Strange Beautiful Music

by Joe Satriani

  Eric Valentine mixing "Time" at The Site in '94

  PHOTO BY JOE SATRIANI

  When Glyn was mixing the record, I remember being shocked: only seven or eight active faders on the desk, and none were labeled! Nothing labeled "Kick drum," "Guitar," "Bass," et cetera . . . Only Glyn knew where everything was. Aside from the few faders, he operated a little reverb/delay unit sitting on his lap, and that was it. That’s how he mixed the record! It was both fascinating and frightening. To be honest, mixing that record was one of those things I couldn't be there for. After mixing records with John and Andy, meticulously adjusting tracks and effects for hours, moving things up 2 dB here and 1.5 dB there, I was ready to step outside the studio while Glyn mixed because I was getting a little toasty around the edges. I can see it when I watch Reel Satriani, the documentary we filmed about recording Joe Satriani. By then, I was just beaten down by the whole experience.

  Still, the way that the recording sounded coming through the speakers was a revelation to me. What I had heard from Glyn’s work with all of my guitar heroes was the artist’s performance exploding full of personality, and he brought that to this record. The process of making the broader album was in fact a growing period for me, and that’s exactly what Glyn had promised. He was trying to get me out of my old skin and into a new place, and he was always confident that when I landed there, I was going to want to make that new thing part of who I was.

  Glyn Johns: I was very happy with the record when it was finished. As far as I remember, he was very pleased with it when it was done. He didn't seem particularly enamored with it while we were doing it, but at the end of the process, when we'd actually finished, he was very pleased. I think Joe liked the record when we finished it, but let’s put it this way—he’s never gone back to that way of recording.

  Each time I record, it’s not like I've got a band that I'm always touring with that can just pop into the studio for a week. The process of going in and recording live before we've had a chance to play the music, and before I've played with those musicians, didn't make any sense to me at the time.

  Unfortunately, the documentary Reel Satriani captured only the last two days of recording at The Site. It made for a good, gritty, Let It Be type of film, but it hardly scratched the surface when it came to telling the whole story. The album actually contained work and performances from four different producers and four different rhythm sections, and took a year of recording at three different studios! In the end, though, it was well worth it.

  The week that the Joe Satriani album was released, my longtime label, Relativity, was absorbed and then dismantled by Sony, and we struggled to get the word out on the new record. Retail would call for a box of Joe Satriani records and there was literally no one answering the phone. It was a disaster because it was a very important record for me and I got no support from the label in the States. Still, in places like the United Kingdom, the record was a smash. We played London’s Wembley Arena on the record’s subsequent tour! I think anyone would feel validated playing a place that size. I felt overwhelmed that a record that was such a risk to make was being embraced by a new wave of fans around the world.

  A funny side note: Mick Jagger came to hang out and watch the Wembley show in the fall of '95. While we were playing "Moroccan Sunset," he moved from watching us at the mixing desk to the side of the stage, and during the song’s breakdown I actually got him to strum my guitar a few times, and it rang through the house as we reentered the song. No one saw it. It was a cool, private moment in a very public setting. Mick was strumming my guitar, and it was reverberating through the arena. It was one of those "Oh, wow" moments for me: "Mick Jagger is strumming my guitar on 'Moroccan Sunset.' How did I get here?"

  CHAPTER 14 * *

  G3/Crystal Planet —1997

  "A dream come true for guitar fanatics."

  —Billboard magazine

  Even after all the success I was enjoying as a solo artist, I was beginning to feel a bit isolated from my peers. I had to remedy the situation, and from that simple desire to play with other guitarists, G3, my own little mini-festival, was born. In a phone call to my manager, Mick Brigden, I asked, "What if I toured with two other guitarists, then jammed with those two players at the end of each show?" That way I'd get to jam every night with players that I'd handpicked! Why three players together on one bill? If we had seven guitar players, we'd never find a promoter to take on that many guitarists playing on one night, and no artist would sign on to the tour to play for only ten or fifteen minutes, so we had to figure out what length of time would be attractive for the artists. Forty-five minute sets for each band was key to making the show work to everyone’s advantage, especially the fans'. You'd also have to leave time for a jam, because the audience is really waiting for that. That’s the big climax. Mick soon came up with the name G3, and then the real work started.

