Ask anyone to name a guitarist they admire or at least know of and chances are one of the names you’ll hear mentioned is Joe Satriani. When his career literally took off and brought instrumental guitar into the limelight over twenty years ago with ‘Surfing with the Alien’, the success was well deserved for all the dedicated people concerned. Fast forward to now and with numerous albums and worldwide tours under his belt, both collaborative and solo efforts plus signature lines of Ibanez guitars and Peavey amplifiers, a new album has arrived which includes an upcoming global tour that will visit Australia.
The new studio album, titled ‘Professor Satchifunkilus and the Musterion of Rock’ follows the tradition of the multiple Grammy nominee’s inspired musical explorations that reach outside the usual mainstream rock field without being too esoteric. Joe’s latest album manages to capture a succinct batch of songs that represent his ongoing quest for new and exciting music pushing instrumental guitar playing up to another level of his already high quality standard. Cohorts are familiar colleague Jeff Campitelli on drums and the highly respected Matt Bissonette on bass. Catching Joe via phone from Phoenix, Arizona whilst on a brief guitar instructional clinic jaunt, Australian Guitar’s Paul Southwell investigated what creations Joe has been meticulously labouring on before he prepares for rehearsals to fine tune the upcoming tour.
A guitarist of Joe’s stature can get access to a stunning range of musical instruments in the studio. So with the latest release it was interesting to hear that he was fairly conservative as to which guitars were put into action on the new album. As Joe comments, “This time around I did something different from just about ten records. I didn’t bring all of my vintage guitars. I didn’t bring every JS guitar and make it part of the sonic palette of the record. For some reason, when I was in my studio, I looked at this guitar rack that I have that holds four guitars and I decided that I’m going to try to do this record and never have to get another rack in the room.” To clarify this he continues, “I wound up using a JS-1200 and a JS-1000 for about eighty five percent of the guitars on the record. A new acoustic made an appearance as well as an old Martin that I’ve had for years that has just been on a couple of records.” Also, one of the well known touring guitars got an airing on the album, as Joe points out that “one of the chrome prototypes made it on the record when we had moved production into The Plant studios when the band showed up and I still had more guitar work to do. Matt [Bissonette – bassist] played my ’71 P-bass which is a vintage one that I picked up a while ago. It’s funny how that worked out.”
The aspect of Joe’s music that puts it on another level compared to most instrumental fare is an ability to harness outside influences and respectfully find a way to implement them into his song writing. For example, hearing the Turkish saz played which is a four stringed instrument familiar to the European region, Joe set out to celebrate hearing a new instrument whilst expanding his cultural horizons. But he did not try to replicate a Turkish saz in doing so. As Joe says,“I was really intent on writing music that was about Joe Satriani reacting to becoming a new fan of music of an artist; Asik Vaysel, that Turkish people, of course, had known of for about a hundred years (laughs). So I thought, ‘I’m not going to be a culture raider here and make believe I can play saz’. So we don’t have any Turkish instruments on that song.”Thus, what he used was an approach instead of accessing the actual instrument. “I’m just playing my JS for the introduction. The bulk of the song is really just a power trio jam and I think Jeff [Campitelli – drums] puts on some bongos. We were really writing about our enthusiasm of his entire catalogue of work.”
This attitude of celebrating an influence is further explored on other songs on the album.
Elaborately on what inspired his muse of sorts on the album, Joe selected more examples.
“It’s the same with the last song on the record, ‘Andalusia’, there’s a little bit where it’s a nod to the music of Southern Spain but we’re not using flamenco guitars, we’re not using castanets or hand claps (laughs). Once again, it is more of a rock band approach as opposed to trying to copy some kind of ethnic music.” He also reveals that, “The album opens up with a song called ‘Musterion’ which uses a Hungarian minor scale but there’s nothing really Hungarian about the song, it’s just music and we always try to make sure that we’re making an original statement. The way that you do that is you just try to be true to yourself.”
Writing gripping songs is without doubt a challenge for most instrumentalists. One of Joe’s techniques to create a flowing song has been to use the guitar to carry a vocal style melody which fleshes out a piece and makes it more universally accessible. He states with clear intent, “I’ve always been this way and I’ve never changed the basis of what I do. It has always been about songs. That is why songs, like ‘Rubina’ from the very first record, was the kind of thing that wouldn’t get me signed to other labels [eg: Shrapnel] because I was never shredding enough for them. So I’ve always had that working against me (laughs), I mean, ‘Kerrang’ was always complaining that I would never get with the shredding programme. I had nothing against it, I just said that is not what I do, ‘why do you keep trying to force me to do that?’ Odds on bet that Relativity label was onto something when they signed Joe over twenty years ago and Joe’s comments show that even the best in the business get rejected by labels who no doubt regret not catching that metaphorical fish at the time.
