Strange Beautiful Music

by Joe Satriani

  John Cuniberti, producer/sound engineer: The first time I met Joe was when the Squares were playing their very first gig. I was actively involved in mixing live sound and hadn't really done a lot of studio work up to that point (although I was building a studio with a friend of mine at the time). I was mixing at the time for the Greg Kihn Band. They were local and had a hit record called Jeopardy, and they were packing them in, so I was mixing front-of-house for them. I remember one night, this band from Berkeley called the Squares was opening for Greg, and their manager came up to me and said, "Hey, it’s our first gig, we're really nervous, the house sound guy here isn't very good, we like what you're doing with Greg, these guys are all from Berkeley, you may even know some of them—would you be willing to mix for them?' And I said, "I'd be happy to." And when they walked out onstage and started playing, I was instantly blown away! I said, "Who are these guys?" and specifically that guitar player—"Who is that?!"

  I remember there was the general feeling that the band was unstoppable, and it was really going to be a big thing. There were bands at the time like the Knack who had clever, hooky little tunes, but they couldn't play like these guys. It was like the Squares were on another plane. I think their audiences would be divided between the musicians who saw them and would go, "Holy cow, these guys are on another level, and that guitar player is definitely someone to reckon with," and then there was the female side of the audience who just loved the lead singer because he looked a little like Elvis and sang like a bird. They were a very good-looking band, so people knew the Squares were doing something different and were going to go places.

  Me onstage with the Squares in '81

  PHOTO BY CATHERINE ANDERSON

  We first met John while I was playing in the Squares and we were in desperate need of a sound guy. We were learning what you needed to be a good band, and that was the first realization: "Oh, the guy behind the mixing board, he’s the Wizard of Oz! We need to find our own Wizard of Oz." We had heard John mix other bands, and we just thought, "If we could get that guy, that would be amazing." Whenever John mixed live, you heard the power of the punch in everybody’s part, but you could still hear everybody’s part. That’s the key, because there’s nothing worse than when you're watching a band and you see somebody do something, but you can't hear what they're doing. With John it sounded to us like how our instruments sounded when we played standing next to each other, so this guy must get it. After meeting him, we realized he was a musician himself—he was a drummer and had a history of making records—so he had been through several stages of his music life and brought with him that experience.

  John Cuniberti: I think the sound and the presentation of the guitar in the band was definitely going to be an element, not unlike Andy Summers in the police. The sound of his guitar in those early records was definitely instrumental in the sound of the band. The Squares also had a sound, and Joe’s playing and sound and technique were definitely in effect; I think he even borrowed a little bit from Andy Summers. Because it was a three-piece, there was always this dilemma of, "How do you fill it out?" When you go to a solo, what kind of solo do you play when there’s only a bass player playing? So Joe would rely on chorus and delay and reverbs to try to help fill out the sound. He was experimenting even then.

  I just felt that Joe was serious. Up until then, I'd worked with a lot of people who weren't so serious, and I just knew Joe was going to be famous, from day one. I thought he'd be famous in the Squares—of course, it didn't work out that way, but I always knew Joe Satriani was going to be a famous musician.

  I knew that first night hearing him play that I wanted to work with him. Two things really grabbed me about Joe. First, his command of the instrument, his authority. I'd worked with a lot of bands, all of which had lead guitar players, but those players were always looking at the necks of their guitars and struggling, trying to work to make their thing happen. By contrast, when Joe walked out, he just played things that were interesting and made it look effortless. His fingers would just flow across the fretboard. He would do things in one song that most of the guitar players I'd worked with up until then could barely make happen on a whole album. So his prowess and command of the instrument was the first thing. The other was that his solos weren't just typical blues-based phrasing and stuff. They were very melodic and singer-songwriter-like—in other words, thought-out. You could tell that he probably played the same solo every night the same way; everything was very structured and sculpted. But the whole band had a lot of energy and looked great, and I was immediately attracted to their music. So after they got done that night, I went backstage, found Joe, went up to him, and said, "Hey, man, I'm building a recording studio, and I want you guys to come in and record."

  These guys were exceptionally well rehearsed. In comparison to bands I had been in and had worked with, which might rehearse two or three times a week if we were lucky, the Squares got together practically five nights a week. They were hell-bent on being the next big thing, and they knew that took a tremendous amount of practice. You could just tell by Joe’s playing that he really practiced; he really made this a full-time job. I think he raised the bar for the other two guys in the band to also see it that seriously, because they had an attitude like, "This isn't for kids. If you really want to be successful, this is what you have to do: practice four to five hours a day," and Joe was a music teacher and came from that ethic of, "If you really want to learn how to do something, you're going to actually have to sit down and practice it— otherwise, don't waste my time."

