Every music fan has at least one story of how they became an enthusiast of a particular band or musician. Maybe they were the unknown opening act for R.E.M., their latest radio single helped you deal with a bad break-up, or someone you knew just told you, “You’ve gotta hear these guys—they’re going to blow your mind,” and that someone ended up being right about that. Whatever that story is, it started with a singular moment, which led you down a long, winding path toward something phenomenal.
For me, that moment came in 1993 when I saw a Sony commercial. I don’t have a clue what the company was selling, but the rock music playing in the background was some of the most enjoyable stuff I had ever heard. I had never known that a guitar could sound like that, or that rock music could, for that matter. After a few moments I glanced in the lower corner of the screen and saw the name Joe Satriani, and beneath it the title “Summer Song,” and that was it for me. The Extremist was in my tape collection in no time flat, then Surfing With the Alien, then Time Machine, and…well you get the picture.
Satriani’s releases have encompassed everything from straight ahead rock ‘n roll to funk, from blues to electronica, from epic jams to blink-and-you-miss-them ditties. Now, well over two decades into his career, Satriani talks about his passion for the music he loves so much and how that fervor has helped make his latest album, Black Swans & Wormhole Wizards, one of his most eclectic—and satisfying—releases in years.
Now you’ve been doing this for a number of years, and album after album you still manage to keep the creativity and the passion you have for each new release, so how do you do that and what keeps all of this from becoming boring or stale to you?
I love it. That’s the simplest explanation. I wake up every day wanting to write something new, to see if I can play something better or differently, to see if I can get inspired by something. So it never gets routine for me. It never gets old.”
You’ve made epic rock tracks that people love, done solo ballads and flirted with everything from electronic to blues in your music, so how do you decide heading into a new album, into each new recording, what sort of sound you’ll be going for?
I write sort of without discrimination when I’m in my writing phase, which means that I’m writing all kinds of songs in different styles. And then when I’ve got a schedule that indicates that I’ve got to stop writing and really start to edit things down, that’s when I get an overview of where I’ve been going creatively and then I try to sense some kind of a strong trend. And then from there I can edit down a group of 30, 40, 50 songs down to about 15 that I think would make a great album, and I’m usually surprised, you know, by the direction. So I’m writing without thinking about direction but I’m sort of presented with the unintentional direction as I start to edit down, and I just kind of let it happen. So if I’m going in a heavy rock direction or a lighter direction…if I’ve got more ballads or more fast songs…I just kind of let it be natural, you know?
That sounds like it would be the best way to go because you don’t put any pressure on yourself to try and create a specific kind of album. You record whatever you’re recording and then just see what’s happening and what sorts of trends you’re finding in the tunes themselves.
Yeah.
So why don’t you tell us about the new album.
Well the new record, to go along with the method I just described, I noticed that I was putting myself in a position where I was going to have to reach people more deeply with my phrasing and the way that I play melodies and the sound of the guitar. And sort of the songs that I picked tended to have the sound of a vibrant sort of rock band being captured in each of the songs. So that drove me towards getting together with Mike Fraser to help record and produce the record with me, and also to pick Jeff Campitelli and Allen Whitman and Mike Keneally. I knew that they would be very complementary towards each other. They each had very cool talents, all revolving around their ability to improvise, but at the same time to stay focused in the genre that I had set up. So although we’ve got influences that are coming from all over the place, it’s primarily a rock record and we were able to work within that framework and yet still get some really outstanding performances. And I think that’s, that alone and the sound of the album combined with the odd material, because it’s an eclectic record, all creates the thing about the Black Swans & Wormhole Wizards record that stands out and makes it different from my other releases.
Yeah, now I was gonna ask about that because like you said, it’s eclectic, and I have to say I’ve listened to a lot of your albums, and the track “The Golden Room” for me is probably the most exotic soundscape you’ve ever recorded, and it takes me to a whole other place more than any song you’ve done since “Until We Say Goodbye,” so I’m wondering what was the inspiration for that particular song?
You know, I was working on that piece of music as kind of a free improvisation for a while, and during one of the experiments I started to combine some Spanish-sounding music with the Indian flavor of the rhythms. At the same time I had been introduced to this phrase “The Golden Room,” which some psychic had said it’s a way you protect yourself against negative influence from other people. I just thought it was a strange concept, to imagine yourself in a golden room and that would protect you from getting influenced or attacked, let’s say, by bad vibes, you know? Just the whole concept I thought was rather interesting. So I thought, “Oh, I think that’s what this song is about,” and it kind of makes sense because there’s kind of a light-and-dark aspect to the melody, you know? The melodies are all kind of dark and tense and the improvisations are very light. And so I liked that idea of the two separate forces bouncing back and forth in the song.
That gives that song an entirely new layer to me now that you mention that because I can totally see that happening. A song like “God is Crying” has this explosive sort of torrential downpour of sound and the title just seems to fit the song very well: Do the titles usually come first for your instrumental songs, or does the music feed the ideas for the titles?
The title usually comes along at the moment of inspiration, so it winds up being a guidepost for me. It follows that specific song’s story, so in that way the title is really like a signpost. It keeps me from wandering, musically, because I think instrumentals can get all-purpose sounding if you don’t really have a theme or a story behind the music that you would if you were writing a song with lyrics. And you know when you’re doing a vocal song you’ve got this great set of lyrics that really helps you decide how to play, how to arrange, how to mix ultimately how the song sounds, so having a title or a story as you start out writing the instrumental is really a great way to go about it because it really keeps you focused. It makes you play specific to that story.
What does music mean to you, personally?
Ever since I was a kid, it’s really been the way that I relate to the world, so (laughs) it’s just about everything to me.
Would you say that’s part of why you make music, it’s just your way of expressing yourself and connecting with the world?
Absolutely. Yeah absolutely.
What is your favorite song to play live from the new album?
You know, I don’t have favorites. People ask me that a lot, you know, what songs are my favorites to play, but I really don’t have favorites. They’re all still works in progress for me, so I love having the opportunity to play the song every night so I can get deeper into it, figure out how to play it better, maybe stretch it a little and see how far I can take the idea. So it’s sort of a challenge, you know, to play all of them every night.
Well and that’s got to be cool because there’s the possibility for the song to do something new each time you play it instead of playing it the same way, at the same speed, over and over and over again until it becomes old hat.
Yeah, you wouldn’t want that to happen and there’s no reason for it. The audience doesn’t want it and we don’t want it, so that makes that decision pretty easy. (Laughs.)
