42:30 of feed by frankenstein the only two people that can really play that sort of solo off each other is you and steve i mean there's just no doubt that that's the two of you and and we we do our best to come up with make it our own but we always try and put the spirit of that time in so thank you for that for you oh you're welcome you know so i'm wondering if that's the that is one of those 40 uh album
• 42:30 - 43:00 releases and i don't think it is i don't think your appearances are are of of the almost 40 albums that you've had in the release in the 10 million sales i i really don't think it is because folks you've done so much of this stuff on your own whether it's with solo albums or or some of the bands that you've done but it's mostly been solo records um the newest one is shape shifting and um i wanted to talk a little bit about that because you
• 43:00 - 43:30 put that out this year but at the same time you've actually released something for the fans on satriani.com which we're going to talk about and give you when we when we put out your socials and stuff but you put out a new uh sort of concept called uh stripped x3 which has the backing tracks of shape shifting black swans and wormhole wizards and is there love and space so three different albums three different complete eras but yeah yeah guys if you haven't gone
• 43:30 - 44:00 on saturiani.com to check this out whether you're a guitarist and you just want to you want to hear these backing tracks which is coming something special and play over yourself or you just want to appreciate the people that appreciate joe you got to go check out uh this album so tell us about both shapeshifting and this new striped x3 so yeah it's you know it goes back to uh a couple of years ago uh steve steve
• 44:00 - 44:30 uh my good buddy um you know decided to put out the the vi uh jewel box and he started putting the backing tracks out and i always joked with him that i was going to replace all the melodies and solos and release the album as a joe satriani record but uh so i had this feeling like well you know this it cost so much money to actually create the backing tracks that's where you spend most of the time and money is you know hiring all these musicians and the studio and everything and the melody and solo bits go on just
• 44:30 - 45:00 as everyone leaves and and you're running out of money you know so right the music always comes last and when you're making a movie it's like why would i be giving these things away but then i i started to think no this is totally different i i need to get over this after i go to got over the you know my conceptual problem of handing over to the fans these these uh precious backing tracks you know uh that
• 45:00 - 45:30 i practice to all the time you know when i'm getting ready for a tour i got real excited about putting them together and as you noted you know just sort of showing the fans the three different errors and and it illustrates how differently i approach each record um and i i wanted them somehow to relate to each other but at the same time i did want to pick three that were wildly different in terms of where they were recorded who was on the record uh who was helping me produce um all that kind of stuff and maybe
• 45:30 - 46:00 conceptually what i was thinking about at the time in terms of the writing the concept for getting other people to play on it was really the brain child of my webmaster at chime interactive john lewiney and he kind of surprised me with this idea by saying hey we've asked you know steve i and phil campbell and phil collum bumblefoot and laurie all these people to come and just play whatever they want in other words don't try to play joe just
• 46:00 - 46:30 do whatever you want like it's a it's a rehearsal backing track or something and what we've been getting has been so cool because you know even like of course you can't do anything that steve does because he's just like a wizard he just whatever he touches he makes it his own thing you know uh but then there were the these younger players uh like like alyssa and and joshua and he had bumble foot on it as well i saw the stuff that they do i'll never be able to do so it was just
• 46:30 - 47:00 so cool to see them like extrapolate you know on these uh these simple structures and and show me you know like there's so much more you can do and that's really what it illustrates what these backing tracks are good for really is for exploration you know in many ways but you got to go check it out folks because it's it's on satriani.com i checked out a bunch of these uh clips because you can get a real nice taste of it you can see phil collin uh playing from def leppard
• 47:00 - 47:30 as well as all the other names even some uh i want to say old schoolers because i love sami but sammy gets a taste on it too as well sammy gets down on the action and uh this is striped x3 and and i think the way you packaged it on your site again going back to that business mindset is really smart because i should show this well for first time that's the thing i wanted to talk about yeah so here's the here's the case right you snap it open this is just a a
• 47:30 - 48:00 mock-up you know but and then you get the guitar itself that's a small joe satriani uh signature series but it's not folks it's your it's your usb stick that has the entire albums all on it um included with the original liner notes and credits and it's all packaged within a replica joe cetriano ibanez guitar uh in a custom case that's the first time people have seen it in the flesh that's right holding it i love it yeah so i think