  He had no tolerance whatsoever for slackers. It’s always been that way. You could hear it in his playing; every night those guitar solos were basically the same. There'd sometimes be some changes—sometimes he would change them completely, but only because they were still in development— but he played everything pretty much note for note, night after night after night after night. There was no jamming, the arrangements were super-tight, and the other two guys in the band had to get with the program. They had to learn their parts, and they had to play it exactly the same way, and Joe absolutely had no tolerance for "F-ing around." The lead singer/bassist, Andy, was a little looser, more old-school rock 'n' roll, you do it a little different every night, you drink a little too much, you have fun with it. Joe just couldn't tolerate that at all.

  It was definitely insane, because we would practice five days a week, even if we didn't have any gigs during that period, for at least four hours a night, and we would just work it to death.

  Jeff Campitelli: Four shows a month, easy, and we'd rehearse five nights a week, because we just loved to play, that was our thing. Joe would teach till eight o'clock, and then we'd start rehearsals at about nine and go until two in the morning. We did that Monday through the end of the week till our next gig. We'd take maybe one day off, and then do it all over again. We never really burned out because we really loved playing that much, and had a good time—it was our entire scene.

  Compositionally, I was the group’s leader. Andy was not as prolific, and that was a bit of a sore point because we couldn't get him to really take over in the role that we assumed he would. It’s a funny thing: What he brought to the band, his voice, was so unique, none of us could even compare to it. It was a band where everybody had strengths and weaknesses. If I had one strength, it’s that I was prolific, and if Andy said, "Oh, I'd love to write a song about this," I could write six songs about that for him, and that would be our starting point. Andy also was just a player by ear; he had no formal musical training and didn't understand chords or anything, so even with his own songs, he had to sit down with you and say, "You've got to help me figure this out. What am I trying to do here?" So a lot of musical work wound up on my lap, and I had to dictate how things were going to go, which turned me into musical leader.

  Jeff Campitelli: We all played our part and shared in the writing credits because we all felt we brought something to the table that the other guys might not have come up with. Joe took th
e lead because he was definitely the most prolific. Joe knew music inside and out. He was a master of theory and of which notes went together and which didn't. How that worked was, Joe might come in with a riff or some cool chord changes, start playing them, and I would come up with a beat, and then either Andy would start working on a bass line and humming a melody or Joe would have an idea for a melody. Then we would give the melody to Neil, the manager, and he would write all the lyrics. So it was four of us who were contributing and sharing in the songwriting credits, but again I would say Joe was definitely the most prolific because he was bringing in the most stuff, and he knew the most about music theory.

  John Cuniberti: Jeff, the drummer, was laid back, and was the youngest, and was just going along with the proceedings, and Andy was a bit of a loose cannon. He was a little unpredictable as far as his behavior, and he wasn't the musician Joe was. He tried, but he certainly wasn't going to be able to play the bass as well as Joe played the guitar. So I don't think there was any question that Joe was the musical leader of the band.

  John understood us, and he allowed us to be ourselves during the recording process. It was great to be back in the studio with my own band. We had a sound; we had our own songs; and we had a lot of energy and momentum going because we'd already played in front of club audiences that really liked us.

  John Cuniberti: At the time, my friend and I had just built our studio and had a 16-track, and because my background was in live sound, it was a fairly straightforward process to bring a band in, set them up, throw some mics up, and get the stuff recorded. Those first recordings we made were a good documentation of what the Squares were doing live, because in those days, in the very late 1970s, people made demos—you didn't make a record. Back then, only artists who had record contracts got to make records, so there was a real clear division between a demo tape, which meant cassettes, and a record contract where you had a real producer, worked in a real studio, and ended up with a final record that sounded like a vinyl album. There weren't a whole lot of overdubs done. There was one song where we put some acoustic guitars on it, and then there were some background vocals and double-tracking of vocals—stuff like that. But it was pretty straight ahead, and I liked the songs the Squares played, and the sound we made in the studio. I was doing other records with other musicians, but a lot of them—as much as I enjoyed the process of recording—weren't bands I went home and listened to at night. But with Joe and the Squares, they were actually making music I wanted to listen to, so that made it a whole lot easier.

  Between Joe and me, I believe Joe saw that I was as passionate about recording music as he was about playing guitar. We both saw each other as allies in becoming famous recording artists. At the time, and still I guess to some degree now, recording engineers needed a band as a vehicle to become famous. You couldn't just be the house engineer and build a reputation by doing little bits of this and that. You really needed to be the guy responsible for a band becoming famous, and then you would be tied to that, and other bands would seek you out based on that reputation. So I was hellbent and seriously focused on having a career as a recording engineer, and I think Joe saw that, saw my seriousness, when he showed up at the studio and noticed I'd been there an hour before and had everything set up. I'm a bit anal when it comes to everything—the gear, making sure everything’s working all the time—and I think he was, too, and appreciated it.

