Joe Satriani’s massive 2024 is leading him into an even-more impressive 2025. Last year the guitar virtuoso hit the G3 stage with Steve Vai and Eric Johnson, after which he and Vai launched the Satch-Vai tour. Satriani then followed it up by joining Sammy Hagar in the Best of All Worlds tour, celebrating the music of Van Halen.
Now as everyone knows, Satriani and Vai are taking their roadshow into the studio before hitting the road again in the summer. And Satch confirms they have several tracks already completed.
“We’ve got three songs finished,” he says. “They’re ready to be mixed, and we’ve got maybe 10 or 15 other songs that Steve and I are sending back and forth to each other. It’s all proceeding really well. In February, Steve and I will finally do some playing in person.”
Satriani stressed that the album is going to be “crazy different,” and that every song is “somewhere else. I’m really excited about it.”
The next months will see Vai on tour in South America with the 1980s-era King Crimson tribute group Beat, while Satch will perform a Las Vegas residency with the Best of All Worlds tour.
“But come June, Steve and I will start touring the SatchVai Band in the U.K. and Europe for two months.”
Busy as he is, Satch carved out some time with Guitar Player to reveal the 10 albums that shaped him as a musician and electric guitar player. Take it away, Satch!
12 x 5 — The Rolling Stones (1964)
“This was the first Stones album I heard, and my siblings let me play to the point that it just became a piece of useless vinyl. Along with the Beatles, these two bands had the biggest impact on my life as a young kid, and suddenly, having that musician inside of him awakened. I just loved the sound and the approach of it. My parents were jazz-age kids, and they played jazz all the time, like Wes Montgomery, so when I heard the Beatles and the Stones, I thought that was something totally different.”
Please Please Me — The Beatles (1963)
“Back when I was a little kid, I wasn’t in control of the record collection. My older siblings were the perfect age for that period, and they would just bring music into the house. I remember saying that I was sick because I knew the Beatles were going to be arriving in New York, so I listened to it on the AM radio.
“I was so excited, and this album was the one that sticks out, like the Stones record. I had a portable record player, like the little suitcase thing, and it just destroyed every piece of vinyl I put on it. (laughs) I would listen to a record one hundred times in a row, just sit in a corner, and listen to it. To me, it was the whole world.”
Are You Experienced — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)
“It was my older sister’s boyfriend who started to bring over albums because they knew I was this little kid who, for some reason, loved the latest rock music that was coming out. So the first time I heard ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ over the speakers, it altered the DNA in my body — in my brain! I remember asking every adult in the house, ‘What is that? Who is that? Is that a record? Can I get it?’ ”
Axis: Bold as Love — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)
“Suddenly, this album, along with Are You Experienced and Electric Ladylandappeared via my sister’s boyfriend. From then on, that album — oh my God — those records totally blew my mind. And then, Band of Gypsys. Those are the most important records in my life. Even before I could express it properly, I just always felt like there was something unique about Jimi Hendrix that I didn’t really hear, really, from anybody else.”
Electric Ladyland — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968)
“As I became a guitar player, performing musician, composer and recording artist, I started to realize what it was about Jimi Hendrix: When he would play, you couldn’t hear one minute of practice in his playing. He never played anything that sounded like an exercise. He never seemed to be demonstrating anything, unlike today.
“There are so many fantastic guitar players all over the world who are demonstrating—but it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of society that doesn’t really give them space to express themselves. They’re kind of stuck to 30 seconds of being amazing for social media. That’s different from playing an original composition from deep in your soul.
“If you look at Electric LadylandJimi was required to reveal his innermost soul with his music. There was something unique about him, and you don’t just hear it, but you detect that he never practiced a scale or studied anybody else; he just sounded like music, like everything was just expression. I thought, Wow… that’s it. It’s all about expression.”
Live at Leeds — The Who (1970)
“Pete Townshend, to me, is another one of those amazing musicians who put so much energy and originality into his playing. He risks everything for the performance and the expression, which is another thing that I love dearly. When I see a performer just go crazy like that — and the fact that his rhythm playing is just unbelievable — I’m blown away. And his choices for guitar sounds are just unbelievable.
“It’s the whole thing with him. He’s such an original. So if I had to pick one album, it would be Live at Leeds because I can’t even fathom the fact that he’s got the guitar on the right side and the reverb and the tape echo in the center. It’s just the craziest thing. I still don’t understand how that band, with those three guys playing, made such a beautiful sound where you didn’t want for another instrument. I still can’t understand it. It’s pure magic.”
Believe It — The New Tony Williams Lifetime (1975)
“I have to add Believe It by the New Tony Williams Lifetime, which featured Allan Holdsworth. That was groundbreaking. I’m really a rock and roll kid, so some records, like this one, they don’t sit with me 100 percent. Like, Exile on Main St. by the Rolling Stones — I love that album, and I’ll always love that album for the songs, swagger and guitar playing. Everything about it perfectly fits my personality, whereas Believe It is not an album that fits my personality as a rock and roll kid.
“But Believe It is remarkable. It’s stunning. What Allan Holdsworth did is absolutely stunning. When I was a young kid playing guitar, I was jamming with an older kid in my neighborhood, and after about 20 minutes, he stopped, looked at me, and goes, ‘You know what? There’s a guy doing what you’re trying to do.’
“He said, ‘Come upstairs,’ so we left his basement. We went upstairs to his bedroom and he put on Believe It. That was the first time I heard Allan Holdsworth’s legato and technique, and my friend said, ‘Hear that? He’s playing all that stuff. That’s what you’re trying to do, isn’t it?’ In my mind, it legitimized that idea of notes just flowing.”
Birds of Fire – Mahavishnu Orchestra (1973)
“I got to see Mahavishnu Orchestra three or four times when they came to Long Island and New York City, and watching them was absolutely amazing. I loved wherever John McLaughlin’s mind was coming from. Whatever possessed him to write music like that, I don’t know. When you spend a lot of time playing Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and then all of a sudden you hear Birds of Fireyou go, ‘What? What are those words? What is that fantastic sound?’ ”
Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin (1969)
“Anything by Led Zeppelin is high on my list, but the first four records are just out of control. Jimmy Page was a tour de force. He shares that thing that all my favorite guitar players of that era had, like Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Townshend: Jimmy Page would sacrifice it all to give you a crazy original performance. I got to see them at Madison Square Garden, and that tour was absolutely insane.
“A lot of people are very guarded when they go up to perform, but Jimmy was not. He just dropped all his guards and played as far as he could. That’s what I love about him and those Zeppelin records. They would just go for it 100 percent. He might fall down and crash and burn, but he’d just get back up, laugh, and do it again. But at the same time, they’d craft these amazing songs.”
Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop — Jeff Beck (1989)
“Jeff created his own world in the studio, and he became a platform to express himself in so many different ways. Not just in one way but with a full vision of music. That’s one thing I love about rock, in general, in its golden period. It’s the totality of the message and the artistic approach. In the more modern era, the last one like that would have maybe been Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop.
“I still remember hearing this album at the time, bringing it into the studio, and saying, ‘Guys, you have to hear this.’ Just hearing it in the studio environment and turned up in a really loud, beautiful room — God, it was so captivating. It just epitomized and was the perfect example of the genius of Jeff Beck and the danger of trying to pull something like that off. Again, he was a fearless guy from a fearless group of guitar players from that era.”
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