Most fans know Joe Satriani as the guitarist David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen approached for the post–Eddie Van Halen tribute tour that never got off the ground.

But according to Satriani, Roth first tried to recruit him decades earlier — for a band that would play Van Halen songs while Eddie was still alive and active.

Speaking to Thinking About Guitar, Satriani recalled receiving a call from Roth in the mid-’90s.

“In the mid ’90s, David Lee Roth called me; he wanted to put together a band to do Van Halen songs,” the guitarist says. “He went on and on about how we were the only guys who could really do it right, and he had all these crazy plans.”

It’s unclear exactly when the conversation took place. Roth briefly reunited with Van Halen in 1996 before the band moved on with Gary Cherone, whose stint as frontman led to the release of Van Halen III in 1998.

Whatever the timing, Satriani says he immediately questioned the premise.

“I said, ‘But Dave, Ed’s still alive! He’s still making amazing records. He’s still on tour. What guitar player would ever try to imitate him while he’s still working? It makes no sense.’

“‘Of course, I said, ‘Look, I’m not the guy.’”

For Satriani, stepping into Eddie Van Halen’s role while the guitarist was still recording and performing was unthinkable. As a lifelong admirer of Eddie’s electric guitar work, he had no interest in trying to recreate it while its creator was still actively pushing the instrument forward.

The idea resurfaced years later under very different circumstances.

Following Eddie Van Halen’s death on October 6, 2020, Satriani was contacted by Roth and Alex Van Halen about participating in a tribute project honoring the late guitarist. Reports later emerged that former Metallica bass guitarist Jason Newsted had also been approached, though the project ultimately stalled. Alex Van Halen would later place the blame on Roth.

“When he and Alex called me after Ed had passed away, it made a little bit more sense,” Satriani says. “Even though I tried to convince them I was not the person who could do it justice.”

Rather than take the role himself, Satriani suggested two guitarists he felt would be better suited to the challenge: his former student Steve Vai and Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt. In the end, the project never materialized.

Satriani would eventually find himself playing Van Halen music onstage, albeit in a different setting. In 2024, he joined Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour, performing material spanning Hagar’s tenure with the band and the broader Van Halen catalog. While Hagar says Satch isn’t the best man for the job, he credits him with bringing “his own thing to the music.”

The tour was widely praised by fans and critics alike, but Satriani’s latest recollection reveals that his connection to Van Halen’s legacy almost began nearly 30 years earlier — thanks to an unexpected phone call from Roth and a proposal he simply couldn’t get behind.

Sammy Hagar has spent decades sharing stages and studios with some of rock’s most celebrated musicians, including Ronnie Montrose and Joe Satriani. But when the conversation turns to Eddie Van Halen, he still struggles to find an equal.

As Hagar prepares to bring his Best of All Worlds tour back for a limited summer run — featuring Satriani, bass guitarist Michael Anthony and drummer Kenny Aronoff — the singer has been reflecting on his years with Van Halen and on the impact the guitarist continues to have on musicians years after his death in 2020.

For Hagar, Van Halen wasn’t simply a groundbreaking guitarist. He was a transformational figure whose influence extended far beyond the instrument itself.

“I can’t imagine where guitar players would be without Eddie,” Hagar says. “He just took a fuckin’ hard left, man, and we’re going to outer space. There were great guitar players before him: Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix.

“I mean, Hendrix kind of did the same thing — he got that whammy bar in there and changed everything. But Eddie took the whammy bar and the hammer and the frickin’ tapping.

“But it wasn’t just the innovation of what he did; he was a great musician. He was a master. He was fuckin’ Beethoven — he was that unique. He belongs in that category.”

Hagar argues that Van Halen’s impact is often reduced to flashy technique when it should be measured by his broader contribution to modern music.

“People call him a rock god — he’s a music god, in my opinion,” he says. “When I bring keyboard players into the band now and they have to learn ‘Right Now’ and some of his keyboard parts, they’re holding their heads in their hands and saying, ‘Fuck! This guy played keyboards just as unique as he played guitar.’

“And on guitar, Joe [Satriani]’s going, ‘Wow, this chording!’”

In fact, Hagar believes Van Halen’s influence helped keep the guitar relevant at a time when electronic instruments were increasingly dominating popular music.

“So I can’t imagine where guitar players would be without Eddie,” he says. “I think they probably would’ve come and gone and we’d be listening to electronic music. I think Eddie saved guitar players — he saved us so we could continue and compete with those damn keyboards and electronic instruments and Pro Tools and all that crap.”

Hagar’s admiration isn’t limited to Van Halen’s playing. He says the guitarist fundamentally changed him as a songwriter and vocalist during their decade together.

“I just loved working with him,” Hagar says. “I don’t know how many songs we wrote together, but it made me a better musician. I expanded my lyrical abilities.”

He points to songs like “Love Walks In” and “Black and Blue” as examples of the unexpected places Van Halen’s music could take him creatively.

“Like when he was playing ‘Love Walks In’ on piano — stuff came out of my mouth I would never have sung,” Hagar says. “The way his playing inspired a lyric and the words that fit melodically, rhythmically within the song, just writing with him was crazy.

“I remember when we wrote ‘Black and Blue’ — it’s the most syncopated lyric/guitar thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I would never write a song like that without Eddie.”

According to Hagar, Van Halen’s writing only became more adventurous as the years went on.

While many fans still point to the band’s earliest recordings as the guitarist’s creative peak, Hagar believes some of his most sophisticated work arrived later.

“So many people think the early stuff was his best stuff,” he says. “Well, no, that was just the first time you heard him. It was so fresh and new when you heard ‘Eruption’ or ‘Spanish Fly’ or these intros on these songs.

“Was that the best stuff? It was his simplest stuff.”

Hagar points to “Can’t Stop Loving You,” from 1995’s Balance, as one example of the complexity Van Halen was exploring during the band’s later years.

“When we play that song now, Joe looks at me and goes, ‘Wow, what a piece of music! Every single bar is different. It just keeps changing.’ And this is Joe Satriani. This isn’t some kid that’s just learning how to play guitar.”

The increasingly intricate music sometimes left Hagar wondering whether his bandmate was deliberately trying to challenge him.

“I was always joking that in the later years, Ed was trying to fuck me up,” he says with a laugh. “The way he started writing music. It was like he was saying, ‘Sing to this, asshole.’

“Like he was just trying to stretch me out until either I did it or I said, ‘I quit. I can’t do that. Make that an instrumental.’ But I did it.”

More than three decades after joining Van Halen, Hagar remains convinced that the experience represented the artistic high-water mark of his career.

“It was an honor being able to play with Eddie,” he says. “It made me a better musician. It made me a better writer. It made me a better singer, without a doubt. I did my best vocals ever with Van Halen.

“The peak of my life and my career pinnacle? Van Halen, without a doubt. Do I think I’m ever gonna be bigger than that again? Fuck no! I might be richer, but I ain’t gonna be more famous.”

Sammy Hagar certainly gets his due as a singer, frontman, band leader, songwriter and, of course, liquor and restaurant entrepreneur. That he’s also a solid guitar player is often lost in the mix.

That, however, could have something to do with those who have stood beside him throughout his 54-year recording career.

The Red Rocker came to prominence in 1973 as the frontman for Montrose, collaborating with Ronnie Montrose over the course of two albums — Montrose and Paper Money — and favorites such as “Bad Motor Scooter” and “Rock the Nation.”

After Montrose changed the lineup in 1975, Hagar embarked on a solo career and scored his own batch of hits (“There’s Only One Way to Rock,” “I Can’t Drive 55” and more). He also teamed with Journey’s Neal Schon in 1983 for the short-lived supergroup HSAS, which released the live album Through the Fire in 1984.

The following year, Hagar performed with Eddie Van Halen at the first Farm Aid concert, then went on to spend 11 years with Van Halen, recording four number one albums with the band following the departure of David Lee Roth. (Hagar would return for one more tour in 2004 and record three new songs for The Best of Both Worlds compilation.)

He worked with Schon again and, later, Joe Satriani in the side project Planet Us. Satriani would also join Hagar in another supergroup, Chickenfoot, and later become part of Hagar’s Best of All Worlds Band in 2024. In between, Hagar brought Vic Johnson into his bands the Waboritas and the Circle.

That’s a lot of electric six-string firepower to be attached to in one career, and Hagar does not take those associations for granted. He loves to talk about his good fortune, too — which he did with us via Zoom from Maui as he prepares for a new run of Best of All Worlds dates beginning June 13 in St. Louis. Here he tells us about four guitar greats he’s played with who aren’t Eddie Van Halen (we’ll leave that discussion for another day).

Ronnie Montrose

“Ronnie was on fire. That’s the way he played — like it’s burning. He wasn’t that fast. He wasn’t a shredder. He played well, and he played really fiery.

“I learned how to play guitar from Ronnie. I learned more from Ronnie than Eddie as a guitarist. I still play more like Ronnie Montrose today. He really inspired my guitar playing.

“When he got into his Town Without Pity era, he started playing more like what Joe Satriani plays — with that sound and that vocal style. He probably would’ve gotten even better; he just had some real head problems. I’ve never seen a guy like that. He fired everybody. The second you had one smidgen of success with him, he broke up the band.

“Montrose — we were about to explode. We were gonna be the American Led Zeppelin, and he couldn’t take it. I don’t know what it was. He was afraid of success. He’d sit there in the studio holding his face like, ‘Oh God, what are we gonna do?’ I’m like, ‘Fuck, let’s jam! Let’s make some music.’

“He was so tormented, man. I don’t know why; I think it must’ve been some far-out childhood thing that happened to him. I mean, come on — the guy shot himself in the head. It’s horrible. [Montrose died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 3, 2012.]

“That broke my heart when he did that. It made me think, Could somebody have helped him? What happened here? How do you let some guy do that? I wasn’t around, but if I’d been around and knew he was in that kind of condition, I would’ve put this guy in a hospital or taken him under my wing. I would’ve helped.”

Neal Schon

“Neal’s been my friend forever. Before Journey broke, we were buddies. We used to play shows together, and he would always come jam with me when I’d play Winterland [in San Francisco]. Neal just walks around with a fuckin’ guitar around his neck. He takes it off to shower, and that’s probably it. He probably fucks with a guitar around his neck. He’s just always playing.

“He’s a great, melodic player. He uses the whole neck and makes it look like a toy. I can tell a Neal Schon solo instantly because he plays a really cool, melodic lick, and then he goes [scats] — just spills out all these crazy, whacked-out notes. I don’t know if any of them are real notes, but if you’re not hitting bad notes, it doesn’t matter.

“I could say, ‘Let’s write a song, Neal,’ and he’ll write a song in five minutes. Him and Joe Satriani — they’re so frickin’ prolific, it’s scary. And it’s ’cause he’s got the guitar on all the time, so he’ll think, ‘Here’s what I was playing a couple minutes ago. This could be a song.’ That’s Neal.”

Vic Johnson

“I call him Vic ‘Right Hand’ Johnson all the time. He’s got a right hand like The Edge, like Pete Townshend. He can shred — his left hand’s great — but his right hand, man, he kicks off a groove and you don’t need to hear the drums. He puts it right in the pocket.

“He was never in a band till he got in my band, and he was kind of a sideman. Earlier on, if he’d had a superstar singer — a Sammy Hagar, a David Lee Roth or a Robert Plant or somebody — Vic would’ve been much more famous as a guitar player.

“Vic’s got the biggest, fattest sound. When I pick up his guitar, his strings are really fat — big ol’ fat strings. I can’t play ’em. I can’t bend ’em, but he’s got those big, ol’ strong hands, and he gets a lot of tone out of there.

“Joe [Satriani], Neal Schon — Eddie, when he heard Vic play — they all go, ‘Yeah, he’s got a cool tone.’ Vic’s pretty much a simple Ronnie Montrose-style guitar player like me, but he’s got the baddest tone of all of us.”

Joe Satriani

“Joe’s got the same thing Jeff Beck had, and that’s that he can make the guitar sing. He’s got the tone and the touch — his vibrato and the way he uses his whammy bar — like Jeff Beck. Songs like ‘Summer Song’ or ‘Surfing With the Alien’ sound like there’s a singer in the band.

“He’s one of the few instrumentalists who can carry it to where you can tolerate it. When I go see an instrumentalist, by about the third song I’m going, ‘Well, when’s the singer coming out?’ ’Cause I’m getting bored. But Joe will play the next tune and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s a cool melody!’ In my head, it’s like he’s singing it.

“I think Joe could be one of the best guitar players on the planet right now. Look — he taught Steve Vai how to play, so Steve will never be better than him. He taught Kirk Hammett how to play, so Kirk will never be better than him. ’Cause you can’t outdo the teacher.

“Joe knows exactly what Eddie was playing; that’s why I love having him in this band. He studied it. He watched live tapes, he saw him live, he listens to the records and knows exactly what Eddie was doing. That’s the difference between him and some kid in a music store playing ‘Eruption’ exactly like Eddie. Joe knows what he’s doing, and he knows what Eddie was doing, and that’s different from simply emulating somebody.

“He’s a genius, honest to God. I’m not joking about his intelligence. He’s super smart. When you interview him, his answers are so thoughtful and so deep. I love the guy.

“Lemme say one bad thing about him so you don’t think I’m kissing his ass too much: He plays too fuckin’ loud. And he doesn’t need to play that loud ’cause he has in-ears. But he’s used to not having a singer, so he thinks, ‘I gotta be the loudest thing.’ [laughs] We’re still working that out.”

At first, Joe Satriani wasn’t sure how to respond to one of Steve Vai’s most elaborate new recordings.

The track arrived dense, layered, and saturated with guitars — the kind of maximal arrangement Vai is known for pushing to extremes.

Satriani remembers his immediate reaction:

“What am I gonna play on this song that’s got 18 Steve Vai guitar tracks on it?”

It wasn’t frustration so much as recalibration. After decades of working with Vai in different contexts, this was something else entirely: a fully formed sonic environment already overflowing with guitar ideas before he even entered the picture.

The track is “Dancing,” the Spanish-flavored latest single from the SatchVai Band, which also includes bassist Marco Mendoza, guitarist Pete Thorn, and drummer Kenny Aronoff. The song is an interpretation of a piece by Italian singer Paolo Conte and is accompanied by a humorous video featuring 13 dancers, including Aronoff and mutual friend Brendon Small of Metalocalypse fame.

“I found that track in the early ’80s and just fell in love with it,” Vai says. “I kept listening to it through the years and imagined it as a guitar piece. I sent it to Joe and said, ‘I’ve got a crazy idea. I want to turn all the horns into guitar parts and beef up the arrangement.’

“I thought he’d say, ‘What are you, crazy? This isn’t rock and roll.’ But he came back and said, ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna play on this, but I trust your insanity,’ so we did it.”

Vai says the third single was originally intended to be Satriani’s “Mayhem,” but both agreed “Dancing” offered a better left turn creatively.

Satriani agrees the choice worked precisely because of its unpredictability.

“It is good, because it is so different,” he says. “It showcases some of Steve’s bizarre ideas about what you can do with the guitar and arrangement — like a peek into the genius of Steve. I remember thinking, ‘This is the craziest idea Steve has ever had,’ and when it came together it was just pure fun.”

The SatchVai collaboration began decades earlier in suburban Long Island, where a teenage Vai studied guitar under Satriani. Vai says those early lessons rarely felt formal.

“We’d sit in his backyard with two electric guitars, no amplifiers, and we’d sit back-to-back and just play,” he recalls.

What began as instruction quickly turned into long improvisation sessions — an early training ground built entirely on listening and reaction rather than technique.

That shared instinct resurfaced decades later when the idea of recording together finally became unavoidable.

A 2024 co-headlining tour accelerated things. The two began jamming at the end of shows, and informal ideas evolved into full exchanges of compositions.

Vai sent Satriani two pieces that became “The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1” and “Pt. 2.” From there, momentum took over.

“We said, ‘Come on, let’s do it. It’s time,’” Vai says.

Satriani says timing was crucial. Both musicians were no longer operating under the pressure of proving themselves.

“I’m glad we waited for this,” Satriani says. “Now we’re older, and we’ve had a crazy roller coaster of success. If we’d done it earlier, we would’ve brought that anxiety into the studio and had pressure from outside sources. Doing it now, we were able to let it just happen.”

The SatchVai album weighs in at 10 songs — “I Wanna Play My Guitar” is the only one with vocals — and has been mixed and mastered. It has no title or release date yet, however, though the pair is anxious for fans to hear the full body of work.

When the album does finally drop, Satriani and Aronoff will resume with Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds band for summer shows, while Vai will be back with the all-star King Crimson adjunct Beat for a European tour during June and July. They also each voice a desire work on their next solo projects, which will leave the prospect of SatchVai as a going concern somewhat up in the air.

“Joe and I kind of work in the moment,” Vai says. “We never even talked about putting a band together until it just happened, because the time was right. I think that’s going to be the M.O. moving forward.

“I know that we are interested in getting back to being our own generals and entering back into our own creative impulses on a solo level, but SatchVai was such a fun process, and it was easy and creative and fun, I can’t imagine not working together again, even if in the future it’s just sharing tracks and creating like that.”

Brendon Small has spent the past few years rethinking both his guitar collection and the way he plays.

Some of that reflection was forced. In August 2022, a dozen of Small’s guitars were stolen from his home studio in Los Angeles.

Those included Gibson Les Paul ’57 and ’59 reissues, a Fender ’54 Custom Shop Stratocaster reissue, a Gibson Thunderhorse prototype and guitars that had been personal gifts from Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, as well as a rare Moog guitar that’s no longer in production.

“Our house was under construction, and I think it was workers who stole them,” Small recalls. “One day I was rehearsing for a Dethklok show and I had some guitars out, and I think they saw where they came from. That morning someone busted into my place and took everything I had out.”

The guitars were also being used while he was working on Dethalbum IV, Dethklok’s fifth album.

“It was like, ‘Okay, 12 of my guitars are stolen and I have to fly to Philadelphia and do a show.’ I didn’t have any time to ruminate or feel bad about it. I just had to keep pushing forward.

“I had to have a stoic take on it, because I’m also the boss of the Dethklok thing, so I can’t be gently weeping in front of my crew. It doesn’t look good.”

Small — who also makes a guest appearance in the SatchVai Band video for its song “Dancing” — says he had “big plans” for the Satriani guitar that was stolen.

“It had this Sustaniac pickup, and I wanted to do some cool stuff with it.”

He wound up replacing it with a new model, but the original “was one Joe played that he gave me as a gift because I helped him on a project. And then the Vai guitar was a JEM Universe seven-string with just great tone that I used to record on Dethalbum III. So at least I got to play it on a recording.”

The Moog guitar, meanwhile, was equally unique.

“It had two kind of Sustaniac-style pickups,” Small says, “and you could create crescendos from nothing. It would go from silence to slowly buzzing the strings as each string starts vibrating. I was like, ‘Oh, this is a film score machine.’ I played it for a long time but never really got to record anything good with it, and then it disappeared.

“Maybe I’ll find another one at some point, for a reasonable price. But because they don’t make them anymore, they’re up there in price.”

Small has also made voluntary changes to his guitar collection. Last July, the creator of Dethklok and Adult Swim’s animated Metalocalypse — which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year — sold “a bunch of guitars,” he says.

“I just didn’t have room for them, and they weren’t getting played.

“So I was like, ‘Am I gonna pay to store these? What am I doing? I need to get them to someone else who can play them.’”

The guitars included electrics he used on his first show, Home Movies, and on Dethklok’s 2009 tour with Mastodon, including a Gibson E2 Explorer that was his main guitar around 2010.

“But I just don’t play them enough,” he explains.

The sale was a success.

“They all sold the first day — which makes me think I should’ve priced them higher,” he says with a laugh. “But what are you gonna do?”

Small, who currently has Dethklok on the road for the Amonklok Conquest Tour with Sweden’s Amon Amarth, has also made some technique changes in recent years, owing to age and what he calls “accumulated bad habits” from decades of playing.

“Something happens naturally when you’re onstage,” he says. “You’re so kind of ‘electrocuted’ by nerves that you start digging in more. My whole thing now is, ‘How do I not dig in? How do I lighten up and stay in control?’”

Over the past year, that led him to study more deeply, including a lesson with Jason Richardson “to come over and basically, like a golf pro, watch my swing and tell me where I’m fucking everything up.”

“I realized I got into some bad habits with playing and posture. I realized, ‘Oh, that’s a nerve issue — but if I play a little more on point I can get rid of that, and I can get control of my hand back.’ I just kind of realigned everything this year.”

Small also began doing CrossFit exercises, including “pull-ups and all that stuff,” to make his hands “just kind of not nearly as sensitive as they were,” helping reverse the problem.

To that end, he also got some useful tips from Satriani and Vai.

“We were talking about the right hand — just the right hand — and keeping it in shape, and remembering how little I need to engage to have total control and great tone and be able to access everything from one place.

“Steve was telling me about how he stands onstage — what muscles he tightens to keep his back and his arm available — all the basic stuff that doesn’t come secondhand. It’s been like re-learning the guitar.

“Being mindful is the thing — just constantly sending messages to myself, like ‘Take it easy, lighten up. There’s a big solo coming up, but remember, it’s no big deal.’”

In some respects, he says, it’s simply business as usual.

“I realized playing guitar is never easy from day one. It’s always hard, even when you start getting good at it.

“I think about my favorite jazz players, like John Scofield — a guy like that has to get up and maintain being John Scofield every day. Pat Metheny’s got to be Pat Metheny and keep cultivating and sculpting. It’s a challenge.”

It’s also not lost on Small that he gets to talk about these matters with the likes of Satriani and Vai, whom he’s also had the opportunity to join onstage on various occasions.

“Those are terrifying, terrifying moments — but you know you have to do it,” he says with a laugh. “Usually I join them when they’re at a point in the show where they’re warmed up… and that’s a tricky place to be if you’re sitting there trading fours with people who inspired you to play guitar in the first place.

“Mentally it’s insane, but you do it anyway.”

Spending time with his heroes has also taught him that they deal with the same challenges in their playing as everyone else.

“Listening to them talk and complain about the same things I do — it’s like waking in a dream state,” he says. “How do I relax? How do I stay in my mind, in my body through the performance and deliver the best thing I can deliver? That’s the hard thing.

“They want that same sweet spot. It’s a dragon all of us will forever chase.

“Those are pinch-me moments.”

The Amonklok Conquest Tour runs through May 21 in Las Vegas, and Dethklok has four additional headlining dates afterward.

Guitar Player Presents is thrilled to partner with Another Planet Entertainment to bring the SatchVai Band to the fantastic Fox Theater in Oakland, California, on Saturday, April 4.

Featuring Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, the SatchVai Band is embarking on its debut U.S. tour, dubbed Surfing With the Hydra. With Animals as Leaders — featuring modern progressive electric guitar virtuoso Tosin Abasi — in the opening slot, the night is shaping up to be the six-, seven- and eight-string event of the season.

Says Satriani, “You do not want to miss this show with this lineup!”

SatchVai debuted in March 2024 with a tour and the release of their song “I Wanna Play My Guitar,” featuring Glenn Hughes on vocals. The band’s new single, “Dancing,” marks the latest chapter in their creative evolution, with Satch and Vai weaving melodic lines over a hyped-up Latin groove.

Satriani says the show will feature new material from the forthcoming SatchVai album alongside selections from the duo’s shared catalog. The SatchVai Band lineup also includes guitarist Pete Thorn (Chris Cornell, Don Henley), drummer Kenny Aronoff (John Fogerty, John Mellencamp) and bassist Marco Mendoza (Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy). Together, the ensemble is built for unbridled guitar mastery and explosive musicianship.

Animals As Leaders will also celebrate the 10-year anniversary of their breakthrough album The Joy of Motion by performing it in its entirety.

Abasi says, “We are beyond honored to be joining Joe Satriani and Steve Vai on tour. In many ways, our band would not be what it is if not for the impact of these two icons. Getting a chance to hit the U.S. with them is a bucket-list experience.”

Get your tickets now.

WIN TICKETS!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see SatchVai Band in Oakland, California, on Saturday, April 4, please send an email and put put “SatchVai” in the subject. Include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go. Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide their own transportation to the Fox Theater in Oakland, California, and have their own accommodations in the area. Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

GP Presents SatchVai Band plus Animals As Leaders

Saturday, April 4

8:00 p.m.

Fox Theater

Oakland, CA

We'll be handing out free packs of Martin strings

Get Tickets

When vocalist Alissa White-Gluz announced her departure from Swedish band Arch Enemy late last year, she hinted at “big news” around the corner. It quickly transpired that the singer was embarking on a solo career to “express myself in ways that have been dormant for years,” linking up with Kamelot and former Doro guitarist Oliver Palotai for her debut single, "The Room Where She Died."

It appears that collaboration was a one-off. The singer has just announced a new band featuring two guitarists with bright futures: former Iron Maidens guitarist Alyssa Day and Danielle Sophia.

Day was praised by Joe Satriani last year, saying “she can shred any guy out there,” and using her as an example of the positive changes currently reshaping the electric guitar and music industries.

The “Surfing with the Alien” virtuoso had pointed to Day, who has made her name predominantly through social media, away from traditional record labels, when discussing how the digital age has leveled the playing field for players around the world.

“With the digital age, music production has become democratized,” he argued. “Everybody can make a decent musical product at home with their laptop. And this has been a good thing for people who, maybe because of their sex or their appearance, have been cut out of the music scene, because they don't fit. They don't have a TV look, or they don't have the right sound for a particular radio station.”

Across Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, Day has amassed a following of around 175,00 people, while she’s scored endorsements with Seymour Duncan and Jackson guitars along the way. She's also collaborated with Ibanez artist Lari Basilio and self-released three singles.

Likewise, Sophia has built an online reputation through her playing, which has roots in metal and jazz.

White-Gluz’s post unveiling the two guitarists, captioned as “meet the band. Soon you’ll meet the music,” has also seen Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss offer some kind words of support.

“Sheesh, bringing out the heavy hitters,” she commented enthusiastically. “Can’t wait to hear this.”

In fact, Satriani believes the current crop of players breaking out of their bedrooms and onto stages — with Sophie Lloyd another great example — are leagues above him and his generational counterparts. That, he says, is welcome news.

“We need newer, smarter people to solve the human condition in every field — scientists, doctors, writers,” he said last year. “We need better, smarter, every single day. That's the whole point.

“We have children, and we raise better human beings to help us, so we don’t become extinct,” he expands. “And, if you're not excited about new players, then that's pretty sad. I'm excited about just about every player I see. I champion it, I always have.”

He may be a world-class shredder, but Joe Satriani is also celebrated for his work as a guitar teacher, and with good reason. His past students include some of rock and metal’s most celebrated players, including Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett, Alex Skolnick and Primus technical expert Larry LaLonde.

But not everyone has clicked with his teachings.

Cake guitarist Xan McCurdy says he wasn't thrilled about his Satch studies. After first picking up electric guitar at age 12 to impress his brothers, McCurdy developed an appreciation for “super mod and British sounds” in his teenage years. That led him to link up with teachers in the Berkeley, California area, including Satriani, in the mid 1980s.

“I felt like he was trying to build an army of shredders,” he says. “Like nonsensical, not musical things; just finger exercises. It was not even scales, just, like, getting your hands to flow, and have the ultimate dexterity, you know? And that was not what I was into because I did not care at all.”

Their differences boil down to two things: taste and, for McCurdy, a distaste for regimented routines.

“I mean, there was a moment when we all got into Van Halen,” he continues. “But I sort of found my little niche subculture world, and I was all about Chuck Berry and the blues guys.”

And so, while a generation of players practiced two-handed tapping and emulating the world’s hottest guitar player, McCurdy was putting his attention elsewhere.

“I didn’t take a lot of lessons, and he hated me because I didn’t practice his stuff enough,” he adds. “And then I found a guy who, instead of having this long-hair shred-master [vibe], this guy would just smoke a joint, and be like, ‘All right, so what do you wanna do?’”

That resonated with McCurdy, and he was able to home in on the parts of guitar playing that mirrored his emotional connection to music. His band's music grew past a sole adoration for Chuck Berry, with country, mariachi, disco, rock, folk music, and hip-hop all flavors for their widespread sound.

Obviously, not every had the same experience with Satch. Skolnick said he learned volumes from his strict attention to detail and practice. As his skills improved and he could go toe-to-toe with the local guitar teachers, he decided to study with their teacher.

“And the guys in the neighborhood had all studied with a guitar player named Joe,” he recalls. “I didn’t know anything about him. I just knew he was an Italian guy. His name’s Joe, and he’s a very serious musician. If you don’t do your homework, he’ll fire you as a student.

“Years later, everybody knows who that is. But at the time, he was this local legend. So I studied with him for a couple years, and that obviously had a huge impact.”

Skolnick's time with thrash icons Testament ultimately got him a gig with Ozzy, but it would be curtains after just one show — even though he doesn't believe his playing was the problem.

As for Satch, he's not teaching anymore, but he does keep an eye on up-and-coming talent, including one next-gen player who he says can “shred any guy out there.”

Brian May has the résumé of a rock god, but he doesn’t see himself as a dot on other players' fretboards, and that’s forced him to reconsider his approach to the electric guitar.

He was voted the greatest rock guitarist of all time in a 2020 Total Guitar poll, a feat he also repeated three years later. For that matter, his “Bohemian Rhapsody” guitar solo is deemed one of the greatest ever written. Yet he feels his playing is limited.

“I have none of that high-speed, high technical skill of a Steve Vai or a Joe Satriani,” he told MOJO in 2017, three years before his first poll-topping triumph.”

However, like David Gilmour, who has also admitted that shredding proved beyond his capabilities, May has played to his strengths.

“What I have is a connection between the mind and the fingers, which just serves me in a particular way,” he explains. “I find that I can connect what’s in my head through the fingers to what’s coming out, and it’s quite a smooth connection.”

His relationship with the guitar — in particular his one-of-a-kind Red Special — is almost telepathic.

“You get to the point where you can almost turn off any kind of thinking process,” he says. “You just allow what’s in your head to go through your fingers.”

Moreover, May believes that, contrary to some, tone isn’t solely about the gear someone uses.

“I think a huge amount of a guitarist’s sound is in the fingers, and in the body and mind, as well as the way it’s played,” he continues. “You own a guitar, play it, and it becomes a part of you more and more as time goes on.

“The sound that people mainly know me for is a guitar that sustains, and something happens to you when you hold a guitar like that in your hands.

“I always used to wonder about that when I was very first starting. I remember people used to sing and play at the same time, the same notes, and I thought: I wonder how that happens? And it happens through doing it for a lifetime.”

Of course, this is an instance where gear does play a role beyond being a conduit for noise making. His Red Special, handcrafted with his father over two years, features an irregular tremolo system that adds greatly to the instrument's sustain.

“The strings lock onto a milled steel plate, which pivots on a case-hardened knife edge,” he explains. “The tension of the strings is balanced by two motorcycle springs. There is very little friction in the system. I also designed a special bridge that has rollers that move, instead of the usual arrangement where the strings come over a fixed bridge.”

Still, while May understands that he can’t outgun the likes of Vai and Satriani, that hasn’t stopped him from letting fly from time to time. He 1983 collaboration with Eddie Van Halen — “Blues Breaker,” a whirlwind 13-minute solo fest — proves as much, even if Eric Clapton, to whom the song was dedicated, derided it as “horrible.” Most of the time, May's playing was more reserved, playing a small role in a much larger picture.

“I think the guitar, to me, is always secondary to the song,” he said during a Q&A at a Red Special fan event last year. “It's not an excuse to go in and show off. It's a way of enhancing whatever material you're using. So I'm always trying to coax different textures out of it — different sounds, different moves.”

That's why he says he had to fight Freddie Mercury to add a guitar solo to this Queen hit, feeling the song called for the texture some lead guitar would bring. It was but one piece of a much larger puzzle.

Such a mindset, he feels, outstrips fireworks for the sake of setting fire to something. But, like Gilmour, he was able to reframe a limitation to find a more unique voice on the instrument.

Meanwhile, Noel Gallagher has revealed the hilarious response he gave his son when he asked his dad why he couldn’t shred like the players on Instagram.

And in related news, May made a surprise at Coachella back in April, playing a Queen classic with Benson Boone. He has also criticized potential law changes that will favour AI companies, and discussed why Jeff Beck's playing was unmatched.

Eddie Van Halen’s love of Eric Clapton’s Cream-era guitar playing is well known. The guitarist talked in depth about learning Clapton’s licks and solos note for note in his first-ever interview, with Jas Obrecht, in Guitar Player’s July 1978 issue.

What’s less well known is that Eddie had also learned the Who’s Live at Leeds album down to each of Pete Townshend’s riffs and solos.

In a new interview with Professor of Rock, former Van Halen bass guitarist Michael Anthony recalled his first jams with Eddie and his brother Alex, saying he was particularly impressed by Eddie’s ability to perform Townshend’s parts perfectly.

“When I jammed with Eddie and Alex that first time, they played some of their original stuff,” Anthony explains. “They were going through these time changes, and I’m like, ‘Whoa! What a trip!’

What's more, says Anthony, “He could play the whole Live at Leeds album, playing it note for note. It was just as good, if not better than Townshend!”

Released in 1970, Live at Leeds is celebrated as one of rock’s great live albums, and one that marked a turning point for the Who. By the dawn of the '70s, they’d become known as one of rock’s greatest performance acts, but they had yet to release a live album. They were also concerned that the success of 1969’s Tommy rock opera had boxed them in as an art-rock group.

The time was right for the Who to make a live album. They had recorded some shows from the Tommy tour but were unhappy with the sound. Early in 1970, they booked a pair of shows with the intent of recording them for an album. They included a February 14 concert at Leeds University and another the following day at Hull City Hall.

By this point Townshend’s stage gear consisted of 1968/’69 Gibson SG Specials in Cherry finish and a pair of customized master-volume Hiwatt CP103 “Super Who 100” heads, as well as a Shaftesbury Duo fuzz pedal. A WEM Copycat tape echo was applied to his guitar at the soundboard. Townshend would switch to using SG Specials in Polaris White finish in 1972. The SG would remain his main electric guitar until 1973, when he switched to the Les Paul Deluxe.

Townshend talent for coaxing a wide range of tones from such a simple rig was impressive. And, as it turns out, Van Halen wasn’t the only famous guitarist moved by Townshend’s work on Live at Leeds. Joe Satriani was blown away by the sound he was able to achieve from his gear, and picked the disc as one of the 10 albums that changed his life. He added that it would be his sole pick if he could choose only one.

“Pete Townshend, to me, is another one of those amazing musicians who put so much energy and originality into his playing,” Satch said. “He risks everything for the performance and the expression, which is another thing that I love dearly. When I see a performer just go crazy like that — and the fact that his rhythm playing is just unbelievable — I’m blown away. And his choices for guitar sounds are just unbelievable.

“It's the whole thing with him. He’s such an original. So if I had to pick one album, it would be Live at Leeds because I can’t even fathom the fact that he’s got the guitar on the right side and the reverb and the tape echo in the center. It’s just the craziest thing. I still don’t understand how that band, with those three guys playing, made such a beautiful sound where you didn’t want for another instrument. I still can’t understand it. It’s pure magic.”

Unlike many of his peers, Joe Satriani isn’t a vintage gear obsessive. That's not to say he doesn't own a few classic axes. In fact, he shared a few gems from his collection with us back in 2020.

But even then, he was culling the herd. For that matter, he never understood the hype about vintage guitars — or the prices they command.

Long before his name was up in lights as a shred supremo, Satriani spent a decade teaching guitar out of Second Hand Guitars in Berkeley, California. The likes of Steve Vai, Alex Skolnick and super-collector Kirk Hammett all drank from his fountain of knowledge. The gig also afforded him the chance to wrap his hands around gear that would make Joe Bonamassa drool.

Satriani, though, didn’t gel with this slew of vintage picks.

“Working in a vintage guitar shop, you kind of get disillusioned about the price of these things and what they actually sound like,” he says in a new video with D’Addario.

“After hours, we would sit there, my friends and I, and we would play all these guitars that were supposedly the most expensive, the most valuable, rare guitars. And they'd be like, ‘There's nothing special about it.’

It's easy for players to be seduced by the magic of vintage guitars. They come from a time when the craftsmanship was meant to be on another scale, and players can source guitars with beautiful backstories, like Joe Bonamassa's "Royal Albert" Les Paul, that set him back a tidy $190,000.