  Once we'd settled on the concept of three stars, Mick asked me, "Okay, who do you want it to be?" and I instantly said, "It’s got to be Steve Vai and Eric Johnson." The role of getting players to sign on fell to me. I had to call Steve and Eric up directly and talk to them over and over again about why it was a great idea. We worked on them for months. It took a very long time to convince them, their management, and the record labels that competition would not be an issue, but I knew in my gut that the audience would love this show. I'm sure Mick spent just as much time talking to their managers trying to get those guys to agree, because up to that point, there was a very well-organized music machine with rules like "don't play with your competition."

  Concert promoters were a bit reticent to have three headliners play on one night, in one venue. Not only was it expensive, but it put a lot of their eggs in one basket. They felt audiences would prefer to see me in March, Steve Vai in April, and Eric Johnson in May. That way the audience would buy tickets to every show, and if there were a problem, they'd have spread out the risk on three different nights rather than one night. It would have been a dream for me to see Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page all on one stage together in a G3-like setting. It would never have changed my mind about who was better or whom I liked more. So we had to convince everyone to forget all the rules about competition and risk, and take a leap of faith.

  Me, Steve, and Eric at a photo shoot at the Capitol Records building in L.A., '96

  PHOTO BY NEIL ZLOZOWER

  The other cool thing about G3 was that we weren't out there just promoting our new albums and playing our new singles. It felt more like a rock 'n' roll victory lap, celebrating our musicianship, our camaraderie, and the genre itself. And at the end of every show, the audience responded so positively to the fact that we were all just standing there on the same stage together and trading solos back and forth, improvising with our guards down. We felt their excitement and it made every show better and better.

  Steve Vai: G3 is a celebration of the beautiful guitar by people who love the instrument and have devoted their lives to it. Joe has put great care and attention into making sure that the musicians who take part in a G3 tour have something valuable to offer an audience that loves the instrument. I feel tremendously grateful for its success!

  Mick Brigden: There’s no way any of our promoters knew what the results would be; they were going off our energy to tell them to trust us. Plus Joe was strong enough on his own to be able to put numbers down where we weren't going to come out looking bad either way. But its success actually went way beyond what we thought. I absolutely have to say, I would NOT have been able to imagine that what happened that first fall of '96 was going to be as successful as it was. The very first shows of the tour sold out right away, so we were blown away!

  Standing next to other guitarists playing really well night after night, you can't help but notice similarities and differences with your own playing. You marvel at what they do and also realize how different you are as a guitarist. I think I began to know more about myself as a player as I was going through those first six weeks of
the G3 tour.

  Back in the States, after our G3 Euro Tour, I was now signed to Epic/Sony and had John Kalodner, the legendary A&R man, as part of my team, along with Mike Fraser, my new engineer/producer. Kalodner had worked with Mike quite a bit, and he brought him in for the G3: Live in Concert project. John was very keen on us using Mike for the next studio record, too, and since we already liked working with him, it seemed like a good idea. I was excited to see where this new producer was going to take me.

  Digital editor Eric Caudieux checking a mix from the G3 live show

  PHOTO BY JOE SATRIANI

  Mike Fraser: Joe and I go back to the eighties, when we had first talked about doing a record together. It just didn't work out timing-wise for us. Then we ran into each other again at a live show, and said, "Hey, we should do something together." Joe explained his G3 concert, so I went out and recorded and mixed it, which sort of launched us into working together on Crystal Planet. We just wanted to make a really good band record and bring him back to his instrumental roots. Up to that point, he'd experimented a lot with singing and vocals. CP was one of the first records in a while where he'd returned to the instrumental part of it without worrying about vocals. The focus was on getting a really solid band thing with Jeff Campitelli and Stu Hamm, a three-piece thing, and later on we added the keyboards and all that. But essentially, the nucleus of it was a three-piece.

