Jul 25 2025
Story & Interview by Steven C. Pesant.
FROM THE VAULT. This classic interview with musician Joe Satriani was conducted in April 1997 and was first published as a two-part feature in issues 3 and 4 of Experience Hendrix Magazine in July/August and September/October 1997.
In April 1997 we had a wide-ranging conversation with Joe Satriani about various aspects of his career, his influences, the all-star G3 concert tour and advances in technology. While discussing the various themes, the conversation routinely circled back to Jimi Hendrix and his lasting influence.
“I was really devastated the day that Jimi Hendrix died… My credit goes to Jimi for getting me started playing the guitar.”
~ Joe Satriani
“I was really devastated the day that Jimi Hendrix died,” explains Joe Satriani. “It’s one of those classic stories – I was on the football team when someone told me that Jimi Hendrix had just died. I turned around, walked off the field, went back into the gym and quit the team. I went home and decided I was going to be a guitar player – I even managed to convince my family to let me do it.
“My credit goes to Jimi for getting me started playing the guitar. I was a drummer for a couple of years up to about nine years old, and then I just weaved off and really started getting into guitar music, which my older sisters and brother were turning me on to. One of my sisters lent me some money to buy a guitar and I never gave up. I would spend hours-and-hours staring at Hendrix posters, pictures and album covers, using Jimi as a source of inspiration to keep me going.”
“I do remember hearing “Purple Haze” for the first time. It was like being at an Alfred Hitchcock movie or something. It’s like big tunnel vision and the room spinning around, it just instantly – with mind and body, as heavy as a pin wheel can get – just having an experience that turned my life around.”
~ Joe Satriani
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: Your musical roots and influences are obviously heavily slanted towards Jimi Hendrix. What is it about Jimi Hendrix that inspires you to fulfill a musical legacy of your own?
JOE SATRIANI: The thing that really got me was the indescribable. I remember the early years – it’s so hard to clearly remember all this because I was such a young person at the time. As a ten-year-old, you hear a piece of music for the first time, but because your mind isn’t as intellectually developed as you’d like, it’s difficult to remember a memory like that in detail.
But I do remember hearing “Purple Haze” for the first time. It was like being at an Alfred Hitchcock movie or something. It’s like big tunnel vision and the room spinning around, it just instantly – with mind and body, as heavy as a pin wheel can get – just having an experience that turned my life around. It was just so profound! I couldn’t really express it back then, and I’m certainly having a hard time now.
That was the primary thing that continued to grow on me. Every time that I listened to it, it was a special experience, something more than when I was into other bands that I liked. Then of course, as I really started to get into guitar, I started to see how deep his talent really was. How rich his vocabulary was and how special his personality was. That was more of what I was listening to. I was listening to the person Jimi Hendrix and he just had a way of showing people how he felt … through his guitar. He managed to be an innovator right alongside that, it was just incredible. Hendrix was a great entertainer, a great communicator and yet he basically sacrificed his life.
Photo: © Steven C. Pesant / Authentic Hendrix, LLC
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: When listening to Jimi’s music today, would you call him a blues artist?
JOE SATRIANI: I wouldn’t call him a blues artist, but I would call him my favorite blues player. I’m one of those kids that was turned onto the blues by way of “Red House.” It was about the same time I was turned onto John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Albert King and Muddy Waters, whom to me are almost the same. But to me, Hendrix, in my mind, did it far better than anybody, although he only had one or two songs that were just straight blues, that I could recognize. To me, being a young musician, he was quoting a blues tradition.
It’s an interesting thing to say, because people who are asking these things have an agenda when they ask certain questions. Maybe when somebody asks that type of question, they’re trying to get me to admit or to give them a statement that backs up their theory.
Was he a blues musician? Well, obviously he wasn’t, he was a great musician and he played the music of his time. It was rock, rock ‘n’ roll and blues and R&B, Motown, psychedelic you know, anything that you could think of. He was alive and in his prime during that period.