And, of course, there’s the thrill of the chase — finding an ultra-rare Gibson Les Paul in a second-hand store is far more exciting than ordering a brand-new build direct from Gibson.

But when it came to an instrument’s performance, Satriani felt unmoved by the guitars he tried. That, he says, is the most important qualifier of a good guitar.

“The musician has to connect with the guitar for it to become special,” he ascertains.

His answer, several years down the line, was to make the most of his blossoming relationship with Ibanez. He wanted to look forward, not back.

“I thought, We can start building our own guitars,” he says. That led to the creation of his first signature guitar, the JS1, which arrived in 1990 and has since been followed by the JS2 (dubbed "Chromeboy"), the JS3 and an ever-growing line of JS guitars.

Since then, there's been an ambitious Crystal Planet JS prototype, which is completely see-through and even features glass bobbins, plus countless other models that have pushed Ibanez's luthiers to their limits.

And when it came to replicating Eddie Van Halen's tone on the Best of All Worlds tour, Satriani modded off-the-shelf axes instead of trawling vintage guitar stores for period-correct models.

The other vintage guitar sticking point, in Satriani’s eyes, is the inflated prices. And it’s easy to see where his grievances lie there. The original “Royal Albert” owner had spent £50 on the electric guitar in the late ‘60s, which is a drop in the ocean compared to JoBo’s outlay.

Then there’s the Kapa Minstrel, the once budget-priced $135 guitar that’s garnered a sizable reputation in the intervening years, and a price tag to match at around six times the original price.

David Gilmour might be inclined to agree with him. The former Pink Floyd guitarist said he couldn't pick out his famous Black Strat in a blindfold test against Fender's reissue models. That admission holds a lot of weight considering the original Black Strat, which featured on The Dark Side of the Moon and Pink Floyd's legendary Live at Pompeii performance, became the most expensive guitar sold at auction when it went for just shy of $4 million in 2019.

Elsewhere, Satriani has said he's happy that a whole generation of guitarists is out-shredding him, has come to the defense of Kurt Cobain's guitar chops, and revealed that he convinced Jeff Beck to sign up for a G3 tour, only for the maverick guitarist to pull out last minute.

Last year, when Joe Satriani and Steve Vai issued their incandescent collaborative track, “The Sea of Emotion, Part 1,” millions of fans across the globe celebrated the news they’d been waiting decades to hear, that the two electric guitar virtuosos were finally — finally — recording together.

As it turns out, that’s partially true. During a Zoom chat with Guitar Player, streaming below, Satch and Vai revealed that, yes, they are working on an official album project, due sometime next year, but their first dual recording occurred when they were teenagers in the 1970s, when Satriani, then the hotshot neighborhood axe-slinger, taught guitar newbie Vai lessons — for five bucks an hour.

Vai recalls that Satriani recently sent him a reel-to-reel tape of a jam they’d recorded called “Reflections of a Year and a Half.” “It was just Joe playing some chords and me struggling through this riff,” he says. “I transferred it to digital and thought, Wow, this is great to have. It's like, eight minutes, 10 minutes long, and we're just jamming.”

The two had already recorded “The Sea of Emotion, Part 2,” but Vai was intrigued by this early recording. “I thought, What would a Part Three sound like?’ So I went back to the tape and took a little snippet of it, the riff, and we use that on the record… We took elements of that and wrote another piece of music around it.”

Satriani laughs.

“We peaked at 16 years old!” Vai adds, “It's so great. Everytime I hear it, I'm that teenager again, just being totally fascinated with everything that was happening.”

In advance of the full album, Satriani and Vai — or SatchVai, as they’re billing themselves — have just issued the rousing new song “I Wanna Play My Guitar,” featuring Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple, Black Country Communion) on vocals. As fist-in-the-air rock anthems go, it’s hooky and full of swagger. And — no surprise — it’s packed with bravura guitar work.

Explaining the inspiration for the song, Satriani says, “How did we feel as kids? Steve and I growing up on Long Island, dreaming about being rock and roll superstar guitar players… Silly teenage dreams, but what did that really mean?

“Now that I'm an adult and I have a stronger handle on how to express myself, how can I bring some of those memories of what we experience to life in a mature way? And although this isn't very mature, I’m saying, ‘I want to turn it up loud. I want to drive you crazy and all that kind of stuff.’

“Meanwhile, I'm thinking, Glenn and Steve are going to hear this, and they're never going to let me forget how bad it is. But it was finished and it's a collaboration, so I'm like, ‘Guys, you got to help me do this. I know the song's going to be great, but there are bits that really suck right now.’

“And they came to the party when we finally had that vocal session. It was great to get Steve and Glenn to come in and help bring the song together and add some great elements to it to make it really take off.

“But at the heart of it is just a teenage kid who wants to go to the garage, plug in and turn really loud and just annoy everybody.”

This June, the SatchVai Band (which also includes drummer Kenny Aronoff, bassist Marco Mendoza and guitarist Pete Thorn) heads to Europe for the debut of their Surfing With the Hydra tour. To hear Satch and Vai tell it, the idea of joining forces to form their own group was something they had always planned on — one day. “It just kind of showed up,” Vai says. “It was a plan sort of in the background our whole lives, but it did just kind of happen all of a sudden. ‘Hey, we're doing this now! Look around — we're doing it!’”

“Like Steve said, we always knew it would happen,” Satriani says. “We just hadn't really worked out the details.”

He recounts how everything started to come together following the conclusion of the 2024 G3 reunion tour in which the two were joined by Eric Johnson. Satch and Vai were gung-ho for a 2025 run of dates, but Johnson was already booked.

“Steve and I decided, ‘Well, we'll just keep going,’ but we didn't want to make it a G2,” Satriani says. “Somebody from either one of our camps said, “Oh, wouldn't it be great if you had a track to sort of announce the fact that it's just the two of you going out?’ And we thought, ‘Oh, yeah, great.’

“Then all of a sudden we just start writing and recording, and there you go. It just sort of snowballed from, ‘Wouldn't it be great if you had a second track? How about an album?’ And we thought, Wow, I guess it's here. It has arrived.”

Joe Satriani and Steve Vai are about to drop the debut song from the SatchVai Band, and Guitar Player has an audio exclusive of the new track.

Titled “I Wanna Play My Guitar,” the tune is a blistering tribute to guitar shred and hard rock, featuring the SatchVai Band — Satriani and Vai, rhythm guitarist Pete Thorn, bass guitar player Marco Mendoza and drummer Kenny Aronoff — with Glenn Hughes on vocals.

The track is a monster whose theme is perfectly suited to a group that features not one but two electric guitar virtuosos, riffing and playing lead work in precise, tight tandem.

“When I started writing this song I had no idea how important the contributions from Glenn and Steve would be,” Satriani says. “What they brought to the track made it all happen.”

As Satch reveals, he originally intended Hughes and the Darkness singer Justin Hawkins would share vocals.

“I got this crazy idea on the Monsters of Rock Cruise where Glenn and Justin were both performing,” he explains. “Unfortunately, when I got back from the cruise I tested positive for COVID and I entered into a 10-day fog, forgetting if I had sent the invitations to collaborate.

“When I finally recovered, I heard back from Justin‘s people that the Darkness was going to be releasing a record at the same time and he wouldn’t be able to contribute to the song, so, I sent a rough demo to Glenn and he was into it.

“I pray no one ever hears that demo of me singing into my iPhone!”

For Vai, “I Wanna Play My Guitar” encapsulates the single-mindedness of his and Joe’s youth as budding guitarists.

"This song depicts all that Joe and I used to think about as teenagers. All of the things we loved about pounding rock and roll and the glorious guitar,” he says. “It is an absolute phenom for us to be able to present to you now our teenage aspirations in this song.

“I remember those days and how absolutely exciting it was to play the guitar. Our whole world revolved around it as if it was a mysterious monolith, as it is, and I know that there are teenagers right now that are feeling the same thing about this sacred instrument when they play it.

”It feels like freedom and joy and I recommend everybody find some time in their life to play the guitar. And to be able to hear the mighty voice of one of our childhood heroes on this track, the great Glenn Hughes is more than the icing on the cake, enjoy!”

Satriani and Vai announced the SatchVai Band in December 2024. The musical union came about after the guitarists and their respective bands played their first tour together — outside of their G3 dates — earlier in the year.

The SatchVai Band marks the first time in their musical careers that the two electric guitar virtuosos and lifelong friends have performed in a band and composed together.

The duo released a brief clip of the band's rehearsal footage in April. The tantalizing minute-long video featured Vai soloing over Satriani’s "If I Could Fly," before both guitarists performed the iconic two-hand-tapped run in Satch's "Always With Me, Always With You."

The duo then harmonized on Vai's "For the Love of God" before the clip ended with them performing the main riff from Metallica’s "Enter Sandman." The tune was a staple on the G3 reunion tour and a significant cut, considering that Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett was, like Vai, once one of Satriani’s guitar students.

The SatchVai Band will undertake their debut road show, the Surfing With the Hydra tour, this summer. The road show kicks off June 13, in York, England, with dates scheduled in the U.K. and Europe through August 2.

In one of the wildest claims of 2025 so far, Sammy Hagar says his new single was co-written with Eddie Van Halen over a year after he died, saying the guitarist had contacted him “from beyond,” while also revealing secret talks held before his death.

Speaking to Rolling Stone about the dream that inspired his new song, “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight”—which features some tastefully EVH-channeling lead playing from Joe Satriani—Hagar says Eddie had come to help him write it in a dream.

“This was one hundred percent a communication from the beyond,” he ascertains. “There is no question about it. I dream about Eddie all the time, quite honestly.

“He had a guitar around his neck,” Hagar says. “And we were having a love fest since we hadn’t seen each other in a long time. And he just started playing this riff, and I started singing”—before realizing the man he was jamming with was dead. Then he woke up.

“I grabbed a pad and a pencil,” he continues. “I got my iPhone. My wife’s screaming, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Writing a song!’ It just kept coming and coming. When I got up the next day, I grabbed my guitar and started to figure out the chords.”

The song sat unfinished on his phone for two years, but the formation of his Best of All Worlds band—Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony, and Jason Bonham (later replaced by Kenny Aronoff)—helped bring one final tribute to his former bandmate to life. Satriani, who had previously said he purposefully never tried to play like Eddie, encouraged the singer to finish it.

“When I told Joe about the dream and played him the thing, he went, ‘Oh man. Hell yeah. Let’s finish that. That’s a cool song,’” Hagar recalls.

It starts with Satriani delivering a slew of deft two-handed tapping licks and rarely lets up. He does a heartfelt and dazzling Eddie impression throughout, weaving between seismic power chords with dive bombs and flashy licks.

Hagar, meanwhile, sings of his gratitude for having known Eddie: “Thank you for the music, thank you for the songs, thank you for the good times,” he bellows in the chorus.

“This song is my final bow to that part of my life,” Hagar said ahead of the song’s release. “It’s not meant to be anything more than a thank-you—with love, with respect, and with one hell of a guitar solo.”

Hagar's last involvement with Van Halen—something he calls “the pinnacle of my career”—was in 2004. He and longtime bass player Michael Anthony watched from the sidelines as the Van Halen brothers linked up with David Lee Roth for the final iteration of the band.

But the vocalist says he reconnected with Eddie Van Halen as the guitarist battled the cancer that would ultimately take his life in 2020. Plans for another Hagar-fronted tour with Van Halen, he says, were discussed.

“I miss the guy so much,” he tells the Los Angeles Times. “Thank God we connected towards the end; otherwise, I’d be heartbroken. It was so important to me that we did connect in that last year.”

“Eddie said to me, ‘Don’t tell anyone about us talking because I don’t want to be answering questions about rumors of a reunion. Next year, we’re gonna get together—we’re gonna make some noise. Let me beat this shit, and let’s do it.’”

Hagar kept this conversation—likely from 2019 or 2020—quiet until now to honor the guitarist’s wishes.

“He goes, ‘Please don’t talk to anyone—not even Al [Van Halen],’” Hagar now relays. “I’ve never said that to anyone, and I bet you Al is gonna have a fucking fit. But Eddie said, ‘Don’t even talk to Al about this.’”

Reflecting on the tour that never was and life after Eddie's passing, Hagar's conversation with the Los Angeles Times takes a somber turn.

“Things aren’t the same without that hope,” he mourns. “I was hoping that would happen, that we’d get together and play someday. And not only for the fame and fortune—which of course I’ve never gotten back to that level since. That was the pinnacle of my career.

“But more than that was the creativity and the energy we had together, writing songs like ‘Right Now’ and ‘Love Walks In’. He brought something out of me that just ain’t the same without him. At my age, you sit there and wonder: If Eddie was alive, could I reach that again? Now that dream is gone.”

Does the wood choice of a fretboard really impact a guitar’s tone? Ask big-name players like Joe Bonamassa and Joe Satriani and they’ll give you passionate reasons for why they lean on either side of the long-raging debate.

Ask Jimmie Vaughan and he’ll tell you it doesn’t make one iota of difference either way. And he’ll point to his late brother for proof.

Today, as manufacturer’s look for alternatives to dwindling supplies, fingerboards can be made out of a huge variety of woods. Pau ferro, laurel and wenge have since come to the fore, alongside Richlite, an ebony-like material made from paper and found on builds from Aristides and GOC.

Regardless of the growing options, fingerboard woods can fall quite naturally into light and dark categories. For many, a rosewood fretboard offers comfort and warmth, while a maple neck supposedly offers greater note clarity.

Joe Satriani veers away from maple, believing it isn't a consistent wood, and opts for rosewood in his Ibanez signature guitars.

“Say you bring eight guitars on tour, getting all the maple-neck guitars,” he said last year. “It is just a piece of wood. It grows out of the ground and Mother Nature decides what's it gonna sound like.

“I owned a '54 Strat, and I loved it. It had a maple neck, and I thought it was the greatest guitar, but I did not have a job then where I had to play melodies and solos nonstop for two and a half hours. And so, this job of being a solo artist has changed my needs as a guitar player.”

Joe Bonamassa, meanwhile, is firmly in the maple camp. Writing in his Guitar World column in 2023, he said “one can argue that a rosewood ’board results in more of a Stevie Ray Vaughan-type sound,” but added, “I always refer to maple-neck Strats as the 'Buddy Holly' guitar, and great players such as Eric Johnson, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix are also well known for playing maple-neck Strats.

“To my ears, the notes jump off it in a different way, as compared to a rosewood ’board.”

Although Bonamassa believes rosewood ‘boards are responsible for SRV-type tones, the Vaughan family seemingly aren’t as quick to make that connection.

Discussing all things gear and tonewoods with Guitar World in a new interview, Jimmie Vaughan spotlighted his prized 1963 Fender Stratocaster. It had a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard, but he swapped it out for a maple neck and didn't notice a difference between the two.

“The body is from a ’63 Strat, but the neck is one [Austin blues guitarist] Bill [Campbell,] gave to me, so I guess it’s kind of a ‘parts’ guitar,” he says of its Frankenstein nature. “It was really put together by Charley’s Guitar Shop in Dallas and René Martinez, who was a fantastic guitar tech.”

And it turns out his reasons for swapping the neck out weren’t tonal.

“I’d wanted a white Strat for years; it felt like it was unobtainable when I was a kid,” he sighs. “I remember seeing Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps in an old movie, and they all had white Strats with the maple neck. I just thought it looked better than the dark rosewood, so I replaced it.

“I know there are people who think it makes a big difference to the sound, but I really don’t think it does,” he adds. “I know Stevie always sounded the same whether it was a rosewood or maple neck.”

The debate extends beyond the realms of the Strat too, with Jason Isbell, the current owner of Ed King's legendary “Red Eye” Les Paul, believing rosewood is “more forgiving,” when it comes to Telecasters and that they “soften things up a little.”

By his own admission, Joe Satriani can often let his imagination get the better of him. Thankfully, he’s surrounded by some incredibly talented people to help make his wild ideas slightly less wild realities.

The custom-built 1999 Crystal Planet take on his Ibanez JS signature guitar is a rather transparent example of that, and it has just sold for $10,000. The guitar was the centerpiece of a collection of gear owned and played by Satch that is listed on Bananas at Large , and it’s a thing to be marveled at.

As the millennium beckoned, Satriani was readying his seventh solo album, Crystal Planet, and a celebratory build to promote the album seemed the perfect tonic. A fully see-through guitar — even the pickup bobbins are glass-like — was a great idea on paper. In reality, it was littered with problems that Juniji Hotta had to solve in the Ibanez Custom Shop in 1999.

“We had to make decisions with stuff that normally you would hide,” Satriani tells Bananas at Large, his eyes fixed on the wires nestling beneath its controls.

“Then the weight is really substantial. It feels like a ’73 Les Paul, or something like that! But when I saw it, I couldn't believe how cool it was.

“I love the clear knobs, you never see pickups like that. And I have to point out that there are earplugs that are squished into the corner here,” he says, pointing to the pickups. As it happens, the plugs offered a simple solution to a rather noisy problem.

“This has to do with the way I used to set up the guitars and the amps,” he explains. “I'd be using a Boss DS-1 into a Marshall 6100. That's a ton of low-end and a ton of gain, and very often these pickups would pick up on those frequencies and they start vibrating.

“Waxing wasn't enough, so we would stuff foam or earplugs in there to stop them from vibrating. It allowed me to keep the gain up and still play melodies that sounded sweet. The earplugs are still in there.”

As is to be expected, the one-of-a-kind prototype, it is well-kitted out. It boasts 22 frets, two DiMarzio humbuckers — a DiMarzio FRED in the bridge position, and a DiMarzio PAF Pro in the neck slot — a Lo-Pro edge tremolo and a rosewood fingerboard.

A short production run of the guitar launched Satch's Y2K range of signature guitars, but this is the only custom-built model.

Impressively too, despite its acrylic nature, Satriani says “it sounds like a JS.”

“It really is a thing of beauty,” he says. “You'd think some of these different body products would really change the sound,” and Hotta is to thank for that.

“I actually got some notes from Junji about his time with it, and it's such an unusual thing because he usually just oversees, it's rare to have him actually build [the guitar].”

Discussing the guitar on his YouTube channel in 2021, Satriani admitted the project was wildly ambitious and called it “a good example of how, as artists, you have to blindly move forward with crazy ideas”.

The guitar was listed for a tidy $10,000 and has since sold. However, the rest of the collection is still listed at the time of writing. That includes a 2016 Fender Custom Shop Telecaster with an SSH pickup setup and a relic finish.

There are also two 100-watt EVH 5150III tube amps, built to the same exacting specs as Eddie Van Halen’s latter-year touring rigs.

Meanwhile, Satriani has explained how he nearly had Jeff Beck agree to a G3 tour, only to pull out with a strange replacement suggestion at the last minute, and has reflected on the hardest Van Halen song he had to tackle on the Best of All Worlds tour.

Joe Satriani says, “He’s the guitar player I wish I was: looks great, plays great, knows every piece of gear.”

Meanwhile, Steve Vai says, “His tone is amazing — fat and warm. And when he plays those big rock chords, they’re all in tune. That’s harder to do than you think.”

Who are the two electric guitar gods raving about? His name is Pete Thorn, a veteran sideman whose extensive resume includes tours with Chris Cornell, Don Henley and Melissa Etheridge, among many others.

Recently, the Canadian-born, self-described guitar nerd was tapped by Satch and Vai to handle rhythm guitar duties in their first-ever group, the SatchVai Band, which will also feature bassist Marco Mendoza and drummer Kenny Aronoff. For Thorn, the prospect of playing alongside two of his guitar heroes on their upcoming Surfing With the Hydra Tour is nothing short of surreal.

“It’s like the 14-year-old me wakes up from a dream in which Joe Satriani calls and says, ‘I’m starting a band with Steve Vai. Do you want to join?’” Thorn says. “That’s crazy! You have to understand — when I grew up, my primary guitar influences were Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. This is like a full-circle moment for me. I can’t tell you how exciting this is.”

Thorn is no stranger to auditions, but as he tells it, he nabbed the SatchVai gig based on his experience alone.

“Joe called me and said that he’d listened to my second solo album, Pete Thorn II. He said, ‘You get rock, you understand rock. I'm looking for that sort of guy.’

“After that, I had a face-to-face meeting with Joe and we discussed some of our favorite guitar players. We had a long conversation about Ritchie Blackmore. I think he was feeling me out to confirm his assumption that I'm a rock guy.”

A few days later, Thorn connected with Vai at a performance by Beat, the 1980s King Crimson group Vai fronts with Adrian Belew.

“Steve asked me if I got together with Joe,” Thorn says with a laugh. “We haven’t all played together yet, but we’ve got a rehearsal schedule, so we’re going to do that soon.”

Backing up two guitar monsters could prove a daunting assignment for most players, but Thorn takes a measured view of his upcoming role.

“I always say, ‘I’m there to be of service,’” he says. “They both obviously have layered parts in their music that will require each of them, and I’m there to fill in the gaps. In many ways, it’s no different than what I’ve done backing up lead singers. In this case, the lead singers are Joe and Steve. To me, it’s the same thing.”

In the following interview, Thorn opens up about auditions, band chemistry and how he knows when he’s done his job just right. He also offers some sage advice for guitarists hoping to nail that big gig.

It’s interesting that you were picked to join the SatchVai Band without an audition. That isn’t the usual way things work, right?

Not usually, but the older that you get and the more you do this stuff, the less you're asked to do auditions. Not that I'm above it — I'm not. I'm happy to go and play and throw my hat in the ring. I've done that for gigs in the last few years.

A little while ago, I did a tour with Nick Carter from Backstreet Boys, and that had an audition. I went down and saw a lot of guys I remember from 15 years ago. I went in, did the audition and got the gig.

Obviously, you’re a versatile guitarist, but let’s talk about chemistry. How do you blend in and form a bond with an artist or band? You have to do it pretty quickly, too.

That's part of the skill of the sideman. I guess the more gigs you do, the more experience you gather, and that allows you to develop your ability to listen to other people, to read the room and adjust your playing.

If you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you’ve honed your musical and personality skills. There can also be unspoken chemistry — you play with a drummer for the first time, and it just feels right. When that happens, you kind of internalize it.

Backing up a star requires a lot of thought. In a way, you have to be Clark Kent most of the time, but onstage you get to be Superman for short periods. You’re not the rock star, but when you get onstage, you’re expected to go toe to toe with that person. You do your thing, you rip a solo, but then you need to step back. You go offstage and you turn into Clark Kent again.

You’re also expected to learn a lot of material, sometimes to the letter. I assume Don Henley wanted you to perform the “Hotel California” solo just like the recorded version.

Sure. I was Joe Walsh in that role. Don was very inclined to want it to just like the record. There were moments in the set when I could step out and do my thing a little bit, but generally speaking, he likes things like the record. And why not? They're classic songs, right?

Your audition process for Chris Cornell wasn’t a snap. You had two callbacks before you got the gig.

That was kind of typical for a lot of auditions: You might go down on the first day and get called back, sometimes a couple of times. It took Chris a few days to settle on people. That third day was amazing, especially when I got home and got a call from management saying I’d gotten the gig.

But the work started right away. I was told, “Chris is hiring you guys. We’re going on the road, and rehearsals start tomorrow.” I was sent songs to learn, and every night for the next three weeks I would get an email with three MP3s in it. There’d be songs like “Say Hello to Heaven,” “Hunger Strike,” “Show Me How to Live,” and the next day it’d be “Jesus Christ Pose” and other songs.

I couldn’t believe it — “I get to play these songs!” It was a magical time.

For Chris, you had to tackle songs from his solo career as well as Soundgarden and Audioslave material. That’s a lot of different sounds and styles.

That’s right. He wouldn’t micromanage — that wasn’t his thing. He would sometimes say, “That sound — could you do a little more of that part instead of the other part?” Or he’d say, “Could you play the other part that's on the record? I think it's more important than what you're doing there.”

But that was few and far between. Otherwise, he was very happy. We did “Black Hole Sun,” which starts with slide on one tone, and then it’s more distorted and you have the arpeggios and the rotary Leslie sounds. I played that and turned to him, and he said, “Sounds exactly like the album.” I thought to myself, Great. I’m doing my job.

That’s got to be a great feeling.

Absolutely. When you get in the room and you’re relaxed, you’ve learned your parts, the sounds are good, and the artist turns around and is like, Ahhhh… That’s my goal. I'm a problem solver kind of person. To bring that good energy in and try to get to the place where you're contributing and everybody's firing on all cylinders, that’s when you think, Okay, this isn't going to be as hard as I thought. That's what the artist is thinking, too, hopefully.

Here’s the other thing: My goal is to go in the room, and the first time you play a song with the artist, even at an audition, and it’s so good that you think, That could be the gig. If this was the gig right now, we’d be pretty good!

Given all the sounds and styles you cover, one would assume you need a boatload of guitars.

I do have a lot of guitars, probably 70 or so. Whatever sound an artist is looking for, you want to be able to say, “Oh yeah, I’ve got that.” I've got a line of signature guitars with Suhr. I’ve been playing their guitars for a while. I bought my first one in 2004 and had it flown across the country. I opened up the case, started playing it, and I thought, “Wow… it’s in tune!” That impressed me.

After that, I bonded with the company and started working with them. I wanted guitars that would fit sonically in a lot of situations, and I wanted them to look distinctive yet familiar and classic. I can play these guitars with Melissa Etheridge, I can play them with Joe and Steve — they really go across the lines.

Long ago, Joe Satriani decided Eddie Van Halen’s virtuoso body of work was off limits. Fearful of inadvertently stealing the maestro's licks, he vowed never to learn Ed's riffs or licks, and said breaking that rule would be "torture.”

Then, last year, Satch did exactly that when he signed up for the Best of All Worlds tour. Joining forces with Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Jason Bonham, the guitarist took to stages across the U.S. to pay tribute to Ed.

Doing so was no small feat, and he's now revealed which of Van Halen's songs gave him the most trouble.

Even before he got around to playing the songs, Satriani had quite a lot to deal with. Realizing that his live rig wasn't suited to the task at hand, he turned to 3rd Power Amps for a custom-made tube amp designed to replicate his favorite era of Eddie’s tone.

He also made some choice modifications to his signature Ibanez guitars and left no stone unturned in his pursuit of Ed's tone and technique. That attention to detail left Hagar thrilled with Satch's effort, despite his belief that the guitarist was not — on paper at least — a “perfect match” for Ed.

Turning to the songs, Satch also came to realize that the order of the setlist is as important as how he plays and sounds.

“Opening with ‘Good Enough’, ‘Poundcake’ and ‘Runaround’ is amazing,” Satriani tells Guitar World. “I quickly realized that the order of Eddie’s embellishments is really important to the fans. Even though Ed would move things around, this audience knows the studio versions and they will want the scream here, the harmonic cascades there and the finger tapping there.”

The audience’s ear for nuances aside, a few songs proved tricky to master.

“The ‘Poundcake’ drill is hard to nail,” he continues. “The beginning of ‘Summer Nights’ is difficult because of the picking and gain structure. I don’t think I got the intro right until halfway into the tour. It felt so odd to my fingers.”

Tonal diversity was another headscratcher. Satch designed his Dragon 100 amp — which is now available as a plugin — to capture Eddie’s transitional 1986 tone. It was an era, immortalized on the Live Without a Net live album, that saw the band pivot from David Lee Roth to Hagar, and it has come to stand as Satch’s favorite.

But Eddie wasn’t a one-trick pony when it came to tone. As Satriani says, “Ed had a million sounds. ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love’ to ‘Panama’ is a huge jump, then to ‘Summer Nights’ is a crazy jump.

"He went from mono to mono, with a little bit of stereo from the Eventide to widen the pitch, and then full stereo. He used Marshall, Soldano, Peavey and EVH. Those are huge changes in terms of preamp gain and compression. He went from a lot of midrange to quite scooped.

“So I asked Dylana Scott at 3rd Power Amplification to solve it for me,” Satch concludes. “We went for the 1986 Live Without a Net tone because it was all Marshalls but with extra stereo-ness.”

Indeed, it wasn’t a spur of the moment idea to chase that specific era of Eddie’s tone.

“Going back some years, when David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen first called me about a tribute, I started this deep search into Ed’s tone,” Satriani reveals. “His sound was lighter and thinner than my JVM, which was designed to make all my high notes super fat.

“That’s what I usually do for two hours onstage. I’m not playing many chords. But when I play with Sammy, it’s 95 percent rhythm and then eight or 16 bars of solo. A quick rip before coming back.”

In related news, Peavey’s CEO has suggested its signing of Joe Satriani is to blame for Eddie’s split from the firm, which led to the creation of the Fender-owned EVH brand.

Steve Lukather has also clarified the role he is playing in a reported new Van Halen album, which is being spearheaded by Alex, and is using Eddie’s unfinished demos as a launch pad.

Over an eight-year spell, Eddie Van Halen was Peavey’s poster boy, working closely with the U.S. gear maker to create the now-iconic 5150 amplifier and Wolfgang electric guitars. That ended abruptly in late 2004, and CEO Courtland Gray believes its signing of Joe Satriani is to blame for the breakdown in their relationship.

Talk at the time was of an amicable split, with the gear-obsessed virtuoso instead forging a new partnership with Fender, leading to the EVH brand that continues his legacy today.

Taking his amp and guitar trademarks with him, the EVH Wolfgang soon entered production, and several models followed since, including the Frankenstein. Many believed that Van Halen’s motivations centered on forming his namesake brand, but in a new interview with Guitar World, Gray says he believes other factors were at play.

“The best we can figure is that we joined up with Joe Satriani and made a signature amp with him called the JSX,” he suggests. “I think Eddie got rubbed up the wrong way because we had another superstar guitar player in our lineup, and he always figured he was the artist for Peavey. So he decided to leave.”

The timeline certainly matches up: Satriani’s signature three-channel, 120-watt amp head launching earlier that year.

However, while it was all smiles in public, the relationship grew frosty behind the scenes. Gray says that while Van Halen kept the 5150 name, “it was part of the agreement that we wouldn’t make the guitar if he didn’t make the amp”.

Tensions continued to grow when the guitarist seemed to go against the agreement.

“Shortly thereafter, we were at a trade show and heard this amp that sounded just like a 5150,” Gray recalls. “And sure enough, he’d come out with his own version. I think he even used our engineer to develop the new one.”

So Peavey, Gray says, hit back: “That was in 2005, around our 40th anniversary. Having been founded in 1965, we decided to call our amp the 6505.”

It's even gone on to release new iterations of the Wolfgang, or at least its essence, with the “streamlined hard-changing beast,” HP2 Poplar Burl RM landing in 2023.

Just five years later, Satriani turned to Marshall amps for his tour dates with the supergroup Chickenfoot, which also featured Sammy Hagar, Chad Smith and Michael Anthony. This reportedly led to another severed relationship.

Interestingly, when Hagar tapped up Satriani for his Van Halen–celebrating Best of All Worlds shows last year, the guitarist turned to 3rd Power Amps to re-create his favorite Van Halen tone, rather than returning to Peavey or Marshall.

Yet Gray doesn’t seem to hold grudges today. Asked about the legacy of the Peavey/Eddie Van Halen relationship, he says he’s grateful for the learnings it provided, and the status elevation it offered the brand.

“Eddie spent a lot of time over here in Meridian, checking the tones and tweaking everything bit by bit to make a great product,” he reflects. “I guess it must have been a big shock when little Peavey in Mississippi got the biggest guitar hero out there working on a signature product.”

"If you're not excited about new players, then that's pretty sad," Joe Satriani said recently. "I'm excited about just about every player I see. I champion it. I always have.”

Celebrating guitarists has been a mainstay in Joe Satriani's life and career, from teaching students like Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett to creating the G3 tour as a way to bring players together, despite hurdles he faced from managers who saw guitar virtuosity as a competition. Through it all, Satch has defied expectations and created bridges between players and genres. In recent months, he’s even applauded the guitar work of Kurt Cobain and celebrated the new generation of guitar players who are raising the bar higher.

Now Satch has expanded on that last point. In a new interview with WDHA-FM, he explains that the digital age of music has democratized music, allowing guitarists to excel and to put out their own music without having to worry about conforming to expectations.

In particular, he and host Terrie Carr discuss how more women are finding opportunities to excel and perform as guitar players, where doors were previously closed to them.

"If you happen to listen to Alyssa Day, she can shred any guy out there,” Satch says, pointing to the young YouTube influencer and member of the Iron Maidens. “So there's no difference in aptitude and availability of technical prowess. It really is just about whether they want to do it or not.”

Day is a perfect example of a young shredder who has built her own platform via YouTube, allowing her to reach others with her music and gear reviews and demos. She’s just one of many examples of how the digital age has opened the door for musicians who once had to rely on labels to reach a wider audience.

“With the digital age, music production has become democratized,” Satch says. “Everybody can pretty much make a decent musical product at home with their laptop, or their iPad, or something like that. And this has been a good thing for people who, maybe because of their sex or their appearance, have been cut out of the music scene, because they don't fit. They don't have a TV look, or they don't have the right sound for a particular radio station."

"That's all broken down. The artists and the fans connect without the need for the music industry infrastructure. This has been great for music. If you go to Instagram, you just see the most amazing guitar players from ages eight to 18. They're just playing better than guitar players have ever played before in the history of the world. So this is a great thing."

Satch and Steve Vai are currently ramping up their new group, the SatchVai Band, writing new songs and preparing for their inaugural Surfing With the Hydra tour this June. They’ve recently announced the addition of Pete Thorn to their lineup as rhythm guitarist.

Despite fears that drum machines and synthesizers would eclipse the guitar in pop music, the 1980s were an incredibly fertile time for electric guitar. Virtuoso soloists like Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson landed instrumental tunes on mainstream rock radio. Steve Val was in heavy rotation on MTV playing with former Van Haien mouthpiece David Lee Roth, and even had a role in the hit film Crossroads.

Then there was Eddie Van Haien, who — after raising the rock world's collective eyebrows with his solos on 1978's Van Halen and '79s Van Halen II — kept the heat up throughout the '80s with a slew of crowd-pleasing albums. Van Halen's celebrity extended beyond guitar culture. He could be seen regularly on MTV and had a cameo on Michael Jackson's mega-single "Beat It."

But virtuoso shred wasn't the only game in town. Many bands — including the Smiths, Bauhaus and U2 — featured guitarists who consciously avoided six-string histrionics. These players were texturalists who used broad palettes of effects to color and shade their music. Their approach grew in popularity, and by the mid '80s, no serious working guitarist could show up at a gig or recording session without the requisite chorus, delay and flanger pedals, or a rack full of digital processors and multieffects.

With the 1980s several decades behind us, we decided to look at the players who molded the sound of guitar back then. We didn't do it for nostalgia's sake. After all, there's loads of inspiration to be found in the tones and ideas these players hatched back in the day. Fire up Metallica's Kill 'Em All and hear just how devastating power chords can be. Spin a Michael Hedges disc and you'll never again think of acoustic guitar as the electric's folky cousin. Throw on a Police album and you're bound to get some new tonal inspiration. Step into the Guitar Player time machine, and you'll see what we mean as we present the decade's most innovative guitarists. They launched a revolution that continues to this day.

Daniel Ash

The goth-influenced soundscapes of English art-rockers Bauhaus and subsequent splinter group Tones on Tail (basically Bauhaus, sans lead singer Peter Murphy) spotlighted Ash's edgy-but-atmospheric tones and creative use of noise. And even when TOT later changed their name to Love and Rockets, and ventured in a more song-oriented direction, Ash never strayed from his ideal of texture over flash. "I love the idea of music that sounds like it comes from another world, but you can still tap your foot to it," he told GP in 1994. "I always found the notion of solos comical — just ego wanking."

Though the EBow was an essential part of Ash's razory sound since the beginning (often pressed directly against the neck pickup), he also relied on delay, flange and tremolo pedals, and employed such tricks as banging on a reverb-equipped amp to coax guitar sounds that were indistinguishable from synths, samples or industrial machinery.