  Although not a musician himself, Mike Fraser is very musical and good at coming up with melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic suggestions. He might say, "Maybe a higher harmony," or "Maybe a more relaxed groove." His ideas are based on his own natural musicality.

  As my new producer, Mike was looking back over my catalog and said, "I'm going to respect what you've done before, but what can we do that will move you into a new territory? Why don't we see what we can do with capturing more energy?" He was really keen on capturing the energy and creativity of the unit—me, Jeff, and Stu—and then bringing in my overdub ideas on top of that. I was trying to create live melody and solo performances that were keepers, too, and the effects were really part of each song’s personality, so I had to treat it like a live show as we were tracking. When we got into the studio, we were able to set up like a live trio, and we would do just six or seven takes at a time. Everyone was encouraged to expand their own performances with each take to see just how interesting we could get.

  Playing Chrome Boy at The Plant in '97

  PHOTO BY NEIL ZLOZOWER

  The influence of my son, ZZ, was everywhere on Crystal Planet, starting with "Z.Z.’s Song." I recorded that particular piece of music back during the previous record’s sessions, which turned out to be the eponymous album.

  On that session I had all of my amps set up in a line in Fantasy’s Studio C. There must have been eight or ten amps set up, and I think I was plugged into a JC-120, a Marshall 6100, and my Wells amp. In the end, John wound up using the Wells amp, and the JC-120 in stereo for ambience. It’s just a live recording of me playing, with John miking everything up. Technically, it was a very delicate but fun piece to perform. I used to play it for ZZ through headphones I would place on my wife’s belly before he was born. I don't know whether he liked it or not, but we used to feel him kicking!

  We moved into our new house on the day ZZ turned four. A few days later we were on the G3 U.S. tour. That was his first time going on tour. My wife was with us, too, so the three of us were traveling together as a family. I shared so many experiences with ZZ on that tour that it was natural his influence would be felt on Crystal Planet. One day we were looking out the window at a series of clouds. ZZ pointed up and said, "It looks like a train of angels." I remember thinking, "That’s just the coolest phrase I have ever heard," and I wrote it down.

  Kids that age say stuff like that every day. One day, when asked if he needed anything to drink, he said, "I just need a piece of liquid." I felt like if I was going to use "A Piece of Liquid," "A Train of Angels," and "Psycho Monkey" (another of his offerings) as song titles on the record, I should give him proper writing credit. It really is like a never-ending muse when you see a child with his or her mind developing in leaps and bounds—it’s fascinating and at times funny the way they put things together as they learn how to express themselves.

  The title track of Crystal Planet came from a book I was reading to him. It was a science book and in the first paragraph, it said something like, "We live on a crystal planet." I remember looking at that phrase and thinking, "That is a great way to express what it is I've been thinking," because this new record was going to be about the underlying structure and the beauty of music, but I just hadn't quite thought of the title yet. I hesitated to use the phrase for a while because I thought people would think it was another album from me about aliens or outer space, but to me, it suggested something much more organic and down-to-earth.

  I started writing more material for the next record after the G3 tour. I keep notebooks from all my previous albums of all the music and production ideas. Everything’s written down, even where to put sound effects.

  One thing I did differently for Crystal Planet was to not make any recorded demos. When I sat down to write, I had my guitar (though it wasn't always plugged in), a metronome to get the tempos and keep me focused, a notepad, and a pencil. Then I'd write out the song and the chord sequence, writing little notes about what I thought the song could sound like. So the first time Mike Fraser and the band heard the songs in full form was when we played them live at rehearsal. I didn't want them to be influenced by a drum machine demo. I thought that maybe that was what had been so difficult on previous sessions, getting musicians to make that leap from the demo to what a song should sound like when a band plays it.

