Joe Satriani

short tour, maybe just about eleven dates or something like that, all West Coast, and so we thought, well, yeah, let's just keep going. It's so much fun. Eric had other commitments, so then we thought, well, maybe it's just me and Steve.

And then as soon as we agreed we thought that'd be a cool idea, someone said, well, you guys would be great if you had a track, And then so I started to write some music and sent it to Steve and then all of a sudden, it was like, hey, you guys should do an album and keep this tour going as long as you can. So here we are. We're on the Satchfy tour, the first leg of it, and we've got a song out and a video and it's a reality. It's just so cool.

was a kid, that was the dream. I always thought, when you got to be a famous rock star, you could just hang out with your friends and play guitar all the time and make music. But in fact it was the opposite. The labels, the promoters, managers were very protectable of their artists, and you just good luck trying to stand next to another guitar player on stage, especially if they did something similar to yourself. So I thought, well,

I just got to turn that upside down. So in a moment of contrarian thought, you know, I said, what if we just made our own festival where every night I'd get to stand next to my favorite guitar players and we would just try to I have fun, out do each other, whatever you want to call it, but we'd celebrate the guitar with the audience and everyone thought it was a great idea. We had to figure out

how to get it down. You couldn't do it with like twelve guitarists or so, because as you know, you kind of rent the venue every night and there's a curfew. You got to get in, do the show, and you got to get out. So if I had even seven guitar players, they wouldn't really have enough time to play to feel like it was worth their while to come out. So we eventually in that meeting after a few hours,

we whittled it down to three. If we could fit three guys, we could get them, entice them with the offer that they could come with their own band, play for forty five fifty minutes, do their hit single, their new music, whatever they want to do, as long as they stick around for the end jam and we play for a half hour, and we'd play not our own songs, but we celebrate the music we grew up listening to.

So that took about a year to convince the promoters and the managers that it was a good idea, And it was my job to sell each package to the promoters, which was also difficult. Some promoters would like one of my choices and wouldn't like the other, you know, and so that went back and forth, but I had it set in my mind it had to be Steve and it had to be Eric, and I just pushed that and then come October of ninety six, it was our first show. It just so happened that a few days

before then, it was my son's fourth birthday. We just moved into a new house and we figured he's old enough to travel now. So that was his first tour, was the G three tour. So he joined us with the bus and it was really fascinating, you know, for all of us, I think for myself, my wife Robina, having a child out on tour, that was something. For Zez,

of course, it was you know, life altering. But he grew up, you know, hanging out with Robert Fripp and Kenny wyn Sheppard and Steve I and Eric Johnson and all the band members, and he just kept coming on tour until about high school and the schools were like, you can't just take your kid out, you know, all the time. So we started changing the touring schedule to

work around that. And you know, he like any kid growing up, when he did, he was really into making skateboard videos and so he by default was handed the camera half the time to film us. You know, his dad and his buddies just goofing around trying to figure out what to do with the Internet. And he brought a lot of life into what was an unusual thing for the rest of us, for us grown ups, you know.

So his history really was about growing up with a very strange father who played rock guitar in the era of hip hop and pop music, and his observations and his life being the son of an almost famous guy. And he wanted to make a film about that and about G three and about guitar playing and what it

means to everybody involved. And so the movie has evolved quite a bit, and he's interviewed, you know, Robert and Brian May and Steve Miller and Steve VII and everybody in between, maybe about thirty or forty different guitar players. Since then, he came on tour with us on this G three reunion tour and for the first time he joined me on stage for a song and played a song his mind blowing moment for us as Fall and Son. But that I think that was a crucial thing in

the film for him to really experience that. After watching from the sidelines for you know, three decades, he finally got to figure out for himself what it really feels like to walk on stage and play summer song. You know.

comrade guitar players, and we've remained the closest friends. And that's when we've toured together countless times, So we go way back. I didn't know Eric Johnson at all, but in the years leading up to that, I was really a big fan, and we actually toured together and nineteen ninety. But I have to say I didn't I wouldn't say to you like we were best friends or something like that. He was just a guy admired that was on a tour with us for a few weeks in nineteen ninety.

I did twist his arm to do some jamming every night, you know, when we completed our set. But he's a much mellower guy than me and my buddies, I guess, so sometimes he would he would decline. Other times I just thought he was amazing, and at that time I thought that he represented a really beautiful forward thinking way of playing the electric guitar that a lot of people

didn't know was possible. He really had his own voice and a unique set of influences, and he was so different than Steve and I. We were just Long Island kids listening growing up, listening to Hendrix and Zeppelin and Sabbath and and Eric was exotic by comparison, you know. So it did. Like I said before, it was arm twisting. Because my manager would call their manager, and like just about every other response, there's a there's a guarded response,

you know. Each manager is like, well, I don't know, I don't know if my artist wants to be seen in this light standing next to that person. And very often the case, I'd reach out to two guitar players and one of them would refuse to play with the other for no reason, you know, stylistic, personal, I don't know what. And I always used to tell them, look that you know, the audience has already decided who their favorite is, so you're not going to change your mind.

It's not a contest. It really isn't. You might think it is because that's how we've been brought up in the entertainment industry. But the audience is smarter. They've already made up their mind. They don't really care. They just there's so happy that we're playing together and that we're playing songs that are not us selling like our latest single or something like that. We're actually just relaxed, casually playing. But they do get to see us push each other

to excel, and not everyone's comfortable with that. That's cool. Not every artist has the same set of tools, you know, and that's way cool. Steve and I were just so comfortable with it. We just as soon as we're standing next to each other with guitars, we just start seeing how far we can go until someone, you know, taps us on the shoulder and says, okay, that's enough. So not every other guitar player gets that or feels that way naturally, but most do.

that was cool. What the other thing that was confirmed was that the audience felt exactly the way I did, which is they really wanted to see this. They really wanted to celebrate with us all the things about the electric guitar that you could do. And let's face it, when you're in a popular band and there's a lot riding on the success of a new album or something, you're guarded. You're putting on a show. You don't show everybody everything. You just show them what you want them

to respond to. But this is different. This is a G three tour. This is where you can play whatever you want. It's the complete guitarist safe zone. You can you can be demure, you can be way over the top. Anything is acceptable as long as you do it sort of within the brother and sisterhood of the band. You know, and you know that you're including the audience, they're part of the show. So those are the things that were confirmed.

The things that surprised me that the negative things were how some people don't like to play with other people. It's kind of is the thing you learn, like in the in the playground, like when you're a little kid, that there are some kids that love to play with other kids and other kids don't you know, and you just got to learn how to avoid them.

and there's no pacing. Really, you get fifty minutes to go out there, so it's kind of a supercharge set that you do. And then you get to this jam and you if you really feel up to it. You are pushed to your limit and you really don't know what's happening. You just don't know what the guy next to you is going to play. And that's happening here right now on the sash By tour. Because Steve and I are totally crazy. We just don't care if we push ourselves to the brink and we fall off the edge.

We find it so much fun and so fascinating, and we know that we've got each other to, you know, to pick each other up if we kind of screw up or go too far.

whatever Robert Fripp wants, we will acquiesce, you know. And so sure enough people would come in and they'd be finding their seats, and they'd be hearing this beautiful music soundscapes, and people who knew about Robert Frip would immediately start to look and go, hey, I think that's Robert Frip up there playing, and other people wouldn't pay attention at all if they weren't, you know, familiar with Robert's music.

