My First Guitar

  I can tell you stories about PA systems flying out the back of the truck and the look on people’s faces when they see this big puffy column in mid-air. Jeff Porcaro had his dad’s prized drum cymbals rolling out onto the road one time.

  What I love about the guitar is that I feel it is the most powerfully expressive instrument out there, and you can get the most amazing variety of sounds. You can take ten guys and put them in a room with the same guitar and the same amp and get entirely different readings. The guitar has a very soulful sound. And guitar players get the most beautiful women.

  Joe Satriani

  Joe Satriani studied music with jazz guitarist Billy Bauer and pianist Lennie Tristano and then later taught guitar himself for ten years to artists like David Bryson (Counting Crows), Kirk Hammett (Metallica) and Steve Vai. Two years after releasing his first solo instrumental CD, he toured with Mick Jagger as lead guitarist for Jagger’s first solo tour. When he phoned to do this interview, I felt very un–rock ’n’ roll and embarrassingly domestic, having to excuse myself for a moment so I could remove a freshly baked baguette from the oven with an unceremonious clatter. Joe, I owe you a guitar-shaped baguette.

  I was fourteen years old when my older sister, Carol, bought a guitar for me with her first paycheck as an art teacher. It was a Hagström iii, a Swedish guitar that we picked up for about $120. I had started taking lessons on drums when I was about nine, but in 1970, when Hendrix died, something clicked in me — I was going to be a guitarist instead. My parents, of course, were mystified, but my sisters were into it. Another sister of mine, Marian, had a nylon-string folk guitar that I started to pick up and practice on when I came home from high school. That’s when Carol said, “How about this? If you promise to practice, I will get you your own guitar.”

  I grew up in Long Island, one mile from Roosevelt Field, where pilot Charles Lindbergh took off on his first transatlantic flight. It’s now a shopping mall, and at the time, it had a small music store called Matthew’s Music. I saw this Hagström III guitar there and thought it looked like the guitar Hendrix played — what did I know? I was a kid. And the price was right.

  I was the youngest of five kids in my family, with a nine year spread between siblings. So, I’d gotten exposed to all the older music of the ’60s plus rock ’n’ roll, the British Invasion, Chuck Berry, The Temptations, The Supremes, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Who, plus blues records from my brother and jazz from my mom’s records. It was not unusual at my house to hear Johnny Lee Hooker coming from one room, Cream from another and then Wes Montgomery from downstairs. Being the youngest, as everyone started leaving the house, I inherited a great, eclectic record collection.

  I did not have a guitar teacher, but I did have a drum instructor, Mr. Patrikos. He was a swinging jazz drummer who taught me how to play and read music. I’d grown up singing with my family and goofing around with music because it was always in our house. Taking lessons was not a big step from what I was learning — it was more of an addition to what I was doing. Quitting lessons was not a big step, either, for the same reason. In high school, I had a gifted music teacher who taught us how to read choral music and taught us music theory and all the ear-training concepts while we were in eleventh and twelfth grade. He was a great teacher. Bill Wescott was his name. He was a concert pianist who wound up teaching at Carle Place High School. But, to this day, I still use all the concepts he taught us in those classes. A few years behind me, Steve Vai also studied with Bill.

  A few other musically minded guys and I graduated a half year early because the principal wanted to get rid of us, so I remember we were cramming advanced music theory for the first half of that last year — modes, keys, quartets, cantatas, mini-symphonies. And of course I was listening to Led Zeppelin, The Doors and Black Sabbath. On the weekends, we were doing mini tours since age sixteen out in the Hamptons. This was when the drinking age was eighteen and it was okay to be in a bar at sixteen, as long as it had a practical application, like playing in the band.

  I love all instruments equally. I could tell, though, when I was eleven years old, that there was a limit to what I could play and what I could not play. I have been playing guitar now for thirty-four years, and it’s still a lot of hard work, mostly in technique. But back then I felt like I had a future with it. With the drums, I felt like I was eighty-five percent good but I couldn’t quite nail that last fifteen percent, which meant everything. Same with the piano; I could see it and hear it, but my hands would not cooperate. The guitar was difficult; it hurt yet I always felt like I was moving ahead. It’s the one instrument that provided the least resistance.