• 48:00 - 48:30 they wanted me to make a like a little infomercial about it but obviously i have no skill think of us as like the the infomercial of rock and roll right now because uh that's that's quite awesome that they that you have that and uh again it goes back to uh you know that business mindset where i have this segment in the podcast where i say taking care of business because you've always had this uh good sense of uh you know how to make money in the
• 48:30 - 49:00 music business that's why you've been able to be so successful you founded g3 in 1995. you know yeah i did not know that uh i mean i knew that i remember the first g3 coming out with steve i and eric johnson and yourself but you've been able to turn it into a franchise and what was the idea behind that oh i was lonely uh it was so funny uh i came back in the middle of the the 95 tour
• 49:00 - 49:30 uh in support of the eponymous release joe satriani in 95 and i said you know everything's great touring packed houses lots of work i got artistic freedom i said but when do i get to hang out with my friends i said every time i call steve i i'm in new york he's in australia if i call lucather he's in la i'm in london i said i never hang out and i i said you know when i was a kid i thought when i'm a rock star i'm just gonna be hanging out with all the guitar players
• 49:30 - 50:00 it's gonna be having fun partying trading licks and of course it was nothing like that it was it was i was just on my own i was on a bus every night or in a hotel room and so who does that joe you know who does that all that hanging out and all that camaraderie drummers ah drummers always do it you know they're very social uh so anyway it took about three hours uh at the bill graham office there but we finally came up with an idea and the difficulty
• 50:00 - 50:30 was of course is that you can come up with a great idea like 25 guitars in one night but try to find a venue that you can rent uh you know that that can hold that many guitar players and then if you've got all those guitar players and you've got to shove them into 7 to 11 which is really like 7 30 to 10 45 because that's the curfew uh people out there watching this may not know but the artist rents the venue for the evening that's kind of like what it is and they have rules which means you pull
• 50:30 - 51:00 in now you do your show and then you get out you know you got a curfew yeah everyone knows about the curfew that axel rose breaks every single night we don't it's very expensive and you and you know unless you're a superstar actor selling 40 000 tickets uh you don't want to break that curfew and you don't want to incur any over just sir especially if you're playing in a union place in new york city you know it makes the whole who are insolvent right so we whittled it down and we thought well
• 51:00 - 51:30 we also won't be able to invite people if we say hey would you like to join the tour and play for seven minutes no one's going to say yes everyone every artist is going to want to play whatever it is their set is to promote their new album uh and and to feel confident that they can reach their fans and give them the show they deserve so we have to figure out what is the number of artists uh that would translate to a long enough set for each artist so that they all feel like they had a chance to
• 51:30 - 52:00 deliver their goods to their fans and three was the magic number and so that's why we went with that um actually yeah it seems to actually have been uh to to uh transcend into other tours because a lot of guitar tours that have been in this under the same business model have that magic number of three i think you know i i've actually done a tour called planet acts where it was three acts three singer guitar players you know guitar players singer
• 52:00 - 52:30 songwriters that that did a tour and everyone did a little bit of a set so i think three is that magic number for it that you did yeah everybody can do you know let's say on the average 50 minutes with changing over and then there's enough time at the end for all three artists to jam yeah a half hour at the end of the night and it's a great show it's so it's so thrilling for me to stand next to these just incredible musicians every night and hanging out all day backstage watching people practice
• 52:30 - 53:00 uh you know a lot of people don't know when we walk off stage the first thing we do is turn to each other and say how did you do that like that was so awesome when that happened wasn't that cool we should do that longer i mean we're just like little kids who just got off a high school stage or something like that yeah there's a great sense of uh camaraderie and every and it's it's so unique because most of the time we're off on our own just doing our set you know night after night city after
• 53:00 - 53:30 city it's the only opportunity where uh on a set schedule guitar players get to really you know trade and share and improvise because we don't play each other's music we're not trying to promote a single we're actually playing classic music to celebrate the guitar with the audience and and i think that's the that's the magic element that just sort of disarms the performers and the audience and everybody can really have a great time
• 53:30 - 54:00 well thank you joe for coming up with that format because it actually has been successful with a multitude of different types of tours man so good idea so i think it's time that we move on because at this point we say let the people speak but this time it's let the people speak secret sauce style because it is a secret sauce episode folks and um this is where we actually get uh people that uh have been following you watching you um and want to actually be