And then the lights would go down and the show would start, and you know, I think we had Kenny Wayne Sheppard actually opening up. The first G three's actually were like fives G fives in a way. But yeah, Robert. You know what comes to mind is this photograph that really stuck with me for years, which was I think it was we were playing maybe Jones Beach or something like that, and there's a picture of Robert Fripp by

his gear with his guitar on. Standing next to him is a four year old ZZ holding a plastic pail and shovel and to me, that was just like the beauty of the tour is that it really was a relaxed family atmosphere when it was at its best, everyone was so happy to be on the tour and knowing as I said before, it was a safe place for guitar players. But it was just a really happy group of musicians and crew, and almost all of them were

like that. We only had a few that had the usual tensions here and there, but they and last you.

we lean on him to sing. So I thought I should just check with Ray some of these weird ideas I have. So we were just texting beforehand, like what do you feel like singing? Can you sing this? Can you sing that? And we just threw threw out some silly songs, and at one point I thought, I want to do a Metallica song. And I don't know why it dawned on me. I just thought, you know, maybe because he's he had just recently interviewed Kirk for the documentary,

but so Kirk was on my mind. So I just I thought, what would be a fun song to do where we could stretch somewhere, you know, we could stretch it out and improvise around it. And I thought of Enter Sandman. But when I texted it to Ray, I was actually joking because he Ray's got a beautiful voice and he doesn't sound like James Headfield at all. But the response was positive and immediate from Ray. He was like, no, we got to do that song. I want to do it.

So that's how that happened. And then I wanted to balance it with something really old and so I picked the Kinks. He really got me. I thought that would be a really great one. And for the first time, actually we're playing a song that's one of ours. So the first piece of music that I wrote for our collaboration is a song called the Sea of Emotion Part one, and we decided to play that as our first song. And it kind of makes sense since it's not a G three, you know, it really is a satch by tour.

So and that's great because it has special meaning to both Steve and I.

music is perfect. So where does instrumental rock music belong. I have no idea. All I know is that I am a child of rock and roll. I love rock bands, I love melody, I love harmony. I was taught music theory in high school by a Julia graduate who was a brilliant teacher that somehow got stuck in this teeny little public high school in car Place. And so I've

got these influences from my older siblings. I'm the youngest of five and my parents were total jazz freaks, so my influences are huge, and I love all of it. I love dense harmony. I love complicated and simple, but if it doesn't have a great melody, I don't really like it. So I've never been into complicated music because it's complicated. I see no charm in that whatsoever. And I know that music is I mean, musicians are supposed to make music for people. That's what we're supposed to do.

So we're supposed to make music to accompany life, and life is crazy, and sometimes you need music to commiserate with, sometimes to celebrate with everything in between. So when I was a young kid, I realized that the intervals, the space is between the notes and the relationship between the melody and the harmony of the most important mood creators ever, that tells the story. And if you've got lyrics, then you're telling the audience exactly what you want them to think.

And if you don't have lyrics, well then you've really given them a gift where they can listen to Moonlight Sonata and decide for themselves whether it's a happy song or a sad one, and they can use it as they like. And I love that. So like when I was a kid and I heard Third Stone from the Sun by Hendrix, it was cathartic, it was beautiful, and I thought, wow, this is amazing, this is like so powerful. And I knew he was being funny at times with the song, but to me, the music was so powerful.

It reminded me of listening to Miles Davis or West Montgomery coming from my parents' living room.

a Hendrix fanatic. And when he died, I decided that very day I was going to pick up the guitar and I was going to dedicate myself to playing the guitar.

silly enough to take up a career in music. But I have to say growing up on Long Island was at that time was the best thing ever, I mean the freedom. First of all, my parents were tired by the time I came around, so I benefited from my siblings breaking them down continually for years and years, and then I came along and they're like, okay, whatever you know,

do whatever you want. Plus the sixties happened, right, So I turned fourteen in nineteen seventy and as you well know, from fifty nine to sixty nine, all hell breaks loose in America, and so I just you know, I mean, my rock band practice in the basement, and my parents would woo.

music theory classes in public high school. People don't know that. But back then in New York there was a board of regents. Education in public schools was actually really good. So I didn't do well. I was in Catholic school for the first five years and got in trouble all the time, until both my parents and the nuns and the priests decided that kids got to go.

were music classes, I mean, that's crazy. And there were sports classes, so I mean, you could physically exert yourself. And I, you know, I'm not a big guy or anything, but when you're that young, most everyone's the same size. And by the time I got around to quitting the football team was the right time because at that age, big guys are going to start getting big and if you're not one of them, you're going to get creamed

on the football field. And so it turned out that the timing was right for me to move on and to become a full time musician. By then, though, I benefited from the fact that I had a good upbringing about exercising in health and whatnot. So I think that I I mean, when I walked out of the coach's office, I was standing up straight. I was a strong kid, not very big, but very strong and healthy, and I

knew what I was doing. So I felt really good, even though I was traumatized by the death of Jimmy Hendrix.

they made me stop. It was a beautiful world. And when I got to see Ringo and Charlie Watts playing on television, that's you know, I mean, what kid doesn't want to make a lot of noise? And drums make a.

And that went on for a couple of years, and you know, I learned how to read and to play all the all the stuff, and he would, you know, teach me the beatles and stones, all the stuff I was into. But ultimately, I mean I didn't know it at the time, but now I can look back and say I was a bit too spacey to be a drummer, because a drummer has to be attentive to every millisecond of a song. They are, they're responsible for keeping it.

You know, they're driving the bus. Basically everyone else is, especially guitar players, are changing seats all the time on the bus. But the drummer is driving the bus. And I started not to realize that I wasn't cut out for that. I wanted to float on top. And when rock music really became rock music what sixty six maybe, you know, when there was a shift from rock and roll to like rock songs that weren't about boys and girls and stuff, and you start to hear different sounds

coming out of the guitars. I started to feel like I was, you know, playing the wrong instrument. And my older sister's boyfriends were fascinated by the fact that I loved anything that they would bring over. So they'd bring over the latest Who record or Hendrix or anything, and they'd play it for me just to look at my reaction. And of course I was enthralled by all of it. But Hendricks changed my DNA. As soon as I heard the first song, I just my whole life was different,

and I knew that that was a path. I just couldn't intellectually understand what it was going to do to me until until I found out that he died, and then I knew exactly what I was going to do.

to see Jethro Tull there. They were absolutely fabulous, just amazing, so two completely unique bands for the time. It was just fantastic. I absolutely loved it, and I'd go to the film more. I remember seeing Steve Miller at the fillmore that I think the week that Hendricks died, it was the first time I went to the Fillmore East and saw Steve play. You know, he tells me a funny story about that, because I remember I was sitting

in the balcony with all the grown ups. You know, I was just a little kid, and I just the whole thing was magic, just like this is. I remember thinking, this is when I grow up. This is what I want to do. I want to hang out to rock music. And I remember the first time I got to play with Steve. I told him the story about what a magical show that was, and he said to me, his

perspective was totally different. Whereas Mungo Jerry was on that show and they had hit at the time in the summertime, and Bill innocently had given out plastic red plastic clown noses to the audience for some reason to celebrate this song, I guess. And so when Mungo Jerry played, and I think there's another band called Clouds that played as well, you know, they played the hit and everyone was happy

and everything was fun. And then Steve comes out, and of course it's kind of somber because Hendricks has just died and Steve wants to come out and play a set playing tribute to Jimmy Hendricks, except that everyone's got these clown noses and they start throwing them on stage. And I don't remember that I was sitting in the balcony. I don't remember that aspect of it, maybe because I was getting high from all the smoke. But anyway, Yeah, we used to go there, Gaelic Park, Academy of Music.

I mean, there's so many places, even out to the island, like to Coomac and watch all the bands touring.

do it. I don't love and I know, And right then I knew what I really wanted to do, so I just turned around. I went inside. I went into coach Redden's office and I said something like, Jimmy Hendricks has died, and I'm gonna you know, I can't be on the football team because I'm going to devote my life to the guitar. And I maybe, I mean most likely because I wasn't such a valued team member. He probably didn't put up much of a fuss, but he went, okay, I take off your stuff and you know, put it

in the locker. So I walked home that night, and over a typical Italian American dinner, I stood up and told everybody that Jimmy Hendricks had died and I was going to be a guitar player. And then there's a lot of yelling and screaming, but eventually worked out.

corner of her room, very quietly, not bothering anybody. And it wasn't lost on me that it was a more personal instrument, that she could really enjoy music and express herself without announcing it to the entire house, like if you're a drummer, you know where everybody hears everything you do.

