Strange Beautiful Music

by Joe Satriani

  Just as I was finishing the recording of Flying, Cameron Crowe called me out of the blue and asked me to write a song specifically for his directorial debut, Say Anything . . . He filled me in on what the movie was about, then sent me a very rough cut of the film on VHS. Cameron wanted something rocking that would represent John Cusack’s angst during a kickboxing scene. "Just do what you do," he said. "I don't care what you do, just be Joe Satriani." So I wrote "One Big Rush" and he loved the way it turned out.

  Looking back, for me as a multi-instrumentalist and solo artist, Flying was a lot of work. Making records with Chickenfoot, by comparison, is really easy because you go in as one of four guys, play a song half a dozen times, and that’s it. On Flying, I played all the guitars, basses, and keyboards, and I sang on six of the eighteen songs. Sometimes, after a hard day of recording, I would return home to get some rest and wake up the next morning having dreamed that I was in the studio and would feel like I hadn't slept! I think the biggest stress of having a recording schedule like that was having to go back in day after day. It was fun, it was exhilarating, I loved it, but at the same time the process of making that record was definitely stressful!

  John Cuniberti: The record was a huge advancement from the first two albums. It was incredibly ambitious. I thought it was going to blow people’s minds and really be well received. The song "Flying in a Blue Dream" was the most beautiful thing he'd ever done. I was really, really proud of the record.

  Mick Brigden: We were lucky in the fact that the success of Surfing opened all these doors, so Joe was a headliner overnight. He didn't go through the phase of being an opening act. He went straight to headliner. Joe’s set obviously had some landmark material, but he didn't have an awful lot of it. That changed very quickly when he promoted Flying in a Blue Dream, because he gave us a broader scope instantly and he brought in vocals. We wanted "Big Bad Moon" as a single. Joe felt the title track was the most important song on the record. Relativity and management knew that if we could get "Big Bad Moon" on the radio and the video on MTV, it would be a hit. We also knew we had "I Believe" in the back pocket. We shot great videos for both of those with a then unknown David Hogan. We put a lot of effort and time into broadening Joe’s audience, as did he, because ultimately it all comes from Joe. He handed in a record with such a wide variety of sound and composition that he opened the door for us to have so many different ways to market this guitar hero beyond just six strings.

  My personal take on Flying once we'd completed work on it was that I'd moved to this higher level that was new for me. I'd elevated my technique and was playing new things that you'd never heard on the first two albums. There were stream-of-consciousness clusters of notes, like in "Flying in a Blue Dream"; very worked out, purposeful-sounding arpeggios like on "The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing"; and crazy out-and-out soloing on "The Bells of Lal (Part 2)." Then there was the personalization of the legato technique, which was a continuation of what I'd just started with "Echo" on Surfing, and I wasn't afraid to use this legato technique as the forefront of my musical statement on Flying, too. It wasn't something I just dashed off with for eight bars for effect, because I knew it was going to be a cornerstone of my technique.

  Me and my six-string Deering banjo at Fantasy in '89

  STILL FROM JOHN CUNIBERTI'S VIDEO

  Looking back on some of the other techniques I had fun with on Flying, I had taken my two-hand tapping style to another sort of extreme compositional level. "Day at the Beach" is a good example in that it was more developed and complex as a song than similar stuff on the first two records. I felt that if I was going to put my own stamp on tapping, I had to move it to some higher level of compositional expression and drop the "wow, look at me" factor.

  Oddly enough, when "Flying in a Blue Dream" was released, the star of the album actually wound up being the title track, so the one that nobody thought anyone would ever play turned out to be the one that got the most airplay. It was the same thing with Surfing with the Alien: The label never picked "Always with Me, Always with You" as the single; instead they picked "Surfing," "Ice 9," "Satch Boogie," but "Always" was the one that everybody wanted. For this album, the record label actually really wanted to use "Can't Slow Down" as the first single, but one of the A&R people at the label just had a real problem with the solo section (I never figured out what it was that she didn't like about it), so eventually they went with "Big Bad Moon" and "I Believe."