• 54:00 - 54:30 on screen with you to ask you a question uh i'd say i would say face to face but i'll say screen face to screen face so we'll bring up joey first and um we'll have him ask a question for you i will disappear for a little while but uh joey do you want to ask a question to joe and joey meet joe joe meet joe hey joey how you doing joey doing well so i've joe i've been immersed the last week in um in a madness of listening to every single solo album from the beginning
• 54:30 - 55:00 wow and so i was trying to understand the evolution right because instrumental music it seems it's it's very different from normal rock music where you have the vocalist and it's been a long time since you recorded um under the solo name a song with vocals like flying in a blue dream and you abandoned that at some point so i wanted to i wanted to understand that motivation because there must have been a point in
• 55:00 - 55:30 time when you decided there is this this genre of clean guitar music that doesn't need vocals and you you created it and you sort of established it so what would love to hear if that was a business decision if it was something that you just wanted to do creatively i'm sure you had great reasons behind it yeah well i i guess the the explanation has to do with the fact that i came into the instrumental uh angle by accident um i was in a band
• 55:30 - 56:00 uh called the squares where i was like the second lead vocalist i've never really been a real singer i i can vocalize but my lead singer andy milton he was like a gifted real singer you know like sammy hagar they're just a special type and uh so it's always a bit difficult for me to to step up to the mic and saying i was making instrumental records for myself uh when steve insisted on on uh connecting me with cliff culture
• 56:00 - 56:30 relativity i thought it was the longest of long shots ever but all of a sudden i had a hit record i'm i'm playing with mick jagger and people want me to do more of it and i thought well this is great fun and i don't have to sing so i i felt kind of relieved but um uh my manager mick brigdon said something to me one day when i was recording uh the flying in a blue dream album he said if you've got something to say then step up to the mic and and sing it
• 56:30 - 57:00 you know but if you don't don't feel pressured that you need to sing for some sort of music business reason and and that was the best advice i got so i looked and i thought well do i really want to sing a song like i believe in big bad moon and ride and i really felt compelled to do that i had a good reason to do that and so sometimes i i approached it like i think my audience knows i'm singing in character i'm not trying to be a lead singer uh everybody knows i'm not a lead singer so
• 57:00 - 57:30 i'm doing this just to make the album more interesting to broaden the the canvas for me to play guitar on because the guitar playing that i could play on a song like strange or i believe very different than if it was an instrumental i'd have to kind of reign it in a little bit more but having vocals to bounce off of gives you an extra freedom i think uh to to express yourself so i never thought that the vocals would ever like open uh a new door commercially for
• 57:30 - 58:00 me because um over and over again i get reminded that i'm not a singer and i can tell you this one story that was just so perfect we're recording the first chicken foot record and we did a lot of background vocals together and one day we're recording at george lucas's studio and we go out there to sing around one microphone and we do one take and uh engineer comes on the headphone says okay sammy could you step back about three
• 58:00 - 58:30 feet okay and then and joe could you step up about two feet right and anyway long story short by the time we get the balance right i'm like this close to the microphone sammy's like back there you know chad is like three feet behind me mike of course is like in the other room i mean this goes to show you that real singers have a way of projecting and i don't and it was a we were cracking up so much we could
• 58:30 - 59:00 barely get the part recorded because it was just so funny how small my voice actually was compared to sammy you know we had to put him like way back there so uh i always remind myself uh when i when someone asks me to sing i go oh no come on let's forget about it yeah so joe for me it was a very freeing experience to to listen to um to vocal free instrumental guitar music when i when i found in 1992 the extremist album
• 59:00 - 59:30 that became a complete game changer for me so i then went back and on the other albums but it it always stood out besides the sometimes overwhelming personality of a voice it sometimes hijacks the song and that's just possible if it's instrumental so i i truly enjoyed that thank you for that well you're very welcome and you you illustrate a very good point the instrumental music really gives freedom to the listener to put their own story into the music
• 59:30 - 60:00 and that's why it's always been uh for as long as history records people making music instrumental music has been a driving force uh in all societies around the world it's it's a big deal it doesn't work as well with this visual medium you know that we're in right now where it's all about people looking into the camera and singing you know um and talking and and and doing whatever but um it it won't go away because of that thing that you mentioned it it allows