  Joe Satriani, age fifteen, in bassist Steve Mueller’s basement. (Courtesy Joe Satriani)

  The other thing is that I came of age during a time of great, virtuosic guitarists, when it was acceptable to be great with impunity. (During the ’90s, I’d say a lot of bands shunned showing any technical prowess.) My era celebrated guitarists for this — Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton — whether they were playing rhythms, solos or improvising. It was a great time to be excited about playing guitar and be inspired. Hendrix was completely open about his influences, mentioning Wes Montgomery, Buddy Guy. And The Rolling Stones were openly into old American blues as their stock.

  I have so many guitar stories through the years. One that comes to mind, because it just happened recently, is that my wife, son and I were watching the Conan O’Brien ten-year anniversary special DVD filmed at the Beacon Theater, in New York City, and I remembered that about three years ago, at that very same venue, Steve Vai, John Petrucci and I did a G3 show. The gig fell on my birthday and I didn’t know this at the time, but Steve had secretly coached the audience beforehand to sing “Happy Birthday” after I finished playing and wished them good night. I thought it was sweet. What I was totally unprepared for was an ambush with hidden cans of silly string. They completely covered me right onstage!

  What’s important to me — and probably best illustrates the strange soul of the musician — is focusing on that three-second moment of playing. Like when you hit that F-sharp and it’s the most beautiful sound you’ve made. It’s these moments I carry with me, and they become part of my musical makeup. That is what I draw from — all these moments put together.

  For fans, it’s records and videos. For me, that is all a byproduct of what I’m doing. Each note and moment is both cathartic and a catalyst to me.

  Steve Vai

  Multiple Grammy-winning guitarist Steve Vai launched his solo career after touring with Frank Zappa for two years. Vai has recorded with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake and is a regular touring member of G3, a concert tour organized by Joe Satriani.

  I was thirteen years old when I got my first guitar, a red Teisco del Rey that I’d bought from a friend for $5. It seemed like a small guitar and because it had all these buttons and pickups, I thought it was the bomb! It was difficult to play, but that didn’t matter. When I first got it, I just stared at it for a few days. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and it was mine. It also had a whammy bar and that would get me out of bed in the morning. My second guitar was a Univox Les Paul, which is the guitar in the photos. I’d gotten it because Jimmy Page played a Les Paul and so did Satriani — he had a black one. Mine was a real clunker, though.

  Like most good Italian boys from Long Island, I also played the accordion, and when I was about nine to twelve years old “Arrivederci, Roma” and “In-a-Gadd-a-Da-Vida” were favorites. I also used to play the tuba in the high school band. I was composing music and the tuba helped me to understand and read the bass clef. Plus, it made a great bong for me and my teenage buddies.

  Steve Vai, age thirteen, playing in his band called Circus. (Courtesy Steve Vai)

  For the first two years of my musical guitar awakening, my inspirations had been Jimmy Page and Joe Satriani. When I heard the solo to “Heartbreaker,” that’s when I decided to play the guitar. Nothing else was comparable to Led
Zeppelin. I was taking lessons from Satriani when I was thirteen to fifteen years old and this had a huge impact on me.

  John Sergio, a friend who lived on my street, was a real music lover, and he had turned me onto Queen, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple and all those great progressive rock bands of the ’70s — but Zeppelin still holds a special place for me. My folks were always tremendously supportive, even when I would play “The Star-Spangled Banner” with my teeth. Perhaps they thought I was a musical idiot, but I think they became a little worried when they realized that all I wanted to do was play. Nothing else mattered. The guitar is expressive liberation. It’s freedom itself. For me, playing the guitar is a blessed relief. Everyone should play an instrument of sorts, but the guitar is the best.

  I think we all have an inherent attraction to music because it resonates in our soul. When I was a child I distinctly remember thinking, while swooning in my mother’s arms as she whispered lullabies into my soul, “Hmmm, I could make a living out of this.”

