VOODOO CHILE

Rip It Up, Issue 156, 1 July 1990, Page 16

VOODOO CHILE

I Ground Control to Steve Vai - I

Timeand again Steve Vai has proven himself amaster magician of guitar who delivers in the studio or on stage, seven hundred percent. e

His career was decided atage 15, having already writtenseveral choral and orchestral scores and taken guitar lessons from friend Joe Satriani. At 18 he was enlisted in Frank Zappa's band affer sending the man a transcript of an extremely difficult Zappa piece titled ‘The Black Page’. = Fouryears of touring and fifteen Zappa albums later Vai decided to build his own studio where he ) recorded the quirky Flex-Able. He then played in Alcatrazz for one album and tour, played the devil's guitaristin the movie Crossroads and formed a band with David Lee Roth. Eat'Em And Smile was the explosive result, followed by Skyscraper. Then came the offertojoin Whitesnake. Upon completion of all guitar parts on Slip Of The Tongue he refurned to his Mothership studio (now 24 track) and worked on his new guitar extravagarza Passion and Warfare. Now age 3J, witha multitude of musical achievements under his belt, whatunchartered territory will Vai venture into next¢ At time of talking he was on tour with Whitesnake. : David Coverdale mustbe quite agentleman and a greatsinger to work with? He is. As a matter of fact that's one ofthe reasons | joined the band. | wasn't prepared to deal with another infense ego-maniac, | mean he's got his ego and all, he's not a wimp, but he delivers every night. And he doesn't compromise the songs at all. We don'tbring the keys down or anything, he gets up there and kicks it." How did you feel about playing with another guitaristin the band? I was very nervous. | knew that it could work and it wasn't something | was negatively opposed fo. | didn’t wantto play with another guitarist on the album but it worked out that

wasn'tthe case. Live, | knew it could workif the other guitarist was mature and understood what | was trying to do and Adrian’s fabulous. | mean, he's a very accomplished guitar player and he's a very good friend too, so it's working very nicely. Much better than | expected. What are your plans once the Whitesnake tour is over?

Well, I might do one of several things. If Passion and Warfareis still - selling I'll probably go out with tapes. | have the entire record mixed

without any of the lead guitar parts. | might go outwith the tapes playing allthe rhythm parts and I'll play all the

‘beats, the melodies and all that stuff. That was one thought, in which case I'll make my way all around the world. It would be presented as a show. It wouldn't just be over-indulgent guitar wank. I'd make itreal interesting with lights and things like that. L You seem to have perfect timing inyour career. Aninstinctfor making the right move at the right time. : Yeah, that's basically what | go by. You can plan things ahead and set goals, which | do, butl have a lot of faith in fate, | have perfectfaith in fate. | believe something will come up and it will be a good thing whether it's a big money making adventure or not. Aslong as whateveryou do you put your heart into. When |left the David Lee Roth band, in some respects it was very hard because Iwas makingvery goodmoney and | hadgreat recognitionand alot of control in the studio. On the same hand it was very, very simple for me o leave because Dave was going in a different direction that| didn't wanna follow. | didn’tknow about the Whitesnake thing at the time but | knew | was goingto make Passion and Warfare no matter what happens. | Will we have to wait long for your nextalbum? 7 Well, you might have a long wait forthe nextinstrumental guitar album. llove doing it and all that but justdon’t know whatkind of market there s, | also like playing rock music with vocals. | really don't know what the future holds but | have faith _ whateveritisitwill be great. The album cover art must have been a long term project for Aaron Brown. : Yeah, he was a kid that sent me some artworkin the mail years ago and | started using himto do stuff. | - worked the guys from Ibanez onthe conceptforthe cover. : The wholealbumisa very emotional and personal statement fromyou. : The albumis a reflection of some events that took place when | was younger. | used to document - everything that | did. When I was aboutsixteen | had this rather strange experience in a dream state. ltwas very vivid, colourful and powerful, Later on | heard it could be termedan outofbody orastral projection. It sounds kind of weird but that's basically the concept behind Passion and Warfare. There's a story that goes with the album from

beginning to end that's going to be released as a novel under the same title. Were ‘Love Secrets’ and “The Riddle’ the strongest images? - Absolutely. ‘Love Secrets’ was the very strongest. What happened to me during the experience | depictin that song is probably the catalyst for any development of individuality | possess as a musician. | was subjected to an experience that was very mind-expanding and | perceived what could be done on the instrument and | witnessed certain feelingsand emotions asa performer, things that | never really saw or felt before. And then, you know, you wake up and you're in the real world and there’s no choice but forifto have an effect on you. Does that make sense? ‘ Sounds like you worked your fingers to the bone on the solo ‘For The Love of God'. Literally. When | recorded the lead for that song | hadn't played my guitar for about six weeks 'cos | was mixing and | wanted to save the song forthe end. The way | prepare fora song is probably different from most people. For that piece of music| fasted for four days, then | practised the piece fortwo days real solid and my fingers lost the callouses and the muscles and tendons were weak so they shredded and | started bleeding under the fingers. It was excrutiatingly painful fo touch : anything. But I still did the song, | had adeadline. : When the tape wasn'trolling | couldn'teven touch the guitar. When itwas rolling | just played. Maybe some of the performance fechnique suffered because | couldn't really play fast at all and when | tried to it came out a little sloppy. But by the same token there was a state of mind that | wasin from the pain and all the

fasting that | neededtobeinto produce that kind of song. : ~ Why do you fast? lusually fast for about ten days twice a year. It's a very good way of cleansingthe body.ldont -~~~ recommend itfor everyone. lfyou're not of a certain health standard it can really make you sick, butit's the best way foryour body to cleanse itself. There's a certain state of mind you getyourselfinto when you employ that kind of discipline to your body. | approach fasting for that certain

state of mind and for health reasons So you're not a meat eater. No, I'm a vegetarian. You get a super heavy funk sound on ‘The Animal’.