• 60:00 - 60:30 people to put their own story into the music and it becomes their own that way so thank you for liking that record i put a lot of work into that album that's cool you've been a pioneer in obviously the whole genre of guitar driven solo albums as well so thank you joey for asking that question thank you very much thank you nice to see you man have a good one so that's getting the hook actually our producer gives them the hook and that's that's that's vick's hook right there but we're
• 60:30 - 61:00 going to have a um nick come up real quick and ask a question and hopefully it'll be as uh as good of a question is that have no pressure on you nick to come up with a good question now because we came up with a good one how you doing nick nice to see you bud you're doing great ron great to see you joe nice to meet you man hey huge fan since i saw you back in the late 80s on the surfing with the alien tour we played fort wayne it was a great show wow but my question was what was the most what was the most difficult
• 61:00 - 61:30 aspect of making that surfing with the alien album as far as musically oh oh the album was made on such a small budget the original budget was thirteen thousand dollars and you know these records were made analog so we had to go to a studio and rent time it's not like working with your laptop at home or something so uh it's expensive uh the the old way of making records um the the budget had to be eventually doubled uh and more i think we
• 61:30 - 62:00 eventually spent 29 grand of actual cash but there was another i'd say 15 grand that was all done uh really bartering i did a lot of sessions uh for sandy perlman and blue oyster cult in the same studio room where we would take over and record a solo or rhythm part after i'd spent six hours working for the blue ester cult repairing guitar parts um the the studio owner michael ward also
• 62:00 - 62:30 um would hire me for sessions and would you know they would pay me in studio time so i'd work for either michael or sandy and if i work for three hours they'd give me three hours studio time and then john and i would run in like between midnight and 8 a.m or something and would use that bartered studio time to you know do the sound effects on circles or you know the the solo on lords of karma or whatever we had to do so everything was done uh
• 62:30 - 63:00 under duress uh the other day i was telling the story about the the melody and that that goes all the way through the the title track surfing with the alien and ends the song the whammy bar and the wawa pedal you have to imagine i had an afternoon to do that i never i hadn't used my wawa pedal for years i brought it to the studio that day i plug it in i tell john let's just try something different we we get a sound
• 63:00 - 63:30 we realize it's four o'clock there's guys standing at the door literally with their arms folded looking at us like hey man you know it's hours now you get out of here and we're like can i let me just do one pass you know so i can get this down and i recorded that take while these people are looking at me trying to get me to get out of the studio right after that the even tied 949 or 911 whatever breaks we could never reconstruct the sound so that wound up on the album
• 63:30 - 64:00 and and that's kind of like how the whole album was put together lots of twists and turns when we mastered the record the first time we found out that the stereo bus at the studio was misaligned so we went back and we made the studio give us free studio time to remix side one this is crazy stuff you know and all this time relativity is screaming at me because i'm way over
• 64:00 - 64:30 budget and and took too much time but actually we didn't we would just we couldn't get into the studio we never had lockout time so it was just three hours on monday and we wait till friday and we do four hours and wait till next thursday and we do two hours so um you know i gotta say wonderful times but at the time very stressful extremely stressful and um when you say that you could challenge me yeah when you when you said there's a
• 64:30 - 65:00 few challenging aspects of surfing with the alien that was actually a perfect question because it seems to be like there was many well it was offended it was a fantastic album it was well worth it thank you at least from the from the fan standpoint love it love all your work man appreciate it great meeting i am uh very grateful that you love the record that you listen to it uh john kuniberti my my good friend an engineer uh it was such a driving force in in
• 65:00 - 65:30 helping me get that record done he was my co-producer and and he sat there with me and had to work out all these issues as they were flying at us so uh kudos to john as well people don't really realize the story behind the story of these albums and i'm glad we're you're able to share it with us here thanks nick thanks for coming on and asking that question hey well dude i'm telling you that's uh i didn't know that story i i mean thank
• 65:30 - 66:00 you thank you for refreshing our memory with that i mean because it does there are so many stories behind the story when you when you think about an album and when it goes to making it and i wish everything was documented because back in those days there wasn't all these social medias and you know platforms to you would have just maybe made that an insta story during back in those days like oh hey we're getting kicked out of our studio but now you're able to share it with us right now i think that's really awesome
