“SHUT UP – WE KNOW
YOU CAN PLAY!”
Steve Vai (SV)
took time out from talking to muso mags to shoot the breeze with me backstage at the
Shepherd’s Bush Empire on
IB: Most of us are aware of how you came to work with
Frank, so I’ll by-pass all that. Tell me about the song ‘Solitude’ which you
performed for Gail at the Zappa’s Universe rehearsals
SV:
How do you know about that?
IB: I, er, have a
tape of it.
SV: Jeezus, how did
that get out?
MK: (laughs)
You can’t stop it!
SV: It was a song that we rehearsed in the 80
band. Frank had written it before then, but we had rehearsed it in an attempt
to persuade Frank to play it - which you really can’t do.
IB: It wasn’t a typical Zappa song.
SV:
It was the least typical
Zappa song I ever heard. When I asked him if it was written for Gail, he said
‘No”. But I know it was because Gail told me it was. Obviously it’s written for
her.
IB: It wasn’t actually recorded - just
rehearsed?
SV:
Well I have heard a tape, I
believe, of tracks for that song with the David Logeman
band - for the ‘You Are What you Is’ album. And we rehearsed it, and Frank came
in as he does sometimes if he’s in a certain mood - he just started chopping
songs from the list. We learned a hundred songs and that was one that got
chopped. But I remember Arthur Barrow had a cassette of it from rehearsal and
years later I wanted to record it. I wanted to do something with it but Gail’s
very sensitive about that song. It’s a very special song for her and rightly
so.
IB: Did you actually sing it at that time?
SV: Yeah, I did. I got the tape from Arthur. I believe
it was Arthur - it was either Arthur or Scott Thunes.
I think it was maybe Scott Thunes, I can't even
remember now. And then I learned it and I did a little version of it for Gail
at the sound check for Zappa's Universe. I totally blew it. I remember
she just sat there with her hand over her mouth. But I talked to her about that
song.
IB: So probably it’ll never see the light of
day officially?
SV:
Well there were other
people that wanted to record it, but I think Gail wants Dweezil
to record it first.
IB: Are you still in touch with the family?
SV:
Occasionally. I was talking
to Gail a few months ago before the G3 tour because we were gonna
do ‘My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama', and I kind of wanted her blessing. And
I got it.
MK: Did you ever tell her I was singing on it?
SV:
No (laughs) - why,
you think she’d say don’t play it? I don’t think so.
IB: (To Mike) Do I take it from that
that you’re not so well in with the family?
MK:
As far as I know they don’t wish to speak to me. I’ve talked to Ahmet a few times; he’s totally cool with me.
But I think it’s Dweezil in particular who doesn’t
really want to know about me.
IB: That’s a shame. (To Steve) You did a
concert at the Eastman Concert Hall in New York with Joel Thome
and a 60-piece orchestra last year - how did that go?
SV:
Well the thing at Zappa's
Universe went kinda good....
IB: . . .you got a Grammy, didn’t you?
SV: We got a Grammy for the performance of ‘Sofa’.
It was a nice arrangement by Mike and Scott. So Joel and I talked about doing
something else together.
IB: Was it your own material that you played?
SV: Yes, what we did then was my material. And
we did a couple of Frank’s songs, and we did a piece by Joel.
IB: Did it include ‘Rescue Me Or Bury Me’?
SV: No.
IB: Oh, I really like that song.
SV: Thanks. But it was a nice event. It was
really hard to get it together. I worked really hard for a couple of years just
getting the orchestrations together. And the logistics of putting together an
orchestra show are pretty staggering.
IB: I understand there’s another one coming up
in Israel?
SV: There was, but it turned into a big
disaster.
IB: But you’ve actually written a long
orchestral piece?
SV: Well the thing is, it’s an avenue that I
can walk down one of these days. I have all this material from the past that
I’ve orchestrated - just pieces of music like ‘For The Love Of God’, a couple
of new things - but what I’d like to do is create a new piece for orchestra and
rock band and have it performed. But you’re talking 5 months of undisturbed
writing and then $200,000 to record it.
IB: Are you two going to record together -
you’ve obviously done the G3 stuff live, but are there plans to work in the
studio?
MK:
Yeah, I’m sure.
SV: Yeah, I really hope so. We just did a
Christmas song for a record that’s coming out on Epic. Mike played piano on
that - it’s beautiful.
IB: Is it something you’ve written yourself?
SV:
It’s this record I’m trying
to put together with Epic. It’s all instrumental guitar. And it has different
players - Joe Satriani is on a track.
IB: Something like Dweezil’s
‘What The Hell Was I Thinking’?
SV:
Yeah.