  We started out the live shows feeling everybody was going to like the whole album. We always knew "Flying in a Blue Dream" was going to be a great song live—it was just a perfect opener. The lights would dim and then the recording of the RF intro started and those beautiful chords and the feedback would unfold. It just had so much drama to it and was so unique at the time. There really wasn't a song like it. "Big Bad Moon" turned out to be a great live song that has stayed in the set to this day. To our surprise, songs like "The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing," "I Believe," and "One Big Rush" became fan favorites, too, and stayed in the set for a very long time.

  CHAPTER 11 * *

  The Bearsville Experiment

  When I decided to begin working on my next album after the Flying in a Blue Dream tour, I wanted a change of studio scenery, and the legendary Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York, fit the bill for me because it had a big live room and it wasn't in an urban setting. As far as John was concerned, he felt the studio had the necessary facilities to handle what we were looking to accomplish, and I think I was just attracted to going back to New York because I grew up there. When you say "Woodstock," it just has an allure because of its history, but I had never been there before, so I arrived like a tourist to some extent. I was looking for a musical adventure.

  I think the experience of being a live act for the last three years was the biggest factor in my decision to shift from computers to a live rhythm section in the studio. After touring not only for the first two records, but also with Mick Jagger, I was thinking, "Wow, I've gotta work more of this live energy that I've experienced into the next record." I figured, "I'm just going to trust my instincts, go to Woodstock with John and with the guys from the Jagger band," so I hired Simon Phillips on drums, Phil Ashley on keyboards, and Doug Wimbish on bass. I wanted to introduce more musicianship into the mix, and that sort of creativity you get from having different kinds of players in the band, but I also wanted to make sure I could control it. That concept really blossomed on some songs—"New Blues" and "Rubina’s Blue Sky Happiness," for example—because each of the players felt (I think) he had room to move creatively.

  Unfortunately, everything broke down when I discovered I couldn't get them to follow this disciplined approach to instrumental rock that John and I had pioneered on the first couple of records. So, for instance, trying to get them to play and create the same effect we got on "Flying in a Blue Dream" or "Ice 9" was very difficult because they didn't think or feel that way as players. It was entirely my fault, because I picked these guys and they're amazing at what they do, but, in retrospect, they were the wrong musicians for the project.

  John Cuniberti: This was ironic to me, because those guys are so creative, and they love music so much, that as soon as they walked in the room and picked up their instruments, they would just play and play and play—and Joe enjoyed that. where I could tell things weren't working for Joe was, traditionally on his prior records, when he would come in for a playback and listen, you could tell when he felt a drum part wasn't working if it was a live player, and he would turn to the drummer and would basically be directing the drummer on what he was looking for. Well, at Bearsville, when he attempted to do that, Simon would either argue with him about it, or say, "Yeah, sure," then go back out in the studio and play whatever the fuck he wanted. Simon played Simon Phillips music, which is like this progressive, showy style. It seemed like Simon felt, "Joe’s been making these weird records with funny drum machines. Now he wants to make a real record with real players in a real room, an
d that’s why he’s hired us." So that’s exactly what Joe got, and it’s exactly what Joe didn't want.

  I remember at one point Phil Ashley taking me aside and saying, "Perhaps you need to be more descriptive, more detailed in what it is you're trying to get out of Simon and Doug." I thought the songs were getting softer and having less of an impact when drums, bass, and keyboards were allowed to wander through the arrangements, and this was a problem because these guys were very expensive! The whole trip out there was very expensive, and suddenly we're running into a problem where I started thinking, "I won't be able to overdub on these performances and get them to really hit hard." So I started to realize after a few weeks—and I think John was pretty shocked when I told him this—"I'm not happy with this. I don't like what my songs are becoming."