• 66:00 - 66:30 um um we have one more question if you want for uh for adam to come up and uh uh adam do you want to come up and ask a question and uh this is adam and jerry hey adam how are you doing joe meet adam i'll go off all right great to meet you and uh great conversation so far thank you for this i want to ask you about creativity um so i'm i'm a non-musician and and for someone like me it's very difficult to uh fully imagine how a new and
• 66:30 - 67:00 original piece of music really comes into existence and i know that for some artists they describe the experience of creativity the subjective experience as one of having inspiration and and um in a way that seems kind of out of out of their control and difficult to explain whereas brothers it seems like they have a reliable process that allows them to create innovative material seemingly
• 67:00 - 67:30 uh in some cases on demand and so i wanted to ask you about your process what what is creativity like and and what is your what is your process like in writing music yeah that that's that's a great very deep question um the one that i don't have a definitive answer for because like most artists i'm uh almost superstitious about looking at looking at it you know it's like i almost don't want to know i don't want to look under the hood to
• 67:30 - 68:00 see what's going on that creates that fantastic wealth of creativity i've been blessed with being very prolific and i don't want to jinx it by looking looking at it too closely but i can say um you you hit on two points that were really interesting um number one i i'm just a human being like you so uh you know i'm just filled with emotions and questions it's a being alive is it's it's visceral it's intellectual it's
• 68:00 - 68:30 spiritual it's emotional and there isn't enough time in the day to re-express it into music but i focus on things sometimes they're so big uh i can't help myself uh from expressing it artistically you know like losing a loved one uh or falling in love or or you know experiencing great joy or happiness um sometimes i use my imagination to take a small feeling and blow it out
• 68:30 - 69:00 of proportion the first time that really worked for me was um when uh going back many years my wife called me uh and she said you know what i'm sorry i got to work late uh i won't be back for dinner and it was just one of those normal things like yeah no problem and and then i thought i'm sitting there with my guitar and i'm thinking you know what if that scenario was really bad what would i what what would happen
• 69:00 - 69:30 if i amplified that whole thing uh what if the phone call was more intense and what if my loneliness was more intense how would that sound and i knew i was just playing you know with it i was just making it up but i put it towards the guitar and i came up with a song called the crush of love and it became a very important song uh on on for my career at the time even though it had no album it was really funny it came in
• 69:30 - 70:00 between uh two albums um but it was proof that you know there's part of who you are truthfully and that and that part that you've developed in other words the musician part can come together and one can help the other or influence the other at times i've had to in to address your other question i've had to be able to turn things on before because we had to do it like being in the studio with chickenfoot
• 70:00 - 70:30 there's a lot of writing that would happen right at the moment where you're just looking at each other and they want to record and you just have to come up with stuff at the moment i think one of the great things about that is that those moments uh of necessity bring out the talent that you've been working on your whole life uh we earlier in in this interview we talked about being prepared for good luck and that's kind of like what it is if you do all the hard work and just
• 70:30 - 71:00 catalog it back there there'll be that one day where sammy haker will say i got the song i got this card in this chord but where do i go with it and you go i can run with that idea i've got all this stuff that's sitting here waiting to be utilized and you turn it on you bring it out you have to have the spirit in you you have to love music want to do it you have to love collaboration i happen to love that i
• 71:00 - 71:30 really like working with people i like getting ideas from other people uh and and working with them so um that winds up being a source of positive energy during those moments where you have to turn it on you know um yeah overall i the creative experience really surprises me uh yesterday i was i was taking a break working on a session and i played a bunch of demos that i had written about um about a month ago and sent off to my
• 71:30 - 72:00 buddies in the band and i marveled at the intensity of each one of the songs because i'd sort of forgotten the story behind it enough time had passed where i'd been working on some other music and i got to listen to that and i thought wow what made me feel that way so intensely that i would write that song and and i was uh i i thank the universe you know for like gifting me that because i had this beautiful gem of a
• 72:00 - 72:30 representation of that feeling that moment and uh i wish i could explain it better but i'm in awe of it your creativity it's it's my whole life my passion in life is creativity and and i wish i could bottle it and uh give it away for free i think you've answered it like as eloquently as you can and adam that's a great question and and i'm glad that i've got that insight again i'm going to be using the rewind button on a lot of this podcast