MK:
But that’s all one song -
this is a collection of different Christmas tunes.
SV: And we did ‘Christmas Time Is Here’, which
is that Charlie Brown... .(to Mike) who
wrote that again?
MK: Vince Guaraldi - it’s a beautiful song.
SV:
It came out really good.
MK: We were actually playing it live on the
tour that we did at the end of last year.
IB: So will it come out under your name, or
‘various artists’?
SV:
Various Artists.
IB: Do you have any plans to work with Terry Bozzio again?
SV:
Well nothing in the near
future, but I have tapes of Terry.
IB: From the Vai band
project?
SV:
Right before that when
Terry and I started hanging out. A friend of mine owned a studio he was turning
into a video-editing facility and he gutted it so it was like this 20,000
square foot room that had three floors in it. And we set up Terry’s drums - he
was wired for 48 track SSL - and I recorded 3 hours of Terry Bozzio improvising. It’s some of the most wonderful stuff
and I hope to take that one of these days and orchestrate around it.
IB: Tommy Mars - still a friend?
SV:
Yeah. Mars, he’s an alien (laughs). There’s few people that are as
musical as he is.
IB: He’s appeared on some of your solo stuff.
SV:
Yeah, but you can’t get Tommy
Mars to come in and do little plinky piano stuff.
He’s like a wild cat. You’ve got to put spurs on and ride that bucking bronco!
IB: He of course has been involved with the
Banned From Utopia.
MK:
I think they actually ended
up doing this thing Steve was gonna do in Israel.
SV: Yeah.
IB: Do you know what happened to Scott Thunes after the 93 tour? I saw him on Top Of The Pops with the Waterboys, then
he seems to have disappeared.
MK:
If you can find a back issue
- from about 4 months ago - of an American magazine called Bass Player, there’s a fairly lengthy interview with him called
‘Requiem For A Heavyweight’. It’s basically his farewell to the music business.
He has decided it’s caused him enough pain and he’s done now. So he’s just
gotten re-married and he just wants to be a househusband. The last couple of
times I’ve seen him he seemed to be happier and more content than I’ve ever
known him to be.
IB:
(to
Steve) Your time with Whitesnake - is that something you look back on fondly?
SV:
Well, when I was doing it I
was enjoying it but afterwards it got kind of weird because I just started
reading funny things in the press. Some of the guys were saying stuff.
IB: Anyone
in particular?
SV: I
don’t want to get into that. It was good when I was doing it because touring
with a big rock arena band, you get treated like a king, first class
everything, I made a ton of dough, and I got to go on stage every night and act
like a lunatic.
IB: And you also did some of your own songs.
SV:
Yeah, my solo section was a
good opportunity for me to promote ‘Passion & Warfare’. But afterwards,
because the record didn’t sell 14 million like the previous one, some people
were a little upset about that. I have nothing bad to say about that. David Coverdale’s a total gentleman; we always got along real
well.
IB: I think he’s gone back to the bluesier stuff now.
SV:
Well, he’s making a blues
record but, contrary to popular belief, that Whitesnake
record that I did was the furthest thing from the blues (laughs).
IB: Are you still friendly with Laurel Fishman?
SV:
Oh yeah - she’s my best
friend. She writes for a lot of magazines. She’s one of the best editors I’ve
ever worked with.
IB: Did you record an interview with her - or
was it Frank - about the time of ‘Stevie’s Spanking’?
There was talk of a lengthy tape.
SV:
I think Frank talked to her
about that.
IB: On ‘Sex & Religion’, Ahmet provided backing vocals on just one track?
SV:
Yeah. There was another called
‘Manic Panic’, but it didn’t make it to the record. But the best stuff I got of
Ahmet is where he’s standing in the studio just
talking (laughs). He’s possessed,
that guy. He’s really funny - totally out there.
MK:
(laughs)
He’s actually writing songs
and rehearsing with a band apart from Dweezil now.
He’ll get into a rehearsal studio every couple of months and work up a new
batch of tunes, and I’ve heard tapes of them and they’re good. Ahmet has tremendous potential as a front man.
IB: Yes, I was really impressed when I saw him
at the Marquee in 91, the first time he toured.
MK:
He just keeps getting
better. He’s taking a more serious attitude towards singing and the lyrics.
He’s got a lot on his mind. As he gets older he starts to have more serious
thoughts and the lyrics have really evolved from there.
IB: (to
Steve) I was surprised to hear ‘Bangkok’ on the ‘Fire Garden’ album - I
never had you down as an Abba fan. How come you chose that?
