Mick Jagger’s advice to Joe Satriani: “Don’t get hung up on playing all these notes… Person number 91,000 up there cannot hear it”
Mick Jagger once gave some crucial advice to Joe Satriani when it comes to playing at large venues: less shred, more crowd interaction.
Satch, who is currently on tour with The Best Of All Worlds band, feels there are two different components to playing guitar live: the act of being a musician, and the act of being a performer. After playing with The Rolling Stones frontman in 1988 for his solo show at the Tokyo Dome, Satch learned a valuable lesson on why showing off your technical ability can sometimes be less impressive than a simple wave to the audience.
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Speaking to Thinking About Guitar, he says (via Ultimate Guitar): “[Mick Jagger] said, ‘When you play places like this, it’s a lot more about this [mimics waving at audience] than it is about this [mimics shredding on guitar].’
“That was his simple way of saying, ‘Don’t get hung up on just playing all these notes, because the number 91,000 up there, they cannot hear it, they cannot see it. But if you do this [wave] and hold one note, you just made their year, because they’re going, ‘He just waved to me when he hit that unbelievable note!’ It gives you perspective about what your job is as a musician and a performer.”
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Despite Satriani having a reputation for being a shreddy virtuoso, when it comes to live environments, it seems he also feels far more shy than his typical playing style might convey.
In an interview with D’Addario last year, he said: “I think the history of performing live has been a recurring subject nightmare for me, because I’m not really a kind of a people person. I don’t seek out to be in a crowd and be in front of an audience, but I love music and I want to share it. So there’s the typical artist conflict right there.”
Find out where to catch Joe Satriani on tour with The Best Of All Worlds band via his official website.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