  As it had started to build up, I had a few key realizations, the first being that they didn't respect me enough to take my direction seriously. I could understand that because I was the "new guy." The second was that they didn't understand my directions because I couldn't figure out how to be more descriptive. So each morning, I'd go to the studio telling myself, "I'm going to turn it around today. I can try to see where their influences will make the song better, change my approach, and see if I can explore their approach. Maybe they're right." But each day, the opposite would happen, and I'd wind up getting a little bit more discouraged, and I would walk back to my cabin at night, thinking, "That didn't get better, that got worse."

  When we started "Summer Song," that’s when I really knew it wasn't working. There was a small dining room off the kitchen where we used to eat communally, and each morning, John would prepare the previous day’s roughs for us, and we would sit there in the morning and listen to everything. I remember everyone listening to "Summer Song" and feeling really good and excited about it, while I was thinking to myself, "That is weak," because I was used to the hard-edged rhythm sections on the Surfing and Flying records. I felt that was a signature of my sound by then, and I noticed once it was removed that there was something NOT better with what was replacing it. I think my creative faith at the time was that once I removed the rigidity, the music was going to blossom, but I didn't hear that at all. I remember it blindsiding John when I announced, "I'm not happy with the way this is going," because he had originally figured—as I had—that these were the greatest musicians we'd ever worked with, but now it was, "How could it not be working?" He probably was trying to figure out, "What is it that Joe’s not hearing, and what can I do to help him out?" Because he was my partner in this, and to a certain degree, I was not being totally open about what I was disappointed with, because I didn't want to totally spoil the vibe of the sessions. I didn't want to stand up and say, "This sucks!" even though that’s precisely how I was feeling.

  Eventually I had to pull the plug on the Bearsville experiment. That was an even scarier decision because of the money I had spent, and maybe wasted.

  Phil Ashley, Doug Wimbish, Simon Phillips, and me at Bearsville in late '90

  PHOTO BY JOHN CUNIBERTI

  John Cuniberti: There were times when Joe would walk into the control room for a playback and just stand there like he was pissed off, and I'm sure Joe went back to his cabin every night shaking his head, asking, "What have they done to my song? I came with this idea to have this song that looks like ABC, and instead I have XYZ, and I'm supposed to go into the studio tomorrow at $2,000 a day and record that?" So as the session started to unwind, Joe opted for what I thought at the time was a soft landing of sorts, because he was pretty unhappy and he decided it was time to take a break. We came home the day before Thanksgiving, and after the holidays we talked, and he said, "I want to get back in the studio. We got a lot of good stuff here. Let’s book some studio time in the Bay Area here, and sort of address all the issues."

  Following that, when we went home for the holiday, John and I started to plan around the idea that maybe we'd be able to reconvene and do what we did before. John offered, "Let’s go back to San Francisco and you record your guitars just the way you always do it. Then we'll bring in a drummer, or we'll do the drum machine thing."

  John Cuniberti: Joe had played and we had recorded a lot of great guitar takes, and he was trying to preserve a lot of those performances: rhythm guitars, solos, melodies. So he started replacing Simon Phillips’s drum tracks with drum programming, and trying to manipulate the music the way he wanted, and I remember it was very, very, very difficult. We started to run into tuning issues, and tempo issues, and those guys were much more free-flowing, so Simon was playing all over the click—in front of it, behind it, around it— and everyone’s playing to him, so when you take his drums off and try to lock a drum machine to it, nothing made sense anymore. We struggled and struggled trying to put Band-Aids on it, and got a few nuggets that were pretty nice that ultimately ended up on the record.

  CHAPTER 12 * *

  The Extremist —1992

  "The chugging 'Summer Song,' the warm 'Friends,' the slamming 'Motorcycle Driver,' and the crunching 'The Extremist' show Satriani’s talents as a guitarist are undiminished, while the more traditional neo-folk approach to 'Rubina’s Blue Sky Happiness' and the bluesy 'New Blues' are different from anything he has done before!"