And I hadn't really thought very much about that, you know, bringing that into my life until that moment when over dinner, I announced I was going to be a guitar player, and my sister Marian said, well, you can borrow them on you can start with that. And then my other sister, Carol, who had just started teaching at art at Westbury High School, said that she would donate her first week's paycheck for

an electric guitar, which was at Roosevelt Field. I don't know if you remember Roosevelt Field in the Island, the first shopping malls, and Matthew's music was there, and they had a guitar that I had that I had been looking at because it kind of looked like Jimmy's white stratocaster. But I think in my little brain at the time, I didn't know there was Fender Gibson or in this case Hackstrom. But this was one hundred and twenty dollars

Hackstrom three guitar, a low cost Swedish guitar. And so we went there about a week or so and she was kind enough to purchase the guitar for me. And I had a My family had a woolen sack tape recorder that they used to use to record or Jesuit speeches all the time. And so since my parents had already gone through the drum face and I didn't have a big drum kit, it took years, you know, to pay off, like getting each little piece. I started with a pad, and then a snare drum, and then this

and that. You know, they were a little skeptical and they weren't about to go out and get me an amplifier. So they said, well, maybe you can use this, And so for I don't know, six months, i'd plug into this woolen sack tape recorder and the only way I could hear myself would be to record, and I would record over the jesuit speeches, sorry Jesuits, and then I'd listen to myself. And this was key to my development because usual beginners, they you know, the moment passes and

they don't know how much they suck, you know. But I knew because I realized when I'd finished playing for ten minutes, I go, oh, I can listen to myself back now, and I'd play it back and I'd go like, oh my god, I'm the worst. How am I going to get better? So it was it was a good tool actually, because I started to realize, you know, you got to play in tune, you got to play in time. There's such a thing as tone. There's a lot to work on.

So I just thought, well, I'll memorize these and then I'll make a sort of a mental note that when I lift off my third finger, it's this extra version of this chord. And later on I learned I was doing suspensions what we call in music suspensions, and changing thirds to fourths or thirds to seconds and things like that. But I would because I couldn't. I wasn't taking lessons from somebody who was teaching me songs. I just started writing my own songs and I thought, well, somewhere the

on line, i'll just get better. And so a lot of what I learned in the first six months or so, I was just learning how to write it with my limited vocabulary.

have that, that you got to do that. You may not be the fastest drummer, the loudest drummer, or the the most complicated, but once you start, you got to keep going until the song is over. So I applied that to the guitar. And then after a number of months, some older kids in the school must have heard me playing somewhere at high school, they invited me into the band and they were fascinated with the same thing that I could just sit there and hang with them without

being given direction. They'd start a you know, some Joe walshong or something, you know, and they and I'd say, well, what are the chords, and they say, well, it's just kind of like does this thing at a minor, and I'd be comfortable with that, and I could hang with that and go back and forth and play things around it, because that's how I taught myself, which is to to build a personal vocabulary around chords as a way of

making music. And so they asked me to join the It was fascinating because I really did not have the technique like what you're talking about, but I could carry a song with the limited technique that I had, and I just learned not to show people what I couldn't do, just focus on what I was capable of doing and get the song finished. And I found that there was so much to share with the bass player, the drummer

and the other guitar player on a musical level. It was like you started speaking a foreign language that you were really good at that you didn't know you were good at, and other people in your band knew that language too, and you would converse during a song and you would throw things back and forth and have some fun. And I thought, wow, this is the most important technique because we would be doing this at a party in a backyard or at a high school dance where your

peers were ruthless. If you didn't play well, they'd let you know right away. But I learned the importance of being able to play music first and foremost, rather than acquiring technical skills. It was, in fact that the best, the most important umbrella of technical skills. But it just didn't have They didn't have names, you know what I mean. They weren't written down in books, you know, like chapter one, Start, don't stop, finish you know number two. Pay attention to

the audience. Lift them up when they want to be lifted up, bring them down when they want to go down. These are the things you learn only by playing for people, your siblings, your parents. You play in a kindergarten, you play in a club, you play in an arena. It doesn't matter where you're playing. You still got to make it work for the audience. So that was part of my earliest instruction was playing for people. And I loved it. I was terrified. I'm still terrified, but I love it

as well. But on the other side of it, I had a hunger for music. I really wanted to understand the mystery of music. When I heard Beethoven, I thought, this is so beautiful. What does he know? How does he put that together? I remember sitting in my bedroom one afternoon and Roundabout came on the radio, and I remember staring at the radio and I admitted to myself, I don't know what is going on, Like, what are they doing? How do they know how to put this

all together and play together? It sounds so complicated to me, but deep inside I knew it was. I bet there's an e minor chord in there somewhere. They're just doing it better than the way.

over it in school and I loved it. And he didn't care that I played Black Sabbath really loud most of the time when I wasn't at school. He would just sit down and show me, like, you know, this is just music and you can apply it to any style, and so it was a wonderful time, very fruitful learning experience that I had in high school.

professional lives, real jobs. But I love that experience. And you know the difference when you're fourteen and you're playing with a sixteen year old, that's like they're really old. And so I paid attention and I learned every moment that I was playing with them about, you know, how to play music with people and how to play music for people, And those two things were the I always realized were the foremost. It's not about achieving a technical level for yourself or for itself. I don't know if

I'm expressing myself correct. Yeah, you know what I mean. You can get fascinated with just sitting there and playing something just a little faster, a little bit more compliment. Maybe it's because I loved simple music as much as I loved complex music. To me, it was just music. And I used to watch my parents with the jesuits, you know, drinking scotch, smoking cigarettes, playing folk music on my sister's guitar, having a great time. I used to

watch them have parties listening to jazz. I watched my sisters dancing to motown music, funk music, my brother playing harmonica to Muddy Waters music. And it always seemed to me the music was something that accompanied us in our lives. It was part of the expression of being alive. That was the most important part. And so how could you how could you rate you know, Beethoven, Miles, Muddy Waters, Pete Townsend. I mean, you can't say one's better than

the other. These are giants. They've learned how to transcend their instruments and make life, you know, with sound. It's just I was fascinated with that.

guy in the band, that kind of man. Typical high school stuffs as the social scene changes, and then we wind up with a different drummer, and then it's some So if Mishwa Khan becomes Tarsus and Tarsus becomes a band, that's I'm in for a good year and a half, two years. We have two singers. At one point I meet some crazy you know this boy that era, that period from fourteen to twenty one is insane. It's just

if you can get through it, God bless you. You know, I don't know how we get through those those years, but so much fun, so much drama, but through it all well, you know, I moved on from that hackstrum. I was able to We used to have classified papers back then, and you'd be able to find people selling stuff. I wound up buying a telecaster, sixty eight telecaster, and then I traded it for a Less Paul a little bit later. And I think this is because the other

guitar player, John Ricchio, it was really brilliant guitarist. I learned so much from him. He was really into the James Gang. And when when Joe Wall switched to less Paul, I was unaware of this. John eventually said, you got to get rid of that Telly and get a less Paul, and so I moved into the less Paul thing. Never stayed in tune God Almighty those late sixties less Pauls, and didn't really move on to playing like a Fender Stratu till I moved out to Berkeley, California. But we

had so much fun. I mean, just the craziest of times that you know, I mean, when you're doing that, when you're playing, when you're when you're playing bars and you're fifteen years old. You're living a life that you know, you thought only grown ups lived, you know, but you see just the craziest part of life. You know, people are smoking and drinking and getting in fights and getting in trouble, and there's basically sex, drugs and rock and roll.