SV:
Oh, that’s a long story. I
have a stack of music: when I was on tour I would just write whenever I had an
idea and I threw it in a pile. Then I would get my engineers - when they
weren’t doing anything - to type them into the computer so I could hear them.
That’s how I discovered a lot of the songs that I have recorded, from these
pieces of scrap paper. So I listened to one of the tapes and I heard that
melody (sings) and I thought ‘That’s
kind of nice, I could make a song out of that’. And I saw the manuscript and it
had my name on it, it said ‘Taurus Bulba’. I
remembered writing a song called ‘Taurus Bulba’; the
melody was so familiar. So I recorded this whole thing and I sent it to my
manager, and her boyfriend listened to it and said “Yeah, that’s ‘Bangkok”’ And
she calls me up and she goes “Is this ‘Bangkok’ from ‘Chess”’ And I said ‘I’ve
never heard any of that - that’s crazy. No, it’s just like a Russian folk
dance’. So she played it for me over the phone and I almost died. I thought I
was in a dream - how did those guys get my music? Then I realised
what had happened: years ago, when I was with David Lee Roth, he gave me this
tape - didn’t tell me what it was - and said, “Transcribe this. Let’s learn it
and play it in the band between set changes”. So I transcribed it and we only
did it a few times. Then I took the music and threw it in my pile. I didn’t
know the name of it or anything. So ten years later when I dug it out and
listened to it, I couldn’t remember that was the event so I thought I wrote it.
It’s a great melody - I thought it was too good to be mine!
IB: A few years ago you mentioned you were
going to remix and add some more ‘leftovers’ to the ‘Flex-Able’ album.
SV: Yes,
that’s my next project. I want to release a box that has: ‘Flex-Able’ remastered; ‘Flex-Able Leftovers’, with some tunes from the
‘Passion & Warfare’ days; a remastering and
licensing of the Alcatraz record; a disc that I want to put together of all the
film cues that I’ve done...
IB: . . .from ‘Crossroads’, ‘Bill &
Ted’...?
SV:
Yeah. And a bonus disc
that’s sort of like ‘Lumpy Gravy’, all this talking and funny things.
MK:
Most of which was recorded
on the bus last night (laughs)!
SV:
Yeah, when these guys got
back in a drunken rage. Oh! Everybody: Mike Keneally.
Wow! (laughs) - poor guy.
IB: So, do you have a backlog of ‘leftovers’?
SV:
I’ve got a real, real lot
of stuff. The fact is I just used to record, never thought I’d ever release it
or that anyone would ever want to hear it.
IB: Being signed to Epic, is that a problem -
you can’t release as much as you’d like?
SV:
No, it’s not that. I just
don’t have the time. The time to record it and finish it. I’m touring so much
and I have a family. No, with Epic I can record anything I want.
IB: You mention your family - are Julian and
Fire gonna record any more songs?
SV:
We’re gonna
find out, huh? I still have a lot of them on tape.
IB: So, after the band project, the half
instrumental/half song oriented ‘Fire Garden’, G3, the orchestral
collaborations - what direction is Steve Vai heading
off into next?
SV:
For my next proper studio
record I want to really focus on the guitar and make it a guitar record. It’ll
have vocals, but I want to try to sit back and think where will the guitar go
from here - what’s the next evolutionary stage? And I’m not talking about in
the mundane pop world of the guitar. You know, a real development of the
guitar. And I want to try to saturate my consciousness in that frame of mind
and see where that takes me and try to make it a reality. I don’t know if it’ll
be the be-all and end-all, but it should be fun to listen to. It’ll be fun to
play!
IB: Okay, final question - tell me about the
sample at the start of ‘Kill The Guy With The Ball’, where did that come from?
SV:
That’s not a sample. It’s a
guitar going through a DSP 4000, an Eventide piece of gear. It’s a vocal filter
that I constructed. What it does is, you hit a note and it makes it go ‘Ai-yeh, ai-yeh, ai-yeh’.
On top of that I have the whammy pedal, which takes the pitch and throws it
around in octaves: ‘Ai-yeh, ai-yee,
ai-yeh, AI-YEE, ai-yeh’. So
that’s with one foot, and with the other I’m using the wah-wah.
So then you’ve got ‘Ai-yaw, wah-yee, ai-yeh, wah-yeh’. And then when
I’ve got the whammy bar and I’m foxing with the notes: ‘Ai-yaw, ah-rai-uh, wuh-yehh-urr-yeh’. That’s
how I did it!
MK:
That might be the next
evolutionary step of the guitar (laughs)!
***
A fredited version of this interview originally appeared in
Issue 59 of T’Mershi Duween.
Photo of Steve at Tower Records, Piccadilly on 23 November 1993 taken by the
Idiot Bastard.