Before Joe’s success ‘broke’ as it were, he was using hybrid guitars [mixed brand parts] to help with playing the sounds that he wanted on tape. To find out the use of those guitars from his ‘Not of this Earth’ era is still active today was something of an artistic statement. Asked if he still uses them the answer is, “Yes I do and they make appearances on records with the exception of this [latest] album, all of the records have pretty much had the appearance of the main guitar that was the black painted Boogie body Strat of hard rock maple and most of the time it had an old ESP V neck on it with an ebony fretboard.” To understand how good that instrument still is he points out that it “has been on just about every record a least doing one little thing, if not something primary. The other guitar that was painted by my wife was another put together Strat but I think it was all ESP parts, yeah, every once in a while will be important to the overall canvas that I’m working on. But, I only had the three guitars to work with back then.” Of course you can’t win them all. “The Kramer barely gets any usage. I think maybe on ‘Crystal Planet’ the old Kramer Pacer came out for a little bit but it is such a horrible piece of crap”, says Joe with a good laugh intact.
Furthering the point that some old gear is always going to be integral to maintaining a sound as well as allowing it to evolve, some pieces of gear that are ignored for a while prove to be the spice needed for making a truly great track. The wah pedal used on ‘Surfing’ is a great example. Other times, it can be a totally new pedal that just somehow melds with a creative moment. Joe reveals some pedal details saying, “I suppose that to some people could call them old by now (laughs) if I’ve had them since the ‘Flying in a Blue Dream’ tour but the Fulltone Ultimate Octave pedal still gets a lot of play.
On the song ‘Out of the Sunrise’ the melody really works primarily because it is like a little ensemble melody between these three guitars and two of them were using my very first Fulltone Ultimate Octave guitar sound alongside a Whammy pedal. The three of them together make a very unusual melodic statement. “
Naturally some pedals on their own are an acquired taste but when in a band situation, they push a sound and an idea. “A new pedal is the Dunlop Octavio which is a thoroughly horrible sounding pedal until you run it into something else that is already distorted. Then all of a sudden you’ll realise that it is a really beautiful beast of a pedal because it introduces a very unstable, complex kind of distortion. That is what you hear on ‘Musterion’. The solo for ‘Overdriver’ is also using that Octavio pedal going into my JSX amplifier being run pretty hot with a lot of gain. So, the two gain stages meet each other and they create a pretty intense effect.”
The previous album ‘Super Colossal’ was where Joe used an Electro-Harmonix Pog [polyphonic octave generator] pedal to great effect. So how does that differ to his more recent pedal experiments? Joe takes the time to explain, “The Pog is entirely different. It is part of that poly synth family that Electro-Harmonix has sort of been pioneering in a way. Electro-harmonix has an odd way of doing a lo-fi, quasi synthesiser processing thing. It is in that lo-fi approach that you’ll find the charm.” Going back to the point of pedals working in context, Joe further expands on the topic, “If you just listened to it you’d say, ‘oh, this sounds really horrible’ as the replications of the upper and lower registers just sound like strange little insect noises. But, together with a powerful amp and cool part, it goes from being this weird thing to the opening riff for ‘Supercollosal’ and it sounds massive.”
He tells of others that have embraced the pedal’s range saying, “on tour, I slowly started to realise I can use it for more things and my rhythm player, Gaylon Henson, found it was great for imitating B3 and other organ type sounds as long as it is tucked in with the band. On its own it reveals itself as a cute little pedal but when you’ve got thunderous bass and drums properly mixed in then it really does sound rather synth or organ like.”
Gear and developing sonics is something that equipment manufacturers would be clambering over themselves to get in-roads with someone like Joe. For distortion he can and does use the Peavey JSX amplifier channels but he also has a prototype pedal that he is using call the ‘Saturator’. He is currently doing the clinic tour with said pedal into a clean running Peavey signature amplifier. Joe comments, “Every tour and every album for me is quite different. It’s quite specific. The other week, I was jumping on stage with Sammy Hagar, Chad Smith and Mike Anthony in Las Vegas. I just brought my little Saturator prototype and JSX half stack; run on stage at the end of the show, plug in and ‘bam’, you know. I did the same thing with Steve Miller when he was playing at the Philmore in San Francisco last week and it was primarily blues we were playing so again, really great, very easy to depend on.”
