Playing Their Hearts Out
After decades of friendship, the iconic guitarist duo, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, will be taking the stage together on their first ever tour as a duo. Joe Satriani and Steve Vai have known each other since Vai was 12 and Satriani was 15. Their relationship has morphed from a student-teacher bond to a lifelong friendship.
The story of how the two former Westbury, Long Island residents met is not only iconic but unforgettable. Satriani describes it this way: “He did show up one day with a pack of strings in one hand and a stringless guitar in the other and said, ‘Can you teach me? You taught my friend…Can you teach me?” Talk about a first impression.
“He was like a god in our town,” Vai said of Satriani. “Lessons were the most important thing in my life. They were the only thing I was really deeply interested in and gave my full attention to, and Joe was the most magnificent teacher. He was strict. He was giving. And he was inspiring.”
“We got along famously because he was just such an incredible student,” Satriani said of Vai. “He showed so much promise. He had an incredible amount of natural talent, and the main thing was he had this drive that was really amazing. He would just do whatever he could to learn everything that I showed him every week. So, it was really a lot of fun. From a teaching perspective, he was the dream student.”
Satriani gave lessons to many other young people who lived in his town. He even gave lessons to a few high school teachers. Vai wasn’t the only Satriani apprentice who went on to bigger and better things. Some of Satriani’s more well-known students include David Bryson from Counting Crows, Kevin Cadogan from Third Eye Blind, Larry Lalonde from Primus and Possessed, Alex Skolnick from Testament and Kirk Hammett from Metallica. Hammett was the recipient of Satriani’s last lesson in the late 1980s. Satriani’s schedule got too busy to allow him to continue tutoring others.
In the ensuing decades, Satriani and Vai have become what used to be called “guitar gods” in the days before the guitar took a back seat to electronics.
Yet, their friendship has remained strong. They have performed together as part of Satriani’s regular G3 tour in which Satriani performs with two other virtuosos-formerly-known-as-guitar-gods. The participants change. Sometimes of them is Vai. Sometimes one of them isn’t.
Satriani said the community of guitar virtuosos is supportive not cutthroat.
“That was my intent back in ’95 when I reached out to Eric Johnson and Steve,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Forget about what everyone has told you in the industry, about us not appearing next to each other. Let’s just stop that and rewrite it to be where we want to stand next to each other. We want to laugh and smile and trade licks and see who can come up with the craziest thing in front of an audience.'”
Satriani told them that their fans had already decided who they liked best.
“‘They’ll just be happy that we’ve decided to let our guard down together and celebrate the guitar with them,'” Satriani recalled saying.
And that’s what Satriani and Vai plan to do when they take the stage together at the Embassy on Saturday: Celebrate the guitar.
“Every night when we’re standing next to each other,” Satriani said, “we can’t help but go ‘Wow.’ We were little kids. Went to the same high school…We have a long, unbelievably fantastic history together. And now that we’re on stage every night just sort of coming up with the craziest guitar things we can think of, it’s really amazing. We feel so grateful. But excited that the next show we are going to do something we never thought of before.”
Vai said that he and Satriani are complementary and dissimilar in all the best senses. Meaning that all the similarities and differences add up to entertainment for the audience.
“If you see us play the guitar, there are certain idiosyncrasies that are kind of similar,” Vai said. “That would be expected since he taught me how to play. We have the same sense of the absurd, the same quirkiness in us. So, we’re kind of like two peas in a pod. But, having said that, our musical instincts are pretty different. My music and his music are pretty different.”
Even though touring is fun, there are lots of preparations that go into it before the adventure begins. Vai explained the rigors of getting ready for touring: “Well, I put a setlist together, I practice it. Then, for about four weeks before we start rehearsals, I just keep running this stuff, so my fingers learn it. Then I make sure everybody has the music and they know what they have to know when we get to rehearsal. When a tour is coming, there’s certain muscles you’ve got to kind of, for me, at least, keep in shape.”
The rigors of touring don’t get any easier as a performer ages, but it’s all worth it, Satriani said.
“When you finally wind up on stage at night, you go, ‘Wow, this is great. This isn’t a job. I have no right to complain.'”
The present team-up grew out of a G3 anniversary tour that Satriani’s son, ZZ Satriani, filmed for a documentary. Johnson was called away by another engagement so Vai and Satriani decided to mount their first duo tour.
Each concert is divided into three parts: A set apiece from each headliner and then a collaborative set.
Rehearsing material for that third set led to the creation of new music, which led to plans for a collaborative album.
“(We decided), ‘Hey, this is really great. Let’s make a record,'” Vai said. “I’m speaking a little prematurely in that the goal we’re kind of trying to navigate is creating a full record and maybe doing another robust tour.”
If people weren’t already excited for this iconic duo taking the stage together, there is going to be extreme amounts of excitement when that new album drops. If you thought this would be the first and only tour they would ever do together, there is hope of so much more now. Be sure to catch the Joe Satriani and Steve Vai tour when it comes to the Embassy on Saturday. It is a show you will not want to miss. Hopefully this is not the last time that Satriani and Vai grace the Embassy stage.