But you still have to go back to school, you know, at when Monday morning comes. And we used to you know, sometimes I remember, for a good long time, I must have been in tenth or eleventh grade at the time, we drove out to the Hamptons and found a gig. I'm not even sure how we got this gig, but we found a weekend gig and we started to go out there and do these little road trips. And my parents, as I said before, had kind of given up trying to raise me as a normal person. Had let me

go with the guys and hang out. And there would be like twelve of us in one bedroom cabin in the back of a club somewhere, staying for the weekend. But it was fun. I mean, I just learned so much about playing music for people during that, because you know, when you're on stage and you're playing, even if you're in the corner of a little club. You're observing people when they don't think anybody's watching. You just see their

lives play out. They're just they're getting loose and they're doing everything right in front of you, and they don't

think you're watching, but you are. And it made a big impression on me, not only the reaction to the way that I played in the songs that we played, but I just learned by watching, just like you would watch if you were if you were into baseball, and you're watching a baseball game and someone does something good, you say, I should try to do that, and then when you see somebody screw up, you go, I should

make sure I don't do any of that. So that's what I would see night after night, even though I was just a teenager.

and a few other friends. I didn't know them too well, so we I mean, it was heaven for me because I took two music theory classes and that's what I loved, and the other classes are okay. I mean it was a bit simpler back then. I was taking French and humanities. I think they called it something that was the offshoot of geography and math.

had at the time. The college has turned into a really great school, but that first year, that was their first year and they had some different ideas about what teachers could be. And I mean Bill Wescott, music teacher at high school. He gave us a university level education. So I went in there knowing everything, and every time they would play a wrong scale, I'd raise my hand and go, you know, that's not what you just said. You did, and so I didn't make friends there either.

But two things happened that were important, which is I got introduced to someone who was playing in a disco band and they put guys on salary, and this was important for a young kid looking for a job. And so I joined this disco band and I actually got I made money every week, I got a paycheck. And at the time, they didn't call it disco. They called it progressive dance music. How's that for euphemism. I didn't care. I was just like, I want to play music. I

need a paycheck. I got to pay for gas oil embargo. You remember those times it was tough to drive her around New York to gigs. And the other thing was one of my schoolmates introduced me to Lenny Tristano. I don't know if you know who Lenny Tristano was, but he was the father of cool jazz. He was the inventor of free form music, really first guy to ever record it for Capital, even though they shelled the record for nine years until after the Birth of Cool came out.

I didn't know who this guy was at all. And one of my fellow students at Five Towns was more of a jazz head than I was. And he said when I was told him, I'm looking for like the guy I need, like you know, I need the wizard. There's got to be somebody out there who could teach me the true nature of music. And he said, you have to go see Lenny Tristano. And I said, well, who is this guy? Where is this guy? And he's like,

he's in Queens, He's like twenty minutes from where I live. So, I mean, I could go on about this, but I mean, if you're not interesting, going, yeah, yeah, you going so Lenny. I mean, at that time, Lenny was kind of retired. He was teaching out of his Victorian house there in Queens. He was blind since a very young age, and he was eccentric by anyone's standards. You know. He dressed only in full length leotards and would walk around the room and he kind of talk like this all the time,

like hey, Joey, what the fuck are you playing? You know, that kind of thing right right to your face, you know. And but he was the greatest teacher. He changed my life because he kind of went to like the heart of what it is to be a musician, Like if you think you're a musician and you haven't done these things, then you're completely lying to yourself. And so, you know, after I basically had been a musician all my life that I could remember, but I realized that I hadn't

really addressed me you know, what are my skills? What am I avoiding learning and simple things? You know, even though I'd been teaching guitar to kids and some grown ups for a good three years by then, there were still these big empty places in my knowledge of music that really bothered me. And I think the dissatisfaction with the professional music world was putting me off to working

harder on my own musicianship. But so in a practical sense, he give you things like learn this scale everywhere, you know, and he's a blind piano player, so he doesn't give you doesn't tell you where to put your fingers. He just say, if you don't know how to do it, go out there and find out how to do it, and just come back next week play it for me. You know, every note, every fingering in every key, no

matter what it was, you know, huge lessons. These things were daunting for me at the time, you know, And then there'd be a harmonic section of the lesson where you'd be playing these chords. Then you had to memorize and scat sing along with a melody and solo. And he didn't care if it was Coltrane or Tony Iomi he'd made. No, he wasn't biased against any form of music. He just wanted to hear you nail every note. His whole thing was the music's got to come from inside

of you. He could care less about sight reading. He just got to be in here before it can come out. His other thing was, you know, if you made a mistake during those parts of the lesson, the lesson was over, he'd walk over to his Grail accounting book and he'd just sit there and you'd have to give him twenty bucks and split. But if you did good, the lesson could go on for two hours, and he'd leave everybody

else in the waiting room. You know, But I'll tell you the one, the funniest, greatest story ever from him was he said, after I had been doing this improv for a really long time, He's walking around the house. I'm left in the room. I'm still playing. I don't know what to do. I keep playing. He finally comes back in and he goes, oh, that's pretty good. What

do you think about that? And I use the word could or should in my description of my playing, and he really went off on me, and he said, you know, you kids from the suburbs have the subjunctive disease. You're always worrying about what you should have played, what you could have played, what you would have played, and you never play what you want to play, only play what you want to play. And it was like, you know, a zen lesson. You realize I'll be working on this forever.

But it was a great lesson because I understood what he meant. He would say like, if you don't if you don't know what the next note is, don't play it. If you don't want to play the next note, then don't play it. So it was so foreign to me as a rock and roll kid. Everything he was saying, don't put vibrato on a note until you've played the note perfectly, and then you've decided vibrato is going to make it better, because that's how you feel in the moment.

He was like a supreme improviser, like improvising was a way of life and it required like a super discipline that was like, I don't know, the only thing I could relate to it was like someone devoting their life to being a yogi or a zen master or something like that. You know, it's just like a total way of life. But it really it forced me to work harder and to admit to myself when I didn't know something that that's what I should work on, like right away.

Like if you don't know that scale, sit down right now, memorize it everywhere. Don't kid yourself. You know that's that was tough. That was tough, and he was fascinating, just a fascinating human being.

in what seems like a really awkward position. You'll see some guitar players where their wrist of their picking hand is anchored and never moves at the base of the guitar, which we call the bridge. And then other guitar players

their hand and their wrist never touches the guitar. It floats, and it's the elbow that provides all the movement, or their elbow stays completely still and only their wrist moves, or even that the thumb and the first finger that are holding the pick, those are the only things that move.

It's it's insane how personal it is, and the one of the difficulties of getting through the period of beginner, intermediate and advanced player is deciding which position fits my anatomy because the guitar is awkward as soon as you put it on. If you're a beginner, you go like, wow, how do I hold this thing? My fingers hurt? How can I possibly stretch? How can I play this? And you know, my right hand and my left hand at

the same time. When I when I was teaching a lot, I very often, almost once a day, would I'm right handed. I'd pick up the guitar and I'd put it the wrong way around, and I'd remind myself, this is how it feels to the beginner student when they come in and I try to get them to play a decord or something. This is how awkward it feels. You know,

I can't play left handed at all. And it's a good reminder that that journey out of being a beginner is one of understanding what your body can do and what it feels comfortable doing, and how are you going to have to work around your anatomy? Again, if I drawn analogy, you look at the Olympics, you look at sprinters. You see some of the funniest variations of a very specific thing. I mean sprinting is like super specific, right, but still not all sprinters hold their arms and move

them in the same way. Why is that what you'd think they'd all do it the same, right? Is just that we're all so different and we have these little quirky gifts that make us excel in a certain way. If in this case, we hold the pick like this and the guitar like that, and you know, Jimmy Page played the guitar really low and John McLaughlin plays it really high. I wouldn't want them to trade positions. I just love the way that both of them play. But

isn't that weird? You know? So if you're a student and you're trying to figure out, like how am I supposed to hold this? You know, how do I which which fingers? Van Halen very often would he'd hold the pick between his thumb and his middle finger, which is really awkward to me, but it allowed him to use his first finger for tapping, you know, brilliant idea.

