“The label went, ‘Steve’s got three necks and you have two. You know what you need?’ And I went, ‘Four’”: The story behind Michael Angelo Batio’s ludicrous quadruple-neck guitar
When it comes to wacky guitar design, Michael Angelo Batio has a strong claim to the crown. You probably already know him for his double neck guitar, which unlike a standard double neck guitar features two necks facing in opposite directions, but he also once designed something far weirder: a guitar with four necks.
And in a new interview with Guitar World, the guitarist recalls how a sort of rivalry with virtuoso Steve Vai led his label to push him to expand his design horizons (even further than they already were).
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He explains that the inverted-commas “rivalry” came about after Vai revealed his triple-neck heart guitar while performing with David Lee Roth.
“What happened was, I had a two-neck guitar, and then Steve Vai came out with his three-neck heart guitar. My label wanted me to challenge Steve to a duel. I didn’t see the point in competitions like that.”
Adding that he didn’t want to partake in a sort of real life Crossroads guitar duel, Batio continues: “The label went, ‘Michael… Steve’s got three necks and you have two. You know what you need?’ And I went, ‘Four.’ They loved it.
“As it happened, Wayne Charvel was building all my guitars. I said to him, ‘Can you do this?’ He said, ‘Sure.’ I have a good engineering mind for guitar design, so I designed the Quad. I told him how I thought it should be four separate guitars, and that was that. It was the wildest thing. There was no limit to what we were trying to do.”
Michael Angelo Batio ultimately debuted the Quad guitar – which featured two seven-strings on top and two six-strings on the bottom – in the 1989 music video for Nitro’s Freight Train. Check it out below:
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