• 72:30 - 73:00 for myself you know because it's been so inspiring but thank you very much adam thank you great answer thank you see you man wow man i you know what during your last couple questions with with our guests i've i've changed you're not a guitar teacher you're a sensei okay you just might want to start growing that big long white beard right now so you can be the guitar sense i used to have a fake one that i could put on like when i talked to john petrucci on facetime but i don't have it around here that's funny
• 73:00 - 73:30 well i mean i would love to talk all day but we're going to wrap things up just a little bit i know you have a busy schedule but um i mean because i wanted you know i'm a gear geek and i would love to talk about i know you still have uh you know your signature series uh js ibanez's that are out and yeah and you have your js you have your uh signature marshalls um i'm not sure if uh is is pv still in the mix right now or what
• 73:30 - 74:00 what are the amps of choice that you are using these days with guitar well yeah outside of my relationship with ibanez i'm a free agent when it comes to pedals and and amps and stuff like that um my favorite amp of all time uh is my jvm it's over here you can't really see it can you there there it is on top of the video look at that is that a jpm but that's not the blue tolex that doesn't have the the joe satriani bc i know your bluetooth that one safely uh wrapped up because it
• 74:00 - 74:30 looks so beautiful but this one's been on the road and and uh you know i've been using that on the 5150 to do a lot of recording um i've got the waza tae here which is really cool use it together with the axe i o um i just put out something with uh amplitube uh a whole suite of sounds uh it's been so much fun we're just about to release a song actually which is like a freaky demo where i kind of plagiarized myself for about four minutes and i just sort
• 74:30 - 75:00 of like did four bars and there's four bars of that you know um it really it was a lot of fun doing it and just using you know the the laptop and the and the the axe i o and and the amplitube joe satriani suite it was fun but i love my 5150 the old one uh like i said that my jvm signature they don't actually make it anymore but i've got a stash of them and i just love playing that amp i just really like it i've got some old amps old marshalls i
• 75:00 - 75:30 love the new fenders uh all the small combos um just great they're hand wired series and their um custom series fantastic in the studio uh princeton's deluxes all that stuff uh really fantastic um pedals i've got so many pedals you can't even i mean it looks really clean this way if you can see down there you'd be like where do i walk you know there's just like pedals everywhere
• 75:30 - 76:00 there's not a phase shifter down there is there like we're talking there it is i love you know you know i'm a big fan of eddie van halen and uh and the phase 90 right wasn't that the the original one was really really great i mean that's how you know the first single from shape shifting was a song called 1980 and that was all about just me being so excited about playing guitar again uh in a rock band and the fact that there was somebody like eddie that came along and kind of re in invented and
• 76:00 - 76:30 reinvigorated playing aggressive guitar and you know he's just he's a master you know and and so uh i thought it was a tip of the hat to plug in that pedal i hadn't planned on it but i was sitting here recording that song and i thought there's the pedal i thought well of course you know it's it's did you because kids today don't realize how lucky they are with youtube to have a speed control already on the player to have everything that you can break down track by track but were you like me did
• 76:30 - 77:00 you actually ruin a bunch of copies of van halen one trying to learn eruption because i used to do it with the with the needle on the thing and i tried to get it but then i would slow it down just to you know not 40 not 33 i'd slow it down to 16 speed but that wouldn't work i mean did you try and learn records uh try and block i mean i was teaching guitar from late 78 uh to 80 to early 88 kirkham it was my last lesson in january
• 77:00 - 77:30 of 88 and for 10 years i had to show all those young kids every from ingvade to eddie van halen you know michael shanker stevie ray vaughan hendrix all of it so uh yeah i i just had to learn how everybody did everything but to tell you this about ear training ear training's so important it's what i i try to give my students all the time as well you know it's always your training i have to tell you this because it really
• 77:30 - 78:00 it really explains the way i feel about the the way eddie played and what it meant which is this goes back maybe two years i'm sitting at a meet and greet with uh phil collin and john petrucci right and they play music while we're meeting everybody so we're signing stuff meeting we're talking about and you know eruption comes on and at one point we're just john and i are just like stunned once again since we were really young
• 78:00 - 78:30 we're just stunned once again we look at each other and we go is that the most amazing like feeling ever and of course we know how to play it inside out we can play it in every key and whatever but that's not the point the point is as a finished piece of music it's the most beautiful expression from somebody who just had a vision and tried everything they could and put everything they had into making something really unique and the fact that he did it is so important