KEY TRACKS "Bela Lugosi's Dead," "Terror Couple Kill Colonel," "Stigmata Martyr," "Hot Trip to Heaven"

1980s GEAR Burns guitars, H&H IC100S amp, Heet Sound EBow, DOD chorus and tremolo pedals, Watkins Copicat tape echo — AT

Adrian Belew

In an era when many guitarists felt threatened by the expansive sonic possibilities of synthesizers, Belew single-handedly proved the guitar to be a limitless tool for unheard-of sounds that no synth could match — from beautiful whale moans to jarring electronic screams. His mind-blowing sonic assaults made him one of the preeminent experimental rock guitarists of the 1980s, and landed him work with King Crimson, Laurie Anderson and David Bowie (on 1979's Lodger, then as Bowie's musical director for the '86 Sound and Vision tour). And Belew's not just a "noise" guy — he's also a master of subtlety. Listen to the Tom Tom Club's hit "Genius of Love." What sounds like a steel drum is actually Belew tapping the strings with one hand while manipulating the resonance control of an ADA flanger.

Belew's contributions to Talking Heads' 1980 release, Remain in Light, still stand as some of rock guitar's most monumentally creative offerings. "Talking Head's music at the time was very funk driven, one-chord stuff — a huge canvas for a guitarist to go wild," Belew told GP in 1990.

KEY TRACKS "The Great Curve" (with Talking Heads). "Elephant Talk" (with King Crimson). "Big Electric Cat," "Twang Bar King" (solo)

1980s GEAR Fender Strat, two modified Fender Mustangs, Roland JC-120 amplifiers, Foxx Tone Machine, various Electro-Harmonix and MXR effects units — DF

Warren Cuccurullo

To legions of pop fans, Missing Persons was all about Dale Bozzio. But as self-conscious and tragically trendy as the L.A. band's image may have been, the "guys" (bassist Patrick O'Hearn, drummer Terry Bozzio, and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo) were absolutely murderous players. All were alumni of Frank Zappa bands, and Cuccurullo's obsession with electronics would help forge Missing Persons into one of the '80s most modern-sounding acts. His massively processed textures, lush distortion washes and soaring, synth-like lines added mystery and excitement to what were, for the most part, merely clever pop songs. And, like Missing Persons' costuming and staging, Cuccurullo's contribution to guitarcraft was scrupulously calculated.

"I want to cut my own niche in rock guitar playing," he said in a February 1985 GP interview. "I want to be easily identifiable and known as a little wiz."

KEY TRACKS "Destination Unknown," "Give," "Mental Hopscotch," "Walking in LA.," "Words"

1980s GEAR Gibson SG and ES-335, self-designed "Missing Link" solidbody (with two necks joined by a loop), custom Performance guitar, custom Vox (assembled from a Vox wah, a Vox neck, and Vox pickups), 100-watt Marshall head and 4x12 cabinet, Garvin X-100B head, Mesa/Boogie head, ADA Flanger, Foxx Tone Machine, Heet Sound EBow, Lexicon Prime Tune, Maestro Super Fuzz, Morley Echo/ Volume, Mu-Tron III, MXR Pitch Transposer — MM

Elliot Easton

With a sound that was as far from macho '70s rock as possible, the Cars were possibly the quintessential '80s band. Looking back on his days in the group, Elliot Easton feels it was no accident that they forged one of rock's most individual and identifiable sounds. "Our different influences made us sound the way we did," he says. "Certain factions of the band were into the technological advances — keyboards and things — while my influences were Moby Grape, the Grateful Dead, and a lot of Memphis soul and New Orleans R&B. There was always a creative rub in the band that made the Cars unique."

On the group's pre-'85 records — The Cars and Candy-O — Easton managed to sneak hot country guitar ("My Best Friend's Girl") and clever bluesy solos ("Bye Bye Love") into the band's poppy tunes. "I never related to the 'skinny-tie' scene," Easton says. “And I was never impressed with the punk-guitar ethic. That whole primitive style of guitar playing is just not what I'm about." What Easton is about is simple. "I think I have a knack for making a song happen," he told GP in '86. "And that's a big get-off for me."

KEY TRACKS "Cruiser," "Magic," "Shake It Up," "Since You're Gone"

1980s GEAR Fender Strat and Telecaster ("I'm a twanger at heart" he says), mono Gibson ES-355, Guild Nightbird and Flyer, Rickenbacker 12-string electric, custom-made Kramer solidbody, assorted Dean solidbodies, assorted amps (including Lab Series, Pearce, Marshall JCM 800, various Fenders and Mesa/Boogies), Boss delay and chorus, Pro Co Rat, Scholz Rockman — DF

The Edge

When the relentless, echo washed lines of "I Will Follow" hit the airwaves in 1980, it was immediately obvious that the world had changed. The cutting-yet-ambient guitar soundscapes were so different from anything else heard at the time that The Edge became an instant guitar hero. However, due to the band's youth — The Edge was only 19 when U2's debut was released — more than a few guitarists assumed that a non-technical player had simply stumbled onto a few glib tricks. Not so.

"I was struck by the fact that groups such as Television had a well-defined sound that was like no one else’s,” The Edge said in the June '85 issue of Guitar Player. "So when we started putting material together, it was always in my mind that we had to find what we could do that was different. The most important thing is that we maintain a certain originality in everything we do."

The Edge remained true to his quest for individuality throughout the '80s, providing fans with thrilling, almost cinematic textures, and challenging other guitarists to re-evaluate their relationship with their instrument "There's no reason on earth why guitar players should copy one another and end up sounding the same," he declared.

KEY TRACKS "Gloria," "I Will Follow," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "Where the Streets Have No Name," "With or Without You"

1980s GEAR Gibson Explorer, Fender Strat and Tele, Vox AC30, Mesa/Boogie MK-IIC, Boss SCC-700 Effects Center, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, Korg SDD-3000 digital delay, Yamaha D1500 digital delay and R1000 digital reverb, MXR Pitch Transposer — MM

Billy Gibbons

ZZ Top was already a huge concert act when the advent of MTV in the early '80s gave the "little ol' band from Texas" an opportunity to boogie its way to unprecedented heights. Video images of the bearded mysteriosos with their custom coupe accompanied hit after hit from the 1983 release Eliminator, and behind it all was Top's enigmatic guitarist, Billy Gibbons.

The trademark pick harmonics, stubby solos and grinding riffs that fueled Eliminator and the subsequent Afterburner were old tricks for Gibbons, but his streamlined approach to playing over sequenced grooves made it easy to forget that blues was still the magma at ZZ's core.

As Gibbons explained to GP in 1986, "Try as we might to spice up our sound with synthesizers and this and that, it basically comes down to a few moments of bluesiness that we want to hold onto. That's where we came from, and that's pretty much what we'd like to keep stabbing at."

KEY TRACKS "Dipping Low (In the Lap of Luxury)," "Planet of Women," "Sleeping Bag," "Velcro Fly," "Under Pressure"

1980s GEAR Dean Z, Tom Holmes customs, Strings & Things St. Blues (Strat-style guitar), Roland GR-700 synth, Fairlight digital workstation, Fender and Marshall amps, Scholz Rockman, Roland Dimension D, Ibanez rack effects — AT

Michael Hedges

While the electric guitar was everywhere in the 1980s, the decade also ushered in a rising interest in virtuoso solo acoustic guitar players. The Windham Hill label was the launching pad for many of these guitarists, including William Ackerman (who headed the label) and Alex de Grassi.

Then along came Michael Hedges — with a style that encompassed some of the lyrical, contrapuntal approaches of his labelmates, and also incorporated funky rhythms, minimalist song structures and jazz-inspired chord voicings. As Hedges said in the February '85 Guitar Player, “Ackerman and de Grassi have good rhythm. It's just not as kinetic as mine. They're great impressionists and romantic players, but that doesn't come naturally to me."

Hedges showcased his composing and performing chops on his '81 debut, Breakfast in the Field and the '84 followup, Aerial Boundaries. The latter album featured Hedges' stupefying, one-man-band arrangements, with percussive two-handed tapping and a host of extended-range tunings. Hedges had, in effect, broken the four-minute mile, forever expanding the boundaries of what players and listeners thought was possible in the solo-acoustic realm.

KEY TRACKS "Aerial Boundaries," "The Happy Couple," "Hot Type," "Rickover's Dream," "Spare Change"

1980s GEAR Martin D-28 and00-18, Dyer harp-guitar — AL

James Hetfield

"There was the real glammy stuff when we were starting out playing the clubs in L.A. — the Mötley Crües and the Ratts," James Hetfield said in the April '89 GP. "Music was based around the singer, and no one was really riffing."

With Metallica's first three records, Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets, Hetfield single-handedly changed that, and metal was never the same. Performed with Gibson Flying V or ESP Explorer-style guitars and Mesa/Boogie Mark II heads, Hetfield's punishing lock-step riffs spawned several copy-cat bands, as well as a legion of young, denim jacket-clad guitarists hell-bent on learning Metallica tunes — not the solos, but Hetfield's speedy power-chord riffs, performed almost solely on heavy downstrokes. "That's key!” he said. “It's tighter sounding and a lot chunkier.”

KEY TRACKS "Creeping Death," "Eye of the Beholder," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Four Horsemen," "Whiplash"

1980s GEAR Gibson Flying V, ESP Explorer-style solidbody (loaded with EMG pickups), Mesa/Boogie Mark II heads — DF

Allan Holdsworth

In 1980, Allan Holdsworth — a veteran of U.K., Bill Bruford, Tony Williams and Jean-Luc Ponty — formed his groundbreaking quartet, I.O.U. He described the band's music in the December '80 Guitar Player as having "some elements of jazz and rock, but we try not to be overly tricky."

Compared to what? The music on the band's '82 debut, I.O.U., was teeming with modulating time signatures and circuitous chord progressions — in other words, tricky. Holdsworth's unique style featured clarion-toned, legato solos and a unique chordal approach. Only guitarists with brave hearts and pliant hands worked their way through Holdsworth's '85 book of compositions Reaching for the Uncommon Chord.

Holdsworth began looking to guitar synths for new sounds around '85, but because he was prone to playing blazingly fast, synth controllers could barely make sense of what his hands were doing. He eventually found that the Synth-Axe could keep up, and he featured the instrument prominently on his '86 album, Atavachron.

KEY TRACKS "Devil Take the Hindmost," "Panic Station," "Road Games," "Three Sheets to the Wind," "Where Is One"

1980s GEAR Custom Charvel single-humbucker electrics, Ibanez AH-10, SynthAxe, various amps (including Hartley-Thompson, Pearce, Fender and Sundown), Steelmaster volume pedal, Yamaha E-1010 analog delay, two ADA STD-1 stereo tapped delays (one for clean tones, one for dirty). — AL

Eric Johnson

Like Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton, Eric Johnson initially gained prominence as a result of other guitarists singing his praises. Steve Morse, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Wffiter and Billy Gibbons were among those who raved about Johnson in interviews. Not a prolific recording artist, Johnson developed his legendary rep based on a radical '84 Austin City Limits performance and the 1986 album Tones, his only release of the decade.

With a rocker's ears, a cellist's hands and an alchemist's curiosity, Johnson forged a signature sound from fluid, multi-octave arpeggios, buttery bends, cascading pentatonic runs, and chimey, close-voiced harmonies. He proved that one could coax sweet, violin-like sustain from a Strat while cruising up and down its fretboard with flawless intonation. It was Johnson who got guitarists thinking about cable impedance and directionality, the timbral differences between germanium and silicon transistors, and carbon-zinc and alkaline batteries. While the rest of the planet was exploring the multichannel amp, he perfected the triple-amp rig. By making us aware of each element in the signal chain, Johnson elevated electric guitar tone to a science.

KEY TRACKS "Cliffs of Dover," "Soulful Terrain," "Rail of Tears"

1980s GEAR '54 Fender Shut, two Fender Twin Reverbs (driving an open-back Marshall 4x12 cab), Dumble Steel String Singer, Dumble Overdrive Special, 100-watt Marshall heads driving Marshall 4x12 cabs, Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer, Paul C's Tube Driver, TC Electronic Sustainer, Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, Echoplex — AE

Mark Knopfler

Using phasoidal Strat tones, poignant bends and snarky double-stops, Mark Knopfler established himself in the late '70s as a soulful and melodic player — and one who preferred to pick with his fingers! But in '85, with the release of Brothers in Arms, Knopfler and his band Dire Straits hit the musical jackpot. In addition to scoring massive worldwide sales, the album provided Knopfler an opportunity to stretch out as an arranger, songwriter and ensemble leader. His guitar tones expanded to include throaty Les Paul riffs and darker, distorted Strat lines, and he began to explore extended themes involving guitar, keyboards and woodwinds. Released when many listeners were buying their first CDs, Brothers in Arms also became an audio benchmark.

Even today, many engineers use tracks from this beautifully focused recording to fine-tune stage and studio sound systems. Many of Knopfler's new musical ideas emerged from his film scoring experiences, which began in '83 with the magical soundtrack to Local Hero. Cal, The Princess Bride, and Last Exit to Brooklyn followed.

No other guitarist has so successfully combined the twin careers of solo artist and film composer. For Knopfler, each discipline strengthens the other: His albums have become timbrally richer and more thematically complex, and his scores have benefited from his soaring solos and tinkling resonator guitar work.

KEY TRACKS "Brothers in Arms," "Going Home," "Money for Nothing," "Walk of Life"

1980s GEAR Strat-style Schecter with Seymour Duncan pickups, Strat-style Pensa-Suhr with EMG pickups, '53 Gibson Super 400, '58 Gibson Les Paul, '36 Style "0" National, Ovation Adamas, Gibson Chet Atkins solidbody classical, twin 100-watt Soldano heads driving two EV-loaded 4x12 Marshall cabs, rackmounted CryBaby wah, Ernie Ball volume pedal — AE

Steve Lukather

In every decade there's an elite group of studio guitarists who seem to get all the top sessions. In the '70s, it was Larry Carlton and Louie Shelton. In the '90s, Michael Landau, Tim Pierce and Brent Mason ruled the roost.

But in the '80s, it was Steve Lukather. His Reagan-era credits include albums by Eric Clapton, Stevie Nicks, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Don Henley, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Joni Mitchell, Manhattan Transfer, Paul McCartney, Chet Atkins and many others. His tight chord work and tasty-yet-muscular solos helped sell literally hundreds of millions of records.

Lukather also had success with his own band Toto — particularly with the 1982 release Toto IV, which enjoyed multi-Platinum sales, hit singles and a sweep of that year's Grammy awards. Through it all, Luke has remained a regular guy who is just happy to play guitar. "I know I'm very lucky," he told GP in June 2000. "I've had the chance to work with all my heroes. My career is a dream come true."

KEY TRACKS 'Africa," "Rosanna" (with Toto). "Dirty Laundry" (with Don Henley). "Running with the Night" (with Lionel Ritchie). "She's a Beauty" (with the Tubes)

1980s GEAR '63 Fender Strat, '59 Gibson Les Paul, Gibson 15, custom Ibanez electrics, Paul Rivera–modified 100-watt Marshalls and Fender Deluxes, Fender Concert Lexicon Prime Time delay, Eventide H910 Harmonizer, Roland SRE-555 Chorus/Echo, various Ibanez multi-effectors — MB

George Lynch

One of the original hot-shot LA metal players, Dokken guitarist George Lynch had chops to burn but always kept them in check with a tasty vibrato and keen sense of melody. When Randy Rhoads left his guitar teaching job for the Ozzy Osbourne gig, he insisted Lynch fill his shoes and take over his students. Not a bad referral.

The majority of Lynch's Aqua Net–glazed fury can be found in his super-charged solos. "I think a typical George Lynch solo should have melody and build to a climax," he told GP in 1986. "Speed is also important. People may get down on that, but it's impressive and it gives the solo energy" Aside from his stellar lead work, Lynch's wicked, tritone-laced riffing absolutely defined the hard rock "hair band" sound for the next several years.

KEY TRACKS "It's Not Love," "Lightning Strikes," "Mr. Scary," "Paris Is Burning"

1980s GEAR Various custom guitars (including Charvel, ESP, and Kramer solidbodies), Aria acoustic, vintage Marshall heads and cabs, Randall amplifiers — DF

Yngwie Malmsteen

The Swedish shred king first hit our pages in Mike Varney's February 1983 Spotlight column. Soon after, Malmsteen came to the States and joined Hollywood metal-rockers Steeler. After working on their '83 album, Steeler, he quickly outgrew the band's limited scope and left to join Alcatrazz. His tenure didn't last long — after recording just one studio album, No Parole from Rock 'n' Roll, he left Alcatrazz to concentrate on his own band, Rising Force, where Malmsteen was finally able to realize his artistic vision.

With intricate original compositions — inspired by classical composers J.S. Bach and Nicolo Paganini — and extended-play solos, Malmsteen tolled the bell for all who had ears to hear: He was the new king of Shred Hill.

KEY TRACKS "Black Star," "Evil Eye," "Far Beyond the Sun" "Icarus' Dream Suite," "Marching Out."

1980s GEAR 1969 Fender Stratocaster (and other Strats of similar vintage, all with scalloped fingerboards), modified 1971 Marshall 50-watt heads, Marshall 4x12 cabinets (with Celestion G-65 speakers), DOD Overdrive Preamp 250, Korg SDD-1000 rackmount digital delay, Fender extra-heavy picks ("I couldn't play with anything else,' he said in the May '85 GP) — AL

Johnny Marr

Armed with a huge palette of tones and a savvy sense for turning oddball chord sequences into hit

songs, the Smith's Johnny Marr forged a guitar style that incorporated '60s primitivism, '70s funkiness

and gobs of Byrds-style chime. Two of the many things that set him apart from his '80s-era contemporaries were his disdain for guitar solos ("I like improvisation in the right place, but I find most solos corny") and his natural ability to create unique clashes by superimposing major and minor modes. "I use a thumbpick,” he told us, “because when you have all five fingers going, your fingers go to progressions you don't even know you're doing.”

Marr's bright, jangly tones always sounded huge without the benefit of distortion, and his spine-chilling slide intro on the pulsating "How Soon Is Now" remains one of the most distinctive guitar sounds ever recorded. Following the breakup of the Smiths in 1987, Marr appeared on albums by the Talking Heads, the Pretenders, Electronic, The The, Paul McCartney, Kirsty MacColl, Bryan Ferry and others.

KEY TRACKS "How Soon Is Now?,” "This Charming Man," "What Difference Does It Make?,” “The Headmaster Ritual," "The Violence of Truth"

1980s GEAR Epiphone Casino, Fender Strat, Gibson ES-335, Gibson Les Paul, Martin D-28, Rickenbacker 330, Fender Bassman, Fender Showman, Fender Twin Reverb, Mesa/Boogie Quad Preamp, Roland JC-120, Dunlop Cry Baby wah, Eventide Harmonizer, Roland GP-8, T.C. Electronic 2290, Yamaha GEP50 — AT

Prince

It's difficult to find an '80s artist more prolific or cutting-edge than Prince, who ushered in the decade with the release of Dirty Mind. On this record of slamming funk rhythms and catchy melodies, Prince was credited as playing guitar, bass, drums and keyboards — as well as singing, producing, arranging and writing all the tunes.

Controversy followed in '81, but it was his '83 album, 1999, that gave him his first taste of superstardom. The infectious title track, with its sinewy chord stabs and slippery wah figures, became an instant classic. Prince's dry, in-your-face rhythm parts set the standard for funk rock in the '80s. Purple Rain took things higher still, with strong tunes and even bolder guitar work. His trademark funk rhythms abound on Purple Rain, but it was the blazing solos on tunes such as "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" that turned guitarists' heads. With over-the top distortion, squealing feedback, and a flamboyant persona (that drew on Hendrix, Little Richard and James Brown influences), Prince the Guitar Hero had arrived.

Prince would go on to release six more albums in the '80s, changing stylistic gears with each record. This incessant self-reinvention confused and alienated some fans, but many of them were brought back into the fold with 1987's Sign O’ the Times, which showed Prince's heavier side (on the title track), as well as his pop stylings ("I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" and "U Got the Look").

KEY TRACKS "Baby I'm a Star," "Sign O’ the Times," "When Doves Cry" "I Would Die 4 U," "1999"

1980s GEAR Fender Telecaster, Hohner Tele copy, Mesa/Boogie amps, Boss pedals — MB

Trevor Rabin

Seminal prog-rock band Yes had apparently seen the rising and setting of its sun in the 1970s, with nine albums and several hits (including "Roundabout," "Long Distance Runaround" and "Yours Is No Disgrace"). Then, just as 1983 was winding up, South African guitarist/vocalist/producer Trevor Rabin brought his cache of songs to founding members Chris Squire (bass) and Jon Anderson (vocals), and resurrected Yes with the smash 90125, an album rife with slick production, radio-friendly hooks and tactile, layered guitars. Although Rabin's harmonized leads are arguably the most memorable color of his tonal spectrum, his inventive use of modern gear proffered a wealth of tones — from super-compressed clean to crunchy to sweetly sustaining. Even his acoustic guitar tones were amazingly distinctive. In short, Rabin's command of tonal shades proved him to be both a brilliant texturalist and a fiery lead player.

KEY TRACKS "Changes," "Hearts" and ”Owner of a Lonely Heart" (with Yes). "Can't Look Away," "Etoile Noir" (solo)

1980s GEAR '62 Fender Stratocaster (with Seymour Duncan stacked humbuckers and Schaller tuners), two Ernie Ball volume pedals (one for regular volume, one for echo volume), and various MXR pedals (including a Pitch Transposer, a Dyna Comp, a 10-Band graphic EQ, an analog delay, a Distortion+, a flanger and an envelope filter), MXR 15-band EQ and digital reverb rack units, Roland SRE-555 Chorus/Echo — SH

Vernon Reid

Besides blurring color lines as one of the few all-black hard rock bands on the scene, Living Colour launched a whole new sound with their ingenious blend of funk, avant-garde jazz and metal. Guitarist Vernon Reid's massive, Zeppelin-influenced rifling, grinding dissonance, and furiously chromatic solos were masterfully balanced with slithering dance grooves, complex chording and adventurous use of new technology, including samplers and guitar synths, that he combined with his ESP and Hamer Superstrats.

KEY TRACKS "Cult of Personality," "Glamour Boys," "Middle Man," "Open Letter to a Landlord"

1980s GEAR Hamer Chapparal and ESP Strat-style guitars with Floyd Rose tremolos and EMG pickups (two single-coils and a humbucker), Cry Baby wah, Korg volume pedal, Roland GP-8, DigiTech DSP-128, Dean Markley CD-120 1x12 combo and Fender Dual Showman head driving Fender 4x12s, Mesa/Boogie Quad Preamp and Strategy 400 power amp, ADA MP-1, Boogie 4x12 cabinets — SH

Randy Rhoads

Many thought Ozzy Osboume's career was finished when he was fired from the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath in 1978. However, thanks to his discovery of the brilliant, classically trained guitarist Randy Rhoads, Osbourne emerged triumphant in 1980 with Blizzard of Ozz — an album that is still regarded as one of metal's finest. As one of the few hard rock guitarists of the early '80s who didn't jump on the Van Haien bandwagon, 22-year-old Rhoads introduced the world to a distinctive tone and unmistakable style that bristled with blinding pull-off licks, staccato rhythms, and chromatic solo flurries. Despite a sparse discography, Rhoads has gone down in history as one of heavy metal's most original guitarists.

KEY TRACKS "Crazy Train," "Dee," "Flying High Again," "I Don't Know"

1980s GEAR Gibson Les Paul, custom V-shaped electric with DiMarzio pickups, Grover Jackson–designed shark’s-fin guitars equipped with Seymour Duncan pickups, Dunlop Cry Baby, Korg delay, 100- watt Marshall heads through Marshall 4x12 cabinets with Altec speakers, MXR Distortion+, EQ, chorus, and flanger pedals — SH

joe Satriani

In the early '80s, Joe Satiani was a guitar teacher in Berkeley, California, with a couple of band projects and some sessions under his belt. By 1987, he was on the cover of every guitar magazine in the world, thanks to Surfing with the Alien.

With dazzling technique, high-energy tunes and extreme guitar tones, Satch proved that all the rumors of his greatness (some of which were started by his former student, Steve Vai) were true. And he did something that very few guitar heroes have done — sell records.

Surfing was a smash hit with guitarists and non-guitarists alike, and Satriani would enjoy further success with his subsequent releases and tours. He was also picked by Mick Jagger to go on the road and cover parts originally played by Keith Richards and Jeff Beck.

Looking back on his debutante decade, Satch told us, "Making the transition from giving lessons in the back of a store to being the Surfing with the Alien guy and Mick's lead guitarist was a completely mind- and life-altering experience."

KEY TRACKS "Circles," "Hordes of Locusts," "Ice 9," "Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing," "Satch Boogie"

1980s GEAR Homemade Strat-style guitars, Ibanez solidbodies, 100-watt Marshall amps, Scholz Rockman, Echoplexes, Boss CE-1 chorus — MB

Neal Schon

As a teenager in 1970, Neal Schon achieved Northern California royalty status by joining Carlos Santana's band. A couple of years later, Schon formed his own group, Journey, which became increasingly popular with its Santana-esque brand of jam rock. At the close of the '70s, however, Journey found their winningest formula when they added vocalist Steve Perry and moved in a more pop-rock direction. When the '80s rolled in, Schon was the guitarist — and one of the chief songwriters — of a veritable hit machine.

What set him apart from most other popsters of the decade, however, was his stellar guitar work. Schon's punchy, intricate rhythm parts — and his soaring leads that blended melodicism, dynamics and fiery chops — earned him unshakeable street cred among guitar freaks. His two albums with keyboard god Jan Hammer further cemented his rep as a player, making him the first choice as a jam partner when guitarists such as Gary Moore, Eddie Van Haien and Jeff Beck came to town.

KEY TRACKS "Walks Like a Lady" "Stone in Love," "Girl Can't Help It" (with Journey). "I'm Down," "No More Lies" (with Jan Hammer)

1980s GEAR 1963 Fender Strat, Gibson Les Pauls, Aria Pro II, various amps (including Peavey Mace, Fender, Marshall and Mesa/Boogies), Electro-Harmonix Hot Tubes — MB

John Scofield

Celebrating his blues and funk influences — and attacking the electric guitar as a truly electric instrument,

with bluesy bends and chorus-tweaked tones — John Scofield brought an earthy vibe to jazz's heady mindset. He was also one of the '80s most versatile jazz guitarists, performing with Miles Davis, pianist McCoy Tyner and the French National Orchestra.

"One thing I learned from Miles Davis," Scofield said in '84, "is not to be afraid to play what you hear. In other words, just play what you feel. Miles was a master of the fine art of letting things happen naturally"

Scofield spent much of the '80s expanding the progressive ideology that began with his Davis tenure by working with contemporary jazz-funk rhythm sections. Then in 1989, he bid the decade farewell with Time on My Hands, a stinting return to the acoustic jazz realm.

KEY TRACKS 'All the Things You Are," "Pick Hits," "Techno," "Who's Who" (solo). "What It Is" (with Miles Davis)

1980s GEAR Gibson ES-335 and ES-175, Ibanez Artist AS-200, Polytone Mini-Brute IV, Music Man 410-HD, Sundown amps, Ibanez stereo chorus and stereo reverb, Pro Co Rat, Boss Octaver — MM

Brian Setzer

They had the look, the attitude and the wild-boy flash of rockabilly rebels, but while MTV pumped up the fashion factor for video fanatics, the Stray Cats were more than mere cartoons. Credibility came howling from Brian Setzer's Gretsch 6120, with a lead style that honored the genre's heroes while simultaneously nudging rockabilly into uptown duds. Setzer was channeling Django Reinhardt and other jazz greats along with hellraisers such as Carl Perkins, Cliff Gallup and Paul Burlison.

"When I first heard Cliff Gallup," said Setzer in the September '83 Guitar Player, "he was kind of what I wanted to be — a jazzy rockabilly player. He really sent me."

But while Setzer's head was sometimes transcending rockabilly conventions, his tones were totally true blue. "I use the middle-pickup position on my Gretsch," he explained in '83. "I usually turn the presence up full on my Bassman, and the volume to about four or five — just to the point where it's about to distort. The volume is so low, I could play in my bedroom and it would be fine. I usually put the bass around five, and the treble up to eight. I set the echo for one repeat almost directly after the original note — bop, bop. It's pretty tight."

Shooting the Cats beyond the tattoos and haircuts of lesser rockabilly contenders was the fact that Setzer was absolutely immersed in the style. He got it. "The early rockabilly stuff is basically a country guitarist trying to play rock and roll guitar — which is a mixture of black blues and white country" he said. "It's a feel. A lot of people put the cart before the horse. They think they've got to buy a '58 Gretsch and an old Fender amp. That stuff is great, but you've got to have the feel."

KEY TRACKS "18 Miles to Memphis," "Double Talkin Baby" "Rock this Town," "(She's) Sexy & 17," "Stray Cat Strut"

1980s GEAR 1959 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins, '60s blond Fender Bassman, NCR Analog Delay, Dean Markley strings (.010 or .011 set) — MM

Robert Smith

As main guitarist and visionary for what has been called "the world's biggest cult band," Smith graced the nine Cure albums released during the '80s with moody, multicolored guitar. Listen to what lurks behind any of the Cure's hooky vocal melodies and you'll likely find complex patterns of intersecting guitar parts that swirl around the main line to create an energetic and enticing backdrop.

Able to visualize the entire song during the recording process, Smith typically recorded all the guitars himself, adding depth and color to his six-string tapestries by incorporating open tunings and tracking each part with varying degrees of distortion and/or effects.

Alternative instruments also factored heavily into Smith's sonic sculpting. As he told GP in 1992, "The whole Faith album [released in '81] has six-string bass. I think when people talk about the 'Cure sound,' they mean songs based on six-string bass guitar, acoustic guitar and the Solina (a.k.a. the ARP String Ensemble)." One of Smith's more oddball studio tricks involved detuning each of his guitars' high E strings a few cents apart to create natural chorusing effects when the individual tracks were mixed together.

KEY TRACKS "The Blood," "Fascination Street," "Love Cats," "Other Voices "

1980s GEAR Fender Jazzmaster, Gibson Chet Atkins, Ovation six- and 12-string acoustics, '62 Fender Bass VI, Peavey amps, Dunlop Cry Baby, Boss pedals (chorus, delay, flange, phase, and overdrive) — AT

Steve Stevens

A central figure in Billy Idol's aggressive mix of punk, new wave, heavy metal and dance music, Steve Stevens wrote the book on balancing texture and technique. “I try to avoid the lead guitar-solo syndrome," he told GP in 1984. "My approach is more sonic than actual notes — if you have a really brilliant sound together, you don't have to play all that many notes."

Stevens elevated the songs he and Idol wrote into a realm that blurred the line between Ozzy-approved pyrotechnics and Bauhaus-style noise-art. Wielding short, fierce solos, feedback assaults, trem-bar antics and sci-fl-style sound effects, he furnished Idol's Rebel Yell with wall-to-wall guitar. But when the following release, Whiplash Smile, took a more techo-oriented turn, the guitarist decided it was time to get his own band together.

Stevens' inventive guitar playing resurfaced in full force on his 1989 solo debut Atomic Playboys, a release that gave Stevens the opportunity to indulge his hard-rock side, as well as his interests in R&B, pop-jazz, and John McLaughlin–style acoustic work. "I never wanted to lose the acoustic part of my playing," Stevens said. "I always loved the way that people like Robert Fripp, Steve Howe and Steve Hackett could be acoustic players, but also utilize effects."

KEY TRACKS: "Atomic Playboys" (solo). "Eyes Without A Face," "Flesh For Fantasy" "Rebel Yell," "White Wedding" (with Billy Idol)

1980s GEAR '53 Gibson Les Paul, Hamer Steve Stevens Signature, custom Suhr Strat-style, custom Jackson, Guild acoustics, Roland GR-700 synth, Marshall IMP and KM 800 heads, Vox AC30, Boss effects (CS-2 compressor, 0C-2 Octaver, CE-2 chorus), Vox Clyde McCoy and Cry Baby wahs, Pro Co Rat, Eventide 999 Harmonizer, Lexicon PCM-41 multi-effector, Maestro Echoplex, Roland rack effects (SDE-3000, SRE-555, Dimension D), Scholz Rockman — AT

Andy Summers

The Police launched in 1978 with the release of Outlandos d'Amour, and the band hit their stride in the early '80s with Zenyatta Mondatta and Ghost in the Machine. Vocalist/bassist Sting was the Police's chief songwriter, but Andy Summers had a more vital role in shaping the band's sound. His novel chord voicings, off-beat (in both senses) rhythm grooves, and shimmering chorus and delay-laden tones were essential to Police hits such as "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da."

In the January 2001 issue of Guitar Player, Summers revealed that "procedure by negation" was the key to sculpting his unique guitar voice. "Back in my Police days," he said, "I thought, Everyone's still jamming on power chords. I don't want to do what everyone else is doing, so what am I left with?"

One thing Summers did to outstrip the Joneses was to avoid distortion or overdrive — except as a last resort. (The solo on "Driven to Tears" showcases his dirty side.) Another Summers-ism was to use add9 chords in place of standard barres and power chords. ("Every Breath You Take" is built almost entirely around major and minor add9 chords.) He also avoided the cliché of extended solos, favoring brief, personal anti-solos. (Check out his synthed-out breakdown on "Don't Stand So Close to Me.")

Ironically, Summers' innovations were embraced by legions of post-Police guitarists, rendering his specialties nearly as common as the generic affectations he sought to avoid.

KEY TRACKS "Driven To Tears," "Every Breath You Take," "Message in a Bottle," "One World," "Walking on the Moon"

1980s GEAR 1963 Fender Telecaster Custom (with Gibson humbucker in the neck position), Roland guitar synths (G-303 or G-707 controller guitar with GR-300 or GR-700 synth module), various amps (including Mesa/Boogies and Marshalls), Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger, Musitronics Mu-Tron III envelope filter, Roland RE-301 Chorus Echo, Echoplec, MXR pedals (Distortion+, Phase 90, analog delay and Dyna Comp) — AL

Steve Vai

The first murmurings of Steve Vai's talent began when he was credited with "impossible guitar parts" on Frank Zappa's Man from Utopia. His first solo album, Flex-Able, showed what Vai could do when left to his own devices — namely, creating wacky tunes that proudly displayed his Zappa influence and his stunning chops. Filling the shoes vacated by Yngwie Malmsteen, Vai joined Alcatrazz for one incredible album, Disturbing the Peace. Criminally under-promoted and underappreciated, the album features songwriting, tones and arrangements that can hang with Vai's most celebrated work.

His next move, to David Lee Roth's band, brought Val squarely into the spotlight with one of the most high-profile rock gigs of the decade. He also recorded and/or toured with Whitesnake and PIL in a decade where it seemed as if there was nothing he couldn't do.

KEY TRACKS "The Attitude Song," "Viv Woman" (solo). "Jazz Discharge Party Hats" (with Frank Zappa). "Painted Lover" (with Alcatrazz). "Shy Boy," "Skyscraper" (with David Lee Roth)

1980s GEAR: '78 Fender Strat with DiMarzio X2N bridge pickup, custom Charvels, various Ibanez JEM models, Carvin X-100B amp, 100-watt Marshall, Roland SDE-3000 delay, Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive. — MB

Eddie Van Haien

Van Halen's 1978 debut — and Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption" solo, in particular — breathed new life into rock and sent hordes of guitarists scrambling to the woodshed. However, Van Halen continued to leave jaws agape throughout the '80s. Though two-handed tapping, whammy-bar abuse and raging staccato licks are the most conspicuous marks of his signature sound, Van Haien also surprised the guitar galaxy with deft slide work, intricate classical-flavored pieces and impeccable rhythm playing. His influence on subsequent generations simply can't be overstated. Eddie Van Halen stands as one of guitar's most far-reaching and important innovators.

KEY TRACKS "Cathedral," “Could This Be Magic," "Hot for Teacher," "Little Guitars" and "Mean Street"

1980s GEAR Charvel Strat-style guitar (with a '58 Strat bridge — later exchanged for a Floyd Rose — and a Gibson PAF humbucker), custom Kramers (with PAFs or Seymour Duncans and Floyd Roses), MXR Phase 90 and Flanger pedals, Echoplex, Lexicon PCM-70, Eventide 949 Harmonizer, Roland SDE-3000 delay, Variac-equipped 100-watt Marshall plead heads with Marshall 4x12s — SH

Stevie Ray Vaughan

At a time when drum machines ruled and it was hipper to own a Roland G-707 synth guitar than a '62 Strat, Stevie Ray Vaughan pushed bare-knuckle blues back onto the airwaves. Ironically, most listeners first heard Vaughan as a sideman on David Bowie's club-oriented Let's Dance. In '83, pop radio was dominated by new wave and synth bands, so Vaughan's stinging Strat tones and Albert King–inspired bends in "China Girl" and "Let's Dance" sounded downright revolutionary. That same year, Vaughan's bluesy debut, Texas Flood, hit the Top 40 and established the 29-year-old as a bona fide guitar hero. For the first time in more than a decade, it was cool to play blues.