I wouldn’t sell him short by saying he was just a rock guitarist or just a blues guitarist or just anything. I would say that he was obviously an amazing musician. He played blues like no one else. He was for me the perfect blend of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy. He seemed to really like what these other guys did, but he had his own way of doing it.
“[Jimi’s] experiences, I think, are what lead him to develop the style the way he did.”
~ Joe Satriani
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: Apart from Hendrix being your major influence who else held an impact on your playing style?
JOE SATRIANI: As the years went on, I got more and more into all the different blues players. I started to learn more about Jimi and all the different musical experiences that he must have had. But he grew up in a completely different time. I basically came of age in the 70’s and here he was in the Army in the early 60’s. We’re talking about a completely different life experience, coming from different backgrounds and different sides of the country. His experiences, I think, are what lead him to develop the style the way he did.
In that same token, when I was sitting in Long Island as a young kid listening to Muddy Waters or something, I could look out the window – there was nothing that reflected that lifestyle. But in a way, when Hendrix grew up in Seattle, he wasn’t seeing that either. He was being exposed to musicians from an entirely different era and an entirely different state. He grew up in the Rock ‘n’ Roll era; but he was aware of musicians that grew up decades earlier and made records. He just took it all in. He obviously was aware of Robert Johnson and the long history of Muddy Waters – the second generation of electric blues players. But Hendrix also liked The Beatles and The Stones – those that were his contemporaries.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: As your own music has progressed, could you ever envision yourself growing to a stage where music would be your career? Or were you always playing just for the love of the guitar?
JOE SATRIANI: I’m often reminded of this. I knew I would continue to be a player and that something would someday work out. But I couldn’t have imagined this kind of scenario, especially being known as an instrumental artist. It all kind of happened by accident.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: As your career continues to evolve, do you consciously strive as an instrumentalist or do you see yourself ever expanding into a guitarist / vocalist?
JOE SATRIANI: Not really. I like the form of instrumental music a lot. A lot of music that I grew up with when I was young was instrumental – classical and jazz. There was a lot of blues that was the same way. But I probably spent more time playing Rock ‘n’ Roll music in bands with vocalists as I grew up. It’s a great art form, but it’s difficult because you don’t have words to describe what your music is all about. But also, when working in the format of Rock ‘n’ Roll where the music is three to five minutes long, you have to learn to tell a story with as few words as possible – and I really do like that.
Photo: © Steven C. Pesant / Authentic Hendrix, LLC
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: This rooted musical perspective definitely provides a unique and powerful sound. Your guitar skills allow your emotions to speak the words for you.
JOE SATRIANI: Well, thank you. But you know… I’m also a very lousy singer. [laughter]
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: When Jimi first started, he was shy and unsure about his voice, and obviously he overcame this – I suppose you never really know where things will take you.
JOE SATRIANI: It’s quite funny. I remember when I was very young, I taught Steve Vai how to play the guitar. We were both two little kids who dreamed of being Rock ‘n’ Roll stars. But I don’t think we could have thought that either one of us would make it into the industry, let alone that both of us would have made it to some degree and that we would still be playing together today.
During this past year, we’ve been reminded about our connection. It seems every time we get together to play again; we just start back where we last left off. It’s like we started jamming with each other when we were 15 years old and then we kept going. Every once in a while, there are a couple of years where we don’t see each other, but then we get back together – if there are some guitars strapped around us – we just start playing. We’re just great jamming buddies. But it goes back to when he took lessons in my bedroom where I grew up with all these different Hendrix posters plastered on the wall. It’s an interesting connection.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: While you were teaching the likes of Steve Vai, David Bryson (Counting Crows), Larry Lalonde (Primus) and Kirk Hammett (Metallica) among others, did you sense at that time that these guys would go the distance and make a career of guitar playing?
“Life is a mixture of happiness and suffering. So, when you’re a musician or any artist for that matter, it’s difficult because it’s not a job, it’s a 24-hour a day neurosis of sort.”
~ Joe Satriani
JOE SATRIANI: Oh yeah. All of them had their own inner drive and their ideas about music and what they liked and how they wanted to pursue it. I always thought the emphasis on the lessons was to provide them with enough interesting material because they had such a great appetite for it. They kept that desire to play music. I would hope that it would get them through the weird times because it’s inevitable you know, we’re just people and things happen.