Like if you think there's a body type for dancing, you're dead wrong. Just anybody can have that wonderful gift of being able to move, to connect their inner feelings to every part of their body and just surprise you with how great they are dancing. And so I think music playing instruments is pretty much the same way. You cannot, you know, judge the book by the cover. In this case, I hope I'm not mixing metaphors her analogies.

about what they can't do. Is you really do have to focus on their gifts. And that's what we all need to carry us through life in general. You know, just focus on the gifts, everything else will fall into place, you know, again, if you if you keep the you know, when I was young, and even when I was teaching in a guitar store in the eighties and in Berkeley, and I had students that were, you know, eight year

old kids. I had race car drivers, lawyers, doctors. I had you know, all kinds of peace people who had real lives outside the guitar store. And you know, people would come in and the young kids, the little kids just thought I was some weird old guy, you know, in his twenties teaching guitar and their parents made them come and learn how to you know, play guitar. They come in and put their plastic toys on the amp. And then they were great though, because they'd learned so fast.

And you'd have teenagers who just really wanted to be rock stars, you know, and you had to figure out like do they really want to be rock stars they really or do they want to play their instrument really well? And then you had professional people who just wanted some relief. You know. They'd come in for a lesson and they'd say, can you just teach me how to play this Creeden song?

So after I have a hard day, I can come home and just you know, have a glass of wine and play a song with my partner some And so you have to focus on, you know, how can you get that to how can you help them achieve that whatever it is they want. And so, like when I was teaching Kirk Khmid, he had a real job. After the first year, he went from being an exodus into Metallica and he had a serious job and some requirements, and he had to learn really fast. The great thing

was he was dedicated. He had his own opinions about what he thought was great, and he was super hungry, and you know, started taking two lessons a week. That's how dedicated he was. And so you And again, even if it's someone like Kirk, or if it's just the race car driver who comes in after a crazy day on the track and he just wants to play some music, you know, you just focus on the positive and the

strengths that everybody has. He don't worry about the little you know, where you put your finger and stuff like that. Everyone's different.

So and I did like it. And I just happened to move into this little bungalow across the street from a guitar store, and I used to go in there and play all the guitars all day long and never buy anything. And one day, the owner, Jim Larson, he says to me, you know what, if you're just gonna sit here and play all day long and not buy anything, you might as well give lessons. And I said, oh, man, I gave lessons on Long Island. I don't want to

give lessons. But anyway, I realized that there was very little in the form of work for me out there because I didn't know anybody. I had no contacts in the Bay area. So I started teaching and I had no I mean, I have no idea why I wound up seeing guys like Larry Lalande and Alex Skolnik, and Kirk Hammett and David Bryce and Kevin Cadogan. I was just like the luckiest guitar teacher ever that all of these very different kids would come in and they were

so motivated to learn, and they were so different. Perfect example would be like one of one of the luthiers who worked for the store. She had a little kid, Charlie, and so one day she comes in and she's like, Joe, Charlie's driving me crazy. You just could you just teach him how to play guitar. So he's you know, he

leaves me alone. So this little Charlie comes in, and Charlie's like not even though he's growing, he's growing up right alongside all these what are going to become thrash metal players and metal players, he has no interest in any of it. And so teaching him was a lot of fun because he was just into anything that was against what was trending. And of course he becomes the Charlie Hunter that's just preeminent funk, jazz, whatever you want

to call. He just created his own genre and he grew up to be just an amazing man and just fantastic, just you know. But at the same time, like I said, they would, there would be Kirk and who had a gig that was extremely important and he was making history like with every album, and then like right after him, it would be like David Brison from County Crow's who was like, you know, he said, look, I don't care about soloing, I don't care about shredding. He said, how

how do you write songs? How do you change keys? What chords go with this? How many different ways can I give this feeling? And then shift into that feeling. It was really fascinating for me as a teacher to have this unique variety walking through the door every day. And I did that for about ten years.

really strict. You got to basically quote every cool blues player in the world to be accepted by the audience. They don't celebrate originality, you know, it's weird. But rock music, I thought, well, it's so inclusive. They celebrate everyone's originality and they just want you to keep writing great songs. And I just thought this is really great, you know, so, but along the way I started. I was in this band called the Squares for about four and a half years.

only way I can describe it. We were very dedicated, but I have to admit we were not as good as those guys, so no wonder we didn't get anywhere. But we practiced like crazy and we were as pro as you can get. And during that time I was always teaching, so my day job was teaching at the guitar store, and then we would either rehearse or gig

at night. And somewhere along the line, I really wanted to produce our own record, but our manager and our agent at the time, Neil and Kevin, they just they were saying, no, we should just keep trying to go down to LA and ironically try to get John Carter at Capital to signs to a label. I see, I didn't. I mean I could jump ahead and say the first time I met Carter again, we laughed about he was how he was my nemesis because he turned the squares

down so many times. That was was, Oh, anyway, I love John, But anyway, so, uh, I on a break, this is really I mean, you'll be editing all this out. But so we rehearsed down by Seventh Street in the Berkeley Flats area, in a warehouse that was part of the NOLO Press publishing company, and they had a dumpster right outside where we rehears, so when we go out there to have a cigarette and a drink between songs,

there'd be this dumpster overflowing with their books. So they're how to books, you know, like how to get a divorce, how to start a bakery, how to do this, and inside the books were tear out sheets. So one day we're out there, we're going nowhere, you know, with this band, and I'm looking at I'm looking through the dumpster and I see how to start a company, how to do

your own books. And I take this book back to my apartment and I go, you know what, I'm going to start my own publishing company, my own record company. I'm going to make a recording. I'm going to put it out when the band takes their Christmas break, and I'm going to bring it to the band and show them that it can be done. So that's what I did. And it was a very weird, avant garde EP that I recorded in late eighty four. And you know, I

went down to the courthouse. I started Strange, beautleful Music. I started Rubina Records. I was the president. I was also the first client, and I got this record pressed. I brought it to the band and no one, no one really liked it. I did it. Jeff was intrigued by it, you know, and the reaction made me realize this is going nowhere. I got to get out of here, you know. I started the band, but I just said, look,

I'm quitting this band. You guys could do whatever you want, but this obviously you've got to do it yourself now. So I just thought, the next thing I'll do is I have to do an album with drums and bass and keyboards that people.

debt for just under five grand. I'm really struggling to pay this thing off. And I get a call my second call from a local band do a great kin band who once again having guitar player problems, and they want me to come to the studio like that day because I have to finish their album Love and Rock Role, And there was no argument. I was like, I need cash like today, you know. So I went down there to Fantasy Records. They literally recorded me just like listening

to music for the first time. I'd like, tune up and they'd play something and I'd just play along and they'd say, we got it, Joe, all right, let's move on to the next song. And by the end of the early evening they handed me ten thousand dollars cash and they said there's more money coming just you know, give us twelve months. And I was like, you got it, no problem. You know. I really did like the band,

and we played with them a lot. Greg was a fantastic singer in front Man, and I didn't know the guys in the band that well, but I knew from opening up for those guys for years that they were the real deal. It was like a cool not my style of music, but I recognized that they were really good at it, and so that what followed was well. First of all, I paid off the credit card, and because about the same time, I'd sent a cassette of

it to Steve vi Iika. Steve and I were always trading cassettes of stuff we were working on, and he had just signed with Relativity Records out of Jamaica Queen's for his Flexible album. And the way Steve put it was, he goes, Joe, my record is so much weirder than yours, and they signed me. They gotta sign you. So I said, okay, you can to send them the cassette. I don't care. I wasn't even thinking that I get anywhere with it,

but Clifficaltrairie at Relativity Records liked it. We met and it took about twelve months, but eventually a P and D deal was struck while I was just finishing my year with Greg Kin, and in November of eighty six, they released Not Out of This Earth, which was my first full length LP that I had produced and played on, and that was probably the strangest instrumental album I'd done outside of the EP, which was certifiably weird.