  I don’t get bored playing the guitar, ever. When I’m not playing the guitar my heart is crying for it. Every time I play a song that I have played many times before, I focus on going deeper and deeper into the notes. When I can hold my focus in the emotional awareness of the moment, the melodies continue to reveal layers of deeper intimacy and truth. It’s a lifelong process. It’s like climbing a ladder that reaches into infinity from the abyss. Sometimes the air gets very thin as a result of my shallow breathing, and I fall helplessly, but there are those around me who have wings, and they inspire me to keep climbing.

  All aspects of evolving on an instrument are a challenge, but when you love the instrument there is never any discipline involved because it is a joy. When you cannot do something that you would like to do, then you work on it and until you can do it — this is one of the truly delicious things in life. We thrive on the gratification we feel when we achieve something and, for me, the guitar has always been about discovering new things, everyday. Playing an instrument is a cathartic experience of self-discovery.

  My challenges have never been with the guitar or the music business in general. But if I had to point out the biggest caveat it would be time. Finding enough time to explore, develop and record the way that I would like is the real challenge.

  The photographs are from my first gig. I was so nervous for a week before that I could not sleep and kept throwing up. I loved playing the guitar more than anything but I felt as though this whole live thing, playing in front of people, was just not the thing for me. All I could think about was what could go wrong. But the moment I got on the stage and hit the first chord all that anxiety went away and I felt lifted up. I felt like a wizard and savored every moment. I realized I had found my comfort zone and that was on the stage. And it felt like home.

  Twenty-five years or so ago I designed a guitar for Ibanez around the idiosyncrasies of my playing style. It’s called the Jem. It has become wildly successful, along with its sister model, the rg. We will occasionally come out with a unique aesthetic for the guitar for special occasions such as a tenth or twentieth anniversary. For the tenth anniversary Jem, the idea of mixing my blood in the swirling paint job presented itself, and I went to a hospital to have blood drawn — a lot of blood. The guitar was dubbed the “DNA guitar,” and we did a limited run of 300 guitars, and you can see my blood in the paint swirls. I figure that, in a hundred years or so, if they ever get cloning down to a science, they’ll be able to clone me from the DNA in one of those guitars — and perhaps that guy could figure out a way to get his music on the radio.

  Gary Lucas

  Guitarist and songwriter Gary Lucas has been cited by David Fricke of Rolling Stone as “one of the best and most original guitarist in America.” Lucas has toured with Captain Beefheart and cowrote Joan Osborne’s Grammy-nominated song “Spider Web” from her album Relish and he also cowrote “Grace” and “Mojo Pin” from Jeff Buckley’s album Grace.

  I was nine years old when I got my first guitar, and I couldn’t tell you what the make was because it was such a bad guitar. My father had the whole notion I’d play the guitar — I was clueless. One day, he said to me, “How’d you like to play the guitar?” I said, “Gee, Dad, great idea.” So he arranged for me to take lessons with a teacher in Syracuse, New York, where I grew up. This guitar was a cheap rental guitar with strings that were about an inch off the fretboard.

  Right away, I hated this thing. It produced terrible calluses and painful blisters on my fingers. So I only lasted about a month because I hated practicing and I hated this guitar. I was learning out of your basic Mel Bay instructional book about the rudiments of guitar — I don’t remember the title. I just remember hating disciplining myself to practice. Then, luckily, or my career would have ended shortly after this, my parents came back from a trip to Mexico with a cheap but decent Spanish guitar with nylon strings. This made a world of difference to my development as a guitar player. I found this guitar so easy to play.

  I was listening to lots of folk music, or what the purists would call “fake” music, like Peter, Paul & Mary — hootenanny-type pop music. I could play it really well. I did want to rock out but, for the time being, this thing was completely adequate. This was 1961. Within a week of starting guitar lessons, I’d also started attempting the French horn, if only by coincidence. My local elementary school teachers had administered a test for musical aptitude where they played various pitches and rhythms to test your ear. I’d scored one hundred percent on this test. The school’s band director then approached me about playing the most difficult instrument in the entire band — the French horn. I was a good sport. I told him this sounded good, whatever. So I rented a French horn and found this equally daunting because, to this day, I do not have a significant upper lip. I never really had a good embouchure but I stuck it out for eight years, playing in school bands and orchestras with the horn. The guitar was something I vastly preferred. My junior year, I got thrown out of the band for wearing sandals.

