by Joe Satriani
Praise for
STRANGE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC
"I have known Joe since I was 12 years old, and every time Joe puts his fingers on a guitar what comes out sounds like inspired music, even if it’s just a finger exercise. He created and branded a niche with his own voice and in so doing he wielded an entire genre, and he continues to do so with no excuses. He paved the way for many others!"
—STEVE VAI
"Joe Satriani’s my favorite guitar player."
—SAMMY HAGAR
"Joe Satriani is in and surf’s up, y'all! It’s all about the wickedness of the wave and when the sand is shakin', you know Satch be earthquakin', makin' loud of his superbly satisfying signature sound. And when I say surf, think, 'The Silver Surfer' who stands out. . . shiny and showy . . . instant connectivity with Satch when his chome-plated silver 6-string thing is strap'd up, ready to slang, bang, and tang-the-tang. Ya' gotta dig on some Joe, now. A pleasantry in the purest with performance and power to please the most particularly picky of palettes. Jang on with Joe Satch, Brothers and Sisters. Surf’s up."
—BILLY F. GIBBONS
"After all the times I had been on stages with Joe, been on the side of stages watching and listening to Joe, and all the times I have been in the audience cheering for Joe, I continue to have no idea how Joe does what he does. How does he do it? In 52 years of playing with others in public, very few have given me the personal and professional support that Joe has. It is exceptionally rare that a player of this standard is also this generous."
—ROBERT FRIPP
Copyright © 2014 by Joe Satriani and Jake Brown
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
BenBella Books, Inc.
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Send feedback to [email protected].
First e-book edition: April 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Satriani, Joe.
Strange beautiful music : a musical memoir / by Joe Satriani and Jake Brown.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-939529-64-0 (trade cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-939529-65-7 (electronic) 1. Satriani, Joe. 2. Rock musicians—United States—Biography. 3. Guitarists—United States—Biography. I. Brown, Jake. II. Title.
ML419.S227A3 2014
782.42166092—dc23
[B] 2014000811
Editing by Erin Kelley
Copyediting by James Fraleigh
Proofreading by Cape Cod Compositors, Inc. and Laura Cherkas
Cover design by Ty Nowicki
Cover photo by Chapman Baehler
Text design and composition by Silver Feather Design
Printed by Bang Printing
Distributed by Perseus Distribution | www.perseusdistribution.com
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I would like to dedicate this book to the visitor from outer space who saw fit one night so many years ago, out on a distant lonely road, to beam me up to his spaceship, teach me how to play electric guitar, and return me to Earth, just to see what would happen next. Seriously now . . . This book is dedicated to all my wonderful fans around the world.
—JOE SATRIANI
This book is dedicated to my beautiful fiancée, Carrie Brock (Brown by the time this book is in stores!), for being so patient with my creative process and so loving to me personally throughout the journey that was writing this book.
—JAKE BROWN
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1: The Hendrix Experience
Chapter 2: High School Confidential
Chapter 3: Learning Curves
Chapter 4: Satch Goes West
Chapter 5: Twists of Fate—The Joe Satriani EP, 1983–1984
Chapter 6: Not of This Earth—1985–1986
Chapter 7: Relativity
Chapter 8: Surfing with the Alien—1987
Chapter 9: Launching the Silver Surfer
Chapter 10: Flying in a Blue Dream—1989
Chapter 11: The Bearsville Experiment
Chapter 12: The Extremist—1992
Chapter 13: Eponymous—1995
Chapter 14: G3/Crystal Planet—1997
Chapter 15: Engines of Creation—2000
Chapter 16: Strange Beautiful Music—2002
Chapter 17: Is There Love in Space?—2004
Chapter 18: Super Colossal—2006
Chapter 19: Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock—2008
Chapter 20: Chickenfoot I—2009
Chapter 21: Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards—2010
Chapter 22: Chickenfoot III—2011/2012
Chapter 23: Unstoppable Momentum—2013
Conclusion: 2013 and Beyond
The Gear: Album by Album
Acknowledgments
Index
Foreword
Queen used to work in Munich a lot, in a studio called Musicland, well known for its output of rock recordings. Our producer/engineer was called Mack—who notably made a song called "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" into a record in a matter of hours (with a little help from Freddie and us boys). One day Mack phoned me up and said, "I'm working with a young lad called Joe Satriani, who is an admirer of your playing. He wants me to send you the material we're working on so you can hear it." Just a young lad. Well, that first Satriani album arrived in the form of a cassette tape, and it’s now one of my most treasured possessions. The content, as you all know, was spectacular, and the Man Who Surfed with the Alien has never looked back since.