Life is a mixture of happiness and suffering. So, when you’re a musician or any artist for that matter, it’s difficult because it’s not a job, it’s a 24-hour a day neurosis of sort. Like when you lock your desk up or drive home from a gig or leave your job and you can just forget about everything; it’s very awful when you show up to do your job when you’re a musician, but there’s no creativity there – so you just wait. There’s that thing about you that drives you to be a player – it’s with you 24 hours a day. It’s always there. There is no holiday, no summer vacation, nothing. It is all consuming.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: After starting on the guitar in 1970 and plugging away for years, what helped you make that big break into the music industry?
JOE STATRIANI: I started taking drum lessons at nine years old and switched to guitar at age 14. I then started playing gigs at 15 – then road trips at age 16 and went on tours at 17. I didn’t sign with Relativity Records until I was 30. So, that’s a lot of dues playing. I mean, being totally broke and it really…
The story has been told a million times by a million guitar players on how difficult it really is. I just got lucky. I had put out my own record early, on my own record label, which was just something based on a few papers I signed at the courthouse and the IRS. I operated it out of my living room. But it got me going and motivated to take control of my own creativity.
I then did my second record and at the time I was usually communicating with Steve Vai. He had presented that (first record) to Relativity Records who had just signed him to some kind of a deal through his record, Flexible. So, Steve would always say, if they are going to sign me because of Flexible, then they’ll definitely sign you because of Not Of This Earth. It was really through Steve’s introduction that I became associated with Relativity and went on to make a number of albums for them.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: What goes around really comes around in this industry. It’s interesting to see how you taught Steve Vai how to play and then he comes back years later and helps plug your work. You both get together and create a hugely successful concert tour as G3. And travel the world.
JOE SATRIANI: It’s great. There’s a great community out there. That’s another good reason to make friends and not enemies. Besides the obvious benefits, like you said, you meet the same people on the way up and on the way down. Any way you want to look at it, you just want to be one of the good guys.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: How did the recent G3 Tour come together with yourself, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson?
JOE SATRIANI: This is something that I’ve wanted to do for many years. Between myself and a few people at Bill Graham Management and Bill Graham Presents, we came up with this idea for a guitar festival that was similar to Lollapalooza, but we had to start from the ground up and create our own identity. I really wanted the first outing to be with Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. To me, that was very important. I waited quite a while until they were both in a position where they had release schedules that made sense for them to tour alongside somebody else.
We just had a great time touring the US last year. It came after a year of touring for me, because we were supporting the Joe Satriani album (released in 1995). We went out for about 11 months and then the last month was the G3 Tour. So really for our band, it was the crowning achievement for the whole year of touring. We went out with a real good bang.
This time around (for the forthcoming 1996 tour), Steve Vai is back on the G3 Tour and Kenny Wayne Shepherd – a great up-and-coming blues player, and Robert Fripp one of my guitar heroes – are also on the tour with us now. We’re excited about that.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: Is this tour going to be called The G3 Tour – Part 2 or something along that line?
I hope to do it, if not every year, but at least every two years and to keep changing the people who go with me on the tour.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: I see that you are releasing a greatest hits compilation on CD and on video from this first tour of the G3…
JOE SATRIANI: What we did, Epic was interested in releasing a live record, but they wanted to keep it as an introductory kind of a thing. They picked three songs out of each of our sets and then three jam sessions from the end of the night. It’s a cool sounding record because it’s not three hours of instrumental guitar. It comes in at about 73 minutes and it’s really a great rockin’ record of guitar playing.
Because everyone is limited to three songs, the styles change quite quickly on the record. I’ve grown to really love this concept that Epic brought to us. Also released at the same time is a live video based on the same premise but the performances are from a different evening.
Photo: © Steven C. Pesant / Authentic Hendrix, LLC
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: Is the CD a collection of songs from a single night or is it a collection of music from throughout the entire tour?
