On The Record: Joe Satriani on Van Halen, Jagger & his star students

Eddie Van Halen unexpectedly visits the studio and listens to a song with Joe Satriani. Joe talks about his upcoming busy schedule, including the G3 reunion tour, Monstrous Cruise, and tours with Steve Vai and Sammy Hagar. He discusses the importance of balancing practice and rest for musicians. Joe shares his experiences teaching Steve Vai and other talented students, emphasizing the importance of nurturing individuality. He also reflects on his own unique path as a musician and the significance of developing the mind alongside physical abilities. All of a sudden, like 11 in the morning, and Eddie walks into the studio. I had no idea he was coming. I was totally shocked. And, you know, he's got a cigarette and a beer, and he's just racing a million miles an hour. And he's like, hey, Joe, what's going on? Play me what you got. And I was like, this is the last song that I wanted to play Eddie Van Halen. But there it was. So we just sat there. We listened to the song. And he made some comments. And he picked up on the fact that it was really jangly at the moment. Ha. Hi, this is Joe Satriani on the record with Ultimate Guitar. All right, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I appreciate it. My pleasure. You're gearing up for a very busy 2024. So why don't you give us a little rundown of what the next few months have in store for us. First up is the G3 reunion tour with Eric Johnson and Steve Vaughn. And we get that started mid to late January, which is about a month away from now. And then after that, I do the Monstrous Cruise, which should be fun. I've never done a cruise before, so I'm not sure what to expect. But I'm going to be doing not only shows on the cruise, but I'm also showing my artwork as well. So the Wentworth Gallery will have a room of some kind on the ship. And so I'll be doing that during the day as well. Yeah, as you can see out in the art room over there, there's tons of guitars I'm working on right now, just cramming to see if I can get all these pieces in. Of course, I'm practicing here in the room, as you can see. After the cruise, Steve and I get together for the Satch Vi tour. And that's going to be really a lot of fun. We're actually working on two or three pieces of brand new music that we've written and started recording together. And that'll be released as the tour gets started. We're excited about that. And then after that, I get a little bit of a couple of weeks off. And then I start up with the one and only Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony and Jason Bonham. And we're doing the best of all worlds tour, like a Sammy Hagar retrospective tour. And yeah, that's going to be crazy. That's just going to be so much fun. Like every song's a hit that's in the set list. It's just great. So I'm looking forward to that. And then I'm going to take a vacation, a well-deserved vacation. Yes, yeah, yeah. So I was wondering, in the lead-up to all this, are you playing more than ever? Or are you putting guitar away and letting the fingers rest a little bit? Yeah, that's a good question, because you definitely got to do both. I remember some famous guitar player once said that your ability to play very often rests on things that will wear out eventually. So you don't want to chill yourself practicing, and then when you show up to actually play music for people, you've got nothing left. Because you've used everything that your muscles and tendons and bones had. So I think all players who've been around for a while realize that at some point, you've got to chill out and understand that resting, maybe going over the sets mentally is a better idea. Luckily for me, I have a variety of things to work on, which I think works in my favor. Because if there was one thing I had to do and I was practicing those 10 songs over and over again, you get into that problem of repetitive stress. But if you've got a variety of shows to do, like I do, and plus you've got a lot of painting to do, everything's kind of spread out. So you always feel like you're doing a lot of different things. And that thing helps that thing. Working on Van Halen somehow for a little bit helps when you go to do Montreux. So you're working on some solo stuff, and that helps when you're working on new material for like what I'm doing with Steve. I haven't figured it out totally. You'd think I would after all these decades, but I think every day you've just got to listen to the state of your body and figure out if you can push yourself or not, if you need to rest or if you really need to try to build something new. So you don't want to spoil that, that spontaneity, the spirit. And so like I said, I haven't figured it out, but I'm working. So I wanted to get into G3. The next tour that you have on the horizon. I've spoken with Steve about the time that he spent learning white with you. I wanted to get your perspective on that. How you met Steve by and when you realized that he was a special talent. I probably, the first time I met him, I think really when we spoke, was when he just showed up at my front door looking for guitar lessons. He was 12, I was 14 going on 15, I think. And I think I was teaching a friend of his, John Sergio, was in his class. We were all going to the same high school, Car Place Public High School. And so people had seen me play for about a year at all parties, the high school dances, Battle of the Bands, stuff like that. So I started teaching a bunch of kids that asked for lessons. And he was just one of them that showed up. And he actually took lessons with a friend of his because they couldn't afford the $5 for lessons. He and Frank Strassel would come together. But after about, I don't know, three or four lessons, I took Steve aside and I said, hey, you're going so fast and Frank is at another