Taking the use of this gear in the studio, it was interesting to get the details on what is used to attain that smooth Satriani disctortion sound. Joe readily discusses it saying, ‘in the studio for this album, a number of songs are using the Saturator prototype which is a straight up distortion pedal. It’s like a two stage distortion pedal with a little extra icing on the cake for given situations. It is primarily a pedal that is supposed to simulate a super high gain in an amp. Sometimes for ‘Andalusia’ and sometimes for ‘Asik Vaysel’ that is the primary distortion. Then, other tracks I was just using the crunch channel on the JSX to get a really warm vintage tone and refined distortion.”
Going into further detail and providing a window into some of the research and development that Joe can be involved in with developing gear, Joe pin-pointed that “we were very keen on not imitating Marshall, Mesa Boogie, Diezel or any other great amps. We thought, ‘what can we do that is different with those gain channels?’ We worked on creating something that sounded almost like it had already been recorded before it came out of your speakers. Those particular tones of both the ultra and the crunch channel do make appearances throughout the record in combination with tracks that have the Saturator on it. Sometimes, the Octaver was part of that as well as the Fulltone Ultimate Octave which is primarily a distortion box. So, you know, case by case and it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve.”
It is refreshing to find out that for Joe, the adages of ‘if it sounds good, then it is’ and ‘keep it simple’ still applies. He adds, “I go on tour sort of like the way that Hendrix did in that I have an amplifier and a couple of pedals on the floor. I like to keep it very simple. I might play for two and half hours and I’m primarily playing melodies and solos back to back. Your average guitar player gets four to eight bars in the middle of the song. The rest of the time it is rhythm guitar meaning backing up vocal arrangements. So, I have a different need. My set up is rather unique, I would say.” We’d all tend to agree there.
One of Joe’s most successful projects is the G3 tour concept which is, as most know, various touring jamming concerts consisting of three blistering guitarists, always including Joe as band leader and founder. So when he’s now doing solo albums and tours, maybe you’d assume G3 tours might give him some breathing space in a live situation. Joe mildly retorts, “I don’t know because when we do G3 you’ve got to get ready for the most intense guitar playing ever. But for me, I like to invite players that I think can just shred me under the table. It’s just so much more fun. The last one we did with John Petrucci and Paul Gilbert was probably the best fun I ever had on the G3 and at the same time it was really frightening to have to be the third guy to take the solo after those two guys (laughs) night after night. But that is what makes it fun and makes it challenging and at the end of those tours I really do feel like a better guitar player because I got to hang out with those guys and play every night.”
Joe knows what gear to use to replicate his classic songs. He is also not afraid to experiment with sounds live. Being around the G3 tours as a pivotal role, he’d see all sorts of guitar rigs of his contemporaries and whilst he has tested out some of these other rigs, his sound remains firmly intact. Joe muses on gear changes, saying, “I think everybody can change their sound and still be themselves. I didn’t sign a record deal until I was thirty so I spent a long time in obscurity playing in clubs doing small gigs and nobody cared what amp I used. But, when I go to playing ‘Flying in a Blue Dream’, that has a certain sound of a clean amp with a distortion box. The same with ‘Satch Boogie’ where I need a whammy bar and a lot of distortion to get that song to work. The set-ups add to the quality and it’s very important that I can sort of replicate that event for the audience.”
Not to be inflexible with possible set-ups and live gear changes, Joe makes the point that “it is the reverse [scenario] which requires more finesse with gear. To get a lot of distortion you just get a pedal and that’s the easiest way for any kid out there. But being able to have a setup where as you back your volume down you get a good sound, that can be a little bit more tricky.” Understanding that your gear is important key to developing a tone that inspires better playing and better songs, Joe continues, “Not every box can give it to you and not every amp can give you a clean sound to make that distortion box sound bold plus be interactive or dynamic with the volume control of your guitar. So, in that case, for me, the JS-1000 or the JS-1200 guitars, the Saturator, the JSX clean channel; that’s a very important triumvarant there that allows me to do a lot of things that people know me for around the world. I didn’t have the luxury of that when I was starting out, just a guitar player in a band, struggling with whatever amplifiers were out there.”
In conclusion, with all of his experience, musicianship, commercial success and infinite style, the thought of such a graciously humble yet amazingly virtuoso musician chasing awards from the broader music industry that is not overly versatile by design is intriguing. Having been nominated around fifteen times for a Grammy it’s good to see how ground Joe is about the whole experience. He clarifies, “The process of getting nominated is so difficult. It’s like a ten thousand mile race just to get nominated and then to win one is sort of like the final inch (laughs). It really doesn’t bother me [to not have an award yet]. I’m an instrumental electric guitar player and I’ve had this amazing twenty year career. I get to tour around the world and I mean really around the world and play for people who love to hear me play my guitar. So, I don’t think that anything has gone wrong because of the situation with the Grammys. As a matter of fact, I think that being the underdog but being constantly nominated has been somehow the secret of my success,” laughs Joe rounding off a typically informative, enlightening and forthright conversation about guitar playing, equipment and music.