JOE SATRIANI: Primarily, the live CD was from Chicago and the video is from the following night in Indianapolis.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: When can fans expect to see these new releases in the stores?
JOE SATRIANI: June 1st.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: With the G3 Tour expanding into a second tour, are you looking to keep the same format from this year or are you going to experiment in something new?
JOE SATRIANI: I think each year will define itself. As the music world changes and evolves, it will be what we would use to help define the next G3. You know G3-’98, G3-’99 and G3-2000… I kind of like how that one sounds.
And then of course, we’re hoping not only as players but as consumers of music, that someone new comes along that just blows the doors off everybody else. We’re all looking for the next Jimi Hendrix to come along, and you can be sure that he’ll be along on the tour – or she.
Photo: © Steven C. Pesant / Authentic Hendrix, LLC
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: In 1988 you jumped off your own tour and went on the road with Mick Jagger, how did this come about?
JOE SATRIANI: I was in New York on the first part of the Surfing With The Alien Tour. Some friends of mine, I’m managed by the Bill Graham Management Group now, but at the time I was self-managed, but I knew some guys from Bill Graham. I had done a lot of shows with Bill Graham Presents and we both lived in the same town, so they knew about me, but we weren’t affiliated.
But they were in New York, basically putting on Mick Jagger’s solo tour and were in charge of the whole production. When I arrived in New York, my former manager (years back, when I was in a different band, he was working for Bill Graham), knew that Jagger was still looking for guitar player. So, he said to others, so how about Joe, he’s just in New York now doing gigs.
They got a hold of me and asked why don’t you come by in between your show dates and just audition if you feel like it. Of course, I just jumped at the opportunity and came by to audition. I guess I just got lucky, I really got along well with the band and with Mick and we all just said great. So, with in about and hour and a half everybody shook hands and I was in. But I had to think, “God, I gotta go tell my guys and say I’m joining Mick Jagger’s band for a couple of months.” It was a bit difficult for the other guys and the crew, but I knew it was the chance of a lifetime.
I had such a great time playing with Mick and the rest of the guys in the band. I ended up making great friendships and music connections with Simon Phillips and Phil Ashley who played and recorded with me on the Extremist album. I also kept up a friendship with Mick Jagger as well.
It was just a great thing to happen and at the perfect time. As we went to Japan and later to Australia later on that year, Surfing With The Alien was just becoming a hit record in America, it was just beginning to be released in these other countries as I showed up with Mick Jagger. It was the ultimate promotional happening, to be standing next to Mick Jagger when your album comes out. And Mick, he was just so gracious and helpful. He always gave me the freedom to use any of his staff or services to promote my own record and gave me a solo spot in the middle of every show. You know in front of 60,000 people – to play a segment, a little piece off my record. You know you couldn’t have had a better shot at spreading your music around the world.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: When playing on stage, do you consciously strive to move the sound of the studio to the stage?
JOE SATRIANI: You can’t! Basically, you can’t. That’s one thing I learned from Jimi Hendrix’s records is that you have to screw the studio but wait until the live situation happens – become one with the live situation you know. When you’re in the studio forget about the live situation – become one with the studio.
When I think about some of those incredible pieces like “Electric Ladyland” or “1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)” or “Are You Experienced?” – those are things that happened and are so unique in the studio. They were unique because they used backward performances and incredible layering and overdubs, something that just couldn’t be duplicated live.
“… that Band Of Gypsys album is like the holy grail of guitar.”
~ Joe Satriani
But you know, if I thought that Jimi walked onto the Fillmore stage with the Band Of Gypsys saying, I’m not going to have those backwards guitars, slowed down sounds, sleighbells, gunshots, all that kind of stuff. I would have been tempted to tap him on the shoulders to say you know, don’t worry about it, people just want to see you play. Of course he didn’t do that, so for me, that Band Of Gypsys album is like the holy grail of guitar. Jimi Hendrix playing “Machine Gun” is like the statement of electric guitar playing for the entire century. No one has even come close to it, not even close.