A few years later, I was the musical director of a one-night stand in a set of shows in Seville, Spain, called Guitar Legends. Ours was the Rock Night. It was an amazing opportunity to put a set of brilliant guitarists together on one stage—including Steve Vai, Joe Walsh, Nuno Bettencourt, and, of course, Joe. I asked Paul Rodgers to come and galvanize us all—a smart choice, as it worked out; no matter how technically adept a guitarist is, I have never met one who didn't rate playing "All Right Now" with Paul as one of the great moments of his life! We all turned up for early rehearsals, so we were actually able to work together to make some unique collaborations. Joe was already a mighty star by that time, but he and his band jumped at the offer of going on first. I remember wondering if I was mad allowing this to happen, but I was backstage watching a TV monitor when Joe hit the stage smack on the dot of showtime, live on Spanish national TV It was one of the most spine-chilling moments I can ever remember. It was as if the TV screen caught fire.
I'm proud to say that Joe became a great friend and we have played together a few times over the years. He’s one of the most modest men I have ever met, and always makes me feel like I'm special, but I never get over the feeling of awe standing next to him on a stage. Joe has refined his own style of playing to a point where he’s forever up there in the stratosphere of excellence that is reached by very few musicians. His technique is flawless, dazzling, and peppered with so many special bits of magic that few can even try to emulate. But over and above his technical skills, Joe has a burning passion in his playing that clinches his mastery and makes him one of the great guitar heroes of all time.
Among all the fireworks, Joe never lost his earthy e
dge. One of my great delights recently was playing the debut Chickenfoot album for the first time. I just couldn't stop smiling all the way through— especially in "Sexy Little Thing"; hearing Joe get back to ground level and lay down a riff as part of a great big hard-rock band outing was, to me, the greatest joy. I keep it in my car as the best pick-me-up I know for when I feel down. Yeeeeouch!
—BRIAN MAY
June 2013
CHAPTER 1 * *
The Hendrix Experience
Jimi Hendrix was my biggest influence growing up, and on September 18, 1970, the day that Jimi died, I was crushed, for reasons I can't fully explain. It’s impossible to go back in my mind to that moment as a teenager. Even now I can't quite say what happened in my head, but I know that because he died, I decided to become a guitar player. That moment of decision was immediate and profound. It changed my life and everything about me.
That same day, I quit the football team and announced to my coach that I was going to become a musician. At home that night, I told my family I had decided what I was going to do with my life: be a Professional Guitar Player.
After all the dust settled at the dinner table, my sister Carol offered to donate her first paycheck from working as an art teacher at the local high school to buy me an electric guitar, which speaks to the extremely supportive and musically inclined family I came from.
When I was growing up, my mom would spin classical music records as we played, with the intent of educating us, but the music she and my dad listened to was jazz. Mom would play the most popular classics, so we heard Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Puccini—all the usual suspects. Then we would hear Miles Davis and John Coltrane, all the way to Dave Brubeck and, later on, Stanley Turrentine and Freddie Hubbard when the seventies began. She was also a big Wes Montgomery fan (I think she had all his records), so we listened to him, too. My dad was a bit more big band-ish, but he listened to all styles of music throughout his life. He would tell me great stories about going to see all the great swing bands for a nickel as a kid growing up in New York City. He said he'd walk into these places, and it would be free half the time—you could get a beer for a nickel and watch the greatest big bands of all time. When my parents hosted parties they would spin all kinds of music and dance to all of it. They were both very open-minded and progressive in their appreciation of music.
Me at 15 with my first electric, a Hagstrom III
PHOTO BY SATRIANI FAMILY ARCHIVES
Being the youngest kid in the house, I grew up listening to what my older sisters and brother listened to, so that’s how I heard early rock 'n' roll, Motown, and all the pop music that was around. Then, during the mid-sixties, when rock really started to become a thing, they brought that home, and as a little kid I was exposed to all of it. In 1966, when the first straight-ahead rock albums were being released by the bands who used to play pop, I was on the verge of turning ten, and being ten years old in the mid-sixties was a lot younger than being ten years old today. There was no Internet or anything like it, so my only new-music influences were what was on the radio and the music my siblings were bringing home.
I think the first time I connected with music was when we were on a summer vacation up in Vermont, and my sisters were going to a dance. So they let me stand inside the door of the dance hall for, like, half a minute, and I'm maybe eight or nine years old, and when I heard this band playing "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," by the Rolling Stones, it was a life-changing moment. It was the best-feeling and best-sounding thing I'd ever experienced in my life. That feeling never left me.
I think when I started to see the Beatles and the Stones on The Ed Sullivan Show, that sort of awakened my desire to play drums, so that’s how I started out on drums. There was a piano in the house that my mom played jazz standards on. My three sisters struggled unsuccessfully with piano lessons, but my brother and I were somehow given a free pass—we never had to suffer through that. I think they had just given up on forcing us to take music lessons. Once I started playing drums at nine, I took lessons for a year or so, but that was really my whole musical education at that point. I was basically left to my own devices.
