“If you played guitar you thought you were cool. But I didn't, so I never told anybody”: Here's how Steve Vai finally told his friends he was learning guitar

Steve Vai may be considered one of the world’s greatest virtuosos today, but the guitarist — who is currently playing King Crimson’s ‘80s material alongside Adrian Belew in the group Beat — was humble about his talents when he was a teenager.

Speaking with Positive Grid to promote his new signature Spark Mini amp — part of the Spark 2 series of modeling amps — Vai says he honed his craft in secret.

“I didn't tell anybody when I started playing the guitar, because I was kind of shy that way,” he explains. "The guitar was such a cool instrument. If you played it, you thought you were really cool. And I didn't think I was really cool. So I never told anybody.”

Eventually, his talents came to light in a fashion that was surprisingly showy for someone supposedly lacking self-confidence.

“I did enter a talent contest,” he continues. “It was the first time I'd played in front of my classmates. It was a big auditorium, and I played 'The Star-Spangled Banner' with my teeth… and I won. It was the first time I won anything like that.”

The $50 prize money he took home that day was well spent and helped him develop a taste for what was to come.

“That was so much money,” Vai says. “Me and all my friends took that money and we bought cases of quality beer.”

Steve Vai Talks Guitar Technology, Spark MINI Vai, and Discovering Your Calling - YouTube

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Vai's latest guitar challenge has been to master Robert Fripp's relentless guitar parts ahead of the Beat tour. Since his having shoulder surgery in 2021, he's found keeping up with Fripp's ferocity isn't easy.

“If you take something like 'Frame by Frame' [from 1981's Discipline], the riff itself is hard enough. You have to have a particular picking technique in order to be able to play it,” he says in the November 2024 issue of Guitar Player.

“But what makes it so excruciating is the relentlessness. It doesn’t stop. The thing about Robert Fripp is, he runs very deep. He’s a holistic player. He takes into account not only body posture and hand posture but also inner-being centering: the need for bulletproof attention. He is highly disciplined. It’s the only way you could achieve the kinds of things he achieved on the guitar."

Vai’s conversation with Positive Grid also saw him imparting some key wisdom to budding guitarists — regardless of whether they think they’re cool enough to tell their friends about their talents.

“I think it's important to know that your imagination is infinite — it is — and that's your greatest tool,” Vai explains. “Your greatest tool for developing anything creatively is your ability to imagine it. Once a person realizes this, the most powerful tool that you have is the ability to visualize.

“That’s how I’ve developed my technique. I’ll bring it to the guitar. My favorite thing to do is to try to imagine something that I couldn’t do... and then do it. That was the greatest payoff. It still is for me, every time.”

Visit Positive Grid to learn more about the Spark Mini Vai.

And head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy of the November 2024 issue of Guitar Player, which features an interview with Steve Vai and Adrian Belew alongside a feature-length interview with cover star David Gilmour, plus much more.