Inspired to pick up the guitar by Jimi Hendrix, Satriani, an Italian-American native of New York state, has released a staggering 16 solo albums over his career – earning him six gold and platinum discs, 15 Grammy nominations, and album sales in excess of 10 million units worldwide – whilst never losing his focus on dedicating himself to the artistry of his instrument, the guitar. While still a teenager, Satriani taught other budding six-string hopefuls including Steve Vai, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Larry Lalonde from Primus. Since his 1986 debut release “Not Of This Earth” and the breakthrough follow up, “Surfing With The Alien,” Satriani’s legendary status has been firmly cemented in rock ‘n’ roll fame for more than four decades.
Satriani’s return to Australia is expected to be nothing short of epic. This is Joe’s first Australian tour since 2014 and a rare chance to experience one of the world’s greatest guitarists beginning the next chapter of his legendary career – whilst also marking 30-years since his first visit down under. We had a chance to talk to the guitar icon himself ahead of his Australian tour to talk about the shows themselves, his history with Australia and his latest album ‘What Happens Next’.
Andrew: It is an absolute pleasure to see you back in Australia later this year!
Joe: I know, it’s been a few years so I guess 4 years is a good enough time to return, looking forward to it.
Andrew: Sure and I know you did a guitar clinic here in between that time as well but it’s always good to see you do a full on show and obviously supporting the new album “What Happens Next”. Before we get into the tour, what kind of feedback have you been getting from the fans since it was released earlier this year?
Joe: Oh wow we just hit the ground running in January! The record came out January 12th and I think we were on tour a few days before then, we did 3 back to back G3 tours, each of them about 2 months long with John Petrucci (Dream Theater) and Phil Collen (Def Leppard) on the first US leg and Canada and then in Europe with Uli Jon Roth [who] came onboard and wow what a fantastic response from the audience to the new material which is hard to break in when you got a G3 show because you don’t really have a long time to play, you only have an hour per band. But right away fan favorites popped up like “Cherry Blossoms”, “Thunder High On The Mountain”, even crazy songs like “Catbot”, they loved that and “Super Funky Badass” which is really a kick back 70’s kind of song. So I was very happily surprised and encouraged to keep digging deep and once we started doing the solo tours it got even better because you put on a full show.
Andrew: Yeah and what people seem to be saying about the new record is that it seems to be a little bit more stripped back I guess. A little bit more straight edged Satriani type hard rock stuff, I mean would you agree that this album is a little more bare bones so to speak?
Joe: In some ways what you are saying is spot on because it was born out of a cathartic process where I was really trying to go in a different direction from “Shockwave Supernova” and “Unstoppable Momentum” and a whole string of albums that really were a little bit more progressive minded where I tried lots of things with different bands and tried doing different kinds of arrangements. But the process of doing “Shockwave Supernova”, of having my son out on the tour filming me and then realizing that I was in fact going through a kind of cathartic process where first of all I had to admit that yes, that sort of alter ego narrative that was part of the last record was partly true although I fictionalized it for the front of the album. But that got me to the point where I said I need to go back like you said, stripped back and go back to my original loves about playing guitar about music, what are the styles and feelings and grooves and extras I really like.
Once I got that answered, then I thought I gotta talk to Chad Smith, I gotta talk to Glenn Hughes and see if they want to join me in trying to do this as a trio so that we could get…I like to use the word ‘essential’ to describe it. Sometimes when people say bare bones they think oh, one microphone, one guitar. Of course it’s not like that, we use all the technology we can. It’s really about an attitude and then things like arrangement and try to use a little bit of economy but don’t stop if you gotta go overboard. If you have a song like “Righteous” or “Thunder High On The Mountain”, they need lots of stuff. They need six guitar tracks just maybe doing little things here and there but when you listen to the whole thing it doesn’t come off as overly accessorised or fussed over and that’s kind of what I mean by the attitude that you bring in, is just be really gutsy and tell the truth with economy of harmony and melody and then give your best performance. That actually goes back to what got me into guitar in the first place, those early rock records we celebrated that attitude.
Andrew: As far as the setlists are concerned for the Australian tour, how many of the new songs are you looking to play?