For the next seven years, Vaughan never strayed from his roots, recording taut, guitar-driven R&B with his Lone Star confederates, Double Trouble. Whether reinterpreting Hendrix and Howlin' Wolf, or pounding out an original R&B shuffle, Vaughan infused each note with palpable tension. You can witness his blend of feral energy and superb technique in Live at the El Mocambo, a video shot in a sweaty Toronto nightclub in '83. Because of its unwavering honesty, Vaughan's music remains as popular as ever.

KEY TRACKS "Lenny," "Love Struck Baby," "Pride and Joy," "Texas Flood," "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)"

1980s GEAR '59 sunburst Fender Strat, a pair of sequentially serial-numbered '63 Fender Vibroverb 1x15 combos, Fender Vibratone, Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer — AE

Jamie West-Oram

Punctuating the Fixx's radio hits with his chorused, squeaky-clean Strat tones, Jamie West-Oram was one of the most identifiable guitarists on the '80s new wave front. Though his restrained funk rhythms, shimmering harmonics, palm-muted syncopations, and echo-drenched chordal washes marked him as mainly a texturalist, West-Oram also peppered his work with quirky whammy warbles, feedback-soaked squeals, and brief-but-cathartic solos. His unique sound earned him sideman gigs with many notable artists, including Tina Turner, Depeche Mode, Stevie Nicks and Brian Eno.

KEY TRACKS "One Thing Leads to Another," "Red Skies," "Saved by Zero," "Stand or Fall"

1980s GEAR Charvel Strat-style guitar (with Schecter neck, EMG single-coils, and a Floyd Rose tremolo), Marshall 50-watt heads with JBL-loaded 2x12s, Korg digital delay, Yamaha SPX-90, MXR stereo chorus, Pro Co Rat — SH

Since its inception in 1996, Joe Satriani’s G3 tour has seen him lock horns with some of the best guitars in the business. From Steve Vai to Robert Fripp, John Petrucci, and Eric Johnson, Satch has engaged every guitarist on his wish list for each of the G3 tour's jaunts.

But as he's revealed. one guitarist managed to elude him, even though he initially looked ready to make it a reality.

Jeff Beck is arguably the biggest name among the most likely candidates to have not featured on a G3 tour, but that’s not for a lack of trying from the Surfing with the Alien maestro. He says a Beck-powered G3 looked to be on the cards, only for a last-minute change of heart to ruin his plans.

“The one that was so close to really happening was me with Jeff Beck and Billy Gibbons," Satch told the UCR Podcast. "I think we were a week away from actually putting it in ink in the books. It was so close to happening.

"Then, Jeff bailed at the last moment.”

The guitarist tried to use his humility as te reason for pulling out, but Satriani wasn’t convinced that was the real reason.

“He used the excuse that he thought it would be better if we toured with Prince,” he says. “I took that as a really good joke, like, he just didn't want to do it, so he came up with the most ridiculous suggestion.”

Back in 2018, Satriani spoke about his hopes of building a dream G3 line-up of his “heroes,” Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, Brian May and Billy Gibbons, which seems to be the same tour he was alluding to in his UCR Podcast conversation. And what a tour it would have been.

Satriani only crossed paths with the late great twice, so he never felt comfortable enough to ask the burning question and get closure on the real reason for his pivot.

“There was no way for me to ever talk to him about it, like, ‘Why didn't it happen?’” he says. “I've always thought in my mind, ‘Let's call up Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck!’ You know, let's get all of your favorite guitar players out there.”

His theories of why he pulled out center around the generational divide between the two players.

“I could see them just wondering, ‘Who is this kid? We don't know who he is. [He] plays instrumental guitar, who cares.’ So I never really thought it would happen, but I'd ask anyway.”

It’s a strategy that has worked for him before; other players haven’t felt that generational void the same.

“Once in a while, somebody would agree or just show up and say, ‘I want to play,’ like Brian May, Neal Schon, or Robert Fripp,” Satriani adds. “So we've been really fortunate in that respect.”

Fripp joined the G3 tour in 2005, and to this day remains one of the most “interesting characters,” that Satriani has shared the stage with.

“When he joined up, he insisted that he not be listed, and he wanted to play before the show,” he told Guitar Player in 2022. “He said, ‘Look, don’t turn the lights on. I’m going to sit behind all the amps, and I’m going to play music as people walk into the venue and find their seats. And don’t mention my name.’ It’s what he wanted to do.

“We did a couple of other tours together, just me, Steve and Robert playing blues guitar or something. It was hysterical, and he was fearless about that. He was Robert Fripp to the very end.”

Satriani will link up with Steve Vai, Peter Thorn, and ever-busy bass player Marco Mendoza as part of the SatchVai band later this year.

he's also defended Kurt Cobain's guitar skills and says he wants the next generation of players to wipe the floor with him.

Joe Satriani’s massive 2024 is leading him into an even-more impressive 2025. Last year the guitar virtuoso hit the G3 stage with Steve Vai and Eric Johnson, after which he and Vai launched the Satch-Vai tour. Satriani then followed it up by joining Sammy Hagar in the Best of All Worlds tour, celebrating the music of Van Halen.

Now as everyone knows, Satriani and Vai are taking their roadshow into the studio before hitting the road again in the summer. And Satch confirms they have several tracks already completed.

“We’ve got three songs finished,” he says. “They’re ready to be mixed, and we’ve got maybe 10 or 15 other songs that Steve and I are sending back and forth to each other. It’s all proceeding really well. In February, Steve and I will finally do some playing in person.”

Satriani stressed that the album is going to be “crazy different,” and that every song is “somewhere else. I’m really excited about it.”

The next months will see Vai on tour in South America with the 1980s-era King Crimson tribute group Beat, while Satch will perform a Las Vegas residency with the Best of All Worlds tour.

“But come June, Steve and I will start touring the SatchVai Band in the U.K. and Europe for two months.”

Busy as he is, Satch carved out some time with Guitar Player to reveal the 10 albums that shaped him as a musician and electric guitar player. Take it away, Satch!

12 x 5 — The Rolling Stones (1964)

“This was the first Stones album I heard, and my siblings let me play to the point that it just became a piece of useless vinyl. Along with the Beatles, these two bands had the biggest impact on my life as a young kid, and suddenly, having that musician inside of him awakened. I just loved the sound and the approach of it. My parents were jazz-age kids, and they played jazz all the time, like Wes Montgomery, so when I heard the Beatles and the Stones, I thought that was something totally different.”

Please Please Me — The Beatles (1963)

“Back when I was a little kid, I wasn’t in control of the record collection. My older siblings were the perfect age for that period, and they would just bring music into the house. I remember saying that I was sick because I knew the Beatles were going to be arriving in New York, so I listened to it on the AM radio.

“I was so excited, and this album was the one that sticks out, like the Stones record. I had a portable record player, like the little suitcase thing, and it just destroyed every piece of vinyl I put on it. [laughs] I would listen to a record one hundred times in a row, just sit in a corner, and listen to it. To me, it was the whole world.”

Are You Experienced — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)

“It was my older sister’s boyfriend who started to bring over albums because they knew I was this little kid who, for some reason, loved the latest rock music that was coming out. So the first time I heard ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ over the speakers, it altered the DNA in my body — in my brain! I remember asking every adult in the house, ‘What is that? Who is that? Is that a record? Can I get it?’ ”

Axis: Bold as Love — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)

“Suddenly, this album, along with Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland, appeared via my sister’s boyfriend. From then on, that album — oh my God — those records totally blew my mind. And then, Band of Gypsys. Those are the most important records in my life. Even before I could express it properly, I just always felt like there was something unique about Jimi Hendrix that I didn’t really hear, really, from anybody else.”

Electric Ladyland — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968)

“As I became a guitar player, performing musician, composer and recording artist, I started to realize what it was about Jimi Hendrix: When he would play, you couldn’t hear one minute of practice in his playing. He never played anything that sounded like an exercise. He never seemed to be demonstrating anything, unlike today.

“There are so many fantastic guitar players all over the world who are demonstrating—but it’s not their fault. It's the fault of society that doesn’t really give them space to express themselves. They’re kind of stuck to 30 seconds of being amazing for social media. That’s different from playing an original composition from deep in your soul.

“If you look at Electric Ladyland, Jimi was required to reveal his innermost soul with his music. There was something unique about him, and you don’t just hear it, but you detect that he never practiced a scale or studied anybody else; he just sounded like music, like everything was just expression. I thought, Wow… that’s it. It’s all about expression.”

Live at Leeds — The Who (1970)

“Pete Townshend, to me, is another one of those amazing musicians who put so much energy and originality into his playing. He risks everything for the performance and the expression, which is another thing that I love dearly. When I see a performer just go crazy like that — and the fact that his rhythm playing is just unbelievable — I’m blown away. And his choices for guitar sounds are just unbelievable.

“It's the whole thing with him. He’s such an original. So if I had to pick one album, it would be Live at Leeds because I can’t even fathom the fact that he’s got the guitar on the right side and the reverb and the tape echo in the center. It’s just the craziest thing. I still don’t understand how that band, with those three guys playing, made such a beautiful sound where you didn’t want for another instrument. I still can’t understand it. It’s pure magic.”

Believe It — The New Tony Williams Lifetime (1975)

“I have to add Believe It by the New Tony Williams Lifetime, which featured Allan Holdsworth. That was groundbreaking. I’m really a rock and roll kid, so some records, like this one, they don’t sit with me 100 percent. Like, Exile on Main St. by the Rolling Stones — I love that album, and I’ll always love that album for the songs, swagger and guitar playing. Everything about it perfectly fits my personality, whereas Believe It is not an album that fits my personality as a rock and roll kid.

“But Believe It is remarkable. It’s stunning. What Allan Holdsworth did is absolutely stunning. When I was a young kid playing guitar, I was jamming with an older kid in my neighborhood, and after about 20 minutes, he stopped, looked at me, and goes, ‘You know what? There’s a guy doing what you’re trying to do.’

“He said, ‘Come upstairs,’ so we left his basement. We went upstairs to his bedroom and he put on Believe It. That was the first time I heard Allan Holdsworth’s legato and technique, and my friend said, ‘Hear that? He’s playing all that stuff. That’s what you’re trying to do, isn’t it?’ In my mind, it legitimized that idea of notes just flowing.”

Birds of Fire — Mahavishnu Orchestra (1973)

“I got to see Mahavishnu Orchestra three or four times when they came to Long Island and New York City, and watching them was absolutely amazing. I loved wherever John McLaughlin’s mind was coming from. Whatever possessed him to write music like that, I don’t know. When you spend a lot of time playing Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and then all of a sudden you hear Birds of Fire, you go, ‘What? What are those words? What is that fantastic sound?’ ”

Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin (1969)

“Anything by Led Zeppelin is high on my list, but the first four records are just out of control. Jimmy Page was a tour de force. He shares that thing that all my favorite guitar players of that era had, like Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Townshend: Jimmy Page would sacrifice it all to give you a crazy original performance. I got to see them at Madison Square Garden, and that tour was absolutely insane.

“A lot of people are very guarded when they go up to perform, but Jimmy was not. He just dropped all his guards and played as far as he could. That’s what I love about him and those Zeppelin records. They would just go for it 100 percent. He might fall down and crash and burn, but he’d just get back up, laugh, and do it again. But at the same time, they’d craft these amazing songs.”

Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop — Jeff Beck (1989)

“Jeff created his own world in the studio, and he became a platform to express himself in so many different ways. Not just in one way but with a full vision of music. That’s one thing I love about rock, in general, in its golden period. It’s the totality of the message and the artistic approach. In the more modern era, the last one like that would have maybe been Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop.

“I still remember hearing this album at the time, bringing it into the studio, and saying, ‘Guys, you have to hear this.’ Just hearing it in the studio environment and turned up in a really loud, beautiful room — God, it was so captivating. It just epitomized and was the perfect example of the genius of Jeff Beck and the danger of trying to pull something like that off. Again, he was a fearless guy from a fearless group of guitar players from that era.”

Joe Satriani doesn’t want to be the world’s best electric guitar player. When he sees a young shredder more talented than him, he cracks a smile.

His second solo album, Surfing With the Alien, sounded like guitar music from the future when it was released in 1987. The record put him at the cutting edge of the guitar scene, and his reputation has only grown as some of his students — including Steve Vai, Alex Skolnick and Kirk Hammett — have become regarded as some of the best players around.

Satch's lofty status in the guitar world was emphasized over the past year with the reformation of the classic G3 lineup and his role performing Eddie Van Halen's parts in Sammy Hagar's Best of All Worlds tour. But with that said, he says he wants to see the next generation of guitarists go one better than him.

Speaking in the latest issue of Classic Rock, Satch says he’s already been usurped by today’s social media-savvy crop of players who are taking technical excellence to new heights.

“It's already happened,” he says when asked about discovering younger players who are better than him. “There's a couple of things to address here. Number one, if it doesn’t happen, the world is in deep trouble. We need newer, smarter people to solve the human condition in every field — scientists, doctors, writers. We need better, smarter, every single day. That's the whole point.

“We have children, and we raise better human beings to help us, so we don’t become extinct,” he expands. “And, if you're not excited about new players, then that's pretty sad. I'm excited about just about every player I see. I champion it, I always have.”

It turns out that, even at the height of his powers, he knew his days were numbered. He looked at his most famous apprentice and saw the future.

“I started out teaching, and I got used to the idea that Steve Vai was gonna walk in my door and blow my mind,” he says.

Of course, it’s only natural that the standard of guitar playing continues to rise. When Eddie Van Halen brought tapping techniques and whammy-bar dive bombs to the masses, it was revolutionary. For the modern-day player, those are often no more than key foundational skills. The more players that can execute those techniques, the more likely it is that some will build upon it, and take it further.

Satriani's apprentice-turned-master Steve Vai clearly shares the same sentiment. He's been tapping up the next generation of superstars for his annual Vai Academy event for years. Tim Henson, Yvette Young, Ichika Nito, and Mateus Asato all featured at the 2024 event.

He says he's “fascinated by their talent, technique, and creativity,” and it comes from a place of genuine joy. There is no ego to be bruised.

Satriani’s efforts to champion his fellow shredding superstars led to the formation of the G3 tour. While he has been the mainstay, the tour has played host to mega names like Yngwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci, and Robert Fripp, and fresh-faced talents like Guthrie Govan, Tosin Abasi, and a 19-year-old Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Yet, he tells Classic Rock that not everyone thought the tour was a good idea. The powers that be didn’t want Satch in such close quarters as his competitors. But he says, “When I was fourteen, if I had a chance to see Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck together on the same stage, I'd think that was the greatest thing ever.”

Meanwhile, Satriani has defended Kurt Cobain, whose critics have branded him a sub-par guitar player. Satch has explained why he thinks Cobain's skillset shouldn't be so readily dismissed.

The rise of grunge in the early 1990s killed the popularity of guitar virtuosity and technical wankery. Even so, it didn’t stop Joe Satriani from launching his annual G3 tour in 1996 with Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. Over the next decade, the shredfest became celebrated for presenting ever-changing lineups that featured some of the day’s most technically proficient players, like John Petrucci, Yngwie Malmsteen and Robert Fripp.

But as Satriani tells Classic Rock, accommodating the players’ varying musical styles and idiosyncratic requests could be a chore at times. Take Fripp, who insisted on being an unlisted show opener and performing out of sight as attendees entered the venue during G3’s 2004 run.

“You have two extremes,” Satriani tells Classic Rock. “Like, Robert Fripp, who said, ‘No lights on me, I want to sit down and I want to be behind everybody.’ So it was sort of an ‘un-demand’, y’know?”

And then there’s Fripp’s polar opposite, the irrepressible Yngwie Malmsteen, who appeared on the 2003 tour, where he, Satch and Vai jammed on Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing."

“I mean, if you invite him, you have to just say, 'I know what I’m inviting,' ” Satch concedes. “To Yngwie’s credit, he always plays so great and always puts on the Yngwie Malmsteen show.

“The only problem that I would have is that sometimes he wouldn’t pay attention to other things happening onstage when his bit was done, because he’s just not used to not being the focus of the show. I’d say, ‘When Steve [Vai] is soloing, don’t throw your guitar up in the air right next to him, because he’s got his eyes closed. I don’t want him to get hit in the head.’”

Satch says launching G3 proved problematic simply because no one had ever done something like it before. Some guitarists’ managers saw it as a competition rather than a celebratory jaunt.

“The vibe back then was to keep the gunslinger guitar players away from each other,” he explains. “The record companies, the management — everyone was like, ‘Don’t stand next to that guy, because he’s your competitor.’

“So we had nice little arguments with them, saying, ‘This is different.’ This was something I felt the audience really wanted to see, because I wanted to see it. When I was 14, if I had a chance to see Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck together on the same stage, I’d think that was the greatest thing ever. I wouldn’t be thinking like a promoter, I’d be thinking like a fan.“

Considering that grunge essentially killed the whammy-bar wrangling, double-tapping guitar acrobatics that G3 would go on to celebrate, Satch he has no animosity. “I didn’t pay any attention to that, I guess,” he says, noting that his 1992 album, The Extremist, “came out as my love letter to the classic rock era, so it was a throwback record anyway. But when I emerged from the studio I realized, ‘Oh, it’s all Nirvana and Soundgarden.’ ”

And while many technically proficient guitarists love to slag Kurt Cobain’s rudimentary axe-handling skills, Satriani has nothing but praise for the way Nirvana’s frontman used his talents in service of his songs.

“He was a great guitar player,” Satch says. “You go back and look at Nirvana clips, and you realize this guy is playing everything he’s supposed to play. He’s not looking at what he’s playing, so obviously he really knows the instrument. And he’s playing with one of the greatest drummers of all time [Dave Grohl], so that wouldn’t have worked if he was not a good guitarist.”

Satch's appreciation for Cobain shouldn't come as a surprise to those who know him. After all, he, Vai and Guthrie Govan picked Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as one of their show-closing jams on the 2016 G3 tour.

Satriani is coming off a busy year that saw him revive G3 with Vai and Johnson for a limited run of shows, perform Van Halen–era songs with Sammy Hagar on his Best of all Worlds tour, and tour with Vai. The new year looks like it will be just as busy. Last month he and Vai announced they’ll hit the road in June as the SatchVai Band for the Surfing with the Hydra tour. The road stint will be the first time in their nearly 50-year musical careers that the two electric guitar virtuosos have performed as band members. Their tour begins June 13, 2025 in Europe, with more dates to be announced.

In addition, Satch and Vai have been writing new music together, which means a SatchVai Band album can’t be far behind. Stay tuned.

Sammy Hagar recently has waxed lyrical about Joe Satriani’s ability to step into Eddie Van Halen’s sizable shoes on the recent Best of All Worlds tour. But he now admits that the guitarist was “not a perfect match” for the gig.

For what was one of 2024's most talked-about tours, Hagar put together an all-star Van Halen tribute band to celebrate Eddie’s legacy over both the Hagar and David Lee Roth eras. Satch has impressed while playing the role of Eddie, with former Van Halen bass player Michael Anthony also brought back into the fold alongside Jason Bonham.

Satriani took his role extremely seriously, bestowing his chosen fleet of guitars with one key mod to help him master Eddie’s parts and working with 3rd Power Amps on a custom tube amp based on his favorite era of Eddie Van Halen’s tone. For the tone-chasing masses, the resulting amp is now available to buy in a variety of formats, including as a plugin.

But, while saying “Joe’s a serious musician,” Hagar adds that there were elements that, on paper, didn’t make Satriani the best player to handle the role.

“He so good and he's so focused,” Hagar tells Rolling Stone. “Joe's a very serious musician, and he really brought it. Every night, I'm sitting there watching him do his long solos and stuff in a song like '5150,' and I'm watching the fans and they're checking him out, man. Their jaws are dropping, like, 'Holy shit, he's doing it.’

“Eddie and Joe don't have the same style at all. A lot of people think, 'Oh, yeah, he was a perfect match.' No, he wasn't a perfect match. There are a lot of guys that play much more like Eddie than Joe.

“A 12-year-old kid that can probably play 'Eruption' and those songs. There's plenty of them, I've seen them. They're just mimicking the song. I knew Joe could adapt. He knew what Eddie was doing, and so Joe does what Eddie was doing. He's playing it in a musical sense, and feeling it, and knowing what it is.”

Interestingly, Satriani, who is a lifelong Van Halen fanatic, says he’d never learned to play his songs before the tour having been worried that his own music would be infiltrated with Eddie-isms. Instead, he focused on forging his own style rather than simply mirroring his hero. That, Hagar says, makes Satch’s playing of Eddie’s parts all the more fascinating.

“He brought his own thing to the music, but he honored the most important parts, the essence of the songs, and the essence of the solos,” Hagar believes. “He didn't play note for note. Some things were almost note for note because a solo like Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love is iconic. You can't stray from that. Other than that, when Eddie jammed, Joe knew he was jamming and [so] Joe jammed.”

Hagar has expressed his desire to keep the Best of All Worlds extravaganza going, but in the meantime Satriani has announced a new band with Steve Vai. The pair's new venture will see them taking their newly devised Surfing With the Hydra tour on the road next summer.

It will be the first time in their nearly 50-year musical careers that the two electric guitar virtuosos have performed as band members, with new music mooted.

The tour follows Steve Vai also doing his best legendary guitarist fill-in as part of Beat, performing King Crimson’s ‘80s material with Adrian Belew. Reflecting on the new guitar partnership, in lieu of Robert Fripp, Belew opened up to GP about his early struggles adapting to Fripp’s playing style when he first joined the band, with Steve Vai facing similar challenges ahead of their live shows together.

Joe Satriani and Steve Vai have been writing new music together and will take it on tour next summer as the SatchVai Band, the duo announced in a joint video released today.

Dubbed the Surfing with the Hydra tour, the road stint will be the first time in their nearly 50-year musical careers that the two electric guitar virtuosos have performed as band members. Their tour begins June 13, 2025 in Europe, with more dates to be announced.

This past spring, the guitarists and their respective bands played their first tour together — outside of their G3 dates — where they performed across select U.S. cities. Since then they've merged their creative talents for the time first to create new songs.

“We’ve been writing new music and we want to go back out on tour together,” Vai says in the newly released video, “but this time with a little bit of a twist."

Adds Satriani, “The Satch-Vai tour was such a blast that Steve and I thought, Hey, we haven't had enough. We want more!”

The news comes at the end of a busy stretch for the two guitarists. Both played in 2024 on an abbreviated G3 tour and on the Satch-Vai tour. Afterward, Satriani took part in Sammy Hagar's Best of all Worlds tour, where he performed Van Halen–era music.

Vai, meanwhile, has been performing 1980s King Crimson music in the group Beat, featuring Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Danny Carey.

The SatchVai Band's road show will run through July and include stops in major cities, including London, Paris, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. It will also include performances at major European summer festivals, such as Hellfest, Umbria Jazz Festival and Guitares en Scene Fest.

Pre-sale tickets for the tour will be available starting December 11 and 12, with general sales opening on Friday, December 13. More information is available at SATCHVAIBAND.

Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson shred the blues classic “Crossroads” in this exclusive new video of the three electric guitar virtuosos from the 2024 G3 reunion tour.

Directed by ZZ Satriani, the “Crossroads” video captures the energy, fun and celebratory exhilaration that those concerts delivered.

Says Satch, "ZZ’s video brings together all the fun and musical magic of this epic G3 journey Eric, Steve and I have been on since 1996. Because of our shared roots, ‘Crossroads’ is a song that unites us. We are three very different players, still evolving on our instruments but still enjoying the celebration of the electric guitar with each other.”

Vai concurs. “We’ve played this classic jewel on various G3 tours in the past," he says, "and it always feels good to wrap the fingers around this iconic riff. Slamming away with Joe and Eric on this track creates a rich atmosphere of crushing guitar delight. It’s an honor to be a part of it.”

Adds “Johnson, “It’s always a fun one to play and stretch out on!"

The video is a tantalizing sample from the trio's forthcoming Reunion Live album that captures the electrifying magic of their sold-out 2024 U.S. tour. The album features the three guitar icons, who first joined forces in 1996 on the inaugural G3 tour, doing what they do best — shredding guitar before a live audience.

Out January 31, 2025, Reunion Live delivers full sets from each guitarist, including hits like Satriani’s “Sahara,” Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover" and Vai’s “For the Love of God,” along with a thrilling encore jam of Hendrix and Clapton covers.

Recorded before an audience at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, Reunion Live captures the energy of the G3 live experience as it shines a spotlight on the ever-evolving art of the electric guitar. The package will include new live albums from each of the three guitarists, along with a collaborative supergroup album. The album mirrors the live tour format, with individual sets followed by an epic jam session featuring all three guitarists.

Reunion Live will be available in multiple formats, including Digital, 2CD Digipack, 4LP (Black) Gatefold, and a Deluxe Slipcase with four colored LPs, a 64-page coffee-table book and two CDs. The Deluxe edition will feature a different colored vinyl record for each artist and a special splatter LP for the jam sessions. The photo book is divided into separate chapters for each artist and and the jam. The two-CD set will include a 16-page photo booklet.

Reunion Live can be pre-ordered now.

G3 Reunion Live

Album Release: January 31, 2025

Formats:

Digital, 2CD Digipack, 4LP (Black) Gatefold, Deluxe Slipcase with 4LPs (Colored), 64-page coffee table book and 2CDs.

Tracklisting (all formats):

1. Gravitas (Vai)

2. Avalancha (Vai)

3. Little Pretty Intro (Vai)

4. Little Pretty (Vai)

5. Tender Surrender (Vai)

6. Zeus in Chains (Vai)

7. Teeth of the Hydra (Vai)

8. For the Love of God (Vai)

9. Land of 1000 Dances (Johnson)

10. Righteous (Johnson)

11. Trail of Tears (Johnson)

12. On-Ramp Improv (Johnson)

13. Freeway Jam (Johnson)

14. Desert Rose (Johnson)

15. Venus Reprise (Johnson)

16. Raspberry Jam Delta-V (Satriani)

17. Surfing with the Alien (Satriani)

18. Satch Boogie (Satriani)

19. Sahara (Satriani)

20. Nineteen Eighty (Satriani)

21. Big Bad Moon (Satriani)

22. Always with Me, Always with You (Satriani)

23. Summer Song (Satriani)

24. Introductions

25. Crossroads (Encore Jam)

26. Spanish Castle Magic (Encore Jam)

27. Born to Be Wild (Encore Jam)

Alex Van Halen has lifted the lid on a score of would-be Van Halen projects in a candid new interview with Rolling Stone.

The Van Halen drummer is promoting his new book, Brothers, which details his life growing up and taking over the music world with Eddie Van Halen. The audiobook version features their final recording, captured shortly before Eddie’s passing in 2020.

Of the revelations dropped during the interview, the most surprising are that, at separate points, Chris Cornell and Ozzy Osbourne each nearly ended up fronting Van Halen.

Alex can’t recall when their secret jams with the late Soundgarden frontman happened, but he says Cornell — who took his life while on tour with Soundgarden in 2017 — was “in a very fragile part of his life.”

"I got behind the drums, and he started playing bass,” Alex says of their jams. He was especially impressed by Cornell's commitment to his performance. "We played for 45 minutes. This motherfucker got so into it he started bleeding. I said, ‘This is the man you want.’

"And then he died.”

Cornell was certainly a fan of Eddie Van Halen's. In 2009, while working on his divisive solo album, Scream, with producer Timbaland, Cornell reportedly requested Van Halen contribute to an acoustic-guitar version of the title track. A recording of Eddie's parts is said to exist, although vocals were never tracked for it.

Meanwhile, Osbourne has confirmed there were talks about him fronting Van Halen for a record in 2001, while the band was in between singers.

“Yes, we were discussing it,” Osbourne confirmed to Rolling Stone. “It is something that if it had come to fruition, would have been phenomenal.

“Eddie and Alex were great friends of mine for a very long time and it’s a regret of mine that we never got it together. The Osbournes [reality show] got in the way of creating new music at that time, unfortunately.”

In related news, former Van Halen members Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony have recently wrapped up the Best of All Worlds tour alongside Joe Satriani and Jason Bonham. The Van Halen tribute show saw Satriani make multiple mods to his guitars in order to honor Eddie’s legacy and style.

The tour follows an earlier attempt at a Van Halen tribute that would have united Satriani with Alex Van Halen, original Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth and either Anthony or former Metallica bassist Jason Newstead. Alex has blamed Roth for the project's demise.

“The thing that broke the camel’s back,” he says, “was when I said, ‘Dave, at some point we have to have a very overt — not a bowing — but an acknowledgment of Ed in the gig. If you look at how Queen does it, they show old footage [of the band with their late frontman, Freddie Mercury].’

“The moment I said we’ve got to acknowledge Ed, Dave popped a fuse.… The vitriol that came out was unbelievable.”

According to Alex, Roth’s refusal to acknowledge his brother led to a physical altercation, and the project fizzled out before it even started.

“In retrospect, playing the old songs is not really paying tribute to anybody,” Alex says. “That’s just like a jukebox, in my opinion…

"To find a replacement for Ed? It’s just not the same. The heart, the soul, the creativity and the magic were Dave, Ed, Mike, and me.”

The tube amp Joe Satriani has created with 3rd Power to nail Eddie Van Halen’s transitional, 1986-era guitar tone has been made available as a plugin – with physical amps on their way, too.

When Sammy Hagar extended the invitation for his former Chickenfoot bandmate to join him, Michael Anthony, and Jason Bonham as part of the a Van Halen-celebrating Best of All Worlds tour, the six-string virtuoso knew a tonal overhaul was necessary.

“My live rig doesn’t work,” he admitted earlier this year, “Van Halen is a different animal.”

Before he could get to modding guitars, his first move was to link up with Nashville-based amp maker 3rd Power, and its chief designer, Dylana Scott, for a custom tube amp.

With the tour including both Hagar- and David Lee Roth-era songs, the amp’s mission statement was simple: capture the essence of Eddie’s Live Without a Net rig; a period when the band was transitioning between those two different eras of singers – and Satch’s favorite.

Eddie’s ‘86 rig comprised modded Marshalls with power soaks and effects processing, which is what the result, the Dragon 100, has stylishly mimicked. The amp is currently on the road with Satch and co.

Thankfully, IK Multimedia – the firm behind the Amplitube ToneX plugins that, via “machine modeling,” can supposedly make digital twins of any amp on the planet – sampled the amp’s soul for a plugin recreation before the tour began.

Consequently, the Dragon 100 has been added to its Joe Satriani Amp Vault Signature Collection, which launched last month, making the amp's magic accessible to digital amp users worldwide.

The amp was captured at Hagar’s Red Rocker Studios in Northern California using IK Multimedia’s nifty modeling tech. Eight resultant digital models promise classic Plexi tones with fine-tuned, tube amp-like dynamic response that works as well with single notes as it does complex chords.

The new models have been added to the Satriani collection at no extra cost. Existing users can download the extra amps for free, too. That takes the collection's amp count to a tidy 67.

“My 3rd Power Dragon 100 amp is a vintage-sounding and modern-featured head inspired by the legendary 1967/1968 Plexi Super Lead 100,” says Satriani.

“It sounds like a roaring Plexi recorded with the best mics, preamps, and EQs, perfectly balanced like a great, legendary recorded guitar track. Harmonically rich and touch-sensitive with plenty of gain on tap, there's nothing quite like it. It's my favorite new amp.”

The amps were road-tested during his recent co-headline tour with Steve Vai, with three heads now being put to work on the Best of All Worlds tour.

“My new setup for the Best of All Worlds Tour will feature an all-Dragon (wet/dry/wet) system with three heads powering six cabinets,” he explains. “It's an awesome sound!”

Real amp loyalists will soon be able to get their hands on Satch’s Eddie-channeling amp – in 25, 45, and 100-watt head and combo options – very soon. Pre-orders are now open via Bananas at Large with a three to six-month lead time, with prices starting at $2,999.

The amps are hand-wired point-to-point builds, utilizing a laydown mains transformer to supply 500v of power to EL34 power tubes – resulting in superpowered saturation.

Further features are headlined by 3rd Power’s signature HybridMASTER control. This allows players to simultaneously control the volume, limit the DC current, and regulate the DC plate voltage of the tube circuitry.

In simple terms, this helps fine-tune the amp’s tone for every venue, regardless of size.

There’s also a host of smart EQ features, including Plexi/Cascade Preamp Modes, a 400Hz Boost, Vintage/Modern Tone Stacks, a Low Freq. Push, and Vintage/Focus Power Amp Modes.

Finally, an Ultra Presence mode delivers four switchable High-Frequency Shelf settings.

In the meantime, their digital counterparts are available today at a fraction of the price.

The Joe Satriani Amp Vault unlocks Satch favorites (Marshall, Soldano, 5150), and rarer amps like a vintage Fender ’53 Tweed Deluxe, and now the Dragon 100, for $99.99.

Jump over to IK Multimedia to explore the suite in more detail.

After months of excitement and gear speculation, Sammy Hagar is set to take his Best of All Worlds tour out on the road this weekend. 

The 31-date run will see the vocalist performing Hagar and Roth-era Van Halen songs, backed by an all-star band featuring Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony, and Jason Bonham. 

The guitar world has been patiently drip-fed information about the gear that Satch will be using for the shows, with many a keen eye paying close attention to a man who doesn’t do things by halves. 

We already know he’s worked with 3rd Power amps for a tube amp that nails Eddie Van Halen’s transitional 1986 guitar tone, and that his signature Ibanez models will feature. Now he’s given fans the most comprehensive rundown of his Van Halen-worthy axes yet in a new video.

Amongst the guitars packed for tour is a 1995 Music Man Wolfgang, which he bought on Reverb. It has since been re-fretted and had Satriani’s signature DiMarzio Satur8 humbucker installed in the bridge. The pickups it came with “didn’t work,” in a surprise twist.  

The pickup's chrome finish, he says, “was not the color we were looking for but it was the only one they had.” 

There’s also a modded EVH Frankenstien, which has been fitted with a Sustainiac pickup, kill switch, and a clear pickguard for “my unusual picking technique.”  

Of his Frankensteined Frankenstien, he adds “I straightened out the pickup and put a Satur8 in there. It sounds really good.” 

Satriani has previously joked that he fears the ghost of Eddie will haunt him for the mods he’s made to the guitar. But, forever a tinkerer and innovator, we imagine that Eddie would have loved to see these choice tweaks being made here.

The Satriani signature guitars that have gotten the nod are his Elephants of Mars model, his standout Chrome signature, and Red, White, and Black variants. 

Of those, he says “my main guitar is gonna be the chrome guitar, which I have really beat up on tour all year. It sounds great for all the stuff.” 

The Red model, meanwhile “is a bit sweeter” for having a basswood, rather than an alder body. The Black model will stand as his 5150 guitar.  

Indeed, the fact that an Ibanez – and not an EVH or the Music Man – will play the leading role is an interesting development, with the guitarist perhaps leaning a little further into his style of playing than some expected. 

There is one feature, though, that is prevalent across virtually all the touring guitars, regardless of who made them. 

“I’m sure people will say, ‘What’s this speed knob doing here?’” says Satch with his Elephants guitar in hand. 

“Well, it’s because I need the numbers. I just need to look down really quick and find out where ‘four’ is on the volume knob, and get that perfect volume setting for whatever song we're doing.”

Satriani admits that he’s “not quite sure which ones are going to be the ones I’ll use on every song,” but insists he’ll “have fun” and “mix it up,” throughout the tour. 

Visit Sammy Hagar's website for a full list of upcoming Best of All Worlds tour dates.

With the Best of All Worlds tour fast approaching, fans have been given the biggest insight yet into Joe Satriani’s Van Halen-honoring live rig, and it appears he may be leaving his Ibanez signature guitar behind for the shows.  

The tour sees Satriani and Jason Bonham uniting with Van Halen alumni Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony for shows celebrating the band’s David Lee Roth- and Hagar-fronted eras. Satriani has been taking his role extremely seriously, as he tries to craft the most authentic Eddie Van Halen guitar tone possible. 

The guitarist has previously spoken about chasing the “mythical Van Halen sound,” and it seems his relentless tone-chasing mission involved a drastic overhaul of his gear. 

