Loving the Alien

Rip It Up, Issue 137, 1 December 1988, Page 10

Loving the Alien

THE JOE SATRIANI EXPERIENCE

Those who attended Mickjagger’s concert last month would surely have been impressed, not only with the singer’s great performance but also with his band of high calibre musicians. .k A

The band stormed through his songs, Stones classics and hot versions of James Brown and Jimi Hendrix numbers. Guitarist Joe " Satriani made his own special contribution to the sound with fluent • . playing and raunchy lead breaks but ■ that was only a taste of this man's capabilities. Just listen to his own instrumental alburns Surfing With The Alien or Not Of This Earth and you'll soon discover what this amazing guitar player and teacher is really all about. The.? energy, warmth and honesty of his music reflects his own personality; he is certainly a very friendly and inspiring character (at his Auckland in-store record shop appearances he made extra efforts to ensure that he spoke to everybody). Since his fascinating musical background has already been well documented, let's see what he has to say about it all. Did you fly into Auckland last night? "Yes, a connecting flight from Sydney. I saw a lot of beautiful countryside coming in." No spacecraft, then? "No spacecraft, no. That would be nice but unfortunately all very earthly transportation here." You must have played to some huge crowds with Mick? t, ■-. "We played a place in Jakarta that was built for 120,000. We had just under 100,000 there after they let the rioters in. There were riots going on outside the stadium. There were J people who couldn't get in so they let them in for the last song. I think they destroyed 90 cars outside—l saw black smoke billowing over from outside the stadium, soldiers with machine guns. What a place. It's nice

to be back here in civilisation." How did you land the tour with Jagger?

"His bassist Doug Wimbish and I met at a Chicago show and he saw my trio play with Steve Vai as a guest

player. Doug reported back to Mick and suggested getting me in the band. About four months later their offices got in touch with Steve Vai about the possibility of him coming down to jam with Jagger. He declined because he was in the middle of doing SkyscrapervAh David Lee Roth, but he said they should give me a call. Nothing happened until January when I was playing in L.A. again with Steve Vai as a guest. By then Surfing With The Alien had been released and was doing very well. Doug Wimbish again saw the show and went back to rehearsals, insisting Mick should bring me in for an audition. "Mick just flew mein. The band and I playedforaboutan hourorso while Mick was outside listening through the door, trying to check me out, then he popped in and we just started playing. We had a good time. He's a lot of fun, the whole band's like that really." Drums & Wires What equipment are you using for the Jagger show? "I'm using two Marshall 100 watt half-stacks but I'm using a Randall pre-amp and no wah-wah pedal, just a little delay forsome of the solos and that's it actually. It's a very straight ahead gig and I play a Fender strar for almost the entire show, except for the solo in which I use the Ibanez. In this band there's always guitar, always two keyboards, drums, bass and five people singing so subtelties justdidn't work—l needed somethingthatwasa little bit thinner and more cutting in orderto be heard. It was a challenge, a nice break to get away from using the vibrato bar just for a change. I'm pretty much at home just playing straight guitar." What's the story behind the Surfing With The Alien album cover and title? "It wasn't going to be called Surfing With The Alien. It was just a strange title that popped into my head without much effort. I used the title as a catalyst to write what I

thought should be the most fun-sounding guitar song where I could just play every kind of wild guitar, but it couldn't be heavy—it had to sound kind of fun. I wanted the song to be a guiltless expression of rock'n'roll roots and everything — that's why there's little hints of Chuck Berry and whatever all through it. It was such an absurd title that it started to create a little movie in my head. "So I finished the record and sent it off to the record company. I was on the phone to the production manager, Jim Koslavski, and I told him what it was going to be called. He laughed and told me his nickname used to be the Silver Surfer and it would be a good idea to put the Surfer on the cover. Believe it or not I had no idea what he was talking about! So he started telling me about this comic strip character on a surfboard. I said look, this evil character no, 'cause I had made a deal with the record company that there would be no tasteless violence or anything like that associated with my records. Jim said no, this guy's a good guy, so he sent me two comic strips. Here was this funny but intense-looking figure with these metaphysical problems running through his head all the time. I was looking through these pages thinking any page could be an album cover. So we made a deal with Marvel Comics and went and licensed one of the original plates." Hendrix & Gama lons So, Jimi Hendrix was your main influence... "Yeah, and continues to be. As I have become more experienced in lifeif's easiertoseeJimi and his life and how human he really was. As a young kid growing up I was infatuated with this bizarre musical character. If I listen to'Electric Ladyland' or something I'm just so impressed because I know how few tools he had to work with. He really made a statement and it's a lasting statement—it's really remarkable