  —Billboard magazine

  With The Extremist, I felt like my playing style had really grown and I had sort of reconnected with a lot of guitar playing that I grew up listening to, like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. My other records were a little more modern for their times, but with this record, I was not holding back from bringing out my roots of the late sixties and early seventies. So that meant I was showing more of what I could play, which was an important part of my growth as a musician. I also think that the range of composition was HUGE on this record. At the time I was wondering, how was I going to get "Tears in the Rain," "New Blues," "Why," "Cryin'," and "The Extremist" to stylistically fit together on one record? How was I going to justify that there was a song like "War" on the same record as "Rubina’s Blue Sky Happiness"? Were people going to like the sort of Celtic country style of "Friends," because it was very much not like "Ice 9"? I also felt that I'd really matured compositionally, and that was something John had felt at the beginning, too. He just thought that the material I'd brought in was really exceptional, and I think his reaction to it also gave me a little bit of courage to see it all the way through.

  Even though I was conceptually excited about this album, starting over after the Bearsville debacle was so difficult for me because there was this incredible sense of guilt that I had spent too much money and had failed to pull the project together. It really affected me in a creative way, and I distinctly remember calling Bill Graham Management from Studio D at Hyde Street one day and telling Kevin Burns that I didn't feel like playing my guitar anymore. I had lost all the necessary drive to continue.

  When I called the office that day, it was to ask Bill and the management team, "Can I stop, again?" Their answer was, "Of course you can, just pack up and stop." My management company was great; they told me to take some time off and not to rush back into it, which was the right advice, so I just shut everything down and took a year off from recording. My wife and I had recently bought a house up in the Sierras at Lake Tahoe, and we finally got to spend some time with each other, because it seemed like we had been working like crazy for years and years. I'd spent a lot of time on the road, and she was working as well, so I think we just needed time to hang out together. I also performed at the Guitar Legends Festival in Spain that year, so by then, early '91, it was the first time Rubina and I had a chance to travel together.

  With the time away, I was starting to reevaluate everything I was doing in the music business. I started to think that it was just a matter of stepping out of it for a while so I could come back with a fresh attitude. That led me to think, "I've got to be more like other musicians. I've got to play around." Bill and the guys at the office were saying the same thing: "Every artist we know eventually works with n
ew musicians, engineers, and producers."

  Months later, on October 25, 1991, we lost Bill in a tragic helicopter accident. It was a staggering loss for his family and all of us who knew and worked with him, and a huge loss for the music world.

  We had to continue on. I had to pick myself up and complete my vision for The Extremist. It was time to find some new collaborators. I'll admit, I found that thought to be frightening at first, because John and I had shared some of the greatest moments, creatively recording and mixing together. We would spend hours in the studio stretching ourselves into areas where we felt we were just walking on the edge, and then we were ultimately rewarded by platinum success, but I wanted to keep pushing myself. By the end of the year I realized this was where we were, so my manager, Mick Brigden, started to field ideas about working with some different producers.

  I traveled down to L.A. and met with a few producers, including Mike Clink (Guns N' Roses) and Dave Jerden (Jane’s Addiction, Alice in Chains), and then I met with Andy Johns at Eddie Van Halen’s studio. I found myself feeling a little starstruck. I couldn't believe that I had a chance to work with somebody like Andy because I'd been listening to his recordings ever since I was a kid. When we first met, Andy was like a total wildcard. He was a very colorful character and very animated in a rock 'n' roll way. An important part of Andy’s talent was that he was extremely musical. He was a musician himself; he may not have been able to play drums, but he could zero in on the delicacies and intricacies of drum patterns and go out there and instruct a drummer. He could help you arrange keyboard parts and harmonize guitar lines—he was that musical. The conversation we had in just the few hours we spent listening to my demos at Eddie’s studio that day reignited my passion for the project.