Hagar posted a clip of their recent rehearsal on his Instagram account, with Satriani donning what looks to be an EVH Striped Series ‘78 Eruption guitar, while a host of EVH pedals were spotted on his pedalboard. 

Satriani is rarely spotted without his signature Ibanez, which makes the sight of him shredding on a white and black striped EVH super Strat even more surreal, but the tones he ushers out of it show that his meticulous tone-chasing is paying off. 

Two EVH-branded MXR pedals, a Phase 90 and a Flanger, can be seen in his effects chain, alongside a Boss CE-2w chorus pedal and a Boss DM-2w delay pedal. 

The Hagar-filmed clip doesn’t hang on the guitarist for long, leading to speculative guesses as to what else completes his pedalboard, with Guitar Player's best guesses being a TC Electronic Sub 'N' Up Octaver and a Vox wah.

The latter is particularly interesting. While Satriani has a signature Vox wah, Van Halen has long been synonymous with the Jum Dunlop Crybaby Wah.   

Satriani is working with 3rd Power Amps ahead of the tour to create a custom amp designed to nail the sound of Van Halen’s 1986 live album, Live Without A Net. It was a transitional period for the band, getting used to life without the enigmatic David Lee Roth, while Eddie began to move away from Marshall amps. More importantly, it’s a tone that both Satriani and Hagar adore. 

Satriani’s gear overhaul may be pretty extensive, but as per a recent Guitar World interview, it was always necessary. 

“My live rig is designed so that I can play above the 12th fret on the first strings and still have everything sound fat,” he said. “I realized there's no way to play the Van Halen stuff on my rig; it's a different animal. It doesn’t work.” 

The 28-date Best of All Worlds tour begins in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 13, and runs through to August 31, with the final show happening in St. Louis, Missouri. A full list of dates can be found on Sammy Hagar's website.

Last November, it was announced that Van Halen alums Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony would join forces with drummer Jason Bonham and electric guitar hero Joe Satriani for the Best of All Worlds tour. Set to take place this summer, the trek isn't explicitly a “Van Halen tribute tour,” but seems to be the closest thing to a Van Halen tribute tour (involving former members of the band, that is) that we'll likely get. 

Filling Eddie Van Halen's shoes, of course, is just about impossible, even for as formidable a player as Satriani is.

In a recent interview on the Masters of Shred show, Satriani discussed the difficulty of threading the needle between giving fans the fretboard fireworks they expect from a Van Halen-dominated show, without simply copying the late guitar hero note-for-note.

“I've tried my best to avoid playing like Eddie forever,” Satriani said. “I'm a big fan and I've never learned the songs on purpose so I didn't steal anything. Then I had to learn the songs and I was like, ‘This is gonna be torture.’”

Satriani went on to compare the experience to his brief tenure in Deep Purple, which saw him replace the departing Ritchie Blackmore. 

“When I was playing in Deep Purple, all I heard was Ritchie Blackmore's parts in one ear, and in the other ear was me. It didn't sound like Ritchie.”  

Reservations aside, however, Satriani has indeed been intensively studying EVH's tone, particularly that found on the early-Hagar-era 1986 live album, Live Without a Net. To that end, Satriani revealed that he has been working with Nashville-based boutique amp builders 3rd Power on “the ultimate '86 era Van Halen amp.”

“Once I'd taken this deep dive into the technicalities of trying to play these songs, and spoken to Sammy about his favorite tone, we focused on [Live Without a Net],” the guitarist said. “He was still playing the Roth era rig, but was leaning towards what was to become the Hagar era rig – the transition from Marshall amps to Soldano, to Peavey, and ultimately the 5150IIIs.”

Though Satriani couldn't confirm whether the amp would be tube-powered or solid-state, he stated confidently that “We'll be able to do both eras [Roth and Hagar] with that setup. Getting that started has been the important thing for me.”

• For dates and tickets to the Best of All Worlds tour, visit Hagar's website.

Roughly 10 years ago, Guitar Aficionado magazine ran a story about George Harrison’s guitar collection. I was the publication’s managing editor at the time. For the page showing George’s Gibson J-160E — the acoustic-electric he played on many of the group’s early songs — we included a photo of George and John Lennon holding their Gibsons. 

As the story goes, Harrison and Lennon bought their matching Jumbos at the same time and eventually, perhaps accidentally, swapped them. Lennon’s was stolen in late 1963 and presumed lost forever by the time our issue came out. That changed after a reader saw our story and thought one of the guitars in that photo of George and John looked a lot like a second-hand early ’60s J-160E owned by his friend. Long story short, the guitars were a match. Lennon’s missing guitar had been found.

Ever since, it hasn’t been lost on me that the media can play a passive, but very important role in helping solve mysteries around historic instruments simply by reporting on them and, where possible, providing photographs and descriptions. Maybe we’ll get closer to bringing them home.

And while we’re on the subject, take time to write down your guitars’ serial numbers and take photos. You’ll be happy you did should your gear have the misfortune to meet up with bad characters, like the lost guitars below…

George Harrison's 1965 Rickenbacker 360/12

STOLEN: Circa September 1966, possibly London

George Harrison was the owner of two Rickenbacker 360/12 12-strings, both gifts to the Beatles guitarist. He received the first — allegedly the second ever made — from Rickenbacker president Francis C. Hall on February 8, 1964, after rehearsals for the group’s Ed Sullivan Show appearance, and went on to make it an integral part of the early Beatles sound on A Hard Day’s Night. 

The second was gifted to him by Minneapolis music store B Sharp Music, prior to the Beatles’ August 21, 1965 show at Old Met Stadium. After learning from another visiting Liverpool rock band, the Remo Four, that Harrison might like the guitar, the shop custom ordered it for him. The guitar featured Rickenbacker’s newly introduced style, with rounded edges, rather than the sharp corners seen on the 1964 model, and checkerboard binding on the back, instead of white binding on the front and back. 

According to Andy Babiuk’s Beatles Gear book, Harrison put the guitar to use in the studio on the Beatles’ next album, Rubber Soul, where it can be heard on the chiming lick to his song “If I Needed Someone.” He played the guitar in concert on many occasions over the next year, the Beatles’ last as a touring act. It’s been suggested over the years that the ’65 Rick was stolen along with his Gretsch Tennessean and Paul McCartney’s ’61 Höfner bass — a theory now debunked — during the January 1969 sessions for Let It Be. 

Most likely, the guitar was lifted sometime after the Beatles concluded their 1966 tour on August 29, at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, and prior to Harrison’s first trip to India to study sitar with Ravi Shankar. Finding the guitar has been difficult in part because B Sharp Music didn’t record the serial number. Rickenbacker CEO John Hall has said five 1965 360/12 guitars could be candidates, based on shipment records. A guitar bearing one of the five serial numbers has surfaced, but whether it’s Harrison’s or not is unknown.

Joe Satriani's 1990 JS2 "Pearly" prototype, Blue Donnie, Rainforest

STOLEN: Pearly, on August 21, 2000, Clearwater, Florida. Blue Donnie and Rainforest, sometime in 2000, San Rafael, California

Joe Satriani's JS2 model was the second signature guitar Ibanez created for the virtuoso. Introduced in 1990, the guitar had a basswood body with a chrome finish, something Ibanez had never attempted before. As it turned out, the finish was prone to cracking, and therefore very few were produced. “Unfortunately, they used real chrome, and any fissures created when the finish lifted the sealant off the body would crack and create a knife edge,” Satch told Vintage Guitar in its January 2012 issue. As a result, the guitar didn’t go into production, and Joe’s three prototypes — dubbed Chrome Boy, Refractor and Pearly (so named for its pair of Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickups) — were given a thick plastic coating to protect his hand from getting sliced open by a crack in the finish. 

“At first, when the guys delivered the guitars, I remember thinking, Boy, these sound compressed or something,” Satch commented, “and I put them in the rack.” That changed as the guitars aged. “Later, they became my favorites, especially the Chrome Boy.” The guitars were used heavily on record as well as onstage, which is how Pearly came to disappear during load-out following a show at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida, on August 21, 2000. 

Within days, news of the theft was swirling across the internet, along with the promise of a $500 reward. To date, Pearly hasn’t been found. Sadly, Pearly isn’t the only guitar Satch has lost. Two others include Blue Donnie and Rainforest, both stolen from a rehearsal facility in San Rafael, California. Satch describes Blue Donnie as “my favorite hand-painted Donnie Hunt guitar, used extensively on the Flying in a Blue Dream tour.” The other is “my one and only Rainforest guitar, dedicated to me by my sister Carol.” 

Eric Clapton's "Beano" Gibson Les Paul

STOLEN: Summer 1966, in northwest London 

When guitarists talk of stolen guitars, the one that most often comes to mind is Eric Clapton’s first Les Paul Standard, the ’Burst he used on the 1966 release Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton. The guitar has the distinction of being the instrument with which Clapton practically defined blues-rock guitar tone and stands as the epitome to which many players strive. The fact that it was stolen and remains lost only furthers its iconic status.

Clapton bought the Burst at the Lew Davis music store at 134 Charing Cross Road, in London, sometime between Sunday, May 30, 1965 — when he was last photographed playing a Fender Telecaster — and Friday, June 4, when a local newspaper photographed him wielding his newly purchased Les Paul at the Ricky Tick club in the Plaza Ballroom in Guildford, Surrey. The guitar was used, but in nice condition. He modified it by replacing the original Kluson tuners with a set of Grovers and, toward the end of 1965, removing the metal pickup covers to reveal the bobbins: double-white at the neck, double-black at the bridge. 

This was at the height of Clapton’s prowess with the Blues Breakers, and it’s lucky he was captured for posterity playing the Les Paul at the Blues Breakers sessions between March 27 and 31, 1966, at Decca Records studio in northwest London. But by the time of the album’s release that summer, Clapton was rehearsing with his new blues-rock trio Cream at a church hall in Brondesbury, northwest London. It was from there the Les Paul was stolen before Clapton had played a single lick on it with the new band in public or on record. 

The theft got some publicity that August in the Record Mirror, where a downcast Clapton described the guitar as “five or six years old, small and solid. It has one cutaway and is a red-gold color, with Grover machine heads. The back is very scratched and there are several cigarette burns on the front.” He replaced it that month with a ’Burst purchased from future Police guitarist Andy Summers, then bought another that he gave to Free guitarist Paul Kossoff in the summer of 1969 when that group supported Clapton’s new group, Blind Faith. 

But finding Clapton’s original ’Burst may prove impossible. Its serial number and year of manufacture are unknown, and only some 20 or so photos of the guitar exist, most of them grainy, making it difficult to match the figuring of the wood and patterns in the fretboard markers, as well as telltale dings and damage. If ever there were an elusive stolen guitar, this one is it.

Jeff Beck's sunburst 1959 Les Paul

STOLEN: July 21, 1969, Tamarack Lounge, Ellenville, New York 

Before he was Cheap Trick's guitarist, Rick Nielsen was a vintage guitar dealer at a time when his wares were more commonly known as “used” guitars. Among his star customers was Jeff Beck, who purchased from Nielsen a 1959 ’Burst that he went on to use with the Jeff Beck Group. On July 21, 1969, the band — consisting then of Beck, singer Rod Stewart, bassist Ronnie Wood and drummer Tony Newman — was performing at the Tamarack Lounge in Ellenville, New York, in support of Beck’s album Beck-Ola, released that June, with the ’Burst among the guitars onstage. 

According to Newman, Beck riled up the audience by spraying them with a fire extinguisher, after which security quickly rushed the band offstage. While the gear was unattended, someone made off with Beck’s ’Burst. In 2000, the guitar was finally located by Perry Margouleff, a Long Island musician and vintage guitar dealer to the stars. Margouleff was eager to purchase the ’Burst but wanted Beck’s blessing, which he says was received via a phone call. Margouleff subsequently paid $75,000 to an undisclosed dealer for the guitar. 

In January 2018, Beck’s manager notified Margouleff that his client wanted the Les Paul back. When the parties failed to reach a resolution, Margouleff filed suit, seeking a declaratory judgment that Beck had abandoned and waived any claim to the instrument. David Baum, Beck’s lawyer, has denied the 2000 phone conversation with his client ever took place. Thus began a “he said–he said” over who is the ’Burst’s rightful owner, a question that, to date, has not been settled. Beck died in January 2023, adding a new wrinkle to the matter. The guitar remains in Margouleff’s possession.

In terms of versatility, few guitarists have anything on Alex Skolnick. When he’s not slaying audiences with blitzing riffs and solos with thrash-metal titans Testament, he’s blending bebop and rock with his own jazz group, the Alex Skolnick Trio.

Clearly, he’s learned a thing or two about what to play and when, but as Skolnick points out, his evolution on the electric guitar is ongoing. “I’ve constantly got my ear out for good tips, and I’m always trying to improve my playing,” he reveals. “I notice that about my favorite players — they don’t stop. Even when they get into their 60s and 70s, they’re as passionate about learning as they were when they started.”

One might assume Skolnick’s level of proficiency requires maximum thought at all times, but somewhat surprisingly, he notes that he’s aspiring to reach a place where he doesn’t have to think at all. “That’s kind of a crazy goal I have — to be able to play a piece of music as easily as I would use a fork. I want it to be as automatic as that,” he says. “There are things I play that are effortless, but it’s certainly not everything. There’s a level of musicianship I have in my head. We’ll see if I get there.”

If you’re looking to take your playing somewhere new, get started by checking out Skolnick’s top five tips.

1. BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF

“This is very hard for many people to wrap their heads around. To be able to improve as a guitarist, you need to be honest with yourself about what you’ve got under your fingertips. Let’s face it: We all want to be great guitarists and play at a high level. There’s the aspirational side of it, but the reality can be something different. You must learn to accept where you are currently to be able to focus on the things you need to work on, and that takes humility and maturity — two traits not always common to guitarists.

“How many times have you seen a friend say, ‘I can do that’ after they hear some insane guitar solo? Well, maybe they can’t do that yet, and that’s okay. But they’ll never be able to do it if they’re not honest about the work they need to put in.

“You might be the best guitarist in your household, or maybe you’re the best on your block. But go to a big city, and guess what? You won’t be the best. There are tons of people better than you. That’s okay, too. Accept it and put in the time to practice.”

2. ENJOY THE PROCESS OF WORKING TO IMPROVE

“Years ago, when I was just starting to play, I came across this giant guitar instructional book that had far too much information for me to process at the time. There was every imaginable scale, mode, fingering and chord in this thing. I had no idea what to do with it. I thought, Oh, my God. I have to absorb all this stuff? It seemed impossible.

“Then I heard Day Tripper by the Beatles. It had that cool riff that sounded like surf guitar, and I thought, I think I can play that. I picked up the guitar and played it really close to the bridge of the guitar so I got that twangy sound. I had fun with it, and I felt inspired. Then I played The James Bond Theme, with the same kind of surf guitar sound. I had a great time just playing music. It made me feel good about myself and the progress I was making. And as a result, the idea of taking a look at that instructional book didn’t seem so overwhelming to me. Those little steps made the big steps seem reachable.”

3. DON’T TRY TO BE SOMEBODY YOU’RE NOT

“It’s easy to be swayed by the crowd. Sometimes a guitarist comes along that everybody seems to talk about, and you might be tempted to copy that player. It’s one thing to appreciate a guitarist, but if they have such a unique style, maybe it’s best to steer clear of adopting it.

“I remember when I was taking lessons from Joe Satriani. At the time, everybody was going crazy about Yngwie Malmsteen, and I liked what he was doing, too. Joe kind of told me, ‘That’s fine, but don’t get too into him. Don’t try to sound like him, because in a few years there will be somebody else who’s the hot guy.’ Which is funny, because a few years later Joe was the guy everybody was talking about. People were learning everything on Surfing With The Alien, but I tried to keep my distance, because I remembered what Joe had told me. It was kind of funny, really. Joe was a great teacher and a huge influence on me, but I knew I shouldn’t try to sound like him. He was doing his thing, but it wasn’t supposed to be my thing.”

4. DON’T LET NEGATIVITY BRING YOU DOWN

“It’s easy to get depressed about your musicianship. As I said about going to other cities and hearing great players, you might go, ‘Oh, man, I thought I was good, but I suck!’ You don’t even have to go to a big city; all you have to do is scroll on your phone and you’ll hear amazing guitarists. But it’s important to stay positive. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s one thing to be realistic, but that doesn’t have to turn into negativity.

“Negativity takes on many forms. I know plenty of amazing players who don’t get
press or awards. They could easily focus on what they don’t have, but they don’t because it won’t get them anywhere. They’re out there doing it. They love playing music, and that’s what really matters.

“I’m a weird mutant. I love metal, but I identify as jazz. I’ve gotten recognition, but
I see fans online say things like, ‘Why don’t people talk about Alex Skolnick more?’
I never think of it that way. I’m actually pretty happy about the recognition I’ve received. To me, it’s about what happens when I play and what I offer to the world. Sammy Hagar has seven Ferraris — I don’t have one Ferrari. If I wanted one, I could go into some other business and get one. But I enjoy what I do. I wouldn’t change anything.”

5. PRACTICE MATERIAL YOU HAVEN’T MASTERED, PERFORM MATERIAL YOU HAVE MASTERED, AND RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENCE

“This is kind of a summary of a lot of what I’ve talked about. It’s about accepting where you are on the guitar while understanding where you still want to be. It’s important to take some chances live, but the stuff you play in front of people shouldn’t take too much thought. The parts you play should be fully absorbed and feel fairly automatic. That way, you can have a great time interacting with the band and the audience. It should be a celebration of how far you’ve come. There’s material that fits that comfort level.

“On the other hand, there’s material that doesn’t fall into that category — ideas you’re working on and things you aspire to. This is the stuff you should keep private for the time being. Keep practicing it and working on it. One day you’ll be able to present it to people.

“This might sound kind of obvious, but believe me, it’s something I do in my own life. There are things that I play live that I just don’t need to practice anymore — I’ve got them down. However, there are things that you haven’t heard me play yet because I’m working on them. That stuff is all delegated to practice time. The key thing is, I want to have great performances onstage and productive practice sessions, and the two aren’t the same. So don’t get them mixed up. If it’s not ready for prime time, save it until the time is right, and then all of your practice will feel worth it.”

The following appeared in the May 2020 issue of Guitar Player magazine.

“There's a great piece of advice I once got from Glyn Johns,” Joe Satriani tells Guitar Player, recalling a conversation with the legendary British producer who helmed Satch’s 1995 self-titled album.

“He said to me: ‘It’s not your job to decide what people will like or not like – it’s your job to play the guitar. So go play your bloody guitar!’”

Satriani laughs at the bluntness of the directive. But, he adds, “It was just a really great, cutting-through-the bullshit statement. He was saying, ‘Make yourself happy. Play what you want to play!’”

It’s a credo that the 67-year-old Satriani has taken to heart over the course of his long career, during which he’s released 18 solo albums (his latest being last year’s The Elephants of Mars) and played with artists and acts as diverse as Mick Jagger, Robert Fripp, Blue Öyster Cult, Spinal Tap and his own supergroup, Chickenfoot. 

As for whether fans will like what they hear, that’s not Satriani’s concern. “You might worry about that if you’re, like, 18 and just coming onto the scene and you want to be very ‘definable,’” Satch says. “But I’ve been around a long time. I’ve made a lot of records. And I’m riding high on this wonderful career gifted to me by the fans. 

"So, if anything, the only pressure I feel is to keep exploring and delivering different creative sides of my playing and my musicianship.”

Could you have ever imagined you would build a career out of playing instrumental guitar music?

It wouldn’t have crossed my mind at all. But instrumental music became like a personal growth thing for me. That sounds weird. I don’t mean for it to sound medical or something. [laughs] 

What I mean is, it was the thing that I did to help me understand music. I loved listening to instrumental music, whether it was classical or jazz or Hendrix’s instrumental stuff. 

But I was always focused on being in a rock band. I wanted to be like Jimmy Page with Led Zeppelin, you know? I wanted to be in a four-piece band with a singer and to write great songs, but also be part of an ensemble.

So what happened?

As we got into 1984 with the Squares, it just got more and more dire and frustrating. And simply as a knee-jerk reaction over the Christmas holiday break, I started my own record company and my own publishing company, and I made an instrumental EP – just the weirdest record ever, as an experiment.

And I remember bringing it to the guys at rehearsal a few months later saying, “We should be doing this – doing crazy shit and we should be doing it on our own.” And everyone was like, “…Nah.” [laughs] And so by the end of that year, I’d left the band I’d created and I had this weird EP that people started to recognize.

I wasn’t successful at all, but just the fact that Guitar Player reviewed it made me realize that this was a path where the universe was saying, “Hey, you don’t have to kill yourself trying to be in a pop band. You can do this and you love it, so why not do it?"

Well, now you’ve made a nice little career out of this instrumental guitar thing. How do you go about keeping it fresh?

That’s a good question! [laughs] It’s one we ask ourselves all the time. I think there are levels in any musician’s career where you can break it down into what you’re trying to accomplish physically, what you’re trying to accomplish artistically and what you’re trying to accomplish economically.

These are all things that need to be addressed. Musicians need to be honest with themselves and ask, “Am I going to be happy just playing in a disco band, or should I get myself in a metal band, because that’s what I love?” You’ve got to answer that.

You ask yourself, “Am I playing the kind of things that I want to play, or am I stopping myself because I’ve invented some set of rules or guidelines that I think are going get me more success?”

It’s silly to think that way, and musicians should never think that way. You can’t make people like you or not like you – it’s totally out of your control. When you accept that, there’s something freeing about it. But then you also have to do the hard work. If you’re going to stand up in front of people and say, “I’m a musician,” then they get to say, “Oh yeah? Well, show us!” You’ve gotta have the stuff.

You thrive off the creativity, as well as the challenge.

Yeah. I like coming off a tour and thinking, 'Oh my god, what am I going to do next?' What am I going to write? What am I going to play? 

That split second where you have a moment of weakness and anxiety is actually a really fertile moment, and you fill that void with all these aspirations and things that you want to express – things you’re happy about, things you’re sad about, things you’re mad about. 

And when you finish it, you offer it up to the people. But then, you know, you move on and you go write some more stuff. You do the work.

Order Joe Satriani's latest solo album, The Elephants of Mars here.

Once upon a time, your favorite guitar virtuosos were novices, honing their chops and struggling through the same challenges and problems every beginning guitarist goes through.

Well, what if they could tell you what roadblocks they encountered and how they got around them?

Better still, what if they could provide you with their very own exercises designed to build chops in that particular area?

It would be awesome. And that’s exactly what this lesson is all about.

Here, Steve Vai, Mark Tremonti, Joe Bonamassa, Mike Stern, Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, Alex Skolnick, Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson share stories about their own efforts to build their chops and provide you with short exercises that will help you develop relevant techniques.

So grab your guitar and get ready to build your chops with the best players in the business.

STEVE VAI

"I would get extremely disciplinarian with myself when it came to building chops. When I would sit down to practice a lick, like the one here, I’d tell myself, 'Until you can play this lick properly, you will not get up, eat, go to sleep.' 

"That’s a pretty intense thing for a 14-year-old boy to do – it’s a reflection of a psychological imperfection, actually, or a crack in the cosmic eggshell. I was very intense about it. 

"I don’t need to sit and practice for 10 hours a day anymore, but I do try to be as proficient as possible."

MARK TREMONTI

"The exercise that helped my alternate picking the most was one I got from the first Paul Gilbert video, Intense Rock. That helped me to get that upstroke across strings really tight, so I could flow through three-notes-per-string scale patterns ascending. 

"Problem is, I became twice as good ascending scales as I was descending, so I then had to work in both directions to get my upstrokes and downstrokes equal. 

"It’s important that you practice it in both directions."

JOE BONAMASSA

"As a singer, you warm up and then warm down, and I like to think of the guitar in the same way. And if you’re playing four-hour gigs, like I do, you often wake up the next day with cramped-up hands and fingers. 

"So, to get the cobwebs out, I like to use what I call the 'Andy Summers Exercise.' I play a three-string sus2 shape moving up the neck, hitting all the natural roots in the key of C, and then repeat it on the accidental roots – the sharps and flats. I also do it with the roots on the 5th string. 

"Doing the exercise in this manner, rather than just chromatically, makes you pay attention a bit more, and keeps you from just mindlessly noodling."

MIKE STERN

"When I was 22 in 1975, I was doing gigs with Blood, Sweat & Tears where we were playing really fast tunes, and I was trying to play more like Jim Hall and float over the time. But then Jaco Pastorius said to me, 'Man you’re going really slow and trying to hear everything you play, which is great, but at this point you’re ready to ‘hit up against the time’' – or play eighth and 16th notes right with the time.

"So I went back and practiced playing a tune like, say, “Donna Lee,” with a metronome, and each day I’d click up the metronome a bit. Another thing I did was take classical pieces and, as an exercise, play them way faster than they’re supposed to be played.

"This one here, in G minor, is from Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Violin, and there’s no set fingering. I know a lot of cats who worked out of this book – John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Steve Vai. The thing is, if you’re gonna work on your chops, don’t just do a scalar exercise. Technique by itself is kind of useless, but when you include it with musical ideas, it makes sense.

"And remember, with chops all you can do is develop your potential. But what’s beautiful about music is that someone’s style or voice is defined as much by what they can’t do as what they can do. Some people can’t play fast, so they play more melodically. 

"I dig melodic playing, but I also dig the excitement in John Coltrane’s or Michael Brecker’s playing – it’s an obvious thing that people can relate to. West Montgomery, even, liked to work on his speed. He felt that it added variety to his phrasing. And it did."

YNGWIE MALMSTEEN

"Years ago, I recorded a band rehearsal on a slow tape machine, and when I listened to it the next day [on a machine at proper speed], I went, 'Man! That’s fast!' I didn’t realize that something was wrong with the machine. 

"After that, I started playing everything a lot faster. Like, if there was something I was originally playing legato, I’d want to be able to play it was alternate picking as well, completely coordinated and clean."

PAUL GILBERT

"I played for about eight years without having any significant picking technique. It was all hammer-ons and pull-offs. For me, what it took was learning to use the metronome – slowing a repeating lick down to where I could do it perfectly, then gradually speeding it up. I learned a really simple six-note picking lick on one string, and within a couple weeks I could play it really fast.

"But the hardest thing about fast picking is to go from string to string, so to improve at crossing the strings I practiced this one here, which gets progressively trickier with each section."

ALEX SKOLNICK

"The biggest thing that’s helped me has been learning licks off records, as opposed to playing exercises from books. And over the years, I’ve developed quite a few licks into exercises.

"One of the first was from Al Di Meola’s “Race with the Devil on Spanish Highway,” from Elegant Gypsy – the fast lick that everybody plays. It was very challenging, so I divided it into sections. 

"The first descends in a quintuplet pattern [A G F# E D]; the next one is a four-note group [F# E D C#]. To expand the exercise, you can move the entire pattern up to the next note, B, and use the same rhythm pattern. Keep going up the scale, playing either the quintuplet alone or whole lick, and move it up and down as well as across the fretboard."

JOE SATRIANI

"When you’re hammering on and pulling off, it’s all about accuracy, not brute force – you really have to pay attention to the way your fingers are moving. For instance, when I put my finger down on a string, do I feel that I have put it in the most efficient spot possible? Should the string be a little more in the center of my fingertip, or a little off to its side?

"I used to find the perfect spot to hammer on and pull off – both on my finger and on the fretboard – and then focus all my energy on the movement required to get there. 

"Doing that freed me up to really start whipping my fingers around in a musical rhythm."

ERIC JOHNSON

"The most important thing I’ve done for my chops is that I’ve always worked on my picking and fretting at the same time, so that whatever I play, it’s really clean. 

"You can work on this with whatever you’re playing – it’s just a process of fretting a note right, picking the string right, and muting in all the right places. 

"The key is to make sure you’re in sync, and if you are, the result is a nice, pure sound that really projects."

Print has faced a major foe for the past two decades as digital media has come to dominate the mainstream. But 25 years ago, guitar magazines faced a peril equally as formidable: rap.

As the urban contemporary genre became dominant in the late 1990s, guitar-based music faded from the airwaves for the first time since the British Invasion, which was itself a re-set after the brief lull that followed the late-’50s demise of rock and roll’s first wave.

I can still recall seeing the circulation figures in late February 1998 that showed declines of as much as 40 percent among some of the smaller guitar magazines that swam around the era’s Big Three: Guitar Player, Guitar World and Guitar for the Practicing Musician. (Remarkably, I’ve worked at each of those titles.)

The result was a culling that killed off Guitar Shop, Maximum Guitar, which I was then editing, and several other now-forgotten publications.

There were still plenty of guitar groups and artists, many of whom – like Limp Bizkit’s Wes Borland and Korn’s Munky and Head – filled the newly emerging nu-metal category, a fusion of metal and rap. But the heyday of virtuosos and shredders seemed long ago and faraway.

About the only thing that kept the light burning for guitar virtuosity in those years was G3, the annual guitar tour launched in 1996. It was a novel concept, bringing together a triumvirate of players on an annual basis to celebrate a level of electric guitar technical proficiency that dominated in the 1980s, before grunge stripped modern guitar rock of its feathers and frills.

Over its years, G3 became a remarkable celebration of guitar virtuosity in all its many forms, encompassing shredders like Yngwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci, Paul Gilbert and Steve Morse, hard rockers such as Michael Schenker, Neal Schon and Brian May, new blues artists like Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and even country pickers like Johnny Hiland – not to mention such impossible-to-categorize players as Robert Fripp and Adrian Legg.

And it was all due to one man: the tour’s creator, Joe Satriani.

Of course, he had a little help for his all-important inaugural run from two guitarists who shared his dream and vision: Steve Vai and Eric Johnson.

Lighting a torch that kept the spirit of virtuoso guitar playing alive while, remarkably, embracing music in all its many styles and forms, it was and remains a tremendous achievement.

Of all the shredders that emerged in the ’80s, Joe Satriani is perhaps the guitarist whose style is most rooted in the history of classic rock and blues, something that both Mick Jagger and Deep Purple clearly picked up on, as he had touring stints with both acts. His later rock supergroup, Chickenfoot, with Sammy Hagar on vocals, made it clear that Satriani was as comfortable in a band setting as he was fronting his own music.

“It’s a very different discipline to be part of a band as opposed to fronting my own solo material,” Satch explains. “It can be a bit of a relief when you’ve got a born front person like Sammy Hagar or Ian Gillan, and you realize, Oh, I can just hang out back here near the drummer. It’s kind of nice for a person like me, who’s shy. However, if you’ve had those moments where you’ve played your own instrumental music in front of 90,000 people and they’ve cheered, that feedback is so powerful. You don’t get that direct audience connection with your own music when you’re part of a band.”

As a solo artist, Satriani has amassed a body of work that has pushed the boundaries of instrumental rock music, while never relying on technical expertise at the expense of emotional content. “It’s so easy to write complicated songs,” he says. “You take a piece of sheet music and you fill in the dots. Then you find some crazy musicians who are willing and able to play it, and you go, ‘Look this is so complicated, isn’t it great?’”

He laughs. “When you try to play it live, what do you do? Basically you’re busy all the time, just playing the parts. It’s very different going to see a band like Free: There’s a singer, bass, drums and guitar. They can move with the audience; they’re not bogged down with ridiculous parts.”

Four of Satriani’s song selections are long-established favorites fans expect to hear at every show. And they haven’t lost their freshness for Satch, even after almost 30 years of playing them. “I’m still trying to get them right,” he says, with a laugh. “I’m so grateful that I’ve got an audience that allows me to play those songs and refine them each time I play them. Many times, recordings are the first attempts at a song, and there are things that evolve the longer you play them live. We always respect the song as much as we can. I always tell the band that we have to be specific.

“Each song is not an opportunity to display your chops. We’re not in a fusion band playing in a club; we’re a rock band playing on a big stage. Our audience knows these songs, so let’s respect that. The songs actually allow for interpretation because of the delicacy in the way that they’re arranged.”

1. “Surfing With the Alien” from 'Surfing With the Alien' (1987)

“This was definitely the song that introduced me to a worldwide audience, and I think, in retrospect, it was probably the best song to make that introduction. When we started recording, we didn’t know that this would be the title of the album or that it would be the first track. We were just having fun, everybody was coming up with great ideas, and it became the obvious choice to open up the record.

“When I finished it, I thought that it was a representation of everything that I like about guitar playing. It had some Hendrix and Chuck Berry – a bit of everything; it was a natural. It wasn’t dark and brooding, and it didn’t sound like I was jumping on any particular bandwagon.

“I think Relativity, the record company, were scratching their heads over me, because I didn’t look right. [laughs] They had Steve [Vai] at the time, and he looked perfect – he always does – for the role of guitar god. It was both fun and heartbreaking to make the album; we had some terrible obstacles to get through. We didn’t have enough money to finish it off at one point. We had to master it twice, because there was a discrepancy in the left-to-right balance that I wasn’t prepared to accept.

“The day we were finishing the track itself, I was really just winging it to come up with something for the end. We’d been using an Eventide Harmonizer, which kept breaking down, and we couldn’t control the stereo pitch alteration. The malfunctions caused us to run late, so the guys who’d booked the next session were literally standing there glowering at me, waiting for me to finish. I performed the end solo with the whammy bar in front of a hostile audience. [laughs] I would have changed a lot of things about the album if we’d had a much bigger budget, but as for whether I’d have gotten a better result, nobody can ever know that.”

2. “Flying in a Blue Dream” from 'Flying in a Blue Dream' (1989)

“I feel that the structure of this song, musically, is extremely unique. Whenever I write a song, I always go into it thinking I can make some kind of innovation that no one has thought of – maybe some chords or some juxtaposition of ideas that hadn’t been used before. This song embodied that spirit of experimentation on so many levels. I used an open F tuning for the rhythm guitars, and I tuned my ’64 P-Bass down to a low C. I don’t know why I didn’t just get a five-string to solve that problem. [laughs]

[Producer] “John Cuniberti, who programmed the drum machine, wanted to try what was a really modern approach back then: to use no fills and follow the bass and acoustic guitars, which were constantly repeating in a minimalistic way. We didn’t call it ‘techno’ back then, but the approach was in that vein.

“I thought, for the melody, I wanted to re-create the feel of a great tune from the jazz-pop era. When Sinatra or Tony Bennett would sing a song, they’d start in a conversational low tone, then the notes would rise through the register. And eventually, when they got to the last few lines of the story, that would be the chorus, and the highest notes of the melody. I thought it was a very elegant way to tell a story, rather than starting on 10. That required me to really focus on how I can get my fingers to communicate a beautiful melody to an audience, to really inspire them.

“The beginning of the song came about by accident; we could not get rid of RF noise and interference – TV, radio or whatever. One day we were laughing at how many TV stations I could dial in with my volume control, and we started to hear this kid talking. John pushed ‘record,’ and it just happened to be right at the start of the tape reel. Then the guitar chords came in over it. It was a great coincidence. The solo was just a burst of craziness I played after a few glasses of wine. I often think I could do it so much better now, but it’s definitely got the vibe.”

3. “Summer Song” from 'The Extremist' (1992)

“It was tough to pick the third song for this – whether to go for what meant the most to me or which reached the most people, because that is what really defines your career: what people hear. I was on a promotional tour for Surfing With the Alien with a radio promo guy from Relativity Records, and I asked him what he thought would be the next step, career-wise, to reach more people. He said, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing. All we need is that one ‘summer’ song. If you can come up with one track that encapsulates the vibe of summer, I would have a much easier time walking an instrumental track into a rock and roll radio station.’

“I was working on that idea, and I just started focusing on the rhythm and the two chords, and letting the movie in my head run – driving around having fun, getting out of school... girls – you know? [laughs] It was difficult to record. The first time we tried, it failed; it just sounded kind of shuffly. We reconvened at another studio, and it was too much like ‘Surfing.’ We had a drum machine and it just wasn’t working. We got the Bissonette brothers in – Matt on bass and Gregg on drums – but we still couldn’t nail the vibe live. So we decided to use the track we already had with the drum machine and got Gregg to play to it. He really got it.

“Andy Johns was producing, and he worked with Gregg on nailing down the exact feel. The song hadn’t happened until that point. When we played it for the record company, they didn’t get it. We made a video that MTV wouldn’t play, but Sony came in and offered me a commercial. During the MTV awards, they booked two spots during every ad break and the song got played about 10 times that evening, and that made it my biggest international radio hit.”

