Strange Beautiful Music

by Joe Satriani

  By the time our focus began to turn toward the mixing stage, we'd been working on "stage three" of the project for almost too long. I had been living in a hotel room in L.A. for four or five months by then, and I was beginning to go crazy. I wanted to go home. I didn't want to hang out in L.A. by myself anymore. The Extremist was very much a throwback record to celebrate classic rock—it just came out at the perfectly wrong time! I really didn't know what was going on outside of my world until I packed up my car in L.A. after mastering and started driving home. And on that seven- or eight-hour drive home, listening to the radio, I thought, "Oh my God, what radio station will play anything off of this record?"

  I realized now they were playing Nirvana and Soundgarden, and there was no room for my record; I was too young to be on the classic rock stations, and I wasn't young and grungy enough to be on the active rock stations. I remember going on MTV's Headbangers Ball and Riki Rachtman saying to me, on television, "Some of this stuff could be very New-Agey," and I almost killed him right there on television. I couldn't figure out where he was coming from . . . It’s a funny thing to think about, because I wasn't thinking of it like that while I was tracking. I was just trying to make the best recording of the best performances of what I thought were my best songs at the time. So I didn't know what we were going to do about it.

  When the record came out, I knew that there was a lot going against it because of the trends at the time. Here in America it met resistance to some degree because it was very straight ahead. Outside of the U.S., it was received more openly, for what it was. Within the U.S., however, we had what was proving to be a bit of a problem . . . until Sony used "Summer Song" in a Walkman commercial, which re-broke the album for us!

  Mick Brigden: Joe by this point was a star worldwide, and BIG worldwide, because on the Flying tour that preceded Joe’s returning to the studio to make The Extremist. We had toured A LOT of shows in Europe where we were headlining theatres and going to arenas in France. In the U.S., we had gotten to amphitheaters and multiple theater runs. That’s where we were by the early 90s. Now Joe’s touring and record-selling market is the world, not just the U.S. That’s something that I knew from working with Carlos Santana, that a guitar player with great melodic songs can be very successful outside the U.S., and Joe had built a worldwide market and he had toured those markets and had great songs.

  Cliff Cultreri: Once the Extremist album was in stores, we knew we had a lot of momentum behind Joe, and his live performances were just perfection. There are not too many musicians who have done or who could do what Joe does live, and you can probably count them on one hand: Steve Vai is there, Jeff Beck is there, certainly Hendrix, but you're talking about a very elite few who really, really could deliver like that. By that point, he had already reached the status of living legend because he was a cut above the rest—and not in an egotistical way or anything, but his listeners recognized that. He was really something special, a very special artist.

  The Extremist tour was fun. I had Gregg and Matt Bissonette on drums and bass, and Phil Ashley on keys. It was a great band and we were able to record some good live shows, too. We all began wondering if it was the right time for a live record, so I began brainstorming this idea to do a live album that would have a retrospective component. We could use the recent live recordings as well as older live stuff along with studio outtakes, and so forth . . . So I started to pull out all of my DATs, listening to everything in my archives. By this time, I knew that I wanted to call this album Time Machine, though I still had to sell the idea to the label, and Cliff was very helpful with that. Thankfully, when we pitched it to Relativity, they were totally behind the idea.

  Me and my Ibanez JS "Tele" prototype at a video shoot in '93

  PHOTO BY JOHN CUNIBERTI

  The work that went into the record was extensive, though. John had to compile all the live and studio music, mix it, and get it properly mastered; the art department at Relativity, which was fantastic, worked with photographer Michael Llewellyn, who shot and designed the awesome cover; the label pressed vinyl versions of the album in addition to releasing it on cassette and CD; Matt Resnicoff wrote the extensive bio and liner notes; we had to get permissions from all the photographers, who provided a wonderful batch of photos, and so on . . . Everyone involved pulled together to make it a great project. For an instrumental guitar player to be able to put out a package like that on an independent label was very, very cool. And the fans loved it!

  Ultimately, all these things you do when you release records, they stay around forever—they really do. Your music stays there year after year after year, gaining new audiences, and at the time we were right to push for Time Machine's release, because it turned out to be a hit. The album was essential for my future; it allowed people to better understand what I was all about, where I came from, and where I was headed. In other words, I wanted them to know about all the different kinds of music I was into. I felt that it really was an important artistic statement and that it was going to help my career keep moving forward.

  CHAPTER 13 * *

  Eponymous — 1995

  "Home (is) . . . exactly where we find Satriani on his latest offering, Joe Satriani. On it, visions of the raw, screaming electric blues of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page permeate the album, which some have called Satriani's Blow By Blow. Produced by veteran helmsman Glyn Johns (Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who), Joe Satriani abandons the guitarist’s trademark overdubbed, highly produced guitar attack in favor of a more honest, jammy, live feel that’s fully entrenched in the magical vibe of the late Sixties/early Seventies. The result is an album that sparkles with some of the most soulful and moving guitar playing of Satch’s career."