China Club. You know, there's no rehearsal, just show up. The songs are so easy, you know, and you know, because Danny's a great jazz drummer. And I said, you know, all you have to do is just play a little heavier than usual, don't worry about it. And I didn't know a bass player, so he said, well, you know Mark Egan. Let's get Mark. And I thought Mark's amazing. It's like, why would he be playing, you know, satch

Boogie and stuff like that. But I needed somebody. So we met, we set up, we played, and when we got done with satch Boogie, the deal was made. Barry heard something in what I was doing, because I when he asked me what I wanted to do, I said, look, I want to make an album that celebrates everything I love about guitars. And I said that means Chuck Berry, that means Hendrix, that means some fusion stuff, some classical stuff. You know. I said, that's that's who I am, you know.

And I should point out that earlier, a couple of days earlier, when I went out to the company the record, I'm standing in the middle of their their main room, all the employees around, and Barry's looking at me, and he's very uncomfortable and he goes, you don't look like a rock star. And I was just thinking, like, oh, this is really embarrassing. I got it was like, sorry, Barry, but this is what I look like. But you know, I kind of knew it, you know, and I understood

where he was coming from. Because he had he had just signed Steve I and Steve looks like a rock star, you know, he was a rock star. But he looked a part and I didn't, and and and he was about to sink some money into me. So I totally got it. So it's him being nervous. But it turned out all right because they did give me complete freedom to do what I wanted. And that album was Surfing with the Alien, and thank god that people like that one,

because that one really reflected my true nature. So you know that thing where bands that they get famous for the wrong song and it destroys the band or you know, they it's the single that killed the band. But in terms of that album, Surfing was the best of all the albums of mine that could have got that kind of embrace, you know, from a world audience, because that's exactly who I am, you know.

But I was on Relativity. And so between the office in Torrance, California and Jamaica, Queens, they had radio people whose knew other radio people and they knew disc jockeys. And I did IDs for hundreds of stations. I visited hundreds of stations. I played guitar at hundreds of stations, and stations like wherever Redbeard was in Texas at the time, and Chicago, the Loop and La Boston, unbelievable support. When that record came out, they would just spin it and

I was, you know, klex. They would they would play the whole record on Sunday twice, you know, top to bottom. The record that I thought was so completely out of time, the one that both myself and my co producer John Kuniberty thought would definitely seal our fate as never being hired again, turned out to be the one that got embraced by the fans.

imagine future, you know. And then Barry called me one day and he said, you know, you're one eighty seven on Billboard. And I was shocked that even was on the Billboard charts. And I said, wow, what does that mean, you know? And he said, well, it means you got to put a band together. And I said, Barry, I've never played instrumental rock in front of an audience before. I said, there is no band. It's like, what do

I do? You jump around? You're serious, like, you know, do you need lights, smoke bombs?

I thought, well, no one that anymore. Jeff Beck maybe, you know, but even he would intersperse working with big vocal stars, you know, you know, because the genre didn't exist anymore really outside of Jeff and so but I thought, okay, I have to I'm going to have to figure this out, you know. And so I called ste and Jonathan Jonathan Moover drummer and Stuart Ham bass player who we had played just briefly in the summer at a NAM show, and I said, well, you know, they record company wants

a tour, so we put a tour together. I gave my last guitar lesson to Kirk Hammett in early January of eighty eight, and we're all excited, Wow, going on tour. And I go out on this tour. I'm playing two shows a night, six seven nights a week. We're out there for about three weeks. Maybe it was awful. It was just so hard. You know. There's as you know, just because you have a record doesn't mean you can

sell a ticket. Some people have tickets and they don't they can sell tickets and they don't have record sales or whatever. So it's a funky business, right. So but I was in that position where I was unknown, I was untested, Promoters didn't know how to pronounce my name, you know that kind of thing. And and I was projected to lose about maybe eight grand a week, which

I didn't have at the time. And I remember we were in Boston staying at some awful motel and my tour manager gave me the news of how much money we're going to be losing. And a little while after that, one of my former agents, Kevin Burns, calls me from the Bill Graham management office and he says, you're not going to believe this. How would you like to audition

for Mick Jagger? And so we both laugh for about a minute because we knew I was the worst guy to audition for Mick Jagger, like, you know, I didn't look right and I haven't been playing the Stones songs for ages. But we both said, you're going, like you have to go and then report to the rest of us how funny it was. So I go down, I do the audition, I get the gig. It's like really fun and Jagger is like the funnest guy ever. Plus

he sings amazing. The band is amazing, and suddenly my problem with the tour vanishes because I've got to stay in New York City whehearse with Jagger and then go off to Japan. So this is this is like all part of this explanation because during that those few weeks and then getting in Jagger's band, getting in Rolling Stone magazine, seeing the chart number just go up and up and up and it lands at twenty nine, stays there for

like six weeks. It was life changing because wherever I went, people knew how to pronounce my last name all of a sudden, and Mick was great wherever anytime I was with Mick, Mick would make sure that I could take advantage of any of this because he knew it was, you know, one of those things that only happens once in a while and you just got to do all

of it. So he was always saying, if you need anything, you need a room, you need transportation, you need time to do an interview, let me know, I'll take care of it. And it was fabulous the help that he gave me. But it was a whirlwind. What other words can you use to describe the change of fortune in such a short amount of time. It's just great and

all of a sudden, it's March. I'm at the Tokyo Dome and I'm playing satch Boogie where it's just a couple of months ago, you know, I was at the China Club trying to cue the guys where the bridge is.

surfing with the Alien guy. And just just like you know, when a fan becomes a fan at your fifth album and has no idea that you had four other albums, and they go back and they listen to it and they're like, I don't know that guy. I only know this guy album number five, you know. So, But there were other people who obviously most of them Let's say you playing at the Tokyo Dome. They don't know who you are, and Mick would let me go out and

play two songs. I'd play Midnight all by myself. That was so frightening on such a huge stage in front of ninety thousand people. A little delicate, two hand tapping classical piece. What a crazy idea. But you know, everything is everything, you know. Just that one article in Rolling Stone doesn't mean anything to people who don't read Rolling Stone. But if you read Rolling Stone, then you go, well, this must be really happening, because I read this magazine

and I trust it. You know. The most important element of all, though, is if people don't like what they hear you know you, As Glenn Johns once told me, he said, it's not your job to decide what people are going to like. It's your job to play your guitar. So if you people will decide what they like you just you can't make them like you. And there isn't any press or any bit of good luck that is

going to make that happen. They really have to like listening to your music, to put it on day after day, week after week, year after year, and to take a chance on your follow up album and the next one and the next one.

can't make people like you. You just can't. They're just gonna either like it or they won't. I mean, just look at like fans who love one particular band more than any other band but still will say, oh, album number three is just the worst to the artist's face, you know what I mean. So people it's their prerogative to like or not like, so you might as well just you.

dust on it. I purposely did not play it for years. I just sort of like made a rule like do not plug that thing in, Joe, you know. So I just thought, on a whim, I'm going to bring that. So I bring it. I plug it in. I remember John looking at me like, Wowa pedal, Like I thought you'd like swore those things off, you know, And I'm like, oh, let's just try it, you know. And we get around to getting a sound late in the day, it's just

about four o'clock. We're supposed to be out of the room studio see at Hyde Street in San francisc Go. The other clients are at the door. They're literally looking at me, like, you know, with their arms folded, like hey, it's four o'clocket out of here. And I'm like, just let me do a pass, you know. And so I hadn't played the melody yet or it's melody solo section melody and then solo at the end with the melody guitar, and that was the one we had set up. So

I do this one long take. Guitar is not entirely in tune. The even type processor that we're plugged into, you know, is not working that great. And I get through the end of the piece, all the way to the very end of the song where the fade out would have happened, and that's it, and we have to turn everything off, break everything down, no chance of fixing, you know, like coming in a day later and changing a note because we had to strike the amp and everything.