4. “Crowd Chant” from 'Super Colossal' (2006)

“After years of touring, we used to scratch our heads on the bus after shows about how, any time I tried to do a call-and-response, I would just get moans and groans from the audience. They sounded like zombies or something. [laughs] We were thinking that, obviously, I must be playing the wrong notes and they can’t follow what I’m doing.

“Finally, we decided that they don’t know what to sing because they’re not prepared for it. I was working on the ‘Pavane’ by Fauré, and figuring out a way to use that in a song, when I suddenly realized that I could put it together with my crowd participation idea, as it was such a beautiful melody that they’d want to sing it. I made a long demo, playing what I thought was cool, then every day I’d go back to it, making it simpler and simpler. I realized that the simple things were more fun, like pentatonics, for example. Of course the ‘Pavane’ was in a minor key, so I was combining the happy and the sad.

“We wondered if we could make the crowd sound work. We had about 10 musicians who could sing, and a bunch of other people, kids or whatever, to follow along. We did one take which sounded really good. When we added the second take it sounded like a hundred people, and the third overdub sounded like a thousand. After about seven passes it sounded immense. [laughs] It was originally called ‘Party on the Enterprise’, with some loops from the old Star Trek TV series, but Sony was afraid of being sued so we couldn’t use it. It’s become a great encore song.”

5. “Sahara” from 'The Elephants of Mars' (2022)

“This one was conceived and recorded very quickly. It was originally intended to be a vocal song. I was imagining the singer having a crisis: He’s frantically walking down the streets in the middle of the night, when he gets confronted by a female deity, who tells him love is the answer. I explained the whole concept when we were doing the album, but I think it overwhelmed everybody, and we couldn’t get it to work as a vocal track.

“The producer said it’s too bad we can’t do it as an instrumental, but I thought it would be very tough to make it work, as the structure of the song had so much repetition to allow for the lyrics. I worked on it, and it was actually very challenging to play an instrumental melody on top of a rhythm guitar part where there’s a really awkward bend. [laughs] It made it sound like things were out of tune. I was bending the D string on the fourth fret of a 12-string guitar. I created a minefield for myself when it came to putting the melody on top.

“The main reason I picked this song for this list was that it was such a discovery of guitar playing as I went along building the track, and I felt that, by the time that it was over, I’d become a better guitar player. There wasn’t anything on it that was particularly difficult from a technical point of view, but the hardest thing for any musician is to really nail the emotional content of what you’re trying to express. I always want to transcend the technical aspects of the guitar to move people.”

Think of Joe Satriani’s guitars and probably the first thing that comes to mind are his signature Ibanez JS models. With their aerodynamic rounded-edge shape, built-for-speed neck, high-powered pickups and eye-popping finishes, they are about as modern a design as any.

But that doesn’t mean Joe doesn’t appreciate or have plenty of use for a solid vintage instrument. In fact, he has a whole collection of them at his beck and call.

A few years ago, he was only too happy to open his vintage vault for Guitar Player and give us a little peek inside. And it’s a good thing he did, because some of these drool-worthy models might not be around for long. “I’ve been aggressively shedding vintage guitars for the last 10 years or so,” Satch tells us. “I used to have about 30 or 40, and I like to use them alongside my Ibanezes to round out the tones on the albums. But lately I’ve been trading and trading, and selling and selling, because there’s a lot I have that other people would probably love to play too.”

He laughs. “So I don’t know, maybe you should be talking to Neal Schon or Joe Bonamassa about this.”

Below, Joe shares with us the stories behind five of the finest vintage pieces in his unique collection.

1969 Gibson Les Paul Custom

“I had this dream of finding that perfect Les Paul Custom for a long time, and it has always eluded me. But I picked this one up and my hand just fell in love with the neck. And it has that weird Les Paul Custom sound. I don’t know why they sound so unique, but they just don’t sound like regular Les Pauls.

“We did something crazy with it – we took out the original pickups, put them safely in a box, and then I had [longtime guitar tech] Gary Brawer put a [DiMarzio] Fred in the neck and a [DiMarzio] Satchur8 in the bridge, and we did the full Jimmy Page wiring. The guitar sounds amazing. I wound up using it on [Shapeshifting] on ‘Falling Stars’ and ‘Here the Blue River.’”    

1966 Fender Electric XII

“Years ago, I was always saying, ‘I’ve gotta get that electric 12 that I’ve been looking for.’ I had a Rickenbacker at the time, and it was just killing me. You couldn’t play the thing – you had to keep stopping to retune.

“So my friend Mike found me this Fender, and I remember him telling me, ‘Hey, this is what Jimmy Page actually used on “Stairway to Heaven.”’ That’s a terrible thing to tell someone who’s buying a guitar, because it clouds judgement, right? [laughs] But this turned out to be a guitar I’ve used a lot.

“Sometimes I’d put it on the left channel and the Rickenbacker on the right, and together they make a beautiful sound.”

1958 Fender Esquire

“This one’s my favorite. I’ll never get rid of this guitar. Chris Kelly, who used to work at Ibanez, found it for me back in ’92, I think. He called me one day and said, ‘I found this Esquire. You have to have it!’ And I purchased it over the phone. This is before there was Reverb and eBay and stuff like that. [laughs]

“It wound up on The Extremist album right away, and over the years it’s been on just about every album. I’ve used it clean, dirty, with slide, for power chords… It’s a beautiful guitar. And again, it was like the neck was personally made for me. I don’t know how they did that back in 1958!”

1948 Martin 000-21

“I was looking for a groovy acoustic. I had borrowed a ’64 Gibson Hummingbird, but I wanted something a bit more delicate for fingerpicking. So I walked into Real Guitars in San Francisco one day and there was this beat-to-hell 000-21.

“It was the antithesis of the beautiful 000-28 Eric Clapton had just showed up with on Unplugged. But this guitar wound up on so many records. It’s on ‘Starry Night’ [from 2002’s Strange Beautiful Music] and ‘Love Thing’ [from Crystal Planet]. It’s a beautiful-sounding guitar, and super light. I mean, the thing is like paper now – old and dry, and very expressive.”

1964 Fender Precision Bass

“I bought this at Guitar Center in San Francisco right before I started working on [1989’s] Flying in a Blue Dream. And this is the bass I used on the record. It wasn’t very expensive. I think it was about a thousand bucks at the time – which probably was more than I should have paid, especially if you see the back of it. Someone tried to wipe the finish off and gave up halfway through, so it looks real bad. [laughs]

“But I just wanted a ‘player’ instrument. And this P-Bass has been on so many of my albums over the years. Even bassists that I’ve invited to play on records have wound up using it for at least one song. And that’s because it does ‘the thing’ – that great mid-’60s P-Bass thing that we all love.”

“Whenever you’re dealing with the idea of matching a guitar sound to a song, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, ‘What do I want to say with my instrument?’ Joe Satriani told Guitar Player. “You have to consider your intentions, and that becomes context.

“Context will ultimately define if your tone is good and proper for what you’re trying to put across.”

Synonymous with Ibanez, Satriani has maintained his loyalty to the Japanese firm for decades and his signature guitars remain the engines of his creative work. So how did it all begin? “What I noticed when I was growing up and developing my style, was that Les Pauls, Teles, and Strats restricted me,” he reveals.

“I wanted to play a certain way. But my knuckles would hit the horn on ES-335s, Telecasters and Les Pauls would dig into the underside of my forearm, and things like that.”

While the Strat proved more lenient, the vibrato system still wasn’t working out for Satch. Ultimately, he needed something more stable.

“All of a sudden, the Floyd Rose comes into being,” he recalls. “It had to be invented, because somebody had to solve the tuning issue and make a better vibrato bar.

“Also, I had been putting guitars together myself with Boogie Bodies and ESP necks, and all this stuff, but it wasn’t until Ibanez sent me a 540R that I realized, ‘Hey, this doesn’t look like a ’50s guitar, and it produces a whole other sound.’”

While physical comfort was a crucial factor in realizing the ultimate JS guitar, so too was sound.

“I had to start working on the sound, because the guitar has to be elegant in how it makes its transitions,” explains Satriani. “I start a song, I play a riff, I immediately go into a melody, there are little solo flourishes around the melody, there’s an intense melody that may involve totally destroying the guitar with the whammy bar and other techniques, and then go back to the melody to finish the song. I do that for two and a half hours onstage, and instruments of that ’50s design just don’t work.

“Steve Blucher at DiMarzio has been working with me for years to figure out pickups that would allow me to have a specific voice when I play melody, but also have a big, broad sound when I play chords. It’s easier said than done. There’s real subtlety in those shadings.

“In addition, Gary Brawer and Ibanez’s Los Angeles Custom Shop spent many years on getting the mass out of the tremolo bar so that it didn’t make the guitar sound boingy. It’s constant refinement, because when I play a song like “Headrush” or “Energy,” I don’t want the guitar to stop me at all.

“I need it to be open to interpretation.”

Order Joe Satriani's latest album, The Elephants of Mars, here.

***The following interview extract originally appeared in the November 2018 issue of Guitar Player***

Joe Satriani is happy to discuss nearly any topic related to the electric guitar. But when the subject turns to tone, the voluble master of the six-string becomes downright enthusiastic.

“Tone is such an endlessly fascinating concept,” he says. “Right off the bat, what I find interesting about tone is how subjective it is: What’s good tone? What’s bad? There may not be a right or wrong here, because, as it is with all music and art, context is everything.”

Here, Satch takes the lead and dishes out some sound advice on guitar cables…

People rarely talk about guitar cables when discussing tone, but it’s really one of the most important aspects of how a guitar sounds, isn’t it?

It really is, and it never gets the kind of attention it should.

I always went for the cables that colored the sound the least. You can A/B cables to find the one that’s louder and offers more fidelity – more low and high end.

With bad cables, we’re really talking about capacitance: The guitar signal is coming out of your guitar, and when it hits the cable you don’t want any frequencies to be chopped off or deteriorate.

With rare exceptions, shorter cables do the trick because the signal doesn’t have to travel as far, so there isn’t the same amount of frequency loss.

You can test this easily: Go get a Telecaster and a Vibrolux. Take a two-foot cable, a three-foot cable and one that’s 40 feet long. You’ll be able to tell which cable works best pretty quickly.

When we were recording [1987’s] Surfing with the Alien, we got on this crazy kick of using the shortest cable possible. We even made our own Mogami cables. We were really into it.

John Cuniberti would find a cable that allowed me to stand where I needed to in order to record a particular part. But that was just it: I had to stand in one spot and I couldn’t move any further.

Sometimes it was a four-foot cable, and I would stand right in the control room. It was a little crazy, but it worked.

These days, we use D’Addario cables both in the studio and on tour. We make them up for every gig. If it’s an unusual venue – if it’s a bigger or smaller place than what I’m used to – my tech, Mike, will come to me and say, “Hey, I switched to this length cable because I can save you 10 feet.” We know it’ll make a difference in how my guitar sounds.

It’s kind of funny: Back in my lean years I always went for the cheaper stuff, because economy was extremely important and I had to prioritize. 

I would look at my budget and say, “Well, I really want that one pedal, so I can save a few bucks if I buy the cheaper cable.” But cheaper isn’t always the way to go when purchasing something like guitar cables.

This just goes back to what I said before: You want your gear to inspire you. It has to deliver a sound that makes you want to play and create. So if you have to spend a few more bucks on a cable, do it.

And if you’re thinking, Well, I can’t jump into the audience with an eight-foot cable so I should get the 40-foot one, just remember that the longer cable is going to affect your sound a lot more.

Bigger isn’t always better. And longer isn’t either. [laughs]

For more great advice on guitar cables, check out our essential buyer's guide: Best Guitar Cables 2023: Hard-working Cables That Will Preserve Your Tone.

***The following interview extract originally appeared in the November 2018 issue of Guitar Player***

Joe Satriani is happy to discuss nearly any topic related to the electric guitar. But when the subject turns to tone, the voluble master of the six-string becomes downright enthusiastic.

“Tone is such an endlessly fascinating concept,” he says. “Right off the bat, what I find interesting about tone is how subjective it is: What’s good tone? What’s bad? There may not be a right or wrong here, because, as it is with all music and art, context is everything.”

Here, Satch dishes out some sound advice when it comes to choosing a new guitar and amp…

When purchasing a guitar, what should somebody be aware of in regard to tone?

Guitarists can always look for ways to achieve a certain sound. But the first thing you need to ask yourself is, What do I want to say with my guitar? And the answer to that question will lead you on your way to finding the right guitar to meet that end result.

When a guitar feels comfortable in your hands, it’s impossible to put it down. There’s something about a guitar that, when it feels right, just inspires you to play. Before you know it, you’re writing songs on it and jamming on it all the time. And that’s going to affect the way you play, and it will ultimately affect your tone.

Beyond pickups, vibrato bars, amps and anything else, your hands on the guitar – the way you pick and the way you fret the strings – is the most important element of your tone. So having a guitar that really inspires you cannot be overstated.

In terms of tone, what should somebody think about when choosing an amp?

You have to consider any purchase very carefully and make sure it fits your needs. If you need versatility, as I imagine you will, you should look for an amp that isn’t a one-trick pony.

You might get a gig that calls for one type of sound, and you want to be able to dial it up without a lot of hand-wringing. The next day, you might find yourself in a situation that calls for a completely different sound, so you want to be able to get that tone just as quickly.

Years of playing cover songs and teaching guitar really drove home that point for me. You want an amp that’s flexible and dependable, one that isn’t big and complicated.

Space is an issue for a lot of people, and modern digital amps are a very credible alternative to the traditional amp with a cabinet, tubes, a transformer and some speakers.

For instance, there’s the [Fractal Audio] Axe-Fx, which is small and easy to use, and you can just plug it into the P.A. There are plenty of people who are doing that today, and they’re very happy with a digital amp because it fits with what they’re trying to do.

Visit the Joe Satriani website here.

Getting the perfect guitar tone has never been easy, even for pros. For years, recording studios have used reamping as a way to get the most flexibility when processing guitar tracks and matching tones.

The procedure involves recording a dry, unprocessed guitar track, after which the recorded signal is routed into an amp (or several) and outboard effects to achieve a desired sound.

In essence, reamping allows producers and artists to delay critical decision making, keep their options open for future tone revisions and save time by eliminating the need to re-record a track to achieve a new tone. For that matter, the same track can be used to create layered and varied sounds.

Although reamping has been around for decades, it was popularized by audio engineer John Cuniberti – a.k.a. Joe Satriani’s longtime recording partner – with his 1993 creation of the Reamp, the first commercially available reamping device.

In practice, Cuniberti’s invention converts the low-impedance, balanced line-level signal from a recorder to a high-impedance, unbalanced instrument-level signal suitable for amplifiers and effects pedals, to achieve optimum sonic results.

Cuniberti’s Reamp is at the heart of two new devices from Radial Engineering, a Canadian company with a long-standing and well-deserved reputation for creating direct boxes, audio interfaces and other problem-solving tools for musicians and audio professionals.

Dubbed the Reamp Station and the Reamp HP, these utility boxes tackle the job in ways that will suit everyone from home studio hobbyists to professionals.

Reamp Station

Let’s start with the Reamp Station, an all-in-one solution that combines a DI for recording your guitar signal and a Reamp for processing the track after it’s recorded.

Like many of Radial’s products (including a few of their DI boxes I own), the Reamp Station is made from powder-coated 14-gauge steel. The unique construction features a C-shaped outer shell sandwiching the steel chassis that contains the electronics, with the outer edges of the shell forming a narrow protective lip over the various buttons, switches and knobs on the unit’s front panel.

This is where you’ll find controls for the DI, on the left half, and JCR, on the right. A reamped signal starts with a high-quality direct recording, so it’s great to see these two features combined in one box.

Radial’s DI is based on the company’s J48 phantom-powered active direct box designed for guitars and basses with all types of pickups. In a nutshell, the circuit increases headroom to significantly reduce distortion and produce the cleanest signal possible.

The DI runs off the 48-volt phantom power from your mixer, so there’s no need for an additional power supply.

The DI’s front panel includes a 1/4-inch instrument input and a 1/4-inch thru output to pass your signal to an amp for monitoring purpose. There’s also a button to engage a buffer on the thru output to avoid loading down passive pickups when connecting to an amp, and a pad button that reduces input sensitivity by 15dB when using high-output instruments like active basses.

Here as well is a helpful LED that lights up to indicate when phantom power is active.

The DI’s features continue on the back panel and include a balanced XLR output for connecting a recording interface or mixer, and a 180˚ switch that reverses polarity at the direct output to reduce phase cancellation when the DI is combined with mic’d amp.

Once your guitar part has been recorded, the Reamp Station’s JCR comes into use with a custom-wound USA-made transformer that converts line-level signals to instrument level. The JCR’s front-panel features include a 3.5mm input that lets you reamp signals from mobile devices and handhelds; a level control; a three-position filter with settings for high-cut, low-cut and flat frequency response; and a mute switch that cuts the signal to the 1/4-inch amp output on unit’s back panel.

Speaking of the back panel, this is where you’ll find the remaining reamp features. These include 1/4-inch TRS and XLR input for connecting to the line-level outputs of your recorder, an amp output to feed the resulting instrument-level signal to your amp, and link in and out jacks to connect multiple Reamp devices for when you want to send one signal to more than one amp.

Also here is a ground lift to eliminate hum and buzz from ground loops.

All in all, the Reamp Station is a compact but feature-packed device that leaves no reamping problem unsolved.

Specifications

• CONTROLS: Direct Box: Buffer, pad, 48V phantom power indicator, 180° polarity switch, ground lift. Reamp: Mute, filter (high-cut/low-cut/flat), level, ground lift I/O Direct Box: Instrument, thru, direct out. Reamp: 3.5mm audio input, Reamp in 1/4” TRS and XLR, amp out, link in, link out
• DIMENSIONS: 5 7 /8” x 4 1 /8” x 1 3/4” (LxWxD)
• BUILT: Canada

Reamp HP

If you already own a DI box or just need a simplified reamping solution, the Reamp HP has you covered. Measuring roughly four inches long by two inches wide and 1 3/4 inches tall, this compact, powder-coated 16-gauge steel box is well designed and laid out.

Unlike the Reamp Station, the Reamp HP uses the line-level signal from your recording device’s headphone output. To that end, the left side of the unit has 1/4-inch TRS stereo and 3.5mm input jacks, with a mono switch to sum the left and right channels when engaged.

When the mono switch is disengaged, only the right-side signal is received. At the other end of the box are a level control for the inputs and a 1/4-inch output with ground lift.

For testing purposes, I tried both units to DI a variety of electric guitars and acoustic-electric guitars into my DAW via a Tascam Model 12 mixer as well as an RME Fireface 800 digital audio interface.

Over several reamping sessions, I sent signals from the Tascam and RME unit’s main outputs to the Reamp Station, as well as from each unit’s headphone outputs, to the Reamp HP. 

Destinations for reamping included a Fender ’68 Custom Princeton Reverb combo and a variety of effect pedals, among them an EarthQuaker Devices Special Cranker, a Gurus Echosex 3 Binson Echorec pedal and a Chase Bliss CXM 1978 Vintage Studioverb.

The quality of the Reamp Station’s DI was outstanding, and no surprise there, given my experience with Radial DI boxes. The fact that Radial has packed so much versatile circuitry into a box not significantly larger than the J48, along with the Reamp JCR, is truly impressive.

But it was when reamping that I really came to appreciate what each of these new devices can do. As a home recorder who works alone, I found it infinitely easier and convenient to dial in my desired amp tone by reamping my recorded signal, leaving my hands free to change settings on my amp and effects.

As a result, I was able to return a more perfectly sculpted guitar sound to my recorder, which required less knob twiddling during mixdown.

But better still is how both Radial reampers provide a path for connecting audio recordings to effects pedals. If you’ve invested in some high-end pedals, you’ll appreciate the new uses you’ll find for them with your DAW using the Radial reampers, all while improving your workflow and creativity.

For the most part, my studio-related purchases have been for gear that upgrades my signal path – digital audio interfaces, monitors, cables, etc. – but doesn’t add much in the way of versatility. Radial’s reampers do both and have quickly become much-used tools in my setup.

If you’ve been curious about reamping and take recording seriously, I can highly recommend making the Reamp Station part of your rig. For combining clean DI with versatile reamping features, it handily earns an Editors’ Pick Award.

If you’re more of a hobbyist and want to try reamping on a budget, you’ll get loads of pleasure and creativity with the Reamp HP, but be prepared: It’s certain to be your gateway to the more deluxe Reamp Station.

Specifications

• CONTROLS: Mono sum, ground lift, level I/O 1/4” and 3.5mm stereo in, 1/4” TS output
• DIMENSIONS: 4” x 2” x 1 3/4” approx. (LxWxH)
• BUILT: Canada

Visit Radial Engineering for more information.

***The following originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Guitar Player***

Certain guitar solos are infused with magic. They may or may or may not be technically challenging, flashy, or otherwise virtuoso, but they have that special something that sets them apart from what came before, and they typically alert guitarists everywhere that their world has forever changed. 

What’s more, those magic solos tend to inspire legions of guitarists to attempt to unlock their technical and tonal mysteries, and permeate the six-string community’s collective unconscious, re-emerging later as direct and indirect influences on individual players’ styles. Somewhat paradoxically, however, there is no consensus on which solos have achieved this iconic status.

When we began working on this story, we came up with a lengthy list of solos to include. Our first task was to set up some guidelines. We decided to limit the list to electric rock solos, along with blues and jazz-rock fusion solos that influenced rock. We also set a limit of one solo per artist.

At that point, there were still many more than 40 solos on the list, so we had to make some hard choices. To start, guitarists who were hugely influential overall, but couldn’t be tied to an ultra-influential solo – such as Tony Iommi and George Harrison – were cut. 

We then had to narrow down our selections to just one for each artist, which was difficult for someone like Eric Clapton, whose entries at that point included “Crossroads,” his cover of Freddie King’s “Hideaway” on the Blues Breakers album, and his historic wah workout on “White Room.” Once the smoke cleared, however, we had reached consensus. 

The solos are organized chronologically – including those that fall within the same year – because we thought it would be instructive to see how they relate to each other historically. 

We hope that you like we came up with and perhaps even discover an overlooked gem or two for yourself...

1. Elmore James “Dust My Broom” (1951)

Jimi Hendrix originally called himself Jimmy James and Maurice James in homage to Elmore, and every bluesman since the ‘50s – particularly slide players – owes something to the King of the Slide Guitar. 

Played in an open-D tuning (D, A, D, F#, A, D, low to high), probably on a Kay flattop or Harmony Sovereign with a D’Armond pickup, the slide hook on this tune, and the solo based on it, reappear countless times throughout blues and rock music.

2. Les Paul “How High the Moon” (1951)

The super-syncopated, slap-back soaked runs, chukka-chukka doublestops with bluesy bends, plucky cascading figures, and idiosyncratic ornamentations in Paul’s two solos helped propel this standard up the charts, and further established Paul as the most creative electric guitar player of his generation. 

It was recorded with his “old Epiphone” – a.k.a. “the Clunker” and “the Breadwinner” – with custom-wound hot pickups and other major modifications.

3. Scotty Moore “That’s Alright, Mama” (1954)

Armed with his Gibson ES-295 through a ‘52 Fender Deluxe, Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and their bud Elvis, had no idea what a firestorm they were about to create with this early single. 

Moore’s simple, to the- point style covered the drummer-less bases quite easily with a fat tone and swinging musicality, giving this rather hillbilly ensemble some dangerous sonic heft.

His break on “That’s Alright, Mama” inspired everyone from George Harrison to Keith Richards to Jimmy Page, as well as Danny Gatton, who never missed an opportunity to throw a Moore homage in the middle of one of his famed rockabilly rave ups. 

Moore’s barking double-stops and approximation of a tic-tac bass line on “Mama” are as hooky as it gets, making this solo one of the most important ever.

4. Eddie Cochran “Sittin’ in the Balcony” (1957)

Slinging a 1955 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body 'G'-branded guitar with a Gibson P-90 in the neck slot, Cochran, with his iconic presence and echo-drenched tones, hugely impacted early rockers – such as Lennon and McCartney, who bonded over Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” upon meeting in 1957 – and innumerable players thereafter, particularly Brian Setzer. 

The twangy solo on Cochran’s first hit, “Sittin’ In the Balcony,” crackles with the influence of his heroes Chet Atkins, Joe Maphis, and Johnny Smith.

5. Chuck Berry “Johnny B. Goode” (1958)

While some people might not consider this song’s intro a “solo,” it might be the most important rock guitar part ever recorded. 

The doublestops essentially usher in the post-Elvis rock era, and the tone and balls of this iconic part would echo in the playing of George Harrison, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, and Angus Young... and that's just one tenth of one percent of the players who have copped these licks. 

Listen to it again. You’ll see.

6. Hank Marvin “Apache” (1960)

A primary influence on nearly every British guitarist of a certain age, Marvin created a dreamy, echo-y sound on this #1 U.K. hit that was achieved by playing his Stratocaster – the first in England – through a Meazzi Echomatic tape delay and a Vox AC30 tube amp. 

Marvin mostly used the bridge pickup, but picked near the neck, and palmed the vibrato arm to impart his trademark twang.

7. Freddie King “Hideaway” (1960)

Freddie (a.k.a. Freddy) King cobbled “Hideaway” out of parts lifted from tunes by Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy McCracklin, Robert Lockwood Jr., and even Henry Mancini. 

Between the breaks where he recycled bits of “The Walk” and “Peter Gunn,” King played stinging solos that he plucked on a P-90 equipped Les Paul using a plastic thumbpick and metal fingerpick. 

Eric Clapton did his own version of the tune on John Mayall’s 1966 album, Blues Breakers, and the success of “Hideaway” made it a launch pad for a number of other King instrumentals that would further his notoriety as one of the top blues guitarists of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

8. James Burton “Hello Mary Lou” (1961)

Having turned pro as a teenager on the Louisiana Hayride, Burton was a seasoned vet by the time he became the lead player in Ricky Nelson’s band, which was featured regularly on the TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. 

Burton was a great rock and roll player, as evidenced by his Chuck Berry-style solo on “Believe What I Say,” but he also inspired legions of pickers with his explosively twangy lead break on “Hello Mary Lou.” 

Burton’s playing on Merle Haggard’s early ‘60s hits like “Mama Tried” and “Swingin’ Doors,” inspired the late, great Roy Nichols, who said, “I learned a lot from Burton, and I copied some of his licks, but I couldn’t copy him to a ‘T’.”

9. Jeff Beck “Over Under Sideways Down” (1966)

Along with the Rolling Stones, no band inspired more hard-edged guitar-wielding maniacs than the Yardbirds. Beck’s playing on their classic garage rock anthem is, like much of his playing at this time, inspired by the groovy sounds of the sitar. 

Equal parts spacey modal madness and meth-infused pentatonic fury, it still ranks as some of Beck’s most inspired playing, and that says a lot. 

And not only was Beck’s otherworldly playing inspirational to a generation of guitarists, but his punky stage demeanor and nasty sonic streak (a ‘54 Fender Esquire into a Tone Bender fuzz and AC30), served notice to everyone that a new sheriff was in town, and he was kicking ass.

10. Albert King “Born Under a Bad Sign” (1967)

If Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix lift your licks lock, stock, and barrel, your influence has been spread very far and very wide. In fact, one can make the case that Albert King was the most influential King, just by virtue of the not-so-subtle tributes by his admirers. 

King Albert’s authoritative bends and economical phrasing are required study for anyone who wants to play blues-rock guitar. On this cut, the Velvet Bulldozer lives up to his nickname, making his Gibson Flying V moan, scream, and move mountains with sweeping bends and a stinging tone that delivers all of the nuances in his playing. 

It also proves that, even though SRV and Clapton could “do” Albert, they were never really even close. 

11. Eric Clapton “Crossroads” (1968)

This one is a giant among giants. Little did Slowhand know, after he walked off the Winterland stage in San Francisco, he had created a template setting the standard for expressive, lyrical, howling blues-rock guitar. 

Armed with a ‘64 Gibson ES-335 and a couple of non-master volume 100-watt Marshall stacks, Clapton’s first break is a textbook example of how to build a solo’s intensity, while the second manages to kick it up one more notch for maximum climax. 

Not a duff note in the bunch, impeccably phrased, and with a vibrato that’s as classy as they come, Clapton could have never played another note and he’d still be one of the most influential players ever. 

12. Jimi Hendrix “All Along the Watchtower” (1968)

One can only guess what sort of “light bulb” moment Jimi experienced when he first heard this tune from Bob Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding. Maybe it was the biblical references in the lyrics, or the great melody – or perhaps just the wide-open space for improvising afforded by the four-chord progression. 

Whatever it was, the version that appeared on Hendrix’ Electric Ladyland album gave rise to one of Jimi’s most memorable solo outings. Playing soulfully and inventively using a wah and fuzz, Hendrix reinvented “All Along the Watchtower” to such a degree that it’s sometimes easy to forget who actually wrote the tune!

13. Peter Green “Black Magic Woman” (1968)

B.B. King once said of Green, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.” After establishing himself as a masterful blues stylist in John Mayall’s band, Green quickly evolved both as a player and a songwriter with Fleetwood Mac. 

On his D minor tour-de-force “Black Magic Woman,” Green pulls off an incredibly captivating melody, and his beautiful phrasing and soulful bending on a Les Paul with “magnetically out of phase” pickups was pure gold. 

Carlos Santana made the song a huge hit on Abraxas, and Green was also influential on Irish blues rocker Gary Moore, who would own – and eventually sell – Green’s famous Gibson. 

14. Robert Fripp “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969)

Fripp’s serpentine solo on this alarmingly virtuosic track combines a supersaturated sustained tone with atypical intervallic movement, non-bluesy bends and trills, and note choices and phrasing that had more in common with Coltrane than Clapton. 

Playing a three-pickup ‘59 Les Paul Custom through a Marshall stack and probably either a Burns Buzzaround or a Colorsound Tone Bender, he recorded the seminal progressive rock solo.

15. Jimmy Page “Heartbreaker” (1969)

Selecting the most influential Page solo led to a heated debate. 

But the squawking tone of a ‘58 Les Paul into a Marshall SLP 1969 Super Lead, maniacal cluster picking, wicked hammer-ons and pull-offs, and behind-the-nut G-string bending in the first solo on “Heartbreaker” – not to mention the smoking second solo – explain why everyone from Brian May to Steve Vai to Steve Morse have hailed it as a definitive guitar solo.

16. B.B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1969)

With a tone sweeter and thicker than molasses, B.B. King graced this song with one of his most emotive blues solos of all time. King knew what the tune called for in context of the highly produced album Completely Well (his first with strings), and it wasn’t about showboating. 

Far from it, judging by the way he grooves so succulently behind the beat. Besides being a big hit for B.B., “The Thrill is Gone” showed guitarists the power of playing slow and cool. 

In an era when Johnny Winter was introducing blues-rock shredding, B.B. King’s huge vibrato and deep soul defined what “playing from the heart” was all about. 

17. Leslie West “Mississippi Queen” (1970)

Leslie West’s massive and massively influential tone on Climbing! – which included “Mississippi Queen” – was created by playing through a Sunn Coliseum P.A. head and four 4x12 speaker cabinets. 

“The head had four microphone inputs and a master volume control, huge transformers and gigantic KT88 tubes, and the cabinets were loaded with Eminence speakers, which never hurt your ears, even with the treble all the way up,” West told GP in 2010. 

He was playing Gibson Les Paul Juniors at the time, and used a single-cutaway 1956 Jr. with a single P-90, strung with La Bella Electric Guitar strings (with a .010 banjo string for the high E and the other strings moved down one to create a light-gauge set) on the track. 

The song reached #21 on the Billboard charts, assuring that West’s signature sound was heard across the country and around the world.

18. Duane Allman “Statesboro Blues” (1971)

By 1970 Duane Allman and Dickey Betts had forged one of the most iconic guitar sounds of all time with their harmonized melodies on songs like “Revival” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” 

But as far as slide players went, few at the time got more acclaim than Duane himself, after the 1971 release of The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East. Duane’s slick phrasing and fat, singing tone on the opening track of the double live album was inspired by hearing Taj Mahal’s rendition of the song with Jesse Ed Davis on slide. 

Sonny Landreth, who remembers seeing the Allman Brothers at the time, recalls: “That huge tone that Duane got when he played slide on a Les Paul through a Marshall was a real game changer. I don’t remember anyone else who had a sound like that back then.”

19. John McLaughlin “Meeting of the Spirits” (1971)

Although he had already done revolutionary work with Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Miles Davis, and as a solo artist, McLaughlin’s combination of molten Gibson-through-cranked-Marshall distortion, impossibly fast and complex yet ultra-precise picking, and unique phrasing on The Inner Mounting Flame shattered all existing concepts of “electric guitarist” and lit the fuse of fusion.

20. Ritchie Blackmore “Highway Star” (1972)

Actually a harmonized pair of solos, the tasty bends, rapid-fire triplets, and whammy manipulations on this Strat-into-a-Marshall-amp (via a reel-to-reel tape recorder preamp) solo make it one of Blackmore’s most memorable.

The Deep Purple guitarist’s influence on legions of rock and metal shedders from Morse to Malmsteen to Mustaine is undisputable.

21. Billy Gibbons “La Grange” (1973) 

Gibbons made his mark on this classic shuffle with two solos. 

The first, done on a ‘55 Strat, enters screaming with that classic rear pickup Fender bite, before Gibbons flips to the front pickup for a swinging double-stop workout and some liquid pentatonic runs delivered with his impeccable sense of time and swing. 

But it’s the track’s second solo that the guitarist is most famous for, and the one that every hard rock player would study, due to Gibbons’ insane pinch harmonics. With his “Pearly Gates” ‘59 Les Paul, the Reverend squawks, grunts, and chokes out so many pinch harmonics that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so damm bad ass. 

22. Brian May “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) 

Brian May’s touch, tone, and orchestral instincts have proven impossible to imitate, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. 

His majestic lines on this classic are quintessential May, with precise picking, impeccable phrasing, and a bold, loud sound. 

The solo’s placement in the mix was influential, informing how bands such as Boston and Styx featured their solos. You’ve got to assume Dr. May’s harmonized lines at the end of the song got Tom Scholz’s attention as well.

23. Larry Carlton “Kid Charlemagne” (1976)

Carlton was already a session legend known for his smooth-as-silk lines that were reminiscent of Wes, Pass, and Trane when he cut this Steely track. 

But when Mr. 335 combined a rock dude’s tone with a jazzer’s harmonic sensibilities, he created the standard by which every jazz rocker would be judged. 

Ask Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, or Mike Stern what impact this solo had on them. 

Alright then.

24. Carlos Santana “Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile)” (1976)

Santana masterfully caresses the tune’s main melody with his trademark singing sustain and thick tone, never quite giving up the goods until the outro solo where he lets it all hang out in an outpouring of soulful yet wicked playing. 

He displays a fluid, tactile control at all times, and his tone is more open-sounding and less compressed than in recent years. 

And when he kicks the wah on, look out – he ratchets up the intensity tenfold, just when you think it can’t go any higher. Simply put, “Europa” is a study in pace, melodicism, and space – as well as good, old fashion burning!

25. Al Di Meola “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway” (1977)

Sure, there were people who could play fast before Di Meola, but nobody had made it such a central part of their deal before Big Al came along. 

Di Meola’s picking ability coupled with his sick, self-described “mutola” technique raised the bar for audacious shred and players interested in pushing the limits of picking. 

Far from being a pattern-minded monotone shredder, Di Meola’s Latin influences and his compositional sense have always made his displays of virtuosity supremely musical. 

And for all of the shred haters, Di Meola proved that the emotional impact of many notes is just as valid as a few well-placed ones. 

26. Eddie Van Halen “Eruption” (1978)

What can you say about this cadenza from hell? Cut in 1978, this has to be one of the most influential pieces of guitar playing ever. 

EVH took a Strat with a humbucker, an MXR Phase 90, and a plexi Marshall, and then played some supercharged Clapton licks that boggled just about every 6-stringer’s mind in the world. 

It was Van Halen’s two-handed tapping that truly grabbed everyone’s attention, however, and made this the most recognizable solo of the next two decades. “Eruption” made an impact on millions of rock dudes and seemingly every kid who set foot inside a Guitar Center.

27. Allan Holdsworth “In the Dead of Night” (1978)

As Bill Bruford put it, this solo was, “94 seconds of liquid passion married to a blinding technical facility that was to go down in the annals of rock guitar history. 