He defined so much of where people were going to go with the electric guitar in that one improvised moment, that was caught on a piece of recording tape. And he did it with a coiled cord, a couple pedals on the floor, and a few amps turned up really loud. But he didn’t have a rack full of gear, he didn’t have digital recording equipment, he didn’t have Pro Tools to fix things later. Here were three guys going up on stage – in who knows what state, or under what pressure and entertained a theater filled with New Yorkers. And in doing so, he created the greatest live recording of a rock guitar player ever.
I always think about that. I look at these other guys who walked the earth before me. They just took a deep breath, walked out there on the stage with an electric guitar and just did it. And that’s what I try to do. I try to be as simple as possible when I walk in front of an audience ‘because I don’t want anything to get into the way of me trying to communicate with them or them communicating to me.
I don’t want to know about racks of gears. I don’t want to know about computerized switching or anything. I just need clarity, some distortion, I need some sustained, I need the sound to be able to project. Back then, those guys were just innovators – all of them really were.
In my mind, I call them the third generation of American guitar players. If you look at it from a blues standpoint, you could call Robert Johnson the first generation. The second generation would be Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and those guys. The third generation would be Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Johnny Winter and Mike Bloomfield. They weren’t just following a tradition they were evolving the same way.
I think the greatest recordings are when the guys are just playing live and not worrying about everything or trying to reproduce the sound from the studio.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: When you’re on stage are you just playing music or are you trying to move through a story of sorts?
JOE SATRIANI: It’s impossible, absolutely impossible! I would like to say that the free spirit was really embraced by the G3 Tour and I’m convinced that when people hear – I’ve put out live records before and this will be my third live album – I’m very comfortable with people hearing me in a really raw state, not overdubbed, EQ’d and compressed and everything. But for Steve Vai, I believe this is his first live record and I believe this is Eric Johnson’s very first live record too.
I know they were both kind of nervous at first, and I kept saying, “You don’t know it, but the audience just wants to hear you play the guitar.” I have a feeling that they thought that people loved them for the intricacies of their albums. But I happen to believe that they don’t – I’m a fan of their guitar playing.
I remember when I did a show in Spain in 1991 and Steve was on the bill. I remember, I got there in rehearsals and there was Brian May, Nuno Bettencourt, Paul Rodgers, Rick Wakeman, and the whole place was just filled with the greats. Roger Waters was there too – great musicians were just everywhere. And I’m sitting there, just watching Steve play, and I said to him, you know Steve, no one has ever seen you do this. You’ve got to go on tour, you know. And he’s looking at me like, I can’t go on tour man, I’ve got to play this part and that part and… I said, forget about that part. All you need is a bass player and a drummer to basically set up the song. All the people want to experience is Steve Vai. The purer you can give it to them, something raw, that they’ll really like.
And to me, that’s like going back to all the Hendrix bootlegs I’ve got and all the live recordings, you don’t care that it’s a little out of tune or doesn’t sound like a studio produced project. You’ve already got the studio projects and you love them. You just want to hear the guitar – the way it was played – raw and original.
Photo: © Joseph Cultice / Satriani.com
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: As technology continues to change so rapidly, do you see yourself trying to release material that surrounds itself in technology, such as an enhanced CD?
JOE SATRIANI: I’m not too crazy about the CD-ROM thing. I think it’s an interim, annoying little toy. There are certain things about computers that are so absolutely infuriating. Talk about a machine that tries to make you feel like an idiot. And yet, it just doesn’t seem to do the simplest things for you.
But I’ve recently come to regard computers like guitars – I’ve got a Les Paul Jr. and a Strat and a whole host of Ibanezes that were all customized for different things. I only pick them up when I need a particular result. I won’t pick up a Strat if I’m looking for that Les Paul Jr. sound. But the Les Paul, I could never play that live on “Flying In A Blue Dream” or “Cool No. 9.”
It just wouldn’t work. There’s no vibrator bar, it would just go out of tune, the sound is all skewered sounding. But for those 1 or 2 songs on a record where I really need it, that’s the only guitar that does it.