speed. I can't really do the two of you at the same time. So you might want to think about figuring out how to do a private lesson. And it really did work out because he was just on the fast track to greatness. I mean, it was just so obvious. He had the drive, the commitment. He had great ears. His fingers were huge. And he had really good facility with him as well. He was very well coordinated with both hands. Great sense of timing. And all of those things add up to just being a fantastic musician. So teaching him was really a lot of fun. And he learned everything that I asked him to learn every week. It was amazing. And I was so young. I'd only been playing a year. And so he caught up with me pretty fast. And he was one of those students that made me think, I'm going to learn something new before that kid shows up. And of course, he taught so many players who went on to do amazing things. Was there one that maybe surprised you a little bit or really impacted you other than Soledad Steepe? They were all really surprising. Every time you get a chance to just do a one-on-one lesson, you really learn a lot about that student and their personality. But what I learned over and over again was that talent shows itself in so many different ways. And you can't look at a student and think, well, if they don't have this particular asset, then they're not worth my time or they won't move forward. What I learned was that when you have a young Charlie Hunter following a young Kurt Hammett, following Alec Skolnick and Kevin Cadogan and all these different personalities, they all had something very unique. They didn't necessarily share the same physical talents. They definitely were different personalities. They definitely liked different kinds of music and different players. But they all had this magic inside of them where they wanted to play music. They wanted to invent something musical. I share it with people. And that drove them to seek out a path that was their own. And so not only did I love recognizing it, but I knew that I had to do that as a teacher so that I wouldn't waste their time. I wouldn't try to change them or bend them in my direction. I had to figure out, what is the information that's going to make them smile, make them feel like they've got something they can work with, and give it to them and say, you do what you want with it. Don't copy me. And they were so young. Even though I was in my early 20s, the difference between teenagers and kids in their 20s, I mean, it's huge, really. It's just another generation. And they turned out to be monster musicians. And they contributed to society, which is really amazing. I mean, to the way music is today. They had a fantastic effect on it. And that's such a skill for you to not, I feel like a lot of instructors really bend people and they create little clones of themselves. And so thank you for allowing those people to kind of do what they want to do in nurturing that. So I appreciate you for doing that. Instructors don't get enough love these days. Dad, well, you're very welcome. You know, I had, since I'm not, I always thought that I was a very unique kind of a student. When I started to try to learn things, whether it was learning math and science in school or just trying to pick my music theory teacher's brain in high school, I realized I wasn't like the other high-achieving academic students, wasn't like the other musicians who could pick up reading music and just absorb everything. It was really personal with me. And I had some physical quirks that I just couldn't get over. And I thought, well, I'm going to need a special path. I know I have to work extra hard. I knew because I was teaching a little kid named Steve Vai that I didn't have those physical attributes that he did. And so there were going to be barriers that I was going to face. And I thought, well, how am I going to get over that? I learned a really great lesson from my high school theory teacher, Bill Westcott, who started in 11th grade, started making me write music away from the guitar and the piano. He would just give me some manuscript paper. And he'd say, go write music. I want you to do this every single day and hand it in. And that's it. And I asked him, well, why am I doing this? Because I want to be the ultimate guitar player. And he said, well, when you get to be like 18 or 21 or something, you may turn out that you're not that great guitar player. And you've hit the end of your physical achievement level, but he said, the brain, this musician up here can keep going till you're 90 years old. They can keep getting better and better. So you've got to work on that guy up there. And you can still work these, but these are going to have a sort of a finite level. You're going to hit that speed wall. You can only stretch so far because of your anatomy, so on and so forth. But the musical brain can keep learning, keep expanding. And that was really a great help to me because I started to realize that that's what saved me when I wanted to play and I didn't know how to get the music out. The fingers, they don't have any brains. They take instructions from the heart and the head. You've really got to teach those two. And I would imagine you're getting plenty of exercises with that right now, kind of doing a bit of a deep dive into a lot of the Van Halen stuff and stuff that Eddie's played. Yeah. Is there a song that you found most challenging or a technique or a song that's really pushed you monthly? The main thing is that for the last five decades, I've tried so hard to be myself and to be a geek, not copy anybody. I've been lucky since the late 80s to have a solo career. So I really had a job that forced me to be myself as much as possible. So I made a point not to play like anybody. But it happens eventually when you're having fun, you're at a party, and someone says, oh, can