  —Guitar World magazine

  When I first picked up the guitar, I started with the blues. My primary influences were Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton, and through them their heroes: Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy, Albert King, and everybody in between. When it came time to record the last installment of the Joe Satriani LP, I wanted to honor those blues roots of mine, but in a new way.

  Something important to remember here is that we were doing this in 1995, so it was not the early 1990s anymore. This was a different era; there had been, I think, a cathartic process happening in the music business, and by the time we got together in 1995 for these sessions, people were running from the late-eighties/early-nineties thing. So the feeling was, "Boy, we gotta do something raw, but different."

  When producer Glyn Johns and I first got together, I was looking for him to guide me during this process by weaning me from my old way of making records and put me in a new position that all of my heroes had been in before. Glyn had recorded many of the guitar players who make up my roots: Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and Steve Miller, to name a few. He understood how to put an artist in a situation where he would have to rise to the occasion and create a record that could potentially affect a generation.

  Mick Brigden: As soon as we put the two of them together and they sat and listened to Joe’s demos, Glyn became an instant fan, which is the way it should be. Glyn is not the kind of guy who you would ever be able to convince to make a record if he didn't like the musician or the music—he’s not that kind of guy. Better than that, he thought, "This is a challenge. I've never made a record like this," and Joe gave him so much support in helping him put together how they were going to make the record, which meant putting an album together in a way Joe was not used to making.

  Glyn Johns: Joe was very respectful to me. I was a rather odd choice because Joe’s normal method of recording is completely different from mine. But he was open to the idea of making a record in the way that I do and went along with it. I just wanted to give him a different environment that allowed him to just play and not have the responsibility of every other aspect of making the record. I definitely wanted to give him a bit of a challenge, though, because it seemed that was what he needed. The record he'd m
ade with my brother Andy, The Extremist, I thought was a phenomenal record; I'd heard that, and thought it was a remarkable album on many levels. I think my brother is probably the finest engineer of that type of music that there is, and I think that record is a really good example of his abilities. But I wanted to put [Joe] in a room with people who would react to music in a positive way and for him not to tell them what to play, basically, so that it would just leave him to play the guitar and be the artist, but not necessarily have the minute control, which apparently he normally had. I'm not knocking that approach—it had been extremely successful for him—but my object was to try to put him in a situation with musicians who were as competent as he was. My understanding had been that he'd already obviously worked with really good guys, but I think his tendency had been to tell them pretty much note for note what to play.

  We assembled an all-star backing band that represented the créme de la créme of the world’s finest session musicians, including drummer Manu Katché (who played with Peter Gabriel), bassist Nathan East (Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton), and rhythm guitarist Andy Fairweather Low (Eric Clapton, Roger Waters). Unfamiliarity might have proved a handicap in the hands of a lesser group of world-class musicians, but this band instead thrived in the face of considerable pressure.

  Nathan East, me, Andy Fairweather Low, and Manu Katché at The Site in '95

  PHOTO BY MICHAEL KIRK

  These guys were very expensive. I could only afford them for a total of fourteen days, two of which I missed. So we basically had twelve days to make the record and there was no time for preproduction rehearsals. We would gather at The Site studio about eleven in the morning, listen to a track, do about three takes, break for lunch, come back, and listen to see if we could do it any better, and that was it. Sometimes we would come back and listen, and both Glyn and I would be just knocked out by the intensity of the performance. Other times, everybody would learn something, and Andy or Manu would come up with a suggestion and then we would go and see if it worked. Since everybody was learning and developing their parts at the same time, we felt that it was the right thing to do to allow them to come up with ideas of their own. Being the great producer that he is, Glyn was fantastic at managing us.

  Glyn Johns: My method of recording and producing a record is exactly the same as it was in the late sixties. My approach in setting a band up and recording them is exactly the same. I'm not the least bit interested in doing composites, or changing the tuning on something, or other things you can do with Pro Tools. There was very little overdubbing. Joe might have put an additional guitar on the odd thing, and of course there’s a vocal on one track he overdubbed, but most of it was done live. Pro Tools is totally meaningless to me. I still mix a record without a computer and personally don't see the necessity if you've got really good musicians, and I tend to work with really good musicians. Most of the legendary guitar players I've worked with—Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend—have been "feel" players, obviously all entirely different from each other and from Joe, and Joe’s style of very fast, fluid, extraordinary bit of gymnastics on the guitar is not my normal listening pleasure. But I was astounded by his ability. He’s an extraordinary musician; there’s no question about it. I think he has two huge assets: He has an extraordinary ability to write very listenable instrumental music, which very few people in that genre do; and technically, he’s a genius. It’s extraordinary what he can physically accomplish.

  For this album I had to learn a different way of recording that was completely opposite from my usual method. Glyn wanted everything played live. With John Cuniberti or Andy Johns, we would usually overdub melodies and solos, and would brainstorm guitar sounds after we had our basic tracks. We would work on those tones for hours until we came up with something we thought was really fun and unexpected, and then we would go about overdubbing a performance. Instead, here I am in a live room with a couple of effects pedals plugged into a small amp setup, and Glyn saying, "Do it all live." I tried to explain that wasn't how I did things, but Glyn’s idea was, "Give me the whole Joe, all at once." He didn't want me to sit there and work on it because he felt it didn't need any more work. He felt there was no need to polish anything beyond the first or second take. So, I had to come up with something on the fly for each song. On "S.M.F." I had to play my guitar and harmonica simultaneously, live! That was a first for me.