In a way, the way that they make computers today – I’ve got 2 Macs, I’ve got a small Psion (PDA) and I’ve got a PC – so I’ve just decided that I’ll learn how to operate all of them and use them for specific things. Just like I’m not going to use my Telecaster to sound like a Les Paul; I’m not going to get my Mac to try to do things that my PC was meant for.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: Your website (Satriani.com) appears to have captured your attention quite a bit. Is this something that you are focusing considerable resources on right now?
JOE SATIRANI: When I’m out there working on the website and stuff, I kinda look at everything the same way, like there’s always part of the industry that is trying to sell you the implement of the future. Remember, just like Ralph Cramdon on The Honeymooners, he was always trying to make a buck selling the implement of the future for the housewives of America; something that would start your car and open a can of soup.
But you know; that doesn’t work. I think there is room on the Net and for technology to be very, very specific. Along those lines we’re evolving the website to grow now. What I’ve always tried to do is to create a website that is very interactive and not something where you could spend hours and hours downloading 15-second movie clips, which I think really sucks.
I think what’s really cool is content that is available instantly and requires no special software. The variety of content and the ability to comment or get in touch with the people providing the content. We have a comments page that I sign on to every night to answer people’s questions. We’ve got a fans unite corner where it’s even more specific than that, where people can hit a forum and talk amongst themselves, or if they want to encourage me to take part in it.
We’ve got a part where people can get in touch with my technicians. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be launching CyberSatch which is going to be my online magazine edited by Matt Resnikoff. We’ll be doing stuff that’s not only specific to Joe, which sometimes bothers me a bit about my page where everything is just about me; so, I wanted to branch out and offer people out there, who are interested in technology and how quickly we can spread information. I wanted to offer something related to guitars and music, but it is really separate from me, so to speak, you know, because I can give them insight into the world of music and the world of guitar that has nothing to do with my album or my t-shirts. That is something that I’ve really aspired to, really trying to develop.
Photo: © Steven C. Pesant / Authentic Hendrix, LLC
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: It’s exciting to see an entertainer grasp this technology and in doing so understands its current limitations. The infinite ‘smoke and mirrors’ syndrome of a lot of the Internet is the wrong direction. Surfers just want content.
JOE SATRIANI: Yes, I believe so. We’re not ready for unlimited amounts of video or audio clients yet; the hardware and software isn’t there. It’s a bit silly, and we’re all struggling with it. But you know, when I go home after being in the studio for 12 hours, I check on the site. I look at all the comments and answer them, I check my email and I go around and look at other sites that I really like.
The same way that you would turn on the television to find out what happened in the world; whether it’s local news or world news. What if you turned on NBC and they said the news is coming at 6:00. To hear the news, please download this from Channel 13. And then you go, “Oh, okay, I gotta turn to channel 13. “And then you gotta wait. That doesn’t make any sense. The reason why TV and radio work is that when you turn them on, there’s content coming out to you. That’s slowly happening with the Web. The sites that I really like are the sites that give a lot of up-to-date content and give you a way to give that feedback. I think that’s really important.
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: Communication is the key to success on the Internet. It’s the biggest benefit of the Internet, but it can also be its biggest downfall.
JOE SATRIANI: That’s what I love about computers, the communication level that it’s risen to and the promise that it holds to all of us. When you can sit down and talk to someone from England and from Korea and from right across the bridge in Berkeley, South America and Seattle, you know, that’s something.
I mean, wow, you know. If I was 14 and Steve Vai and I were doing a guitar lesson and we could say, “Hey let’s go on the Net and see if we can ask Jimmy Page a question,” that would have just blown my mind.
Photo: © Joseph Cultice / Satriani.com
EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: Is there an audience focus that you are trying to maintain with everything that you do? Do you provide them with what they are looking for or are you just trying to provide material that you like and hopefully someone wants to hear or see it?
JOE SATRIANI: During a show, yeah. When I’m making a record, I am completely focused on myself. I know this is sound like a little selfish thing, but I guess making an album – a solo album – is a total exercise in self-absorption. To one extent while you’re writing it, at least for me, all I’m trying to do is write, let out what’s inside. I gotta get it out, on paper. Like for this new record, I’ve written everything on paper first. I made very few demos and then I got together with the others and we rehearsed the songs and so I heard many of them for the first time in the rehearsal room setting.