► created this strong and beautiful

music." : What's the key to being able to express yourself so naturally through. an instrument? . "I don't know if I have an answer forthat. It is definitely a goal, everytime I pick up the guitar, to make that transmission from feelings to music as vivid as possible. I suppose you have to relax. You have to put all thoughts of career and ego and what ■ it looks like, all those sorts of things—you have to forget them. ''/.J' • . "Some people are not good at knowing things because it stops them from being creative, whereas other people thrive on it. I've personally never had a problem knowing a lot and using that to be expressive. . Other students I have feel uncomfortable knowing a lot about music, they prefer to sort of blindly charge ahead. There were a lot of people like Jimi Hendrix, who may not have known all the proper names forall the things he was playing, but he had his own language, and that's all that really matters. Inadvertantly you become theoretical about whatever it is that you're doing. Either you use your own words or you use the accepted ones. If you're the type that likes to let the world in and then reflect itthen knowing music theory helps you digest it really quick. ; . "A good example of that is when we were in Jakarta recently. Mick threw a party for the band and - invited a Gamalon orchestra to play. During the break I went up to one of the musicians and had him show me how to play this one string instrument. , I knew from the sound of the music what was going on. I knew that all the bells were patatonic and I knew the basic thrust of theit music. It's not that I get intellectual about it but it's immediate with me. Then one guy taps me on the shoulder. I didn't know Indonesian and they weren't very good at English. He was showing me howto playa single battery on these gamalons. I started doing that and all of a sudden Jimmy

came over and the guy showed him how play something and before we knew it we had almost the whole band playing these and we just jammed for about 40 minutes. We just surrendered ourselves to these gamalon players to guide us with the spirit of the music. Nobody in the ■ • band was hindered by any intellectual barrier." ?• ■ ' Teaching & Learning How long have you been teaching music? - . ;< "On and off for 1 5 years, maybe more." ' What was Steve Vai like back then? "He was one of my first students. - He was remarkable, I knew after a few weeks that he was going to be a fantastic player." What about another of your students, Metallica's Kirk Hammett? "I bought the new Metallica last . night and I haven't had time to stick it on yet. He was excited about it. I heard the demo tapes because the night before I left on tour we had our last lessons and he would bring in these tapes and say what can I play over this, and they were going to be the songs on the record. He was 7 trying to figure out options for solos. He had his own ideas and a lot of the stuff he was playing he wasn't quite sure what the names of it were, but he was coming up with some fantastic stuff. I'm really looking foward to - throwing that cassette on and seeing ' what it sounds like." What do you listen to yourself? "Just about anything. I've been listening to the Sugarcubes this last week. They have this woman vocalist whose singing is unbelievable." \ . Composing Yourself . With songs like 'Always With Me' and 'Rubina', do you know already how they will sound before you play them? "With 'Rubina' I had the song written in my head. It took me a while - to come up with the right tuning because there is just guitar playing

harmonics, and the synth bass, and that is really the only rhythm in the entire song. So the way to do that was to create two or three tunings.. The guitar sound itself we '■; experimented with for a while. I told John, we have to somehow record it . so that when the solo comes on it's • heavy but still sounds beautiful —it can't be flat in your face. We had to put one mike up close and we took another mike and put it about 1 2 feet away in the air. So what we got were these two really strange tracks, and by putting them together gotthis faraway sound I was looking for. J? "With 'Always' I'd come up with the song rhythmically and harmonically, but when I first started to play over it I realised I didn't have the finnesse to bring the song to the proper level. I'd sit down and play for an hour, stop for an hour or two and then go back and listen to it again, play some more ... It took about three days to figure out what I was supposed to do on it. I know that I wanted it to be a continuous statement, not like verse, chorus, solo. I wanted it to be a linear guitar piece. I knew what it was but my fingers weren't quite there yet, so I had to train myself to be subtle." It must be very rewarding to be . able to inspire guitar players and give others listening pleasure at the same time? "I love it, that's a dream y'know. When people like your music, that's great. I remember doing the trio shows and playing a song like 'Always With Me, Always With You' and hearing the audience singing the melody over the volume of the guitar. I feel extremely fortunate." What's your goal for the future, Joe? "To keep doing what I'm doing would be nice. That success would also allow me to grow musically but I'm certainly not going to let any lesser amount of success stop me from playing music so I'm just going to try to stay alive, make the world a better place and keep playing guitar."

GEOFFDUNN