  The truth is, I had guitar lessons for only a month and the rest is self-taught. My parents had a lot of pop Broadway music like South Pacific, The Pajama Game, West Side Story and movie music, like the soundtrack to A Man and a Woman. I loved My Fair Lady and wrote Julie Andrews a love letter when I was about four or five years old. I also liked classical music like Ravel. I loved AM radio, and I remember before I could read or write, I used to sit in a rocking chair in the basement of our house and listen to what was top-forty radio of the day, in the late 1950s. I listened to Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” “Little Bitty Pretty One” — the original, not the one the Jacksons covered later. I loved R&B, but they didn’t play a lot of it in Syracuse. Basically it was Dick Clark American Bandstand music, like Bobby Vinton, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vee — all the Bobbys. Then JFK died, closing ’63 with everyone in mourning and then in February of 1964 The Beatles showed up on Ed Sullivan, and it was like morning in America again. Fortuitously, I played the guitar and this was a band based around the guitar. With the whole British Invasion, I was right there and in like Flynn.

  Even before The Beatles, though, in ’62, I can remember playing with a borrowed electric guitar from my teacher going through the back of an FM radio. You used to be able to plug into it with the external speaker jack and use it as an amplifier. What was called a combo back then later became a band. The Beatles, you know, were a band. When I was in a combo with my best friend, Walter Horn (we composed a soundtrack to a German silent horror film called The Golem), I had a trombone player and clarinet player and we used to play things at the school assembly like “Java” by Al Hirt or “Midnight in Moscow” by Acker Bilk, “A Swingin’ Safari” by Burt Kaempfert and the Peter Gunn theme. These were light pop instrumentals of the day. We had fake books. We probably were not very good but this was my earliest experience in making music en masse.

  Also with Walter I had a duo where he would sing and play maracas and I would play the 12-string guitar. It was a Swedish guitar, a
Klira. When I got bar mitzvahed, I asked for an electric guitar. My parents had produced first a cheap one-pickup Epiphone to see if I could play that, and then, for the bar mitzvah, I was given a Fender Stratocaster, which I attempted to play for a year but failed because I couldn’t get a good tone out of it. I had a Gibson Starfire amplifier. I tried to do a band at the Jewish Community Center with this gear, doing Rolling Stones and Beatles covers and failing miserably. Then my father said, “I’m going to trade in this guitar and get you a 12-string.” He knew I liked folk music. This thing was so great. I gradually broke a lot of strings on it, so it became more like an 8-string guitar. The more strings I broke, the easier it became to play. I was bending the strings a lot, playing rock ’n’ roll.

  In the mid-’60s, I started to hear all this incredible stuff and wanted to get back into playing electric guitar. My earliest hero was Duane Eddy. “Dance with the Guitar Man” was the song I really wanted to play. Also, the theme from Exodus, which I did cover on an album called Street of Lost Brothers. I loved Eddy’s twangy guitar sound. I was a big Anglophile fetishist when it came to guitarists.

  My family laughed sometimes watching me play. My sisters used to accuse me, “You’re making faces while you play. Why are you making that face when you play?” I was not aware that I was doing it. I probably felt like, “Yeah, I wanna make these faces because I feel cool.” Guitar strings are like an extension of the nervous system. You hit that string and your whole face reacts. My family liked my playing. They tolerated it. It wasn’t noisy or threatening. Then, years later, when I had a steady job and called my mother to tell her I’d joined Captain Beefheart and was planning on taking a leave-of-absence to make a record, my mother said, in horror, “The guitar? Murray, he’s talking about the guitar again!” Like that was an episode or phase that had been safely relegated to the past. I had been working as a copywriter at CBS Records, writing copy for all their new artists. I’m most proud of the stuff I came up with for the new punk and new wave bands like The Clash, who I gave the slogan “The only group that matters.”