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Innovative American guitarist Steve Vai is still pushing boundaries of guitar technique whilst retaining tasteful melodies. That fact is clearly evident in his recent live recordings and the G3 tour to Australia that many witnessed earlier in the year. However, it has been several years since Steve released a studio album, the last being the ‘Reflections’ album in 2005. Now, with new studio the Harmony Hut up and running, the second part of the Real Illusions trilogy is the newest studio release titled ‘The Story of Light’. It marks a continuation of Steve’s concept album series and spiritual journey via music. He is still crossing various styles to actively broaden his sonic landscape and through disciplined musicianship, he has opened more doors for inspirational creativity. Australian Guitar’s Paul Southwell chatted to Steve over the phone during rehearsals for the tour supporting ‘The Story of Light’. So, be enlightened with some interesting revelations from one of the world’s most influential guitarists alive today.
AG: How did you approach writing the title track to give it your unique signature feel?
SV: I try to find different ways of constructing tracks so that they are relatively different and that there is enough going on so that it stimulates me. I was hearing this big wall of guitars from seven string chords that you cannot usually get with six string guitars and just tonnes of distortion. If you listen carefully to the rhythmic patterns that are going on underneath, there are all of these polymetric things or various time signatures going against each other. The second half of the song is not like a doubled guitar part. I didn’t want it to sound like a solo. I wanted the whole part to sound like a constructed piece of music, almost machine like. I was focusing on each phrase and when I was writing it I was thinking about each phrase, trying to come up with something a little different than anything that I had ever done before for each phrase and that’s how it turned out.
AG: Certainly it is a contrast to the creation of the song ‘The Moon and I’ which I believe was a soundcheck written effort?
SV: I have this policy that when I come into sound check, usually everybody [in the touring band] is all checked and ready to go. I just pick up a guitar, start playing and everybody starts to follow. On this particular day we were in Athens, Greece and I started to play these chords and immediately felt a song structure so I stopped the band and I explained the song. We only had about ten minutes and we did one pass. We never rehearsed it. Then I put it on the storage disc for about a decade, along with about two hundred other pieces. When I broke it out, it had a lot of potential. There was something special about it so I built the track around it, putting on the vocals and the sound effects.
AG: Another different thing altogether is the song ‘Creamsicle Sunset’. What sort of equipment were you using on the song?
SV: That one was totally different. It started out with just a simple little chord inversion exercise. So I recorded it but for the first time it became music as opposed to an exercise. I started thinking of all of the different ways with which I could make the notes speak. Some of the chords are strummed with the thumb, picked with my fingers or strummed with a pick. Every place on the string that you pluck, strum or pick has a different tonality. The goal was to create this beautiful piece of guitar music that just melted in your mouth and try to approach it with each chord making every single note count. In a lot of places it sounds like a slide or almost like a Hawaiian slack key but it is all done with a whammy bar and just finger vibrato. The song was done with an Eric Johnson Stratocaster directly into a Fender Bandmaster amplifier head. You cannot get a sound like that any other way.
AG: The song ‘Mullach a’ tSi’ [pronounced ‘ah chi’] has harp player Deborah Hensen performing on it. She is also a part of the ‘Crossroads’ duel segment in the live show. How did that happen to be?
SV: Well, with my last band I had two violin players and that worked really well for the [live] DVD of ‘Where the Wilds Things Are’. My music is kind of compositional so I can bring different instruments in that I think will work. I was snooping around online and I came across Deborah Hensen who is considered the hip harpist and I was completely taken because I love the harp. She bends notes, plays a strap-on harp and it is beautiful so I thought, ‘I’ve got to get her into the band’ because I think it will really work. It turned out much better than I could have expected. I gave her the whole first part of ‘Whispering a Prayer’ to play by herself because it is so beautiful and also the introduction to ‘For the Love of God’. I wanted to get her on the record so I rebuilt an arrangement of this Irish lullaby, ‘Mullach a’ tSi’, with the supporting instruments to be acoustic guitar and harp. So I got Deborah to record the harp part and it is very beautiful.
AG: A further revelation on the album is the cover of blues legend Blind Willie Johnson’s song ‘John the Revelator’ which also includes his recorded voice.
SV: I had heard him on a compilation called ‘Anthology of American Folk Music’ and there was one song and it was ‘John the Revelator’. There are a few books out on him so I read them and heard this track with all of these big heavy guitars and these huge vocals. The second part of the song is ‘The Book of Seven Seals’ and it has got like eighty voices on that. I needed a lead singer and I was thinking of singing it myself but I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. I saw Beverly McClellan [from ‘The Voice’ USA] perform and she was amazing with her powerful delivery. Luckily she was interested in doing the song.
AG: How do your new DiMarzio ‘Gravity Storm’ guitar pickups [used on the song ‘Gravity Storm’] compare to your other line of DiMarzio Evolution and Evo2 pickups?
SV: The ‘Evolution’ pickup has a very high output so you’ve got to be careful with how much gain you put on the amplifier. They also have a very fat, open, bottom end. I wanted something with a little less output to get something with a little more amplifier, that wasn’t so top end heavy and was tighter in the bottom. The ‘Evolutions’ are great for heavy distortion but I wanted a little less of a distorted sound so when you are cranking the distortion on the amplifier, you get a tighter, fatter, low end. You’ve got to fight them a little when you solo, but it is worth it because the notes are clearer.
AG: You’ve also got a new sea foam green signature guitar [Ibanez JEM 70V].
SV: They are the same exact guitars [as Evo JEMs]. The JEM has been the same for twenty six years. We change the colour up or maybe the aesthetic a little bit. Sometimes we put different kinds of things in the neck but the bones of the guitar are the same.
AG: Those guitars have served you amazingly well, have you made many tweaks to them when compared to what is available in the shops?
SV: They are virtually identical. The only things that I do to some of my guitars is have a [Fernandes] Sustainer put in them and a ‘Tremstopper’ which is a spring loaded thing that the block rests on so that I can still pull up on the bar but the block has some place to go so it is not entirely floating. Floating tailpieces can be a real challenge sometimes.
AG: Your latest Carvin Legacy signature model amplifier head is a three channel 100 watt head [Legacy 3 VL300]. What led to the decision to strip things back with this one?
SV: I was always partial to the ‘Legacy 1’ as it was easy to play. We went back to the basic technology of the ‘Legacy 1’. The nice thing about the ‘Legacy 2’ was the master volume section. On most amplifiers, the master volume acts as another gain structure so when you bring your master down, you lose your tone and distortion from the pre-amp. So with the ‘Legacy 3’, the master control volume is after all of the pre-amp so you can get your tone at any level. The second channel has a little bit less grit than the third channel. There is also a booster which throws the amplifier six dB hotter for a solo.
AG: What would be the most important thing that you learnt from Frank Zappa, musically?
SV: Musically, to explore your inner ear and don’t be afraid. He was truly independent and very smart. I learnt about music business, how to protect yourself and how to make the music that is important to you without any excuses and without letting anything or anybody stop you. I learned independence and how to work with people and Frank was very fair. He was honest and he was very sharp. Those are qualities that you can bear witness to and that you can absorb but his genius was not able to be absorbed. You could only bear witness to it when you watched him in action and it was inspiring.