Re-mastering Surfing with the Alien
When it comes to classic instrumental albums, Surfing with the Alien, and the massive success of the single ‘Always with Me, Always with You’ put Joe into the some very elite company within the realm of instrumental guitar in the commercial music industry. That is well entrenched in guitar music history and Joe has since achieved a myriad of recorded works and amazing live performances. The recent twentieth anniversary of the Surfing with the Alien release led Joe to produce the re-mastering of the seminal recording alongside original and ongoing album producer John Cuniberti.
The process is meticulous and Joe expanded on the tasks involved. “We took the original tapes and baked them for security as have to bake tapes that are over twenty years old to makes sure that the oxide just doesn’t peel off. Then we do one very, very careful pass on a machine that’s a multi-track set up to the original specifications. Then you transferred immediately. We’ve made many transfers from one two-inch tape machine to another to preserve the master tapes.”
To make it safe for the tapes to remain in as good a condition as possible, once the data, as it were, is transferred they could get on with creating a newer, stronger interpretation sonically of well know material. As Joe says, “In this case, when we were doing simply re-mastering and not re-mixing, we were using a two-track tape machine and then it goes directly into Pro-Tools at 96 kHz. Then if we had to make any changes to the way that we wanted to master the record it was done the way all records are done now and have been for some time which is in the digital domain. That’s how we do the re-mastering that way so now you only roll that tape once.”
Of course, the personal aspect for Joe’s album must have been strong on listening back to something so powerful in launching his global career. Whatever stresses and joys of that time re-appeared were overwhelmed by a sense of observation according to Joe. “I had a budget originally of thirteen thousand US dollars from Relativity Records to record. We eventually had to double that and we added quite a bit of bartering with locals bands to trade session time for mixing and completion time. The things that come back are just the sound of it. I don’t know, man, I mean everyday the world changes, people change, people who listen to music listen to it differently, people who make music, make it differently and that I suppose is the funniest thing. It is like pulling out an old picture of yourself, you look at it and say, ‘I can’t believe that’s me’. So when you pull out an old record listening to something you played twenty-one years ago you just think, ‘Wow, it’s so different; the playing and everything’”, reminisces Joe, considering the timing and impact of his breakthrough music.
Theory and creativity
Apparently ‘musterion’ is an ancient Greek word that’s meaning has evolved from referring to confusing scriptures or doctrines to eventually constitute the simple meaning of mystery. The point being that Joe’s latest album stems from a brief yet inspirational musical idea that spawned the title track. From there, the album then began to take shape and rather promptly at that, by all reports. Joe makes it clearer saying, “For the song ‘Musterion’, I didn’t really think that it was Hungarian minor until I had written the whole song out and written the solo section. I went to start thinking about the verse melody and thought, ‘Hold on a minute, what have I done? What kind of harmonic corner have I painted myself in?’ and I realised the verse section was in Hungarian minor and I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve never done that before’.
Joe was teaching guitar many years ago, alongside now instructional guru and solo artist Doug Doppler as confirmed by Joe, “Yeah, Doug was one of my students when I started teaching out of a small store in Berkley, California.” When Joe’s career took shape, he still found time to write some columns for guitar magazines back in the late 1980s that were thoroughly informative, discussing musical theory such as modes and using what was known as ‘pitch axis’ theory. It seems that the general idea is to use one note as the tonal centre around various chords. Then pivoting around this note are groups of chords and their intervals should give the listener a sense of harmony by grouping related chords together. A tad confusing but certainly not a new concept anymore and the tapping lick in ‘Satch Boogie’ is one well known example of pitch axis theory.
In light of his in depth theory skills, it is fair query Joe if he consciously set out to put those concepts into songs. Joe’s response makes for a better context of using theory in songwriting. “All of my writing is just something that comes from inspiration first and foremost. I just kind of write and go with what I’m feeling inside. I’m trying to write music to emotions, impressions and unusual ideas that have come over me in a non intellectual way. Then somewhere along the way, as I’m writing the song, there’s that other voice in my head that’s a trained musician that might notice what I’m doing.” To put is in a succinct comment, Joe says, “I know these modes in my sleep but it doesn’t mean that’s what I’m thinking about first. It never occurs to me to think about music like that.”
