Frank Zappa’s music was known for pushing boundaries, but his former guitarist Steve Vai says what he did to his collection of electric guitars was just as revolutionary. He even took a screwdriver to one of Jimi Hendrix’s most famous instruments.
Vai — who would later enjoy stints with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake following his time as Zappa’s onstage foil — learned a lot from the madcap musician. Beyond having his musical capabilities stretched to breaking point, and hearing Zappa prophesy his future as a guitarist, Vai also learned why he shouldn’t be afraid to hack away at his beloved instruments.
“Frank was completely irreverent when it came to guitars,” the guitarist tells the Rocktails with Ahmet Zappa podcast, hosted by Frank’s third child. “He manipulated them and did things to them at a time when it was taboo. Frank would have Midget Sloatman [his guitar tech] go into his little workshop and put in all these electronics.”
One great example of the Zappa-ification of a guitar is his Baby Snakes SG. Among its features were a custom onboard preamp with an 18 dB boost, phase switching and tone-shaping circuitry.
But the experiments weren’t limited to his own guitars. Zappa also modified a guitar Jimi Hendrix had used — and burned — at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. He had been gifted the instrument in 1977 by Hendrix’s former roadie, Howard Parker, who had rescued it from being left in a dumpster after the show.
“He had the burnt pickups and everything removed,” Vai explains. “He put a parametric EQ in that Hendrix guitar. It was beautiful. And he would use all this stuff.”
It wasn’t long before his bandleader’s mad guitar science rubbed off on him.
“I started thinking, ‘I don’t have to play just a Strat or a Les Paul,’” Vai continues. “‘I can do whatever I want. Frank does it.’
“I went to Performance Guitar in Hollywood, and I said, ‘I want this, and I want that, and I want this,’ and I didn’t know anybody would care what I was doing.”
From his long-standing Ibanez signature JEM to his multi-necked Hydra — and, more recently, his twist on Brian May’s Red Special — Vai has since forged his own wacky luthiery legacy.
Speaking to MusicRadar in 2022, Vai credited Zappa’s “suck it and see” ethos as the precursor to his JEM guitars.
“Frank Zappa had no governor,” he said. “When it came to taking a guitar that Jimi Hendrix burned at a concert and then putting parametric EQs in it — it didn’t matter whose guitar it was. It looked cool. So I decided at one point — and this was simple, innocent, low-hanging fruit, not having any intention of making something that anybody else would be interested in except myself — and what that was, was the JEM.
“When you are doing things innocently, it’s not like you feel like you are being blasphemous. Like it’s blasphemous to put a whammy bar on a Les Paul? Fuck you! I’ll do what I want!”
Elsewhere, Vai has shocked Brian May by revealing a 1970s encounter the Queen guitarist was unaware of, and has named the one player he felt was even more revolutionary than Hendrix.