Then we played them for the producer and then we just went into the studio and we started recording them. It was a fabulous experience for me because it’s like a feeling that began as a daydream became a reality. I’m just not going to let it go until it’s totally finished. And then when it’s finished, and I get to see it as a CD, when people are listening to it, I don’t know why, but it makes me feel better. It’s like, what I do in life. That’s my life in a nutshell.
“I really do want to give [the audience] the best possible concert, but it’s just impossible to please everybody in the audience with the setlist.”
~ Joe Satriani
I don’t really think about the audience until the very end when I have to go on our tour and I realized, yes, I’ve got like eight albums worth of material. I can’t play them all, so I’ve got to somehow figure out how to do one song from every album, to try to make everybody happy. That’s the hard part about touring, pleasing all the wonderful fans that are out there. You know, I really do want to give them the best possible concert, but it’s just impossible to please everybody in the audience with the setlist. There are people out there who like your mellower stuff, or your angrier stuff, or your rockin’ stuff, or you know, some people just say, “I like the last two albums and that’s it. I don’t know about your early songs.” And they’re sitting next to someone who just likes the first album that’s it. So, it’s very hard.
Jimi Hendrix had that problem when he tried to evolve. His audience just, you know, it seemed like he was always struggling with it. The first 20 rows wanted to see the behind-his-back playing “Foxey Lady” and “Purple Haze” and you know we was writing this incredible music that he really needed to play as an artist.
There’s also that struggle in the entertainment world of what the artists need to do versus what the show should probably provide for the audience. Audiences are on a very late curve, at least back in the old days it was a very late curve. Today of course, there’s probably too many sources to listen to music and you know, I could release my album the day after I finish it on the Internet and there’d be, I don’t know, 40 million people around the world hooked up to the Net. It’s probably one percent of the world population that is on the Net, basically. So that amount of people instantly can hear Joe Satriani. But when I go out to do a tour and they say, “Hey, play the new stuff, we’re acquainted with it already.”
You know, 20 years ago, when, or should say close to 30 years ago, when Jimi Hendrix was going around, you know, he would’ve released a second album and maybe people were just getting the first album in their ears.
Because there wasn’t FM radio back then, like there is now or what happened in the mid-Seventies when FM radio became such a cultural force. Back in 1967 when Jimi recorded the first album, think about what was on the charts then. And you never heard rock ‘n’ roll on TV on a regular basis unless you watched the Ed Sullivan Show. So, rock ‘n’ roll was not used to promote commercials, it wasn’t on CD-ROMs, it wasn’t on the Net. There was no Net. They didn’t use it in movies, it was just like, it was really counterculture.
EPILOGUE
Fast forward 28 years into the future and it’s fun to look back on the conversation and gauge where the world of music has come since that time and how the bulk of music delivery has been centralized with the Internet and digital delivery mechanisms. Reality is that you can indeed complete an album today and release it tomorrow, if not within a few hours; or take it a step further and go live – worldwide – at a moment’s notice through YouTube and similar streaming platforms.
Since our 1997 interview, Joe Satriani has subsequently released 20 additional solo albums, live releases and compilations, taken the G3 Tour worldwide on more than a dozen annual tours along with three special G3 album releases, performed and released new albums as part of the Chickenfoot supergroup with Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, Chad Smith and Kenny Aronoff and much more.
Photo: © Chuck Lanza Photography
We’re also super excited that Joe Satriani has been able to perform at nearly 70 different Experience Hendrix Tour dates in recent years, including a special guest appearance during the 2004 Tour, plus extended itineraries on the 2010 (Spring Tour) and 2019 (Spring & Fall Tours). Learn more about these past performances on the Experience Hendrix Tour website.
In 2018, to help celebrate the release of the special 50th Anniversary box set of Electric Ladyland, Joe Satriani prepared a two-part unboxing series showcasing the new release plus explored the various songs and many inspirations he derived from album’s original release.
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