Music: Steve Vai

Jeff Hemmings looks at the varied CV of Steve Vai

Seller of over 15 million albums, this American guitarist, songwriter and producer of Italian origin started his career as a ‘music transcriptionist’ for Frank Zappa (notating his work) and toured in Zappa’s band in the early ‘80s before releasing his debut album in 1983.

Influenced by the likes of Jimmy Page, Brian May, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and jazz-fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth, Vai started taking guitar lessons form Joe Satriani at the age of 12 (and with whom he still sometimes performs), before attending Berklee College of Music. He then mailed Frank Zappa a transcript of the musicians The Black Page, an instrumental for drums, along with a tape of his guitar playing. Zappa was impressed enough to hire him to transcribe a number of guitar solos, which were published in 1982 in The Frank Zappa Guitar Book. Vai ended up doing overdubs on many of Zappa’s guitar parts before becoming a fully fledged member of the touring band. Zappa referred to Vai as his ‘little Italian virtuoso’, and listed him in the liner notes as performing ‘stunt guitar’ or ‘impossible guitar parts’.

But his eclecticism and versatility really came to the fore when he went solo and also temporarily joined Graham Bonnet’s band Alcatrazz and then with John Lydon’s PiL on the album Album. In 1985 he joined David Lee Roth’s new band, post-Eddie Van Halen, enjoying massive critical and popular success before the band petered out when Vai joined Whitesnake, performing all the guitar parts on their Slip Of The Tongue album. In 1990 Vai released the Passion And Warfare album, the song ‘For The Love Of God’ featuring a guitar solo that was voted one of he greatest guitar solos of all time in Guitar World magazine!

A solo artist for most of the ‘90s and noughties, Vai increasingly combined classical with rock via a number of projects, including a performance with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, working on composer Ichiro Nodaira’s Fire Strings, a concerto for electric guitar and 100-piece orchestra! By 2010 he had completed his first symphony.

A virtuoso, who combines technical ability with a deep knowledge of music theory, he likes to get out his twin and even triple-neck guitars from time to time. Things sound like they are veering into Spinal Tap territory here (particularly when one finds out he is an amateur beekeeper, and an honorary member of the British Beekeepers’ Association…), but Vai, a recipient of three Grammys, is a consummate professional, whose unusual musical career path has taken him to some very interesting places.
Concorde 2, Thursday 5 September, 7pm, £27.50