  Mike and I thought it would be a great idea if we rehearsed first, and I wanted to see if he could capture our sound the way he did on the G3 recordings. So for a week, Stu Hamm, Jeff Campitelli, and I rehearsed Crystal Planet, and everybody got to take tapes home. By the time we pulled into The Plant to record the album, we were well rehearsed and ready to rock.

  Stu Hamm: Making Crystal Planet was a good creative process, I had some great bass tones involved in that, and great grooves, and we'd been on the road for a while, so it was good to get in the studio together. I think it’s great to bring in different musicians to motivate and inspire you, and after a while, Joe knew so many different musicians and what they did that he was able to write for specific players. He knew that in this or that particular song, a musician’s going to be able to come in and add what he was looking for to get a spark, and maybe find something in a song that he hadn't heard initially. We would always record as a band for Crystal Planet—that's the essence of any rock record, because, believe me, in the final product, you can hear when there’s a rhythm section actually playing and working up a sweat and looking at each other and communicating, versus studio musicians trying to play the part effectively and correctly according to the chart.

  Jeff Campitelli, me, and Stuart Hamm at The Plant in '97

  PHOTO BY NEIL ZLOZOWER

  For Crystal Planet, my original Peavey 5150 amp got the most use, along with my Marshall 6100, a Zoom headphone amp, and the rack-mounted SansAmp. My Ibanez Chrome Boy, Black Dog, and assorted JS1000s saw the most action in the guitar department. On a few songs we would add a vintage '58 Stratocaster, a '58 Les Paul Jr., my '58 Esquire, or even a Flying V, just to expand the sonics a bit.

  Mike Fraser: I usually mic each of Joe’s cabinets with a 57 and a 421, and then I'll put a 414 just somewhere nearby the cabinet, but in the room, just to kind of capture some of the room sound. With Joe, I'm working to get sort of silkier guitar sounds as opposed to aggressive, brash, rocky guitar sounds—they have to be a little bit more fluid sounding, which requires a slightly different approach. I still mic him generally the same as everything else, but it comes down ultimately to what Joe’s playing—if he’s running it through some chorusing effects or some delays, we will change his amps up a bit to get his tone si
nging a little more as opposed to jumping at you.

  Producer/engineer Mike Fraser at the console, The Plant, '97

  PHOTO BY NEIL ZLOZOWER

  With Joe’s sound, you have to take a little bit more care with things, because a lot of that sound we're looking for would come from the amps, so we'd start there and play around with how much distortion he wanted to have on the note. Because obviously, the more gain you have, the better the sustain, but then the note gets a little bit crunchier, so it’s not as silky. So there was a lot of balancing between how much gain to get that sustain, but at the same time we kept the sound smooth and easy and would play around with different levels of mid-range, boost, and all that stuff. And then sometimes I'd have to go and adjust my mic placement a little bit so it’s not right on the cone of the speaker, which would get a harsher sound. Then if you pulled it off the cone, it got kind of a more mellow sound, so it was a matter of finding that combination. But once we found what would work great within a track, depending on how thick that track was with other parts, it went pretty smooth. We knew where we had to go with the amp settings to get this tone, and Joe would add maybe a couple of pedals on to help push that tone to that direction.

  Joe would usually say, "Okay, let’s try this out," and at the end of the first pass, sometimes I'd say, "Hey, in the second verse there, why don't we try doing this?" and he'd give it a try, and as we tried that, we might stop and agree, "Yeah, that didn't work. Let’s go back to how you originally did it." So that process was ongoing as we were working on the album, versus being something that was sort of preplanned. Joe’s open-minded to any suggestions, but he does have an idea of tones and how he wants a particular guitar to speak and what voice it has. He had a pretty good idea of what personality he wanted in there as it related to effects, but he’s always been open to ideas on how to best create that.