Yeah, although I'm a vegetarian that's a meat eating song (laughs). That extra B string sure makes a meaty difference. Definitely. It has an attitude! Did you play the ‘Universe’ on most of the album? :

The seven string? Yeah, as a matter offactlused it exclusively onthe

Whitesnake album with just a couple of harmony parts here and there on the 6-string. On this album | used the 7 string for about 80 percent of the music. It really opens up another world. You can put a high string on as opposedto the low string. | like. putting the low string on‘cosit's hard tofind high strings that don't break. It's good for whatever type of music you're playing. You can use itin jazz oras a walking bass line for chord voicings which you just can’tdo on the 6-string, and for classical music for counterpoint. - Havelbanez putiton the market yet? R

Yes. It originally started out just for me then a lot of other artists wanted one. We decided to do a marketing campaign and it blew out the door before we even knew what was

going on. Now they're justtrying to fillthe orders. It Il probably be inthe stores fairly shortly. You usually record really loud

don’tyou? P | started to, but a lot of the stuff on Warfareis actually very soft. With the right EQ it doesn't matter how loud it is, you can get a very powerful sound soft. Sometimes when it's loud it

doesn'tsound nearly as good because you tweak the mike out and you have to end up using mike pads and that doesn'tgive you areal natural sound.

How many tracks would you use ina piecelike ‘E.N.”? There'sso much going on inthere. | didn’tuse the harmonisers for

melody lines. On the guitars there's a lot of effects but there's a lot of

preconceived sounds that | get from scraping the strings with a razor blade ortonguing the strings, using the cordto getthatzapsound. - ‘E.N’is one of the major songs from the Passion and Warfare dream state. Inthe dream state | was

actually playing these sounds on the guitar and all these extremely - unnatural sounds were coming out of it. There was one sound that | heard and saw myself dowhere | held the guitar upside down and there was holesin the back like a flute and I was blowing into the holes and playing them with myfingers and moving the. whammy bar and creating this

feedbacksound al! atthe same time to make it sound like this flute. It was really wild. I'mjusttrying to emulate that flute sound that saw myself doingin my dream. It was so amazing, itwas more than inspiring, it was devestating. : Were youinvolved in the design of the Eventide 3000? - Yes, years ago when they decided to make a harmoniser they came to me and asked me what were some of the things I'd like fo see ina harmoniser. | told them they should make it with diatonic pitch change. That'll follow the guitar in key ‘cos if you have a harmoniser and you set it to aninterval it tracks what you're playing in parallel harmony which bascially means it stays at the same interval no matter what note you play. Now sometimes that interval doesn'twork if you wantto stay ina cerfain key so what this thing does i, you can pop in akey orpopina synthetic scale and whatever notes you play. Ifyou setitto an interval of afourth and you play aroundina certain key, when it gets to where the interval meets fo an augmented fourthto be diatonic, the harmoniser willshiftitso it's diatonic to the key. If Hendrix is your main influence spiritually, would Satriani, Beck and Page be musically and Zappa composition-wise? That's pretty safe to say in the music world. The majority of my influences were non-musical and | think that - holds true for anybody. Musicians caninfluence you but it's what shapes your personality that's the real : influences. Things like the _ environment, your parents, your

friends and your own self esteem. That determines what kind of music youlisten to. | was very much into the people you said for the reasons you mentioned but later on in life | started studying other lines of thought that were huge influences on me, that | feel are at the crux of what | do

today. : : Have you seen Frank Zappa lately? I spoke to him onthe phone the other day for along time. He's doing good work on some really incredible music-(as usual). : Are we going to hear Steve Vai and Joe Satriani on record together someday? ‘Maybe one of these days. I'd love to and | know he'd like to As a matter offact the first time | ever recorded anything in my life was at Joe's house ataguitar lesson called ‘Reflections of aYear and a Half "cos that's how long | was playing and I still have the tape. I'd love to do something with Joe. It'sjusta matter of timing. It was certainly a surprise when you turned up on the Public Image album.

That came up a while ago. | flew in fortwo days and did all the guitars on the record. It was a good experience, totally differentfrom working on a record for months and months. | justwentin an did itand didn’thave any of the responsibilities. | didn’t even hear alot of the music onthere before | recorded it. They justlet the tape roll and ljust played andthere’s one song on there called ‘Ease’ and would you believe the guitarsolo, | didn'teven hear t. only heard the solo once on playback and | didn't hear the track before | recorded it. . Whatare the favourite pieces you've worked on? The Attitude Song’ on Flex-Able and ‘Shy Boy’ on Eat ‘Em and Smile. Steve Vai’s personal symbol is a pyramid with an eye in the middle and number 7in each corner. The 7s are to counteract his beastly birthdate (6/6/6) but what is the meaning behind the pyramid? There's alot of meaning behind it but!'ll just say this very simply. If you hold it upside downiit'saV, if you hold itrightside up it'san A and then there's an eye (1) in the middle. V-A-1. There's more to itthan that but that's all | care to reveal right now. Your main advice to guitarists? There's a lot of things to say about the instrument. About your career |'d say keep your publishing, don't ever stand in front of a camera or say anythingin an interview that anybody else tells you to do and you don'tfeel comfortable with. How's that? Will we get to see Steve Vailive one day down here? It'shard to say. I'd love to be down there right now — maybe not now, it's winter down there, right? | apologise to everybody for not being down there sooner. I've never been in power. Soon as | am, | will be downthere.

GEOFFDUNN