  That first demo John recorded and mixed for us is the way we like to remember ourselves. He captured the moment perfectly. Ultimately, the later demos led to the band falling apart for me because it didn't seem like we had the right ingredients to compare with the fantastic singers and writers who were ultimately going to be our competition. We got more prolific, we got more detailed, but we never quite captured that "moment" again, and we never really got any better.

  John Cuniberti: The first set of recordings I did with the Squares were the most spirited. They were very "ruckus," very straightforward, and just filled with life. Even back then, it was absolutely an ambition of Joe’s from day one to get signed, so the next time we were back in the studio, that was when we started making more "serious" recordings. By then, I had moved to another studio in San Francisco, and we were recording on a 24-track in nicer rooms and stuff, so the management and people who were representing the band and trying to get them a recording contract had a lot of say in the direction of the band and the material. People were saying, "You don't have a hit song," et cetera, and I think their influence on the proceedings really kind of made it awkward for Joe. I think after the first set of demos, the band got steered in a direction that was uncomfortable for Joe, and he didn't like it. From my observations, there was way too much emphasis on trying to get a hit single and be really pop, and he didn't really have as much of a voice as he had before. He could only control it so much, but he wanted to be successful and was willing to make compromises. I just think those compromises that required him to be a pop star were really beginning to rub him the wrong way, and I think it showed in the material and the performances and ultimately led to the demise of the Squares.

  As things with the Squares came to a close, it was complicated because I definitely felt musically like it was not satisfying anymore, that the band could not really grow how I wanted it to grow. That meant that as a team, we weren't writing songs that I liked anymore. The Squares was a power-pop band— how would I be able to express the elements that I put into Surfing with the Alien with that band? In a band that did not like long guitar solos, that was a thing we just didn't do.

  Jeff Campitelli: Near the end, it got to be a little more trying for Joe because Andy didn't want to become a bass player with lots of chops; he wanted to be the singer. In fact, there was actually a time toward the end of the band when we were auditioning bass players, and Andy was fine with that.

  Because Andy was not an improviser, you couldn't just wink at him and say, "We're going to do this for five minutes." He just couldn't do it, and didn't want to. It just naturally was not something he was into. It was one of several real problems with that band. One of our big challenges was we were not making enough money to survive, even as well as we were doing live. We had been turned down every time we tried to get a record deal, and our demos were getting technically better, but musically worse. The energy was not there anymore, and even though we all may have hoped we'd grow together in the same direction, we were actually splitting up over what we really wanted to do.

  Jeff Campitelli: Our decision as a group to split up was mutual. What was happening at the time, in truth, is we were maxed out. We were headlining every club, to where I remember walking out onstage on any given Friday night to do our hour-and-a-half set, and the show would be sold out, and we were each making around $500 cash, but after a while it became a ceiling to us. We'd reached one level of success that was satisfying locally, but we all had bigger ambitions, and the groupthink near the end of the band was, "Man, we gotta get signed!" We were making a living just playing original music in clubs throughout the Bay Area, and it was a wonderful period.

  As this was all happening and the buzz was going on around our band, we were starting to get offers from other, more established acts to join. For instance, I got an offer around that time to leave and join Eddie Money’s band. Also, during all of that going on around the band, internally Joe and Andy weren't getting along all that well, and I felt after a while like I was just the nice guy in between trying to hold it all together. That in time would prove distracting to our focus compositionally, because near the end, if you listen to our demos, the music was just all over the place. One song would be more this direction, and another would be in the opposite direction, which translated to us scaring away ALL the big recording companies who were checking us out at the time. From all that it was just obvious that things were coming to a close. I remember talking to Joe one night and telling him about the offer from Eddie Money to play much bigger venues—2,000- to 3,000-seaters—and I just told him, "This
is a good opportunity and I think I'm going to take it," and he was cool with it, because I think he was heading at that point in his own direction musically.

  John Cuniberti: For a while after the Squares broke up, I got the sense Joe was really discouraged by the whole process, and I would venture as far as to say he was maybe even second-guessing whether the whole thing was going to be possible or not. I think that led him to take more direct control of his music from that point on and focus on becoming a solo artist.

  I felt the artistic drive to strike out on my own, and I thought, I've got to do it in a way where maybe I'm not using it to make money or to be a career; it has to be a purely artistic venture. That’s why I got so into playing, and to accomplish this, I was going to need to control it. I couldn't ruin it by trying to bring it into my reality as a working musician. I had to keep it as a new thing where I could control every element, where trying to make it go commercial never entered into it. I knew instinctively if I got the people I knew involved in it, that it would be compromised. Therefore, if I wasn't expecting to make money off of it, I didn't have to include anybody. It could be like sitting at home and painting weird pictures for yourself without worrying about the outside world and how people will review them or if they'll buy them or not. So once I'd crossed that threshold, I realized, "Wow, I can do whatever I want." So that was a great leap for me, intellectually and emotionally.