"All the hallmarks of his brilliant playing were there in this solo: poise, pace, melody, the Slonimsky interval jumps, the whammy bar, and all over a killer groove.”

28. Mark Knopfler “Sultans of Swing” (1978) 

When Mark Knopfler released this fingerpicked two-pickup masterpiece, he showed guitarists that you don’t need distortion or a plectrum to rock. 

With a Strat on the bridge and middle pickups, a Fender Twin Reverb and a Roland JC-120, Knopfler played two deft, bouncy solos that referenced Chet Atkins with snappy popped notes, crying bends, and clever arpeggios. 

Along the way he influenced just about every clean tone for the next 20 years. When people talk about an “out of phase” Strat tone, they’re talking about this tune.

29. Michael Schenker “Rock Bottom” (1979)

The 1970s was a great time for live records, with classics from Frampton, Lizzy, and Ted Nugent, but one of the sweetest solos to grace a double LP came from UFO’s Michael Schenker. 

The extended break on this tune has everything great about Schenker: melody, dynamics, tone for days, and burning. 

This lead would fascinate rockers all over the world, including George Lynch, Vinnie Moore, Akira Takahashi, and Kirk Hammett.

30. David Gilmour “Comfortably Numb” (1979)

Few solos can match the vibe of Gilmour’s work on this iconic piece. 

Playing a ‘79 black Stratocaster with a ‘62 neck and DiMarzios through Hiwatts and Yamaha RA-200 rotating speaker cabinets, Gilmour transformed what are essentially blues licks into a signature statement that affected the molecules in myriad musical minds. 

This is arguably his crowning achievement as a soloist.

31. Angus Young “You Shook Me All Night Long” (1980)

It serves to reason that a song that is all about getting it on should have a solo that is sexy, right? 

Damn straight. 

Young’s turn on this global hit finds him harnessing his kinetic blues tendencies into a steamy, attitude-laden solo that is actually kind of funky. 

His tasteful major pentatonic flavorings as well as his gorgeous tone – thanks to a wound up old Marshall and a Gibson SG – are the icing on the cake of his impeccable groove, intonation, and phrasing.

32. Randy Rhoads “Crazy Train” (1980)

After Van Halen, it wasn’t easy for an L.A. rocker to make a mark, but Randall Rhoads did so in a big way on his debut with Ozzy. 

Rhoads took what he had gleaned from Mick Ronson, Gary Moore, and Bach, and synthesized it into this metal tour de force. 

He wasn’t the first guy to blend classical music and rock, but he was absolutely the gateway drug for players like Zakk Wylde and Tom Morello.

33. Stevie Ray Vaughan “Pride and Joy” (1983)

The second cut on SRV’s debut album, Texas Flood, “Pride and Joy” blasted onto the airwaves courtesy of a great melody, catchy lyrics, and a gamechanging solo in which Vaughan threw down a barrage of killer licks with a gargantuan tone from his Fender/Dumble rig. 

SRV’s deft songwriting and his Albert King/Hendrix-influenced style succeeded in making what was fundamentally a classic “tay-hass” shuffle into a huge AOR hit that every classic rocker is expected to cover in perpetuity. 

Bottom line is, after SRV came along, anyone who thought they could play blues with fire and passion got a schoolin’ the size of Texas.

34. Yngwie Malmsteen “Black Star” (1984)

Mike Varney’s rep as a finder of great guitarists was already solid when he wrote about a kid from Sweden with a funny name in 1983. 

Many players’ first exposure to Malmsteen was on this shred fest. With his blinding speed, dazzling classical arpeggios, gorgeous Strat-into-Marshall tone, and larger than life vibrato, he didn’t raise the bar for rock technique – he obliterated it. 

Yngwie changed the game forever with this one, just ask any rocker who has swept an arpeggio since then.

35. George Lynch “The Hunter” (1985)

Dokken's George Lynch has inspired countless rock and metal players for nearly 30 years with his perfect blend of structured melodicism and off-the-rails fury – all in the space of a 16-bar solo. 

This solo is a perfect example, as he eases into it with memorable, understated melodic motifs that are helped along with some thick-ass tone and sick vibrato. 

Halfway through, however, Lynch begins to turn up the jets. Alternate picking, sweep picking, and legato playing become one within a single winding phrase, giving him a sound and style that are difficult to ape. 

However, Lynch did show the way for shred-obsessed guitarists on how to structure a meaningful statement in the middle of a tune and leave an everlasting mark. In fact, his solos are the only thing that don’t sound dated about Dokken.

36. Kirk Hammett “Master of Puppets” (1986)

Kirk Hammett’s influences include his teacher Joe Satriani, Michael Schenker, and Thin Lizzy. And nowhere are those influences more prominent than on this tune. 

Hammett’s whammy bar work and speed picking would inspire countless kids to notch their mids, cram their theory, and play blazing solos over chugging grooves.

37. Joe Satriani “Always with Me, Always with You” (1987)

Satriani is obviously known as a master technician, but it’s his melodic side that has left the biggest imprint on guitardom. 

This sweet ballad showcases Satch’s singing tone, skillful ornamentation, and ability to blend the tasty with the jaw dropping. 

The reach of this solo is apparent in hundreds of instrumental guitar records, country ballads, movie soundtracks, and car commercials.

38. Kurt Cobain “Come As You Are” (1991)

Although he took about as many solos and Johnny Ramone, the late Nirvana guitar anti-hero played a memorable one in this song from 1991. 

Presumably using a Boss DS-1 for dirt and an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus for the warbly modulation, Cobain simply quoted the vocal melody in a snotty, vibey way, and the kids went crazy. 

Suddenly, young players – many with a sanctimonious disdain for ‘80s-style wanking – were taking a break from strumming through songs and trying their hands at playing single-note lines.

39. Zakk Wylde “No More Tears” (1991)

Logic dictates that Zakk Wylde was doomed to failure when he got the gig with Ozzy. 

A blond kid with a Les Paul? Really? 

But then people got a taste of his huge tone, squealing harmonics, and rapid-fire pentatonics and a new star was born. 

On this tune Zakk channeled Rhoads, Billy Gibbons, and Frank Marino into a solo that was emblematic of the new generation of metalheads.

40. Dimebag Darrell “The Great Southern Trendkill” (1996)

The post-Van Halen, post-Randy Rhoads world was in dire need of a champion when Darrell Abbott came on the scene. 

He took the styles of those guys, mixed in some Ace Frehley, some Lynyrd Skynyrd, and a heapin’ helpin’ of moonshine and created the ass-kicking solo here. 

Dime made it cool to love Holdsworth, EVH, and Billy Gibbons all in the same song.

Jimi Hendrix has gone down in history as one of the most significant musicians of the 20th century. Even today, over 50 years on from his death, his influence on the electric guitar is still profoundly felt. 

For many he was the ultimate electric guitarist. Hendrix was a musical visionary, a virtuoso, and an incendiary live performer (literally), accomplished songwriter and a skilled wordsmith. He was perceived as a social and cultural icon, lauded by both music fans and by his not insubstantial peers and followers.

We asked an array of phenomenal guitarists about the influence that Hendrix had on their own guitar development and music in general. So enjoy this special tribute to a master as some of the greatest guitarists in the world explain what Jimi means to them. 

Starring, in alphabetical order: Jan Akkerman, Jennifer Batten, Joe Bonamassa, Kirk Fletcher, Marty Friedman, Eric Gales, Brett Garsed, Paul Gilbert, David Grissom, Steve Hackett, Allen Hinds, Greg Koch, Michael Landau, Ronni Le Tekro, Steve Lukather, Hank Marvin, John McLaughlin, Steve Morse, Oz Noy, Orianthi, Uli Jon Roth, Joe Satriani, Kim Simmonds, Andy Timmons, Walter Trout and Carl Verheyen.

But which one of them isn't even a Hendrix fan?

JAN AKKERMAN

JAN AKKERMAN

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I think he was a great musician and showman, but I had very different influences like Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery or the first rock pioneers, and all different styles because I used to play the accordion when I was six years old. So in short, NO second-hand blues licks. 

So in the beginning I didn’t pay too much attention. I did like "Hey Joe" and "The Wind Cries Mary" as compositions, but didn’t think much of it until I hooked up with Joachim Kuhn, a monster keyboard player and friend and totally into free jazz and a big fan of Hendrix. He emphasised the freedom of Jimi’s playing, which I loved, also especially the albums Electric Ladyland and Axis: Bold As Love. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

His style was very expressive to say the least. It is difficult to describe his technique because he didn’t care for that. I liked his tone on the Stratocaster. I like the sound of single-coils like Fender or my Gretsch White Falcon. One of the reasons I couldn’t play a Fender is because the controls are always in the way. Jimi didn’t have that problem because he played upside-down so the volume pot was on the other side of the guitar. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why? 

I still like "Hey Joe," "Spanish Castle Magic," etc, but I heard some experimental stuff which was pretty out as well. All in all he was one of the greatest artists in any scene. 

JENNIFER BATTEN

JENNIFER BATTEN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

He represented a movement in electric guitar of breaking the boundaries of what had gone before, and challenging expectations in the role of the guitarist in a band. With his presence the guitar’s potential became adventurous, dangerous, exciting, and wild. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar? 

He brought a renewed creativity as to what was possible with guitar effects, harmonic composition, tremolo bar use, and manhandling the instrument for a totally new level of entertaining engagement. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

My favourite Hendrix moment was going to a double or triple bill movie of all Hendrix films. It was total immersion when I was a young teen. My parents wouldn’t let me go see him live at my age, when my sisters went and saw a double bill with Jimi and Joplin. So it was as close as I could get. I’m sure that was a chunk of inspiration that pushed my desire along to continue down the guitar rabbit hole. 

JOE BONAMASSA

JOE BONAMASSA 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi Hendrix meant the world to generations. He was the total package. Player, showman and writer. As innovative and revolutionary as his playing was it’s the songs that stand the test of time. Great guitar playing needs a vehicle for it to do that. Jimi has great songs... period. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Jimi brought fire... He used his guitar as a weapon. Up until that point only Buddy Guy had weaponised the electric guitar. It was visceral and almost terrifying to listen to and watch as a young kid in his formative years. Beautiful tone, phrasing and use of chords. Game changer. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Jimi at Monterey... Black 1965 Fender Strat, a Marshall stack and a blackface Fender Showman amp covering Bob Dylan’s "Like A Rolling Stone." A life-changing moment for those lucky enough to witness it in person, and life changing for me. 

KIRK FLETCHER

KIRK FLETCHER 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi Hendrix has meant many things. When I was a kid I saw Hendrix as an amazing guitarist both in and out of the studio. A sonic genius way ahead of his time. His command of sound with this deep understanding of soul. 

As I grew older I started thinking about how he came up with his guitar parts and his lyrics, and also studio techniques. And then for myself becoming a songwriter, it made me view his work in another light. When I listen to Are You Experienced the man could write a song three minutes long, like "Purple Haze" or "The Wind Cries Mary," and it’s still played somewhere on radio to this day. 

Imaginative storytelling lyrics with the most beautiful melodic guitar in a three-minute pop song? I mean, wow! 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

I feel he brought a whole new language to the guitar. His command of playing and blending so many styles and influences. There are so many branches to the Hendrix tree. For rock guitarists you have his use of the whammy bar and overdrive. 

I feel that the great funk movement of the 70s, groups like Funkadelic, were definitely inspired by Hendrix. I feel he wrote the book on funk-rock guitar soloing. His use of double- stops and rhythm guitar is a whole language. His melodic phrasing on ballads. It would be difficult for me to think of a music world without Jimi Hendrix’s contributions. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Picking one Hendrix song is like saying which one of your kids you love the most! I would say "Are You Experienced." I mean that song is from the first LP. It has poetic, lyrical content. Completely amazingly orchestrated guitar parts. And it still sounds so fresh to my ears. 

I think I love that album so much because I have often dreamed about hearing it when it first came out in 67. It’s like that great line in that Joan Baez song Diamonds And Rust: “You burst on the scene already a legend!” 

MARTY FRIEDMAN

MARTY FRIEDMAN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

When I was a kid, I was a massive fan of Uli Roth, Frank Marino and Robin Trower. I loved their playing and learned so much of it, inside and out. I was told that those guys were heavily influenced by Hendrix, so I checked him out. 

I understood the connection, but Hendrix just sounded very weak and undeveloped compared to those guys. Kind of like being used to an iPhone 11 and then someone tells you that if it weren’t for the iPhone 1, there would be no iPhone 11. This is true, and very important. But I’d still rather use an iPhone 11, figuratively speaking, especially as a teenager discovering music. 

I wasn’t there in the 60s when he did the things that inspired literally all of my guitar heroes. So I just never ‘got’ it. I was never into hippie, psychedelic, druggy mind-altering motifs in music so there was just never anything about him that attracted me to his music. How I filtered these same elements out of Trower’s and Marino’s music is anyone’s guess. Had I been around when Hendrix came out I might have felt differently. 

So even though I certainly know, respect and admire his monumental influence on music and great musicians, his music never connected to me personally. 

Recently I was on a long flight and listened to a huge collection of Hendrix to try to find something that I could get excited about. Believe it or not, I still couldn’t hear what everyone else is hearing. Maybe I’m missing something. 

People have this magical unconditional love for the guy, which is fantastic, but they never seem to point me towards some great piece of music that I need to hear from him. I’m always open to suggestions. I feel like it’s in the ‘you had to be there’ category.

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought so many great things to the guitar. Fashion, charisma, beautiful noise, aggressive blues playing like never before, wonderful angelic clean chord voicings, wild showmanship, and was an early innovator in experimentation with guitar sounds. 

You have to respect these things. He was a pioneer and was the first to do a lot of guitar things that are taken for granted 50 years later. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

In my first band, Deuce, we covered "Purple Haze" and I sang and played it. You can believe this or not, but I had never heard Hendrix at this point. The Mahogany Rush Live album was on loop in my world at the time, and could not have cared less that most of that album was cover songs. 

I adored Marino (still do) and when I discovered him, I probably got the same feeling that many guys in the 60s got when they discovered Hendrix. It’s all good. 

ERIC GALES

ERIC GALES 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

It's hard to sum up. But what I can say is that he brought to the world things that had never been explored in music, period, and also the guitar. He was a major influence on every guitarist in the world that came after him and even during him. That was a domino effect that added to a lot of others’ styles, that led to them carrying on the inspiration and influence. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought things to the guitar that even still today leaves great minds puzzled. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

It’s hard to give a single answer as to what’s my favourite Hendrix song. But I’d have to say my earliest memory of "May This Be Love" was and still is one of the songs that emotionally moved me, even as a young lad. And as I said it still does. 

BRETT GARSED

BRETT GARSED 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

My older brother had the Isle Of Wight album and also the Woodstock soundtrack which I was listening to before I even attempted to play the guitar. So Jimi was feeding the urge to give it a go. 

I went on to learn the version of "All Along The Watchtower" from the live album note for note, and was astonished when I heard the studio version with all the overdubs. The live version sounded massive to me and it was incredible to think it was just three musicians creating that wall of sound. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

The obvious things are the authentic R&B influences and his experimentation with effects which he pretty much set the standard for. The level of musicality that he achieved using the simplest of tools is still a high bar that most players strive for. 

But, the thing that astounded me was the way he intertwined his voice with his guitar playing, almost creating a third instrument. He had total independence between what he was playing and what he was singing, and the two would weave in and out of each other, sometimes in harmony, unison or total counterpoint. It’s an incredibly difficult skill to develop and, once again, Jimi had it mastered. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

It’s Jimi’s performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" from Woodstock. Not because I listen to it constantly for enjoyment but because of what it taught me about the power of music and sound to make an emotional statement. 

At first I was intrigued with the feedback, whammy bar divebombs and just the overall pyrotechnics of it, but when I discovered that the whammy bar was imitating actual bombs and inside the other sounds were machine gun fire and people screaming, I learned that he was superimposing a song of national pride over the horror of the Vietnam war and all conflict in general.

I never listened to that song the same way again and it became so much more powerful to me, as did the man who created it. 

PAUL GILBERT

PAUL GILBERT 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi’s rock songs grabbed me first. I liked "Foxy Lady," "Purple Haze," "Spanish Castle Magic," and "Crosstown Traffic." My uncle Jimi (who changed the spelling of his name to match Hendrix), recommended an album called War Heroes. I bought that, and listened to an instrumental called "Midnight" a lot. 

My parents also had a live record from the Monterey Pop Festival. One side was Otis Redding. The other side was Jimi. So I heard Jimi’s live versions of "Like A Rolling Stone," "Rock Me Baby," and "Wild Thing." 

When I was around 12, my mom took me to a midnight movie showing the Jimi Hendrix documentary. The clip of Jimi playing "Rock Me Baby" at Monterey was one of those breakthrough moments, when I suddenly ‘got it’. 

As time went on, I started to love Jimi’s rhythm playing with a cleaner sound as well. "Wait Until Tomorrow," "Castles Made Of Sand," and the intro of "Bold As Love" are all so beautiful. 

Now that I’m older, I love to listen to Jimi as an improviser. He was fearless, soulful, melodic, angry, gentle, and seemed to be singing through the guitar. Sure, there were some noises and ‘wrong’ notes. But when you blast a hole in the side of a mountain, some boulders are gonna fall. And he was ‘chopping it down with the edge of his hand’. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought a voice to guitar. He used enough volume and distortion to make the guitar sustain in the way that a human voice can. And he brought the elements of expression that a voice has; sliding, bending, contrasts of volume, texture, and length, and the best vibrato anyone had heard in 1966. 

Traditional guitar was NOT built to do this. The guitar is designed more like a lute, where chords are fretted, and the strings are plucked. It’s sort of a portable harpsichord, and the great fingerpickers from Segovia to Chet Atkins, played it masterfully like that. 

B.B. King, Otis Rush, Freddie King, and other early electric blues players certainly opened the door for what Jimi did. But Jimi’s songs, live performances, and use of sustain, took the guitar ‘as a voice’ into sounds that made everything before him seem outdated. 

Jimi said, “And you’ll never hear surf music again.” And when you hear the guitar intro of The Beach Boys’ "Surfin’ USA," it sounds pretty stiff, compared to the world that Jimi created. 

I still love The Beach Boys, and I don’t mind when guitar players play guitar like a guitar. But I must admit that a good portion of my time is spent trying to get my guitar to sing, like Jimi did. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

The first that comes to mind is "Killing Floor" live from Monterey Pop. It was Jimi’s chance to win an audience in the USA, and he was in competition with The Who. 

With that much pressure and adrenaline, most players would get thrown off balance. But Jimi launches into his opening number like a rocket. His aim is perfect. He is painting with a big brush, but still achieving detail. 

I can just imagine Pete Townshend watching in the wings, and thinking ‘Holy #$%!’ And Jimi hasn’t even turned on his distortion pedal yet. Look out! 

DAVID GRISSOM

DAVID GRISSOM 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I was in junior high deep into The Stones and Beatles when I got Hendrix In The West. It was like finding the Holy Grail. I immediately got a wah-wah and obsessed on the live version of "Voodoo Chile" until I got close to copping some of it. 

I dreamed of having a Stratocaster and dug into the studio albums. Just as important to me was being inspired to discover Jimi’s influences. I was lucky to take lessons from a guy who turned me onto the three Kings and helped me connect the dots to Jimi. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

I think he changed electric guitar playing the same way Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker changed jazz. He drew from a very deep well. Not only was his playing mind blowing, he wrote really great innovative songs that covered a huge range of styles, tones, and dynamics. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

How do you pick just one? On the more intense side of things, the studio version of "Spanish Castle Magic" slays me. The moment that nearly brings me to tears every time I hear it is the solo on "May This Be Love." I love that softer, melodic side of Jimi. 

STEVE HACKETT

STEVE HACKETT 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Initially I thought he came across with a rare animal power, but when you look more closely, his lyrics are full of poetry. Sometimes the words are very dark with lots of references to imminent death and allusions to the next world. He played like a reanimated zombie, with a haunting otherworldly aspect. 

His showmanship seemed to come naturally to him. No-one ever moved as gracefully with the guitar in hand, as if he possessed this extra electric limb. I feel it was his fluidity as well as his innovation and risk-taking that impressed and influenced me. His playing was heady stuff for me as an aspiring teenage rocker. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Hendrix was a bluesman with a very big difference. I knew his guitar tech, Eric Barrett, who said that Jimi played through feedback constantly, like a weapon permanently set on stun. The spacecraft aspect of his playing was hugely inspiring. He was always going to take you on a trip to some uncharted part of the universe. His playing skirts the limits of earthly experience. It’s virtually a shamanic inner journey. 

He also brought many production ideas to the guitar. Somehow you feel at Woodstock that he was trying to register his protest at the falling bombs on Vietnam, managing to say as much with his guitar as other protest songs had done with words. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

I think "Purple Haze" is my favourite Hendrix song. It’s a very cleverly written tune, and is full of unexpected twists. It defines the term psychedelic. Both the angular guitar riff and the opening dissonant chords give you that feeling of Iron Man Cometh. 

But there’s vulnerability too in the lyric, with the idea 
of confusion running through it. Although "Purple Haze" is a short song, he often played it live with extended moments which sometimes literally did "kiss the sky," to quote the lyric. 

His impact on music was huge. A man who didn’t need a light show. For me it was just enough to watch the alchemy of his fingers, his dexterity and the way he danced with his instrument. 

ALLEN HINDS

ALLEN HINDS 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I remember my older brothers and sisters buying Are You Experienced. First thing was, “holy crap, this is the coolest guy I’ve ever seen”, so the nostalgia factor is high. He could play really well and I fell in love with the songs. Even though I loved the Beatles, he was the first guitarist I wanted to emulate. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought a Marshall amp and psychedelic sensibility to the blues and R&B. I suspect even to him the acceleration of volume and feedback with amplification was overwhelming. I think he was just holding on for dear life, in a great way. No one had heard anything like that before! 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

For the playing alone I love Band Of Gypsys the most. Listen to his solo in "Machine Gun." He was so creative. You could extract some of his improvised phrases and make complete song melodies. 

He was like a jazz player in that sense and could create something from nothing. You just waited on the edge of your seat for the next burst of emotion. Still the very best! 

Some confuse his curiosity and adventurism as sloppy at times, but I don’t hear that at all; he was searching and going where no man had gone before. 

Just imagine if he were here now! 

GREG KOCH

GREG KOCH 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi was and is my main inspiration. He was a true innovator as a guitarist, songwriter, performer and purveyor of sonic mayhem. My chordal approach as well as blues playing is heavily influenced by Jimi’s. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Of course the way he manipulated the whammy bar, or Mr Wiggles as I like to say, along with feedback and his creative use of effects from the Octavia to the Uni-Vibe greatly expanded the emotive range of the electric guitar. 

His greasy blues phrasing and extraordinary rhythm playing really has left an indelible mark on everyone since. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

It’s hard to narrow it down to one. Let’s just say if I had to bring one record to a desert island it would be Axis: Bold As Love. 

MICHAEL LANDAU

MICHAEL LANDAU 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I first heard the song "Purple Haze" when I was eight years old. We were driving around in my mother’s car and when it came on the radio it scared me to death. But after I heard the song a few times, it started to have a calming affect on me and I couldn’t get enough of it. 

His music and his guitar playing demonstrated all of the different sides of human emotion in such a beautiful way. His influence has always been enormous. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He reinvented it, plain and simple. He showed everyone a completely new and fresh approach to playing techniques and sonic possibilities that had never been done before. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

"Castles Made Of Sand" would be one of my many favourites. Here Jimi was mixing R&B style guitar playing with abbreviated jazz voicings as only he had done, and the tone was just so raw and beautiful. The sentiment of the lyrics on that song are beautiful as well... it’s almost like a nursery rhyme, but for grown-ups. 

I also love the out-take of "Blue Suede Shoes" from the Loose Ends record. You can really hear the joy, the energy, and the fun he was having with Buddy Miles in the studio. Such a great moment. 

RONNI LE TEKRO

RONNI LE TEKRO 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I started playing the electric guitar in 1976, just a few years after Jimi passed away. At the time 1970 seemed like 100 years ago, being 13 myself. My uncle gave me "The Wind Cries Mary." It was a revelation. 

I loved his voice, playing and image from day one. Later, when I was able to hear more material I instantly understood that Jimi was one of a kind. His ability to push the guitar into new landscapes stunned me and has been a big inspiration. Especially his extensive and abusive use of the vib-bar as well as implementing large doses of feedback. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Jimi revolutionised the electric guitar. Still I haven’t heard another guitar player with such rhythmical feeling. His solos and playing are so incorporated into his compositions. It’s reaching a higher dimension when you play, sing and compose like that. He was driving the band to magical heights. 

My favourite line-up must be with Mitchell and Redding. Those guys certainly knew how to play freely on the highest level. It sounds like it’s out of control. 

I love that Jimi also gave all guitar players a warning about what could happen to you if you indulge in chemical drugs. Some didn’t take the warning, unfortunately. They sensed that drugs where the driving force in Jimi’s music, but like Jimi they couldn’t handle it. 

His image and live performances inspired and inspires most of us. That being said, I have always been trying to create my own sound and way of playing the guitar. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

My favourite song is "The Wind Cries Mary," simply because it was the first track I ever listened to. It’s something about that song that still gives me the shivers. The production is so full of life and feeling. I think his opening guitar line has probably been copied a million times. 

Of his live performances my favourite is Isle Of Wight festival. You can sense it’s getting closer to the end but little did Jimi know. He is delivering a show out of hell. 

Later I learned to love Frank Marino and the Mahogany Rush. I think he is the guitar player that developed and carried Jimi’s legacy the best. Check out "King Bee" from his Live album. I think Jimi would have been proud.

STEVE LUKATHER

STEVE LUKATHER 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

It was the aftershock of the Beatles changing the world, then an alien came and landed on our planet to give those that understood, the truth. All that before he was 27 years old. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

A total reinvention of the possibilities. He could make a statement with his use of feedback and amazing use of chords and R&B stylings which he made his own. Very loudly! It’s like nothing else. I’m not sure anyone could make an impact like that afterwards. 

EVH did but he was not on a cultural level because Jimi was part of the 60s anti- establishment scene. Black man with a white band accepted by everyone but I never saw colour, just the sound. It was a colossal sound; the anger and intensity of "Machine Gun" through to the softness of "The Wind Cries Mary."

Goodness knows what he could have gone on to have done!

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Impossible. They are all a huge part of my growing up. Kids today might not ‘get it’ but remember this was 1966! NOTHING like it had happened before or indeed after it. 

HANK MARVIN

HANK MARVIN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

It was probably early 1967 when I first heard the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They were performing their first single, "Hey Joe," on Top Of The Pops and, as we say in the weather bureau, I was blown away. 

I loved Jimi’s guitar solo, blues but not as we know it and with so much feeling. Jimi opened the door to a whole new world of guitar playing. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

I’m not aware of anyone before Jimi using feedback in the way he did, or using the whammy bar to create effects so extreme that it probably contributed to global warming. 

He also showed the music world that the electric guitar could be played with the teeth, used as a fireplace and in the right hands be a wonderfully expressive instrument. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

The opening riff on "Purple Haze" is hard to beat, but then there’s the live version of "Red House" on Hendrix in the West. I love those deceptive bends. 

JOHN McLAUGHLIN

JOHN McLAUGHLIN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi changed the electric guitar forever. I was exposed to the acoustic guitar playing of Muddy Waters at the age of 11, and it was revolutionary. Jimi started a revolution 25 years later. Now while I was exposed to Muddy, Bill Broonzy and other great blues players at an early age, I got captured by jazz from 15 years old. But on hearing Jimi for the first time, I heard a guitar being played in a way I’d never heard before. 

At the same time I could hear the profound influence of Muddy Waters not only in the playing but in Jimi’s singing. It was completely new and yet I could hear the history behind his playing. 

I mention my love of jazz but there’s a connection to Jimi here. Jimi revolutionised the sound of the guitar using distortion to bring in harmonics; by the mid 1960s, John Coltrane began to bring in harmonics into his sound and, while the two styles of Coltrane and Jimi are really diverse, there is something very deep that connects them. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

By renewing the influences of the great Mississippi blues players, Jimi brought history up to date with a concept that was not only contemporary, but remains contemporary today. 

There are great musicians who have a powerful impact on other musicians, but to create a new concept of playing is even more significant. I think it’s safe to say that the concept Jimi introduced, changed the way of playing the guitar for all time. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

My favourite piece from Jimi is his interpretation of "The Star Spangled Banner." With a guitar, an amp and a wah-wah pedal, he created not only the most amazing interpretation of the American National Anthem, full of irony, but the most powerful anti-war piece of music I’ve heard to this day. 

STEVE MORSE

STEVE MORSE 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I loved the way that he created mind-bending, unreal atmospheres with his studio recordings; the backwards solos, the echo effects, Rotovibe, wah-wah, octave box, slide effects, whammy bar, etc. 

I was just a young teenager and I just wanted to play "Purple Haze" and "You Experience" solos upstairs in my room with my amp cranked up to get feedback. That is partly how I developed an approach where I mute all the strings but the one I am playing, in order to limit the feedback only to the string I wanted. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

All the previously mentioned sounds (backwards solos, echo effects, Rotovibe, wah-wah, octave box, slide effects, whammy bar, etc), but also strong phrasing, soulful, powerful bends, and melodic rhythm playing. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

That would be "Are You Experienced." In fact, I wrote a ‘in the style of Hendrix’ piece called "Well, I Have” as a tribute. The ending part has the backwards solo too! 

OZ NOY

OZ NOY

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Hendrix is the most influential and important electric guitarist that ever lived. His tone, touch, energy, musicality and fire to me are what rock-blues electric guitar is. I loved Hendrix’s songwriting, and his sense of rhythm influenced so many guitar players in all different styles of music from rock to funk to R&B to gospel. 

Also, to me he is one of the greatest blues players to ever lived, as every time he played a slow blues it was special. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He opened the doors to electric guitar in such a huge way, that I don’t think anybody has more influence on the instrument than he did. The tone of both his rhythm and lead guitar is still untouchable. His soloing was obviously amazing, the depth of his blues roots mixed with this new-age rock feel using very loud amps that created a lot of sustain. 

I don’t think any of that existed before him, and if it did it wasn’t on such an extreme level. He was also a very special rhythm guitar player. The use of wah-wah, fuzz and Univibe set the bar for those sounds to this day, really. 

Hendrix didn’t only change music, he changed our culture! 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

"Castles Made Of Sand." I also love the intro and the actual song and the guitar tone of "Spanish Castle Magic." I love the rhythm guitar playing; it’s hard to choose one! 

ORIANTHI

ORIANTHI 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

The first time I heard Jimi Hendrix was when my dad put on the Woodstock video. I was 11 years old. I was blown away. The freedom in his playing and the sounds he created inspired me so much. He was such a force. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He opened people’s minds. He was an innovator and was constantly searching. He made the guitar sound like no other. He changed the way people heard it. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

"The Star Spangled Banner" from Woodstock. It’s just an amazing moment. I also love the acoustic performance of "My Train A Coming."

My favourite tune is "Voodoo Chile" though. I cover it a lot. 

ULI JON ROTH

ULI JON ROTH 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi was my most important influence, artistically speaking, when I was younger. I can’t even begin to put into words how much I have learned and soaked up from that man. 

To this day, his music doesn’t get old, but always sounds fresh and incredibly alive. His contribution to the world of guitar playing and rock music is unbelievably important. Of all the people in rock music, Jimi was simply the most unique and most visionary. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought a completely new approach, both in terms of playing as well as forging a sound which had never been heard before. His playing was always so much more than ‘just’ guitar playing, though. 

There was always something deeper, something more meaningful, something mysterious behind the notes. He was one of the great inspired artists of all time, and because of that he will be remembered forever. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

There are so many moments that are totally inspired and unique, but if I have to pick one, it would be Axis: Bold As Love. It doesn’t get better than that. 

JOE SATRIANI

JOE SATRIANI 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi’s heart and soul were evident on everything he played. This had the most profound effect on me as a young player. I still get the feeling that he surrendered himself to the music every time he performed. 

For Jimi, every song was a unique opportunity for expression, exploration and exposition. Even though he was a true showman, he still strove for something new, honest and ‘of the moment’. 

His skills as an improvisor were spellbinding, and convinced me as a young musician that that very skill had to be part of my life’s pursuit. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He showed us that the electric guitar could be played with far more expressiveness than previously attempted. 

He innovated with his fingers, hands, and his whole mind and body on every song he played. 

He proved that the sound of the guitar was a vastly larger tool for musical story telling. 

He showed us that you could play like a virtuoso without reminding the audience of anything that sounded like scales and exercises. 

I could go on... 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Every time someone asks me this question I find a new answer. The problem is, I love all of Jimi’s songs! For sheer groundbreaking electric guitar brilliance it has to be "Machine Gun" from the Band Of Gypsys: Live At the Fillmore. For sheer beauty maybe it’s May This Be Love or 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be). 

But, I can’t ignore the magic captured on film at the Monterey Pop Festival when Jimi talks to the audience and introduces the Bob Dylan song "Like A Rolling Stone," and then proceeds to reinvent it, elevate it, and destroy it, along with his guitar! 

His innocence, boldness, naivety, audacity, musicianship, showmanship, are all gloriously on display in this once-in-a-lifetime and beautifully captured moment. 

KIM SIMMONS

KIM SIMMONS (Savoy Brown) 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi made me focus on who I wanted to be as a guitarist. He was so flamboyant and multi-faceted that I knew I couldn’t compete on that level, so I had to look within and find my own personality and style. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Jimi’s guitar playing was Arabesque. It was a mixture of rock, blues, gospel and jazz. He brought a sensuality to the instrument that we hadn’t seen before. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

"Foxy Lady" comes immediately to mind. It was on his 1967 debut album and the song brings back happy memories of London in that time period. 

ANDY TIMMONS

ANDY TIMMONS 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi’s life and music are a continuous source of inspiration and encouragement to explore growth and creativity in a most loving and spiritual way. His true beauty of character emanated through his guitar and his songwriting. Jimi also spoke with the same beauty and eloquence with which he played his guitar and wrote his poetic music. 

I encourage you to seek out interviews and documentaries to learn more about the incredible human Jimi was. And is!

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

I think we largely take for granted much of Hendrix’s innovation in technique and tone today. You have to consider what he did, when he did it. Think about the other music that was happening in late 1966 and early 1967! 

His masterful command of chordal embellishment, his incredibly soulful bending, his array of tones, his control of feedback, his use of the vibrato bar, his ferocious and charismatic live performances. 

All of these elements were certainly beginning to be implemented by other performers and players, but nobody had put it all together in such a highly developed fashion like Jimi. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Though I have many favourites ("Freedom," "Angel," "May This Be Love"), "All Along The Watchtower" has always stood out as a really special Hendrix recording. It’s at once dark yet beautiful, haunting yet uplifting. An incredible reading of his hero Bob Dylan’s beautiful lyric, Bob’s precedent gives Jimi even more confidence vocally. The guitar tones and incredibly melodic soloing take you into the stratosphere! 

All that being said, my favourite moment was easy to pick. His performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock is legendary on so many levels: the tone, approach and arrangement, the protest of the war, the sombreness and finally the beautiful love of his country despite its deep flaws. 

The moment? Check out the melody that magically appears at 2:10 in the midst of chaos, anguish, air raids, bombs, missiles and terror. Almost like permutated taps. Sombre yet hopeful. 

WALTER TROUT

WALTER TROUT 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

It’s monumental. He took electric guitar playing to an entirely new place. I was 15 and this friend of mine said, I have this album by this new guy, Jimi Hendrix, come on over. I was into Michael Bloomfield and Scotty Moore and James Burton, and I went over and he put on the first Hendrix album. I said, “It doesn’t even sound like a guitar, this is the worst shit I ever heard!” 

Then I realised he’d taken what the rest of the world knows about the electric guitar further than anyone had ever taken it. And to this day he’s my favourite guitarist. But it was so new that it was shocking to hear it. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He was huge once I came around to what he was doing. I had to listen to "Red House" before I realised he’s playing the blues. Even though he was pushing the limits, everything he was doing was based in blues, and R&B and soul music. 

