“We’re kinda frozen at 14 years old”: Steve Vai explains why he and Joe Satriani are still so enthusiastic about playing guitar
Steve Vai and Joe Satriani first started jamming together as teenagers, but their musical partnership gone on to span over 50 years. Now aged 65 and 69 respectively, the pair are still going strong – but they still feel like a pair of excitable teenagers when working together.
In a new interview with Thomann’s Guitars & Basses, Vai explains that his musical bond with Satriani still feels as exhilarating and fruitful as when the pair were young. “We’re kind of frozen at 14 years old,” he smiles. “You know, the way [we’re so] enthusiastic about the shows and playing together… it’s like being a teenager again.”
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While the pair have toured together over the years on Satriani’s G3 tours, their collaboration for the SATCHVAI band is the first time the pair have properly worked as a pair. “We tag team, you know,” Vai explains. “I would say it’s my favourite co-creative guitar extravaganza, because we started doing it when we were teenagers. We’ve developed ears for each other.”
The idea for the band came when Eric Johnson wasn’t able to continue touring with G3. “We wanted to extend the tour… So Joe and I went out as Joe Satriani and Steve Vai,” Vai recalls. “Then we [had a call and decided], ‘well, why not just create some new music [together]?’”
Before Vai had even “hung up the phone”, Satriani has already sent ideas over. “I get these two tracks from Joe, and they’re The Sea of Emotion [Part 1 and Part 2], which is a place that we used to go and hang out when we were kids,” he says.
Inspired by Satriani’s enthusiasm, Vai got to work, adding in his own ideas for The Sea of Emotion Part 3. The third movement really embraces that teenage spirit – and Vai even used a genuine recording from the pair’s younger. “So there’s, like, six or seven seconds or so of Joe and I as teenagers,” he grins.
The original recording is from when Vai was 12 and Satriani was 16. “I started lessons with Joe when I was like 12, and I’d go to his room and he had this Sound on Sound tape recorder,” Vai recalls. “And I was just so attracted to this thing, because I loved the idea of recording, I loved the idea of engineering… I said, [Joe], tell me about that thing. He goes, ‘Well, let’s try it.’”
“So he showed me this riff, and he was playing these chords, and we recorded it. We got like, eight minutes, you know, as long as the tape was. And then many years later, Joe sent it to me, and I transferred it to digital, and I thought, I’m going to take a piece of this and actually put it at the beginning of the song.”
While only two tracks have been released, including The Sea of Emotion Part 1 and Glenn Hughes’ feature track I Wanna Play My Guitar, the rest is still being pieced together. “A lot of it is kickback to our youth with mature ears and fingers,” Vai says. “I Wanna Play My guitar is so representative of that time.”
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