And I just I remember my heart sunk because I thought, oh man, it's like it's so promising. I think I'm onto something right. So, as fate would have it, we could never do anything better to it. So that's what's on the album, and thank god people liked it, you know, but every time I play that on stage, I'm like, Okay, now is Joe, now's your chance to fix that, you know, bar sixty three, to make this in tune and maybe you should try this on the B string instead of

the G string. And I'm still working on it, and that alleviates that anxiety of having to abandon a piece of music.

fun attitude of the album. All these things. I thought, well, this is great. If they liked that part of me, then there's no reason for me to try to do this again that I want to keep going in my quest, you know, with guitar playing and so Flying in a Blue Dream was born the idea, and I shocked everyone by saying, look, I want to sing, because what people did know is I'd been in the Squares for five

years and I was one of the lead singers. So and as I said before, I always thought i'd be in a vocal rock band, and I realized that after touring with instrumentals in eighty eight and having two tours with Mick Jagger, that there was this real benefit for having vocals because you could really reach people, you know. And the question was would people accept me being in character because I don't have a lead singer's voice. I don't have that talent, you know, but I could hit notes.

And I thought, well, if I can get into a character and sing rough for Big Bad Moon and sing in a very heartfelt, demure version of myself where I believe and you know, have these different vocals and try to sing like prints for strange, you know that people would get the joke and they say, yeah, he's not trying to it's just Joe, just Joe having fun in the studio. But it was a big album, eighteen tracks,

lots of crazy two hand tapping, harmonica playing. It had a lot of things that I was so excited about that I was just dying to bring out on tour. And again we were really fortunate. I mean those each time I've released a record, it's the records have found their audience, which is just mind blowing, you know. And so I still on this tour right now. I'm singing Big Bad Moon and playing harp and it's so much fun. You know, people get it. They know I'm not a real singer.

guess we hit it off. I don't think because it was the men's room. I'm just saying we hit it off, and then we wound up just bumping into each other at different things like rehearsals or something like that. A gig here, a gig there, and but we didn't really formalize a relationship until he and Neil Neil Sean invited me to join the band Planted Us a few years later. And you know, I was really right in the middle of making an album and booking a tour, and I

wasn't quite sure how that was going to work. We did one live radio show and when and then I went on tour, and when I came back, the band had broken up before I had a chance to just even figure out what I was supposed to do in the band, Like, how do you play in a band with Neil Sean? I don't know. He just he's amazing. He covers all the bases, you know. But and then Sam came around again and called me to do chicken Foot back in two thousand and eight, and yeah, one thing led to another.

I was like stunned that they would want to record that way, but that's how they wanted to record. And so a lot of the first album was done right there, maybe half of it in Sam's little place, the rest of it at Skywalker. And it was always fun, always dangerous, that first tour with Chad destroying drums every night and is so much fun. It was really like it was like being fourteen years old and you know, totally losing control at a high school dancer or someone's backyard party

and doing a professional gig all at once. It had that insanity to it and that love of you know, trying to create a true rock and roll moment on stage. Just tons of fun.

be actually part of his career. And so I wanted to do it, and I think I agreed before I really thought the weight of it when it came to the Van Halen stuff, but it was, you know, he said, well it'll be at that time, you know, next summer, and I thought, Okay, I've got these other projects, but I'll have a couple of months to sit down and try to figure out all this Edward van Halen stuff that I avoided learning on purpose all these decades, you know.

And then of course he calls me and he says, oh, by the way, we're doing this Howard Stern thing. And at the time, I'd been painting canvases and guitars for three weeks. I was literally I had no callouses left. I hadn't been playing. I was trying to cram for this art show at the Wentwer Gallery that was happening the same week as the Stern show. And so I explained to him myself, well, we can't do it. You know. It's just I'm not gonna play Eddie van Halen music

at six in the morning, and besides, I'm painting, you know. Anyway, long story short, they twist my arm. We wind up doing this show and they were great, and they were I mean, Jason, Mike and Sam have been doing these songs for decades now, so they were totally. I just was sort of trying not to screw up too much, remembering each bar as it was coming in front of me. You know, luckily, I'm a big fan of the Van

Halen music. So that's that's the memory I was drawing upon, not rehearsal memory, which you know there was none, but now it's the set list that Sam was put together. Is really a lot of fun. It's and super challenging for me for sure.

acrylic or the oil and whatnot? So she gave me a crash course, and I took all the stuff that I had been doing with pen and pencil and with the computer, and I thought, okay, now it's time to get your your fingers dirty, you know, And I found I really loved it, and then I started doing some more guitars as a test. Now I'd done illustrating guitars, you know, with pen just drawing goofy figures, but hadn't done real works of art that stand on their own

until I started down this process. And I wasn't thinking of selling them or becoming an artist, so to speak, until I was invited by Corey and Robbiet Scene for Art Collective to do these time laps photography pieces in the dark where you wear led lace gloves and you play your instrument, and then they create these photographs and manipulate them in the in the computer and then print them.

And so during a break of the one of the photo sessions, I took up my phone and I said, you know, I've been I've been checking out this stuff. What do you think about oil versus acrylic? You know? And I was just asking art questions, you know, and they got really interested in what they saw and they wanted to collaborate. So we started to do these collaborations with my artwork, getting going into into the computer, using it as backgrounds, adding the images that we were photographing

of me playing. Uh. And then one thing led to another, and Corey Denzigers said he wanted to introduce me to Christian O. Mahoney at Wentworth Gallery and he was like, would you paint a lot if people liked it? You know, It's kind of a funny question. And I thought, well, yeah, I would. I think, like, what's a lot? You know. And so once I start talking to Christian, you know, he's like, well it you know, I mean minimum, we'd love to have three hundred pieces. And I'm like, oh,

I'd never painted, you know. It was just like, oh my god, Like how does an artist do that? So but I thought it was a really great thing to try and and it has been so wonderful for me just to be able to have the opportunity to express myself not only on the canvas, but also on the guitars. And it's when when I walk into one of the Wentworth galleries and I see nothing but my paintings, it's like hearing your song on the radio for the first time.

It's that crazy. It's just it's a bizarre experience. It's very difficult to explain because it's something that you know, it came from inside, that was very personal and all of a sudden, it's in the real world and people are seeing it and commenting on it and buying it and taking it home and looking at it every day. It's just it's It's like when someone says I use your song to get married or at a funeral or at you know this thing. I listen to it every

day when I'm on my bike or whatever. It's it's heavy. It's heavy.

know what people are going to like. I don't even stop myself, and Christian never stops hanging whatever it is I send him because I think he realizes the same thing is that someone will walk by the shop one day and they'll see a painting of something that I did that we never thought twice about, and they'll say, this means so much to me. And that's what I learned at the art shows. It's really fascinating how it works.

So I go there. I spend about twenty minutes with each person that buys a piece of art, and I get to hear from them what they like about it. They want to know all about why I created it. And then at the end of the day I play for about forty five minutes to an hour. If somebody buys one of the painted guitars, we get up and we jam together they if they play guitar. So it's really a fun personal experience, and it's small, you know,

it's what fifty people or something like that. It's not like doing a concert at the Beacon Theater or something like that. It's very personal and you really do spend a lot of time with people and the stories that they tell me about how they feel when they look at the painting. It's really touching. It's a profound experience. I have to like get ready for it.