He’s putting it all together and playing it through an electric guitar like no one had ever done before. I think Jeff Beck is the world’s greatest living guitar player, but Jimi was the ultimate. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

My favourite track is "Voodoo Child." But I mean the long slow jam version, not the "Slight Return" that everyone plays ad nauseam, every club band. But with that slow blues version, everyone is in the studio and they’re just having this great blues jam.

 Steve Winwood is on Hammond B3 I think, and they just do this long, slow, 14-minute blues jam. For me, his guitar playing on there is the ultimate of everything that he ever did. 

CARL VERHEYEN

CARL VERHEYEN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi Hendrix is a huge influence on my rhythm guitar playing. His concepts and chord voicings have saved me countless times in the studio when searching for a part. All you have to do is learn these five songs: "The Wind Cries Mary," "Castles Made Of Sand," "Electric Ladyland," "Bold As Love," and of course "Little Wing." 

You’ll see that his rhythm licks in D Major are the same as the ones he uses for the relative Minor which is Bm. Learn the rhythm licks and study this Major-Minor concept and you’ll be a much better rhythm guitar player. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar? 

Jimi was a pivotal musician in the 20th century. Besides his R&B training with Little Richard’s Upsetters, he draws on the Delta blues players’ deeply moving tradition of acoustic blues. That tradition migrates up the river to Chicago where players like Muddy Waters electrify it, and one-chord Delta blues songs become Catfish Blues and Two Trains Running in Muddy’s band. 

When Hendrix arrives on the scene mid-century, he turns them into psychedelic rave-ups like "Voodoo Chile" and "Machine Gun," thus carrying the tradition into mainstream rock. Obviously his use of distortion, effects and recording techniques were huge breakthroughs for the electric guitar, but I believe his contribution to popular music will be remembered equally for its deep roots in American blues. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why? 

It’s really hard to pick one because I love "May This Be Love" as much as "Who Knows" from Band Of Gypsies. But the long version of Voodoo Chile stands out for me because Jimi is baring his soul on this record. Tuned down a whole step, his huge Strat sound completely fills the room. 

When I recorded with Jimi’s engineer Eddie Kramer a few years ago, I asked him how he got that sound on this ‘live in the studio’ recording. Eddie said, “That was Jimi’s amp bleeding into all the mics: Steve Winwood’s Leslie cabinet mic, Mitch Mitchell’s drum overheads, Jack Casady’s bass amp mic, and the vocal mic.” I said, “Weren’t you worried about phasing issues?” He replied, “We got lucky!” 

I hold this up as one of the greatest Stratocaster sounds of all time. Very lucky indeed! 

Originally published in Guitar Techniques issue 314. Subscribe to Guitar Techniques in print or digital.

Satch is back! And he’s got tons of new guitar goodness in tow.

The maestro released two albums – 2020’s Shapeshifting and this year’s The Elephants of Mars – that he hadn’t had a chance to perform until now due to pandemic tour postponements, and he’ll be playing lots of favorites as well for this epic two-and-a-half hour “evening with” stop at the Oakland Fox on his Earth Tour.

Satriani graced the cover of GP’s May issue alongside his former G3 tour mates Eric Johnson and Steve Vai for a feature looking back at the historic celebration of guitar virtuosity. 

He also went into a deep discussion about The Elephants of Mars in this exclusive interview.

“We did everything. We tried the craziest ideas,” says Satriani. “And we entertained every notion we had about turning something backwards, upside down, seeing what could happen. I want to show people that an instrumental guitar album can contain far more creative and entertaining elements than people are using right now.”

GP’s Joe Bosso writes, “There’s an aspirational, almost transformative quality running through much of the album, best exemplified by the progressive showpiece ‘Sahara’ and the cinematic-tinged title cut, on which the guitarist sheds his readily identifiable classic rock tone and embraces a more slippery, exotic tone.”

Watch Satriani's tripped out sci-fi music video for the title track, “The Elephants of Mars” here...

Help the official video for “Sahara” get to two million views on YouTube...

Satriani is always generous with his copious knowledge of how to play and sound better, and in our October issue he offers his top ten tips for guitarists. We’ll be giving copies away at the show on October 2, plus you can read the article online here.

The top-shelf band on Satriani’s Earth Tour is drummer Kenny Aronoff (John Mellencamp, John Fogerty), bassist Bryan Bellar (Aristocrats, Mike Keneally) and keyboardist Rai Thistlethwayte (Thirsty Merc).

Call friends and make plans for an unforgettable evening in Oakland on the first Sunday in October.

Tickets are going fast. Get yours here.

WIN TICKETS!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see GP Presents Joe Satriani send an email to gp@jimmyleslie.com with “Satch” in the subject and simply include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go.

Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide his or her own transportation to the Fox Theatre in Oakland, California on Sunday, October 2, and have his or her own accommodations in the Bay Area.

Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

Guitar Player Presents Joe Satriani

Sunday, October 2
The Fox Theatre
1807 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland CA 94612

Phone: (510) 302-2250

6:30pm doors, 7:30pm show; All Ages; COVID Info

Free Guitar Player magazines, Martin strings, Mesa/Boogie pedal raffle

Buy Tickets

Years before he became one of the most celebrated guitarists on the planet, Joe Satriani was a club-gigging musician who paid his bills – sometimes barely – by teaching other aspiring players. His famous alumni includes the likes of Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett, Alex Skolnick and Primus’s Larry LaLonde, among others.

“It was a great experience,” Satriani says of his teaching days. “No matter what abilities my students came to me with, I always tried to give them their money’s worth and build their musical knowledge in ways they could grasp and use.

“And I tried to make the lessons fun, because I knew that if things got boring, they’d tune out and stop coming.”

In his own life, Satch considers himself ever the student.

“I’m still teaching myself,” he says. “I started out strumming the guitar and trying to grab bits of information from wherever I could, and in many ways that continues today. Some things you let slide along the way, and other things you obsess about.

“There are many rabbit holes you can go down, but to me there are certain aspects to guitar playing that you should always pay attention to.”

Here, Joe runs down his top ten tips…

1. TUNE UP FIRST

“It’s funny how this is such a neglected aspect of guitar playing. So much of the time, people grab their guitars because they’re inspired to play. There have even been records recorded that way. The guitarist doesn’t want his flow interrupted, and he winds up playing this amazing part with an out-of-tune guitar.

“Check your guitar’s intonation regularly so you know that, wherever you play on the fretboard, the intonation is accurate. Build a history of playing in tune, and it will become part of your signature sound.”

2. STRIKE YOUR STRINGS AT DIFFERENT PLACES IN THE PICKING AREA

“Years ago when watching footage of Hendrix, I noticed his picking hand didn’t stay in one place. Sometimes he’d pick at the bridge, while other times he’d move his hand toward the neck. It was a key element of his playing. Same with Keith Richards.

“I started trying it myself, and it unlocked this rich world of tone.

“Learn to move your picking hand around. This will allow you to shape the tone of each phrase and individual notes. Also, change your pick angle and the part of the pick you use. You’ll be surprised how much variation in tone you can get.”

3. PRACTICE ACHIEVING GOOD INTONATION WHILE BENDING NOTES

“Bending notes is cause and effect. You can determine what kind of effect you want, but you have to learn how to be in control to achieve a particular sound. It can be a scary guitar sound, or it can sound beautiful, but to achieve that result, you have to know how to get there.

“Fret a note on your B string and then drop down two frets and bend up to that note. Do this over and over again at a variety of fret positions using the first three strings.

“Bend half steps, whole steps and so on. Again, build a history of being in tune.”

4. PRACTICE SCALES OVER ACTUAL MUSIC

“It’s important to learn scale patterns, but if you spend all your time doing exercises, pretty soon everything you play will sound like scale patterns. Who wants to hear that?

“Playing over music is a good way to take what you’ve learned and apply scale tones to chords and chordal progressions.

“As an example, set up a two-chord pattern in one mode and jam over the top. Make sure to listen as you play. That’s what the audience does.”

5. VARY YOUR ROUTINE

“When I was learning how to play, I would get stuck on some exercise, and I would repeat it over and over. What I didn’t realize was how the repetition was working against me. It was making my playing stiff and nonmusical.

“Break out of that habit. Stay relaxed and change your guitar warm-up exercises each day. Crank up the variety factor.

“One day you can do the non-musical, finger-twisting stuff; the next, focus on arpeggios, and the next day it’s scales, and so on.”

6.  DON'T DRAG YOUR PRACTICE SESSIONS OUT

“You can work on exercises and scale patterns forever, but after a while there’s a point where you need to stop and move on.

You’re not going to sell out theaters or get a billion streams online with finger exercises. Limit these routines. Keep them short and productive, but keep in mind they’re merely exercises, not actual music your audience wants to hear.

“Spend more of your precious practice time learning and playing music. It’ll be more enjoyable for you, and you’ll progress much faster.”

7. LEARN NEW MATERIAL BY MEASURED REPETITION

“Get in the habit of making the unknown, or something that feels awkward, second nature. You do this by measured repetition – by learning how to play something the right way, not by playing it the wrong way over and over.

“This is something I learned from Lennie Tristano [the jazz pianist, who was Satch’s guitar teacher]. I played a wrong note and he said, ‘Why did you play that? If you’re not sure about the next note, don’t play it.’

“I had let a bad habit become part of my style.

“Be careful not to reinforce wrong parts and get stuck in bad habits. The more time you log playing something right, slowly and carefully, the better your chance of always playing it right.”

8. DON'T STRETCH RIGHT BEFORE A PERFORMANCE

“I always thought it was natural to stretch before a performance. Then I noticed bassist Matt Bissonette was always backstage relaxing right before he played – and he killed it every night.

“Around that same time, I read an article about athletes that said stretching right before an event could actually hinder performance. So I changed my routine, and it really worked.

“I did my warm-ups hours before the performance, not right before, and I noticed that I seemed to play better onstage. I felt more relaxed, and I had extra reserves of energy. Try it!”

9. KEEP YOUR VOLUME LOW WHILE PRACTICING

“This is a crazy one. It relates to your ears’ ability to hear certain sounds at different volumes. A high pitch will be perceived as getting higher if its loudness is increased, whereas a low pitch will be perceived as going lower with increased loudness.

“This psycho-acoustic effect has been extensively investigated. With an increase of sound intensity from 60 to 90 decibels, the pitch of a 6 kHz pure tone was perceived to rise over 30 cents.

“Why am I telling you this? So that you can hear your music properly.

“Keep your volume level low while practicing. It will help you more accurately perceive the tone and intonation of what you’re playing. Your ears will thank you. So will your neighbors.”

10. KEEP YOUR STRINGS CLEAN

“If your strings are nice and clean, you’ll intonate notes better, everything will sound clear and beautiful, and your strings will last longer.

“I used to use isopropyl alcohol, which worked fine, but it also made the strings brittle. Now I use Big Bends Guitar String Wipes, and they work great.

“If you don’t want to change your strings all the time, these wipes will clean them really well.”

Click here for info on Joe Satriani's 2022/'23 tour dates and tickets.

Back in the early spring of 2020, Joe Satriani was conducting business much as he had been for the past 30 years. He had a new record, Shapeshifting, set for release, and his concert schedule was full. “And then the pandemic hit, and everything went upside-down,” he says.

The guitarist went ahead with release plans for the album, but he was forced to reschedule all of his 2020 dates. “Not as easy as it sounds,” he points out, “because you don’t want to be hit with cancellation fees. Fortunately, we had great relationships with promoters and we were able to work things out.”

He sighs. “And then we had to do it again.”

With the COVID pandemic proving to be a stubborn beast, Satriani was placed in the unenviable position of pushing his rescheduled 2021 dates to this year. And as of this writing, that might not be the end of the tour rejigging.

“Everything is in flux because you just can’t predict what will happen,” he says. “I’m pretty sure COVID-19 is going to become endemic by the end of summer, and we’re hoping that we can start the tour in the fall. Everybody’s vaccinated and follows protocols. 

"The problem is the restrictions on quarantine and what that does to a budget. We’re a tight band and crew, and the last thing you want to do is go out on tour and have one person get sick. You can lose a fortune in a week on tour.”

He lets out an exasperated groan. “Part of me is so bored with talking about the nuts and bolts of all of this,” he says. “I like making music and talking about music, but this is the reality we’ve been facing. It’s been a rough time.”

Beyond touring upheavals, Satriani faced a more devastating blow late last year when his friend and manager, Mick Brigden, died suddenly following an accident on his property in Santa Rosa, California. 

To say that artist and manager were joined at the hip would be a vast understatement – for the past three decades, Brigden, whose history dates back to working with groups like Humble Pie and the Rolling Stones in the early ’70s, represented one client: Joe Satriani.

“There’s so much I could say about Mick,” Satriani says. “He helped me in so many ways, and he was the kind of guy who made things happen. He was so into music and the artist state of mind, and because of that he made all the work we did fun and challenging. He was the perfect person to guide me, and he was fully involved with everything I did right up till the moment he passed away.”

He pauses.

“In fact, the day he died, I told him that I was going to be sending him mixes of the new album.”

Satriani is referring to his just-issued record, The Elephants of Mars. It’s his 19th studio album and his first for the earMUSIC label following his longtime association with Sony.

For Satch, who traditionally favored the collaborative spirit of recording with other musicians in the same room, the safety protocols imposed by Covid dictated a new path: He would record all of his guitar tracks at his San Francisco home studio, while his small group of guest players (drummer Kenny Aronoff, bassist Bryan Beller and keyboardist Rai Thistlethwayte) would beam their parts in from various points on the globe.

Co-producer Eric Caudieux, whose work with the guitarist began on 1998’s Crystal Planet, kept things moving remotely from Los Angeles. “Once I got used to the idea that I was going to be stuck at home for a while, I decided to take advantage of the fact that there was no time clock,” Satriani says.

“I didn’t have to do basics in 10 days and get everybody home. I didn’t have to do overdubs in three weeks. I didn’t have to mix in just two weeks. We had a blank slate, and in a way that was exciting.”

Perhaps due to his homebound status while recording, Satriani sounds more restless than ever on The Elephants of Mars – and that’s a good thing. There’s an aspirational, almost transformative quality running through much of the album, best exemplified by the progressive showpiece “Sahara” and the cinematic-tinged title cut, on which the guitarist sheds his readily identifiable classic rock tone and embraces a more slippery, exotic tone.

He doesn’t forsake rocking entirely – the slinky and swaggering “Blue Foot Groovy” is boisterous stuff – but the emphasis here is on exploring new themes and textures, and Satriani’s intellectual curiosity takes him to some unexpected places.

On a trio of cuts – “E 104 St. NYC 1973,” “Pumpin’” and “Night Scene” – he folds a distinct jazz-fusion flavor into his blues-rock foundation, and the results are startling. “I wanted to make an album that I hadn’t done before in terms of the scope – the kinds of compositions, instrumentation, mixing...all of it.” Satriani says.

“Eric Caudieux was part of my last record, and we both felt the same way. The idea was to stretch things out, take our time with the arrangements and try to create a new level of drama.

“As an artist, I never feel like I want to stay in any one lane, but this record really feels like the guardrails have been lifted and all bets are off.”

Does the weight of being called a virtuoso or “guitar god” ever feel like too much? Do you feel as if you have to do something amazing on each song?

[laughs] I don’t know. I kind of feel like I do that all on my own because of the way music sounded to me ever since I was a kid. When I heard the Dave Clark Five play “Glad All Over,” I thought that was amazing.

There are so many songs I could name. But I don’t think of it in technical terms; when something’s right, it’s right. When I hear something that’s nailing the message, to me that’s the highest level of technique.

I’m so unimpressed by the display of physical technique in the wrong place. I’ve always felt that way. And that’s why I’ve always been able to enjoy music played by guitar players of any genre, because I’m not really interested in that.

When I’m sitting down and practicing something, yeah, I’ll seek out some example from some player that can stretch the way I’m trying to play. But I won’t apply that to my music unless I think it’s the right thing to do at the right time.

Of course, the concept of what qualifies as “amazing” is so subjective. To some, Neil Young playing a solo on one string is brilliant, while others would opine that it’s too simplistic.

Sure. I grew up listening to Neil, so yeah, to me, he’s part of my musical fabric. I never questioned what he played, not once. Comparing guitarists… I mean, how can you compare Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page? They’re both geniuses, and they’re both courageous and daring.

At some point you can’t argue this case, because if you don’t recognize it as a valid argument, then you can’t even join in the conversation – it feels absurd. If somebody doesn’t understand the beauty in what Neil Young is doing, then it’s better just to walk away.

On a lot of this record, you move away from what people consider to be your signature sound. Why?

I’d done it before. There are a couple of times across my catalog where I specifically turned that quality up. With The Extremist, I wanted to make a tribute to my classic rock roots, and every decision we made was based on that. The funny thing was, it came out at the height of grunge.

When I did Shapeshifting, I was thinking the same thing. I just had this idea that these particular songs would benefit from a real nod to some of the classic-rock ways of recording rock guitar songs.

This time around, I thought, No, I’m not going to do that. The songs would dictate how they should sound. I wasn’t trying to impose any parameters on the sound.

As opposed to other albums, you recorded this entire record remotely.

Yes, and every guitar part was done in my home studio. It was all recorded DI, and every guitar sound is from the SansAmp plugin.

That must have felt so different to you. You’ve always said that you love being in a room with other musicians.

I do. I love it. There were many times when I’d take a break from recording this album and I’d play along with some song by Chickenfoot [his former group with Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Chad Smith] to re-live those moments.

There’s something so great about recording live in the studio and getting two or three songs done in an afternoon. But then you go, Okay, I did that. Time to move on.

But there’s also something great about being left alone so you can play as many stupid ideas as you want and not feel like someone’s looking over your shoulder. Doing that opens the floodgates to the emotions in a way that you never experience in a public situation.

Let’s talk about some of the new songs. The title track feels very cinematic. Ever thought of doing movie soundtracks?

Hey, I’m ready! [laughs] Sure, why not? The song feels like a movie – it’s about giant, sentient elephants roaming a newly terraformed Mars. You should be thinking cinematic. The track took years to put together, and for the longest time we didn’t know how it would wind up.

Funnily enough, the guitar solo was one take, and it’s just crazy. But that’s what you can do when you’re left to your own devices and you don’t have this time clock going. You can set it up so that you can capture these things, and there’s nothing about an exterior schedule that forces you not to do that.

“Blue Foot Groovy” is a completely different animal. It’s gritty, raw rock and roll. It would’ve made a great ’70s Rod Stewart song.

Yeah, I think it would! I was thinking of Sammy Hagar when I started writing it. The title started out as “Blue Foot,” because I had a series of songs that weren’t as complicated as some of the other Chickenfoot songs. Sammy and I were talking about the possibility of eliminating bridges.

Anyway, it was a bit of a nugget that blew up afterward. And then I kept trying to come up with a title and everybody kept saying, “No, ‘Blue Foot Groovy’ – that’s what the title is.”

Three of the tracks – “E 104th St. NYC 1973,” “Pumpin’” and “Night Scene” – have a lot of jazz fusion in them.

Yeah. Earlier you asked me about dodging the classic-rock thing, and see, once you remove a singular goal in production, you’re also removing barriers from what you can write and play.

There’s no way to have that relaxed, sprawling, lyrical, yet fusiony kind of improvisation on a piece like “E 104th St.” unless you allow that to happen and just write about a vibe and a point in your personal history and how you experienced that.

That track was funny. I had two drum loops in the demo – one was straight and one was swinging – and the combination was so messed-up sounding, but it was so curiously attractive. It was difficult for the guys to figure out how they were actually going to interpret it. Eventually, they made it sound smooth as silk because they’re so cool and they’re so good at what they do.

But my improv on top of the demo was actually over these two loops that were fighting each other. Should it be straight hip-hop or swing jazz? That was one of the funny things I put out to the guys, and they had to figure out how to rectify straight and swing at the same time.

You play a seven-string on “Through a Mother’s Day Darkly.” Are you a good seven-string player?

[laughs] Well, as I’m playing I’m always reminding myself, “That’s a B string, Joe. That’s a B string.” So the answer is no, I guess. But I’m a spirited musician. I try to think like Hendrix and Page, because they were so fearless and they went where they wanted. You’ve got all these incredible performances in all kinds of genres.

I recorded that track really fast. I pulled out my JS6 signature prototype that was turned into a seven-string. I hadn’t played it in years; it had been in its case, and the strings were never changed. They were so loose because they’d lost their tension, but I found that interesting. I just wrote the song based on that tactile response and the fact that it was such a weird Mother’s Day, in lockdown.

What other electric guitars did you use?

Basically the guitars that I was touring with and keep at home: the [Ibanez JS1CR] chrome signature model guitar, the red MCO and a prototype for a paisley guitar. That’s pretty much it. I think there’s a sitar on there.

For acoustic guitars, I used a Martin and my JSA model. Usually when I go into a studio, we bring 200 guitars. I don’t know why, and maybe there’s 15 or 20 that we play. A lot of that has to do with the moment.

It’s the same thing with amps. This is the first album I’ve ever made where I didn’t use any exterior amplifier. I have all the amps in the world that anybody should have, but every time I AB’d an amp against the DI guitar going through the SansAmp, the SansAmp delivered more Joe than anything else.

“Delivering more Joe” – we like that.

That’s basically what it is. I know that’s a really weird thing to come out of my mouth, but that’s what it comes down to. At the end of the record, Eric and I were scratching our heads going, “How is this possible?” It’s pretty funny.

Pick up a copy of The Elephants of Mars here.

By the mid-1990s, Joe Satriani had things pretty much sewn up career-wise. Four of his six studio albums had gone either Gold or Platinum, and his touring dance card was filled for much of any given year.

But despite his spectacular success, something had started to feel a little...off. He wasn’t having the kind of fun he had imagined years before, when he was a budding guitarist dreaming about rock stardom.

“I thought there would be more camaraderie among other players than what I was experiencing,” he says. “As a teenager, I had this idea of what things would be like if I ever hit it big. There would be parties, and I’d get to hang out with my guitar friends. We’d jam and talk about music all night long – that kind of thing.

“Instead, the opposite was true: I was isolated. I would go on tour and play the same set, and then I’d go back to my hotel room and be on my own. I’d have 100 shows in front of me, and then I’d have to make another record and do it all over again.”

Satriani wanted to shake things up, but he didn’t quite know how. And then it hit him: He would create a new kind of show, one that celebrated the communal spirit of electric guitar playing that he craved.

“Nobody was really doing anything of the kind,” he says. “You had blues and reggae festivals. You’d see disco revivals and things like that. Lollapalooza had just started up. But there was nothing really that spoke to guitarists.”

It’s no coincidence that, at that time, interest in guitar was entering a slump from which it would take years to recover.

Starting in the late 1980s, rap and hip-hop had grown in popularity, and were the dominant forms of popular music as the century careened toward its conclusion. Youngsters had become more interested in the power of two turntables and a microphone than in the trenchant blast of a Les Paul cranked through a Marshall stack.

It was still too early to see the lean years that would come, when guitar heroes’ relevance would dim, but Satch’s desire for a guitarist-led event would prove timely.

“I wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with my friends and peers,” he recalls. “And so I thought, Well, nobody else is doing it, so I’ll do it.”

Satriani met with his management team and laid out his grand vision of a traveling show featuring himself and two other guitarists (hence the “G3” moniker), with each player performing an hour-long set followed by a three-way jam.

Once his managers were sold on the idea, the hard part began: convincing booking agents and concert promoters of the package’s validity. “We were breaking the rules that everybody had been taught over the years,” Satriani explains.

“Promoters around the world, and especially in the U.S., like to keep guitarists’ itineraries separated, for business reasons. They don’t want to dilute the market. But I always thought this format would be energizing, because it went against the trends. I always knew it could work.”

Since its first run in 1996, G3 has become the longest-running guitar-centric tour of its kind. All in all, Satriani has taken the show on 18 treks across the U.S., Europe, South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Along with Satch himself, the tour has featured guitarists such as John Petrucci, Robert Fripp, Steve Morse, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Steve Lukather, Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Paul Gilbert, Al Di Meola, Adrian Legg, Phil Collen and the Aristocrats.

But none of it would have happened had G3’s maiden voyage not connected with audiences.

Satriani knew his first package had to pack a wallop, and his dream lineup – a triple-headline bill he shared with his close friend and one-time guitar pupil Steve Vai, along with Texas guitar star Eric Johnson – was a no-brainer.

“I really didn’t have to think about it,” he says. “I wanted to do it with them, and that was all there was to it. I knew we could all shine together onstage.” Vai and Johnson required no arm twisting.

“I said yes immediately,” Vai says. “The second Joe told me about what he wanted to do, I was in. And it superseded other plans I may have had, because the concept felt fresh. Plus, it was something that I thought was needed in the guitar community at the time. The idea was just fantastic.”

Says Johnson, “I felt the same way. It sounded like a novel idea at the time. I remember my manager said, ‘I like this. It sounds really different and cool.’”

Some 25 years on, the first G3 tour and its subsequent editions remain a singular achievement in the world of guitar. Coincidentally, all three of the tour’s founding members are currently releasing albums and planning tours. We thought it was the perfect opportunity to ask them to reminisce about their experiences together and to fantasize what another run might look like.

It was important to me to keep the spirit of guitar music alive no matter what new style of music was becoming popular. I wanted more interaction with great players, and I knew the audience wanted the same. So I took the bull by the horns.

By the late ’90s, it was evident that guitar-based music was losing popularity as rap and hip-hop became the dominant genres. Joe, did you have a premonition that the guitar was in danger of losing some of its relevance when you launched G3 in 1996, just a few years before?

JOE SATRIANI I was more focused on what I felt the fans were craving, and what I too was craving: more fun with the guitar. Having been a performing musician since I was 14 years old, I knew that styles would change and society would simply change channels, so I wasn’t phased by what was happening in the mid-to-late ’90s.

It was important to me to keep the spirit of guitar music alive no matter what new style of music was becoming popular. I wanted more interaction with great players, and I knew the audience wanted the same. So I took the bull by the horns.          

Eric, as everybody knows, Joe and Steve share a long history. When you signed up for G3, did you feel like you had to break the ice with two guys who knew each other so well?

ERIC JOHNSON Well, maybe a little bit, but they were always affable and made me feel comfortable right away. Obviously, Joe and Steve grew up together, and I wasn’t a part of that. But I was totally aware of both of them and their music. I respected them and knew what they were about. I was welcomed very warmly, and that made it very easy to be a part of G3.

Joe and Steve, did you feel like you had to bring Eric into the fold, or were you two like, “Oh, he’ll figure it out”?

SATRIANI I knew it would be fine. I never thought that we had to coach each other. We were all of the same mind: “Isn’t this going to be amazing?” Then at the end of the night, when we start playing together, our attitude was, Let’s just wing it and see what happens! And I can’t tell you how excited I was every night to be destroyed by these two guitar players.

STEVE VAI Come on! [laughs]

SATRIANI It’s true. It was so much fun, because it’s one thing when somebody destroys you onstage like that, and you’re right next to them and you can see how they do it. It’s a life-learning experience. I loved that, and it’s something I’ve always loved about every G3. There’s nothing like it. You can’t replicate it in any other way.

VAI To answer the question you asked about having Eric: Yes, Joe and I have a friendship that goes way back, a very rich, wonderful friendship throughout our lives. We’ve been joined at the hip since I was 12. [laughs]

So to do G3, and to know that Eric was going to do it, too, I was immediately thrilled. Bringing Eric into the fold, it never felt like Joe and I were a group and there was an outsider. We were all very present in the moment. We were three accomplished, mutually respectful players really looking to raise the bar for ourselves and for the guitar.

I know for me, every time I get on a stage with really accomplished, inspired players, it’s impossible not to expand my own potential. Like Joe says, when you’re standing next to these guys, they push you and challenge you. You have to raise your bar because they’re doing it. That’s the feeling you get when it’s your turn. It’s very inspiring, and it’s nice.

Some of my favorite onstage moments were when the three of us were playing together and listening to one another. It’s a very intimate space, and nobody is Joe, Steve or Eric. It’s just this environment of listening and responding.

Joe, during those first G3 tours, did you have a sense that you were keeping the spirit of guitar virtuosity alive at a time when it was in short supply? Did that have an impact on the shows, either in your commitment to keep doing them or in who you brought along on tour?

SATRIANI The G3 stage was the one place where you could play any way you wished. There were no boundaries. You could overdo it, or you could underplay it and be subtle. You could stand still, you could sit like Robert Fripp, or you could bring your own rock and roll circus to the stage.

I encouraged my fellow players to try anything and everything every night. We would support, echo and sometimes challenge each others’ improvisational tangents. Virtuosity on the guitar comes in many forms, and there’s no reason they can’t be celebrated right next to each other.

There have been three other tours with this lineup. When you tour, does it feel like “the band is back together”? Like you’re the Three Amigos.

SATRIANI “The Three Amigos” – I like that. [laughs] I think we should launch another tour once the world opens up a bit. It would be interesting to see where we’ve been musically. We can come back and trade our secrets once again.

JOHNSON Yeah, yeah!

VAI I’m down.

JOHNSON We could wear those Mexican outfits like [Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin] did in The Three Amigos. At least for the encore. [laughs]

Joe, when you put together other iterations, did you ever ask Steve or Eric who they wanted to come along as the third guitarist?

SATRIANI Well, it’s a complicated thing putting G3 together, because my responsibility is both creating and selling the package. It starts a year before we want to hit the road. There are a number of scenarios that we have to float to all the different promoters to get a consensus of what they will agree is worthy of the invitation, because you can only play if you’re invited. You don’t just show up.

That means that we come up with Plans A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and then we see what the reaction is. Part of the music business is pretty cruel. It’s numbers and statistics. It’s always been about ticket sales, but back then it was a lot about radio. These days, the social media thing is really a big deal. It’s the first thing promoters do: They see if you’re trending on TikTok or Instagram. They need to determine if they want to take the risk.

That’s how that starts. And, of course, there’s a fine line between sticking to your guns about what you really want to do and listening to the feedback you get from your promoters. There’s no way to know who should be the third guy in Eastern Europe versus Canada, so you’ve got to talk to the promoters to see what they think and what suggestions they might have. Sometimes they’re good ones, and sometimes you’re scratching your head going, “Really?”

It’s difficult. It’s a very long period, and we have to be extremely quiet and discreet about it until we’ve distilled all this advice and feedback. Then we put out the invitations and reach out to the players that have risen to the top of the list, and we have to see what they say. Some players don’t want to play with other guitarists.

I suppose that’s true.

SATRIANI Yeah. I think there are fearless players out there, and then there are people who are still very guarded. I think that’s the defining difference. These gentlemen here are fearless and totally confident, and they just want to make their audience happy. That’s what you want. You don’t want any other baggage coming onstage.

I imagine sometimes choosing the third guitarist feels very easy and natural, but are there instances when you’ve thought, I don’t know how this is going to work?

SATRIANI Well, one of the most interesting characters was Robert Fripp, beyond a doubt. When he joined up, he insisted that he not be listed, and he wanted to play before the show. He said, “Look, don’t turn the lights on. I’m going to sit behind all the amps, and I’m going to play music as people walk into the venue and find their seats. And don’t mention my name.” It’s what he wanted to do.

Sometimes [bassist] Stu Hamm would play with him unannounced. He’d just come out, sit right next to Robert and he’d play along, or some of the other guys would play. It was really quite beautiful. Robert is such a wonderful human being and an incredible musician. We did a couple of other tours together, just me, Steve and Robert playing blues guitar or something. It was hysterical, and he was fearless about that. He was Robert Fripp to the very end.

JOHNSON Well, I was actually thinking of Robert Fripp when Joe mentioned him, because it was like, Wow, that’s different! He was definitely coming from left field, I think. But it was beautiful and cool. People really enjoyed it, too. I thought it sounded great. A lot of people told me, “Hey, have you heard Robert play with the G3 thing?” They thought it was great.

For the encore jams, you three have played “Red House,” “Goin’ Down” and “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama.” How do you guys come up with those songs?

SATRIANI We start emailing each other about what would be a fun song. I think I put it to the guys that we should pick songs that weren’t our own but were somehow connected to us in some way. They would be songs that the audience would recognize and that would celebrate the guitar.

It wasn’t about one of the participants’ new single or something like that. We had to drop all that pretense that we were there to sell our new thing. I think the Zappa song was Steve’s suggestion. He brought that in, and it was great. It turned into one we did over and over again through the years.

VAI Joe would always reach out for suggestions, and there were many, many songs we’d toss out. Some of them would be head-scratchers, but I always relied on Joe to decipher it all, feel through it and pick what the final jam songs would be.

That went for everything – routing, position in the set, where you’re standing onstage. It was always diplomatic, but there’s a practical sensibility that needs to be exercised in all of these things. And that was Joe, because he’s got the tools.

Joe and Steve, you’ve done a number of G3s with John Petrucci as the third guitarist. Eric, I think you played on one tour with John. Is that right?

JOHNSON I did, yeah, in South America. John Petrucci’s amazing. I’m more familiar with him now, and his drummer, Mike Mangini. You know how there are certain groups that you don’t know their whole deal? Even though they’re almost a parallel track as yours, it’s not somebody you really listen to that much, but you still knew they were great.

I wasn’t familiar with John at first, but I was really blown away by him. It was kind of funny, though, because when I first met Mike Mangini, I didn’t know who he was. I asked him, “Are you down here teching for the band?”

VAI I remember that.

JOHNSON Then I heard him play, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I should say that teching’s no different than playing. I think I embarrassed myself, because I didn’t know who he was. It was a bummer, because I was never able to get to know him; I think I made him feel awkward.

But he was such a fabulous drummer, and John was remarkable. They had a whole different thing going on, with the way they broke up time signatures and stuff. It was just amazing. I got schooled on that during the tour, not unlike the G3s that I did with Joe and Steve. It was like taking lessons every single night.

This is for all of you: How did your G3 experiences impact your feelings about the other two guys here?

SATRIANI Whoa… There have been so many moments when I would stand on the side of the stage watching Steve and Eric play, and then I’d look out at the audience and think, Do they have any idea how amazing this thing is? When are they ever going to see this again?” [Satriani’s cell phone rings] Oh, sorry about that. It’s my agent calling.

JOHNSON He’s saying, “Come on. Book a G3 tour!” [laughs]

SATRIANI And make it snappy! [mutes his phone] Like I said, there were so many moments. For me, in those private moments, standing there and watching them play, it was beyond remarkable. They truly felt the music, and that’s very inspiring. And then to see what they did to the audience, lifting them up, raising their spirits. It just makes you think, We’re doing the right thing.

JOHNSON With Joe, I was really shocked at his precision, virtuosity and sound. Every single night, he would nail everything, unlike somebody else who might be talking. [laughs] Obviously, his records are beautiful, but he plays that stuff live to a T. His touch, his fingering… truly outstanding. He would just nail it all the way.

And then there’s Steve – this organic guitar orchestra. From comedy to sadness, he packs in all these different emotions, and they go way beyond guitar sounds. That blew my mind. It was just such a hemisphere of learning for me.

How about you, Steve?

VAI With Joe and Eric, I already knew of their excellence. You know, I can be a sloppy, visceral performer. I always enjoy what I do, but there’s a little part of me that says, “You can be better. You can be more concise. You can be clearer and cleaner.”

So when I’d get onstage with these guys, that’s what I recognized. Seeing them perform, I saw the presentation of a whole piece of music that was immaculate. No disrespect to any other G3 performer, but if I go back to listen to any G3 record, I go right to Eric’s performance of “Manhattan,” which is flawless.

Every night I would watch him, and beyond being absolutely entertained by a musician at the height of his potential, I would always feel like, Steve, you’ve got to do more of that. He was inspired and performed beautifully from beginning to end.

And, of course, that’s Joe’s middle name. You know how many times I’ve seen him perform? [laughs] Every time he gives you this incredible presentation. What he offers you is beautiful. The song is respected, and it’s mastered completely.

You get as much out of it as the audience.

VAI Oh yeah. When I see these guys do what they do, I could be depressed or I could be inspired. And they always inspired me. I knew how they could perform. But what was interesting for me was putting a microscope on myself.

If anything, I’ve always been a bit of a pretentious rock star. [Joe and Eric laugh] It’s true – you guys know it. And that was exorcized out of me a bit. When you work with guys like this – because they’re humble, and they’re excellent – it’s fun and educational to get your ass kicked.

We were friends before, and we’re friends after. What more could you ask for?

Order Joe Satriani/Eric Johnson/Steve Vai: G3 Live In Concert here.

Visit the Joe Satriani website for more info on G3.