• 78:30 - 79:00 and that the sound of it you can feel there's some sort of weird magic voodoo in that thing that's got nothing to do with the finger technique it's just eddie you know what i mean and and to this day just sitting there in a professional setting you know john and i again you know we hear it in our hearts are going and we're like we can't we can't sign stuff we can't show kids we have to wait till he's finished we gotta listen to the whole thing you know and phil is there we look at phil and he's the same thing we're just like
• 79:00 - 79:30 i can tell you after i sign off today on this podcast i will go listen to that because i'm excited to hear it i will also go listen to the squares album now that i know it's on spotify is great and of course anybody that's in the chat right now should go check out satriani.com in fact it's time for you to give out your socials if you can uh joe because um a lot of people are are probably listening on apple and spotify and we thank you for that but if you
• 79:30 - 80:00 want to see it you could see the the handle right there but joe if you want to uh tell them out for the people how to get in touch with you and find out more yeah the best place if you just type in my name it'll come saturated.com will come up first and then of course you'll see everything for uh the socials funny the funniest one is twitter right because i i signed on without calling my uh my webmaster many years ago and i just you know i was i was thinking funny something funny so i put chicken foot joe uh as people know trying to get your
• 80:00 - 80:30 real name and that blue check next to something can be a bit of a thing uh but anyway there is no problem finding embarrassing photos of me and everything else on the internet so unfortunately it's an open book so yes go to instagram uh go to twitter go to spotify go to facebook satriani.com can direct you to all of that um and thank you if you do there you go well you know what the one last thing i
• 80:30 - 81:00 have for you is a little thing that alice cooper says he's says never let the truth get in the way of a good story all right never let the truth get in the way of a good story so i just have a quick couple things to find out if they were fact or fiction that we came up with and uh you know um i think you kind of almost answered the first one uh 1986 did you almost go broke recording your debut album not of this earth yes okay so that is a
• 81:00 - 81:30 fact this is a yes no kind of it was just fact or fiction because and you did sort of uh you just sort of played a follow-up question to that is a 1987's uh surfing with the alien was based on a real life experience no um it was a it was okay so surfing with the allen is the title of a song i just thought of my head i was just thinking i love science fiction and i thought how come when the aliens show up
• 81:30 - 82:00 it's always they want to eat us they want to cook us they want our water they want to blow up the planet i said what if they come and they just want to have fun so what would you do and i thought oh what if i said hey you want to go surfing that's a lot of fun if you're a human and the alien says yeah so i thought okay i'm going to write a song that's about that surfing with the alien it was just one of those funny little daydreams that i focused on you know so but that wasn't the title of the album the album was supposed to be called lords of karma
• 82:00 - 82:30 and in the summer before the the record gets released it was released in october of of 87 i did my first interview and the british journalist at the end said love the album great work hate the title and you know he said i don't understand why guitarists always go into some sort of indian spiritual thing when and i didn't know what why he was upset but after i hung up i called the record company and i said can we change the title and they said well yeah we haven't
• 82:30 - 83:00 pressed anything yet so i looked at the at the song list and i said okay surfing with the alien everyone will know i have a sense of humor and i'm not taking myself seriously can we just call it that and so i'm i'm talking to jennifer one little thing you have you have an uptight british journalist to thank for the success of your entire career no it didn't go down here's here's the totally random fact about this whole conversation the
• 83:00 - 83:30 guy i'm talking to at the record company is production manager jim kozlowski who's like six foot four he's got long platinum blonde hair he used to work at uh radio in boston and he says to me surfing with the alien great idea we should put my namesake on the cover and i said i don't know what you're talking about and he says the silver surfer that's what they used to call me on on boston radio station that was a comic strip or something too right or yeah
• 83:30 - 84:00 right i didn't know that because my parents never allowed me to read comic books right so i said to him look jim i don't know what you're talking about and he says the silver surfer he goes i'll send you uh a copy of the you know so you can see this thing now you should know in my contract i have stipulated no negative images violent images anything on any of my album covers it was something i was adamant about because relativity and combat were doing great business with some of the most disgusting looking album covers i'd
