Steve Vai Reveals Who Was His Biggest Inspiration To Learn The Guitar
Steve Vai reveals his biggest inspiration and guitar idol
Guitar legend Steve Vai talked about his early musical career and guitar lessons from Joe Satriani during a recent appearance on the podcast String Theory.
In the conversation, Steve stated that he was twelve years old when he first joined a rock band, but he wasn’t playing the guitar at that time. Surprisingly enough, he was a keyboardist and didn't touch the guitar during those early years. However, things have changed for Steve after listening to Led Zeppelin. According to the legendary guitarist, it was the time when he decided to be a guitar player, which shows how good and inspiring Jimmy Page was to young Vai. As everybody knows, Steve started to take guitar lessons from another legend, Joe Satriani, for over three years, which takes a huge role in where he stands as a guitarist right now.
Related to the topic, Steve Vai said the following:
“When I was 12, I had joined a band, but I didn’t play guitar, I played keyboard – electric keyboard. And I only knew two chords – they were for ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash,’ but I always wanted to play. So, finally, when I heard Led Zeppelin, I decided I wanted to play, and also a friend of mine that lived a couple of houses down, John Sergio, he was really into music. He was instrumental in my musical evolution as a youngster, and he was taking lessons from Joe. And when I was at John’s house once, and he had a guitar, and he was playing – I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘You have a guitar and you’re able to play it?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, I’m taking lessons from this guy, Joe Satriani.’ And I got Joe’s number from him, and that’s when I decided, ‘Well, it’s OK, you can play the guitar. ‘So then I went to Joe and I basically had a pack of strings and a guitar.” Further in the conversation, Steve Vai praised the talent of Satriani by saying that he was an excellent teacher. Additionaly, Steve mentioned that he started with finger practices as every other beginner does. About Zeppelin and Satriani, Steve Vai added the following:
"In the beginning, it was basically like finger exercises and just things to kind of get my dexterity going, but it was very well-balanced. My lessons evolved very organically, he was an incredible teacher. "He was able to see what it was I was interested in and what I needed to know in order to help me figure things out for myself, but he was a wealth of... I mean, Joe, I would bring him songs and I'd say, 'Can you show me how to play this song...?' "And it would be like Led Zeppelin, or I remember when the Bad Company record came out in 1974, I was asking him, and he had just heard the song a few times, and he could play them, he was actually playing the riffs that the guitarist on the record was playing, and I was fascinated, I was like, 'You really can do this.'" Thank you so much for watching. Make sure to hit the like and subscribe buttons if you want to support the channel and see you in the next video.
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