I don't really know how they do it, but they transfer the photographs I take of the artwork to this metal medium and it adds this dimension, especially the psychedelic city scapes that I've done blown up, you know, forty or fifty by forty on metal. It's wow, really cool looking.

I going to condense it down into something that's manageable that I can play every night. I went through every manufacturer that made an AMP that could really scream that way, and eventually landed a third power and guitar player designer and owner Delana Scott totally got what I was asking her to do and everything, all the teeny little things that bug guitar players when they're trying to pull things off. And she made me this amp called the Dragon, which

blew everybody away. When I showed up at the satch Vi tour and at the very first one and only rehearsal we had in Orlando with this new amp, and I said, I've never played this before, but I want to start playing this thing right now. And I plugged into this thing. I didn't even set the controls. Delana had set all the controls up herself, after you know, weeks of describing things over the phone, email, text and everything,

and I haven't touched the dial since. And every night that app sounds so amazing, it's so inspiring, and so to that degree that would that would be a good example of how far I'll go to achieve the right sound. Just for one tour, I will commission a special amp and just dive right in and start using it in front of my audience who's heard me play Marshals forever.

for twenty minutes while they fixed it. You know. But if you go and you do a show and it's lackluster because you're not inspired by your gear, that's the kind of memory you don't want your fans to have. So the gear is there to inspire the artist and the musician.

and guitar players struggle with that. If they're lucky enough to own two guitars, they'll probably wind up getting one of each. So they're prepared if they're going to do session work.

They're so brilliant most people still play them. I mean, you just can't do that any better, but you can do something different that gives you more tools, more frets. Most of us play twenty four frent guitars now. It does allow us to play higher, but it also gives us access to what used to be difficult to play

in the normal high range. We also have these vibrato bars that allow us to change the picture of the strings in a radical way, and that's become totally accepted now to hear guitars screaming super high and doing dive

bombs super low. It's just like normal. So I play a guitar that has been carefully and slowly meticulously fashioned to help me do what I love to do, which is to play beautiful melodies, appropriate solos, memorable chre progressions and makes a lot of strange noises when the time is right, and the thing stays in tune and is

just rock solid, you know. And and it's a team effort because you know, the strings from the Dario and the pickups from Demarzio, I mean, everybody, all these companies chip in to help me feel comfortable every time I hit the stage or I'm in the studio and.

to have them there. But I don't like having to relate to a lot of guitars on a physical level, you know, because they're all different, they all feel a little different. If I could get through a show with one guitar, that would be great, But I abuse them so much. You know, after three songs they need a little tuning up. And this is not the seventies anymore, So you can't do that while people are watching. So you got to hand it off and get a new one and keep the show rolling, you.

People expect me to say, you know, Jeff Beck and out in the Holdsworth and stuff like that, but uh, those those three guys, they really laid down some stuff. I mean, they it's just it transcended their technique. They weren't neither of them could play everything, you know, even Hendricks he was not like McLaughlin or Holdsworth. He certainly won't like a Segovia or Christopher Parkning or something like that.

So each these were individual human beings that somehow use their bodies to produce music that is so memorable and so loved and so solid and so enduring. They were so inventive all the time, and I rely on that. I feel that, Like every time I'm playing something in me says that's enough, that's not interesting. You know, it's I refer back to the great things that they recorded and and and I'm lucky that they were part that they've been part of my foundation, I think.

know how he did that. That's like so intense, that song so beautiful, and again you get I would say one of the things about Hendricks is that you never got the sense that he practiced or that he was showing you something that he practiced or he learned from a book. It just didn't Nothing was methodical, nothing was didactic. Nothing sounded like I practiced this scale for twelve years and now I'm demonstrating, which a lot of guitar players

they you know, they use that for effect. And that's cool. But that's what's so beautiful about what Hendricks did. He just transcended it. I mean a machine gun from Live at the Fillmore, that's the greatest live performance ever. It's just you can't touch it.

or that horrible thing. You know, I will. I'll go all the way deep into it. I want to know about that and and and it's different, it's separate from that part of me that just would do that to write a song. Although that's how I write songs. I can't write songs for order, you know, Like if you ask me, you know, Joe, I need a song for my podcast, you know, I'd be like, oh God, this

is work, you know, But I will write it. I will write a few songs by the end of the week about what I've seen, experienced and felt, what I dreamt, something real, something imagined, because that's the way I write. I just write about real experience, which means I have to go deep and like find out what the real truth is about this feeling that I have. And that's the only method I have to edit myself. And you know,

when you're writing music, you have to edit. You got to take out all the notes that mean nothing to get down to the notes that mean everything, so that the song is specific about this story you're trying to reach people with, you know. So that's when the mood thing, my moodiness is beneficial, so I can really turn it on and I don't mind wallowing in it or brooding.

That said Michael Tilson. Thomas said to me once he was listening to my catalog and he wrote me an email and he said, brooding, brooding is good.

level whatever, I just couldn't live with myself. So I would practice and practice and practice, and then i'd meet them later and I'd arrive at the party and everyone would be totally wasted and so and I'd go like, oh, this doesn't look very cool. So I mean, I did my share of partying but it never took over my life. It never confused me. It never took the place of connecting with my friends or the people I fell in love with, and certainly never got in front of the music.

the guitar. And I was like, okay, okay. She said, you know, my boyfriend's daughter is having a birthday party. You're a wich want don't you just come? And I just said, okay, I just gave up. You know, I was tired from practicing. So I went there and there she was. That's how we met.

the albums and the and the tours. But I I always find that I have to structure practice for the next project. I have to carve out time to be left alone to write. I like writing alone. I love having two months to brainstorm and to collect all the materials that I write. I write a lot, you know, and only use a third maybe or a quarter for an album. But I think in the last twenty years it seemed like there's been more randomness. I mean, the

album cycles have changed. Social media has completely upended the old model of how to deal with press and going away and coming back, you know, that that whole routine of trying to maintain an audience, you know, presence through absence, that kind of thing, and so you were always kind of like doing something, you know, but then having the collaboration, especially with Sam and Chickenfoot, was quite unique, and then the cycle of the G three's, and it's just it's been,

I want to say, more different. It sounds kind of weak, but it just seems like it's been a little bit more random the last fifteen or twenty years than the previous fifteen or twenty which were a little bit more streamlined.

Everyone was, oh, you're going to be doing soundtracks. Everyone loves the Sincerenrato music. I had this deep u suspicion because right away they thought, oh, they don't want to listen to my music as it is. They have to see something in order to accept music. But you know, it's just like work. You know, you spend enough decades not working as a musician. You never snicker at the

offer of employment, you know. So I thought, okay, I'll try it, and then then I you know, they were sending scripts that were horrible, and then there were all these you know, invitations, Oh, you should go lunch with this guy, you should go, you know, And I kept saying, you realize I live in San Francisco. I'm not in Hollywood, you know, and you should move to Hollywood, you know.

And because you got to hang out with this these people know those people, and I just said no, and I that was the end of that contract, and I said, I don't want to be bothered by any of this. It's like I can't write music while I'm I'm prefer people not to be their friends, but to get work.

I just didn't seem sincere at all. And so I mean there are I mean, you know, I gave up doing drugs because I realized that people who were making money making and selling drugs were people that I wouldn't like, So why would I help them? You know? And I thought the same thing, like why would I be insincere in friendships when I don't believe in being insincere. So that was easy for me just to tell management, like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to

keep doing what I'm doing. And if people like the music, great, if they invite me to go on tour. Great. If they don't, I'll take my lumps when they come. But I'm not going to be fake. I'm not going to you know, move where I don't want to live and go to lunch with people I don't like.