  Glyn saw what I was going through. Every song that we finished would turn out so different from what I had expected. I kept waiting for that solo moment like in "Surfing" or "Ice 9" or "Summer Song," and it wasn't happening. We were making an entirely different kind of record.

  Glyn took me aside once and said, "It’s not your job to decide what people will like. It’s your job to play your guitar." So while there were times when we would celebrate what we got in the studio, there were definitely other times when he had to pull me aside to keep me motivated. He'd say, "Believe me—it’s going well. You're doing great. It’s going to happen. Just keep moving forward. Don't rely on what you used to do."

  Glyn would encourage me to go even further away from where I'd been, to work further from my comfort zone, because he saw something else in me. He saw the method of me overdubbing, and critiquing myself, then doing another twenty takes on a track as an obstacle to artistic growth. He'd say, "You've done it. You've already done these stunning albums that will be great forever. All these records, why do them again? Now you need to move on and do something else that will be equally outrageous, and the only way to do it is to do it." It’s the most obvious piece of advice, but it is very often the hardest thing for an artist to fully embrace: to do something completely different. No artist wants to stumble, certainly not in front of their audience, but sometimes that’s what it takes.

  Glyn Johns: Hearing Joe play was jaw-dropping! The one thing that I remembered more than anything is that we would do a take that we would all feel completely stunned and blown away by, and Joe would come in and hear in his own performance—not necessarily in anybody else's—all kinds of things he wasn't happy with, but to me it was all completely stunning. That was a little bit frustrating from my point of view; however, obviously I bowed to his better knowing—it was his record and he was judging his own performance. I might argue with him and point out that we all thought it was really good, but if he wasn't happy with something, of course we'd go and do another take. It wouldn't be a matter of him replacing his part; it would be a matter of everybody going out and doing another take. There’s no problem with that. You never know, and you have nothing to lose.

  Each time we played, Glyn got unique performances out of each of us. We were improvising and thinking fast on our feet. We had to react to changes that the other musicians or Glyn would throw at us, which happened a lot. We'd finish a performance, and someone would say, "Are you going to play that? Because if you do, then I'm going to change my part like this," and Glyn would come out sometimes and say, "It sounds great, you've done it, let’s move on," or he'd say, "I'm not happy. Where else can you guys take it?"

  With "Down, Down, Down" for instance, we did three heartbreaking takes, then broke for lunch. It was an emotionally heavy song to dig into and perform repeatedly. When we came back and listened to what we had played, everyone was like, "Wow." That was the first time I turned to Glyn and said, "I had no idea I could ever sound like that." There’s so much personality in the performance, yet it’s so naked and unadorned with effects of any kind. It’s my JS Black Dog going into a Wells amp coming out of a Marshall bottom. That’s it. Originally I was thinking of a more produced version, but Glyn saw the heart and soul of the song and said, "Do it stripped down and at a slower tempo. It will be more emotionally powerful that way." He was right.

  The first ten days of recording, we did "Cool #9," "Down, Down Down," "S.M.F.," "Home," "Moroccan Sunset," "Slow Down Blues," "Sittin' 'Round" and "Killer Bee Bop." They were amazing sessions. As I listened back to the music, I heard some great moments where it felt like
I'd grown light-years, right there on the tape. On every song, I heard a new side of my playing, a new facet to my musicianship.

  I had actually started the record a year earlier with engineer/ producer/drummer Eric Valentine. After returning from a tour playing with Deep Purple in the summer of '94, Eric and I recorded the beginnings of "Cool #9," "Look My Way," and "Luminous Flesh Giants," and finished a song called "Time." "Time" was a big, sprawling composition that John Cuniberti and I had started recording during the Surfing sessions back in '87! Eric and I finally finished and mixed it at The Site in 1994, but Glyn wasn't keen on including it on the record because he thought it didn't fit stylistically. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever done! Oh well . . . It eventually found a home on the Crystal Planet album, where it fit perfectly.

  A second set of sessions with John Cuniberti in early '95 would yield "You're My World," "Look My Way," "Z.Z.’s Song," the start of "Home," part one of "Slow Down Blues," melodies and solos for "Luminous Flesh Giants" and "Cool #9" (version one), and some other pieces that would take even more time to mature. So by the time the project landed in Glyn’s lap he had a lot of material to sort out.

  When we started the last set of sessions, Glyn said that when we were done recording, he wanted me to write one last song that summarized my experience making the album. I wrote "If" as I was driving to The Site for the last band session. When I got to the studio I sat down with guitar, pencil, and paper, sketched out the song, showed the band, and then we recorded it on the spot. I'd never done that before! It was all part of Glyn’s plan.