Joe: Let me see, I’m looking at the setlist right now [counts through the tracks on set], at least 7 so that’s more than half the record right now. We kind of mix it up here and there and I’m sure by the time we get on the plane, all the guys are going to walk up to me and say, ‘Hey let’s do this’ [laughs]. We’re always changing it up a little bit here and there and we’ll probably ask the fans in Australia if they want to hear something special from the new record and we’ll work it out for them.
Andrew: Well that will probably help you then because I would imagine with 16 studio albums in your back catalogue, it must be quite difficult to figure out what setlist you want to do for a tour.
Joe: It is and over the years I had this sort of way of breaking it up into three parts. One would be the songs that would address the majority of the audience which usually they haven’t seen me before and they might only see you once in their lifetime and so it would be rude to not play your most popular songs. So I always think, well let’s take a third of the set and make sure that we play those songs they have really come to see. And then let’s take the next third and let’s play as many of the new songs as they will stand because it’s always hard, it gets harder and harder to play new songs as you stick around longer [laughs]. But sometimes you get these records and they embrace so much of the new record that they breathe new life into your touring career.
The rest of the set I always leave open, I break up the last third into a couple of different categories where I like to see us play something we’ve never played before that maybe we thought shouldn’t be played live, as only an album track or something like that but sometimes you get a person in the band they have a special talent and they can make a song happen that the last band couldn’t. And then I’ll take recommendations from the guys in the band because they come in and they go, ‘Oh I haven’t heard all your stuff but I always liked this song’, and you go, ‘Oh never played that one before!’ In this particular case I think our new drummer Joe Travers came in with some very interesting songs that he thought were his favorites and always wanted to play them and so we tried to work them into the set and it’s been great. We’ve been able to bring back songs like “Cool #9” that weren’t really part of the last, let’s say 5 years because it didn’t really fit the band that much whereas the band before that it was like a hallmark song. So you never known when things like that happen.
Andrew: Yeah we are looking forward to it! In the press release when the tour was announced that it stated that it’s been 30 years since the first time that you came down to Australia…
Joe: [laughs]
Andrew: I know, it’s been a long time! Do you remember much from that first tour at all?
Joe: I remember everything, it was so much fun! You just can’t imagine how exotic Australia was, for me it really was and the fact that I was playing with Mick Jagger was also just a crazy thing. Even though it was our second tour together, you never get used to that. I was always a little bit star struck and even though Mick was the nicest guy ever that you would ever want to be in a band with, he was so exciting and the band was exciting and the shows were big. It was just really a lot of fun and we stayed for a long time in every city which was great, it wasn’t the usual where you are 18 hours per city. Because when you do big shows you don’t play very many of them in a week and so you get a lot more time to hang out, meet people, go to restaraunts and walk around and hang out like a regular person which makes the host country just that much more interesting. So yeah I got lots of crazy memories!
At this point Joe proceeds to ask me where I was calling from and of course I mentioned along with being from Perth on the west coast of Australia, also noted that it was the first show on the tour coming up.
Joe: That’s right yeah! We spent quite a good time in Perth, the show there with Mick Jagger did not go over very well! My amp stopped working after the second song and then it was the bass and after about 20 minutes nothing worked except for Mick’s microphone. It was a disaster for Mick but before and after the show the days we were there were so much fun and Perth is such a unique place, I just had a great time there.
Andrew: Well it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you Joe and we are really looking forward to seeing you back in Australia again. I hope the tour is another success for you and congratulations again on the new album!
Joe: Thank you, very nice to talk to you.
JOE SATRIANI
WHERE TO NEXT AUSTRALIA TOUR
ASTOR THEATRE, PERTH SATURDAY NOVEMBER 24
HQ, ADELAIDE MONDAY NOVEMBER 26
FORUM THEATRE, MELBOURNE WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 28
CANBERRA THEATRE FRIDAY NOVEMBER 30
STATE THEATRE, SYDNEY SATURDAY DECEMBER 1
THE TIVOLI, BRISBANE SUNDAY DECEMBER 2
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
For complete tour and ticket information, visit: satriani.com & livenation.com.au