• 84:00 - 84:30 anyway i got to make this story short i know so he sends me the first two issues of the 1968 comic uh the silver surfer of course i love noren rad the silver surfer the fact that he's metaphysically tortured and the love story the whole thing and i thought well that's really great but how we gonna get that and he goes i know the guys at marvel their office is right down the block from my apartment so he lives in manhattan so he goes down there after work he says
• 84:30 - 85:00 i got an instrumental artist we'd like to use some artwork and they said anything help because the the silver surfer was kind of dead in the water as a as a character this is before the marvel movies started up right so we we were able to get for i think five thousand dollars for 20 years a license to use the real artwork from uh the very first issue where the silver surfer is born out of the hand of galactica so um that's how that happened it was all
• 85:00 - 85:30 because of that one interview and now you're set because you know that marvel's going to come they're going to run out of characters at one point so silver surfer is going to be a new marvel character and of course it's probably you're going to have all the music in that you're saying well no it didn't work out that way at all as a matter of fact decade after decade they put the screws on so bad last last year they finally came and made an offer that i could not accept it was so
• 85:30 - 86:00 beyond servitude and the amount of money they wanted was just ridiculous so they forced me to stop using the artwork and we had to come up with our own artwork so we reissued the album with new artwork last year and we included a double uh vinyl package with the backing tracks and that was the beginning of me releasing backing tracks which ties into the strip uh times three uh release that we're doing now so yeah it's really weird because this
• 86:00 - 86:30 is still you know the whole thing about the silver guitar and and you know it all goes backwards that theme yeah it's still a thing it's so weird that it happened to me you know it's just so five grand was well spent and remember it was five grand that you owed on that credit card for the very first album as well so that's pretty funny isn't it last fact or fiction last let never let the truth get in the way of story you played all the guitars on the
• 86:30 - 87:00 debut crowded house album oh my god no uh uh so that's fiction by saying in fact i sang back up vocals on six songs on crowded houses debut album uh the producer mitchell froome was considering producing the squares at the time and when he got the job to produce crowded house he called andy milton the squares lead singer and myself and said
• 87:00 - 87:30 i'd love to get you two guys to come down to la and sing back up with the band because you guys have a unique blend and no one's heard it before yet you know you don't sound like this great debut record does such a great wonderful and and uh my good friend andy milton not with us anymore but his voice is so beautiful and it's so obvious on that album he he basically sang with neil and harmonized and doubled his parts i sang with the drummer also uh unfortunately not with us
• 87:30 - 88:00 anymore uh our range was similarly small we both had i think he's saying better than i did he didn't really like singing so it's fiction on the guitars but you but your voice was featured on there and there you go it is in fact the only time i have ever been paid to sing on somebody else's record you got paid for chicken foot didn't hurt you well you know that's not really getting paid you know because we we we financed those records ourselves
• 88:00 - 88:30 so we were our own boss so but that was the only time i got hired as a singer you know what i mean and got and got paid and scaled double scale scale whatever it was at the time anything was okay dinner would have been fine uh you know you know what i try to bring one thing that perhaps uh joe satriani fans didn't know before and i think that might be the one thing that uh being on the crowded house of them which is a great album but the squares is a great album as well so you should
• 88:30 - 89:00 go check out that and go check out satriani.com so you can uh get the new shapeshifting record as well as strip times three so we've been hanging out folks with joe satriani i finally said the name right i'm getting it's been nothing but inspirational hang with you as you can see halfway through your questions i got i grabbed my last ball excellent play and listen to some music today i'm sure you're going to do the same because you're in your music room
• 89:00 - 89:30 yeah thanks enough thank you so much joe for being on and thanks for everybody for coming on this uh secret sauce episode of in the trenches with ryan roxy and uh joe any parting words that you might like to have well thank first of all thank you for having me on the show the show is really great i love the format it's really nice that you give everybody a lot of room to tell their stories i apologize if my answers were a bit long-winded but not at all
• 89:30 - 90:00 that was great and so many things i think people didn't uh hear in other places they got to hear you know today i didn't know a lot of these stories and i did my research on this so it was great talking with you hopefully we can do it again yes yes please do please invite me back i'll i'll be ready for you all right guys well until next time joe satriani ryan roxy live in the trenches uh secret sauce episodes we'll see you next time enjoy the ride
• 90:00 - 90:30 the trenches with ryan roxy