I remember quite clearly the first time I heard Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Led Zeppelin—these were the bands that my sisters were listening to. Their boyfriends would bring albums over, and they would get a kick out of the fact that I, just this little kid, had an appetite for this new music. I guess they thought it was cool, so they would say, "Hey, look at this, Jimi Hendrix, when he plays this part"—I think it was on Electric Ladyland—"no one knows how he does it." I'd listen to it obsessively. As my sisters would stop listening to their old 45s and LPs, they would pass them on to me. I also inherited a portable record player, the little suitcase kind. I would go to a quiet corner of the house, plug it into an outlet, put on the records, and listen to them constantly. So I assume my family witnessed this—me, just hanging out with the record player, listening to records over and over again and not playing with my toys while the music was on. I would just sit there staring at the record player and the LP jackets.
The conflict early on with that was that every time I would try to participate in making my own music, it was a bit of a failure. I couldn't play the piano as well as my mother; I could never get my brain around the left-hand/right-hand thing. Then I had my year of drum lessons, but I reached a wall where I recognized that I wasn't really progressing. So then I moved on to guitar, which was also a struggle, but I saw hope because I made these small, incremental steps forward every time I would play. I'd love to say that in 1970 I knew I was going to be an amazing guitar player, but I think it was more of a desire than a confirmation of any talent I recognized in myself.
My older sister Marian was a folk guitarist, so as a kid I got to hear her play, write songs, and even perform at her high school. Her acoustic guitar was the first one I started playing—she told me that I could play it whenever I wanted. She also showed me the chord chart she had in her guitar case, and explained it to me by telling me to just put my fingers where the dots were and to follow the numbers. That was it. She was very encouraging and just left me alone with the guitar, so I taught myself the first basic ten or twenty chords based on that chart. The next step came when a friend of mine told me about a guy he knew who could teach me barre chords. So I went over to this kid’s house and he wrote them out on a piece of loose-leaf paper. I took them home and taught myself how to play those chords.
By that point, my parents had decided that if I was determined to play the guitar, I was going to have to take lessons. They were not adverse to one of their kids becoming a musician, because they knew that it could be done, that not everyone needed to go the conservative route of getting a college degree in order to survive. But they did have a hard-knock attitude toward it, sort of like, "If you're gonna do it, you're gonna do it." So I took three lessons from a guy in town. He was the epitome of what you would call a square guy who was quickly being left behind by the current generation. He looked square, he played square, and he was teaching guitar as a secondary thing while he studied to become a chiropractor. So after three lessons where he tried to teach me to read the sheet music to "Jingle Bells" while I was bringing him Jimi Hendrix’s first album, asking to learn "Purple Haze," we parted ways.
For the next three years, I just taught myself. My parents had no interest in spending a lot of money on a guitar (especially since I'd just washed out on the drums!), so, with my sister Carol’s offer to buy me my first electric, I was on my way. There was this white Hagstrom guitar at a local music store that looked like Jimi's—I was so naïve at the time that I didn't even really know what a Fender Stratocaster was!—and it was only $125, so I thought it would do. Once I got home and sat down with it for the first time, I quickly realized it was a completely different animal from my sister’s acoustic. The art of electric rock guitar is really learning how to play all over the neck. I quickly started to realize how difficult it was to get the sound right, too, because I didn't
have an amp back then. This was due to the understandable fact that there was no way my parents were going to buy me an amplifier just yet, because they were waiting to see if I was going to progress musically and stick with the guitar.
As a substitute, I managed to fashion my first guitar amp out of this old Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder my parents had at home. I don't know how I figured out that I could plug my guitar into it, but it made a cool little amp. I also found the only way I could hear the sound come out of its small, built-in speaker was to put on a reel of tape and push the RECORD button. So by the nature of the process, after I would play for fifteen minutes, I could listen back to what I had just played.
This discovery had a very big impact on me. It was really funny how it worked out, because once I started listening to myself play, I remember thinking how horrible I sounded, so I started to work on trying to "sound" good. The tape recorder also had a function that allowed you to play on top of what you had just recorded, essentially giving me my first exposure to multitrack recording. Once I discovered that, it also helped me work out this idea of playing solos on top of a rhythm, so that was what I did for about six months or so. After listening to me work like that for a few months, my dad broke down and bought me a small Univox amplifier. I'd turn it up to 10 and it sounded all distorted and I remember feeling like I was in heaven! My first effects pedal was an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pie fuzz box that I bought through the mail after seeing an advertisement in Circus magazine, and it was the biggest, fattest fuzz ever created. This was the first of many pedals to come.
It was very confusing when I first played with these pedals because I had no idea how to use them, or how to make myself sound like Hendrix! There was no YouTube back then to instantly instruct you on how to set things up, or on what sounds you could get out of a new piece of gear—you were pretty much on your own. After starting with the Big Muff, the next thing I got was a Maestro Phaser unit with the three buttons on it, and then the MXR, another phaser unit, and then a wah-wah pedal showed up eventually. I really didn't have a whole bunch of pedals back then. I was still trying to get my amps—which were small—to sound really big, and so I would turn them all the way up. Besides the Univox, I eventually used a few small Fender amps that I would borrow from friends. I wish I still had those amps from the early days . . .