you play this song? And you realize, I have no idea how to play that song. I love that song. I've listened to it a million times. I don't know what the guy's doing. And then you go to learn it, and you go, wow, that's really weird. It feels so awkward for me to be like this. And it's not the parts, because I can hear the chords. I know what everything is when I hear it. It's just the sensibility of timing, vibrato, picking. If you're so deep into your own thing, it's really hard to get out of it and try to properly emulate somebody else's playing. And it would almost be like if you gave a guitar to Eddie, and you said, OK, Eddie, we want you to play Summer Song note for note. He'd be like, what? I don't play like that. I don't do that. I just kind of do this, this, and this. Of course, we'd love, no matter how we did it, it would be fun. But it wouldn't be exactly the same. So I think when I was young and I was in cover bands, I knew what it was like to try to get as close as possible when you were playing. For me, it was Zeppelin, and Sabbath, and Stella, and stuff like that. That's what we played. But eventually, you'd have to go, I don't play like that. That's not my vibrato. If I go to play ACDC, there's no way I can do Angus's vibrato. He just has his own vibrato, right? If you're going to try to play like Jeff Beck, he's so personal. You can play the notes and remind people, this part he did in that part, but it's not quite the same. Again, if we heard Eric Clapton trying to play Since I've Been Loving You by Led Zeppelin, there's no way it would sound the same. It'd be great, but it wouldn't sound the same. So what I noticed right away when I realized, I really have to figure out these songs. And what's he operating on? So here are a couple of things I noticed. Number one, he plays so on the beat and makes it feel like he's pushing the beat, but he's actually not. It's really amazing how he does it. And I realized when I went back and I listened to my stuff back to back, I thought, oh, that's me sitting on the back beat as much as I can because I'm playing the melody. And so when you're playing the melody, you don't want to be on top. Actually, you want the band to be pushing, and you're sitting back here like a singer. I like the way Robert Plant sings in Since I've Been Loving You. He's so behind. Or listen to any hip hop song. It's just like the vocals are way in the pocket, they're just late on purpose. So that's something I've worked on my whole life is sit back, sit back, sit back. And all of a sudden, you go to play a song like I'm the One, and it is like, no, you have to be the guy way in front. Alex is going to be going, no, no, sit back here. And that's a difficult sensibility when every nerve ending in your body is saying, sit back. But to make the song work, you've got to sit forward. I mean, that's the first thing I noticed, like the difference between Eddie's sensibility and mine in terms of, I mean, our vibratos aren't that different. He holds a pick. Where are my picks? He holds his pick like that, so he's always got this finger for tapping, and I don't. So I always have to do something. And what I started to do early on was to use my pick for a lot of hammer-ons because I just wanted to be different. And I thought I'd get a better sound. I'd be able to do some different things that other players weren't doing. And I saw guys using their fingers back in the early 70s, before when Eddie was my age, just a young teenager. So there were other guys doing tapping for decades before, but as my generation started to figure out how to do tapping, I saw the thing was a split. There's the tapping for effect, tapping for riff, and then there's tapping to create an entire musical piece. And Eddie did all of it. The way that he would do the tapping, when he would use it, totally opposite of the way that I had forced myself to go with it. Third thing is, again, we're talking about someone who's just an incredible virtuoso in several areas. One of the things that Eddie had was this super-tight swing that was ultra-fast with his right hand. And that is something, again, once I remember hearing that for the first time, I'm thinking, wow, I'm going to have to work on that. That's going to take me like, I thought, I've got three months of 45 minutes a day just working with a metronome to work that into my world of tricks. That's kind of like what it is. I think when you're getting ready for a tour and you get to play a song that you haven't played in 20 years, you remember it, but you go, wow, I don't do that anymore. And it physically feels odd. So you say, OK, I got six weeks before the tour. I'm going to play this thing 10 times a day. And I'm just going to keep working on it, and start slow, and figure out all the different ways of doing it so that when I hit the stage, I can relax and play it the way it should be played. Well, it's fascinating, because I think we've all touched on Eddie Van Halen's stuff. But none of us have done that deep dive where you have to be on stage with members of Van Halen and pay that stuff. And there is an added layer of expectation or fandom that you have to contend with that none of us will be in our vendors. I'm used to it, because when I hit the national or the worldwide scene, I was playing with Dick Jagger. And I was not the right guy for the gig. At least, I thought. Again, I had already disengaged from trying to copy those kinds of players. Loved the Stellas ever since I was a kid, but purposely didn't try to copy Keith Richards or any of the guitar players that were featured as lead guitar players. Then all of a sudden, there I am standing next to Mick Jagger. And I'm thinking, hey, Mick, do you want me to play the solo exactly like Keith did, or like Ronnie did, or Brian? And he's like, no, no, just do whatever you want. Just get into the song and just be yourself. And that's the way we do it. And so I thought, OK, that's great. I'm getting licensed, an artistic license from the man himself. And then I wasn't planning on it, but there I was replacing Richie Blackmore and Lee Purple. And I had the same feeling, because I was a fan and I heard Richie's iconic sound and solos in my head. And I wanted to, as a fan, represent him properly. But I don't sound like him. I don't play like him. So what do you do? And again, the band said, Joe, just be yourself. We invited you because we want you to be here doing your thing. But it's a mental game. You know what I mean? It's a mental game. And if you don't handle it right, you won't play well. Let's put it that way. You won't copy the guy you're trying to emulate properly, and you won't be yourself. And the fans really kind of want both. They don't know how to express it, but they want you to nail the parts. But they also want you to be present and not just stand there like you're doing an Instagram thing. So in research for this, I did discover that you met Eddie at least once, right? Yeah, it was brief. I was in LA at Record One. I was in the last set of sessions for the Extremist album Eddie Johns was producing. And fortunately, that morning, we had put up a track that was really bothering me. It was just one of those songs that was a bit of a puzzle. I'd worked on it for 2 and 1⁄2 years, and I still couldn't figure it out. It was one of these songs where, if I could get specific for a second, where I was blurring the line between rhythm section, riff, and melody. And I had this idea that instead of it just being like chords, melody, like a typical instrumental, and it wasn't ensemble, like Satch Boogie, where we're all kind of playing it like a head, like a jazz head. It was more like a chugging melody that seemed to sit with the band. And there were two songs that were like that, with Motorcycle Driver and this song, Speed of Light. And so at the time, Eddie and I had just finished doing a lot of 12-strings. And so it was really jangly. So all of a sudden, like 11 in the morning, and Eddie walks into the studio. I had no idea he was coming. I was totally stunned. And he's got a cigarette and a beer, and he's just racing a million miles an hour. And he's like, hey, Joe, what's going on? Play me what you got. And I was like, this is the last song that I wanted to play Eddie Van Halen. But there it was. So we just sat there, and we listened to the song, and he made some comments. And he picked up on the fact that it was really jangly at the moment, because we had all those 12-strings up. And then Andy came in the room, and they went out, and they got in some kind of trouble, because I didn't see Andy for the rest of the day. It was a lot of that, working with Andy. You never knew how long you'd have him. He was drinking a lot back then. So you try to get him early in the morning for a couple of hours, because he was brilliant. And he was really a fantastic instructor and producer. But he had his issues, and they would creep in by mid-afternoon. And you'd want him to either leave, or you'd have to get him to go. It was one of those things. So that was one of those days that they split. And I don't know what happened after that, but I didn't see Eddie again after that, unfortunately. So do you have any more solo material in the works? Is that something you're always working on, or do you block out time to work on that stuff? There's always a lot of projects that are kind of flowing. We talked about the tours in 24. We've got a lot of those coming up. What's been happening this past year is my son ZZ has been making a documentary about his life growing up right alongside with G3, because he turned four years old the week that we started G3. And that was the year that we decided he was old enough to take him on tour. And we took him on every tour that we could from then on. And so she kind of grew up, starting with hanging out with Robert Fripp and Steve Vai and Kenny Wood Shepard and out on the bus and just all the way through. And so she's made this documentary. She's interviewed Robert and Brian May and Steve Vai. And what was he doing? Tom Morello, Nuno Betancourt. I just did Nina Strauss yesterday. Everybody from Christopher Guest to Al DiMeola. And it's really all about what the guitar means to them and how it relates to him growing up, having a very unusual father who plays this kind of guitar his whole life. So he grew up with all this sound and stuff. So he's going to come out with us on the G3 tour. And the film really culminates at the last two shows we do at the Orpheum. And we're recording all the shows for a live album, an audio album for ear music. So there'll be a G3 album from that documentary. Hopefully by the end of next year, we'll be finished. And the process of writing new music for the Satch-Vi tour, the sessions have been happening this past weekend. Drums and bass started to get added to the tracks. That got started here in my little control room. And after those come out, I do have to think about my next solo record. But as I mentioned before, after the Best of All Worlds tour wraps up in September, I am going to have to sit down because I know ear music is going to call me up. And they're going to say, hey, how about a new Joe record? So then I'll start to pull all my elements together. I've got lots of stuff written on pieces of paper and stuff on the hard drives that I've got to pull together and see if I can put together an album from all the different things I've been writing. You know, you've had such an incredible career. And it's been one where I feel like you've really been able to do your own thing. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Have a good day. You're welcome. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day. Have a good day.