Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is guitarist extraordinaire Joe Satriani. Joe, you're
Speaker 1: on a spring tour with Steve Vai. How did that
Speaker 1: come to be?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, it started about a little over a year
Speaker 2: ago when my son brought me this idea about doing
Speaker 2: a documentary about himself growing up around the G three
Speaker 2: concerts and the fact we had an anniversary that had
Speaker 2: just come by, and we started with just doing the
Speaker 2: film and it rolled into a G three tour and
Speaker 2: then which we wrapped up in February, and then along
Speaker 2: the way, territories were saying, well, I'd like to like
Speaker 2: you to come here too, because it was really a
Speaker 2: short tour, maybe just about eleven dates or something like that,
Speaker 2: all West Coast, and so we thought, well, yeah, let's
Speaker 2: just keep going. It's so much fun. Eric had other commitments,
Speaker 2: so then we thought, well, maybe it's just me and Steve.
Speaker 2: And then as soon as we agreed we thought that'd
Speaker 2: be a cool idea, someone said, well, you guys would
Speaker 2: be great if you had a track, And then so
Speaker 2: I started to write some music and sent it to
Speaker 2: Steve and then all of a sudden, it was like, hey,
Speaker 2: you guys should do an album and keep this tour
Speaker 2: going as long as you can. So here we are.
Speaker 2: We're on the Satchfy tour, the first leg of it,
Speaker 2: and we've got a song out and a video and
Speaker 2: it's a reality. It's just so cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. How many kids do you have?
Speaker 2: I just have one, It's easy, Satriani. A lot of
Speaker 2: people have been following me over the years. No him
Speaker 2: from doing the podcast way back when and doing a
Speaker 2: lot of videos for me, music videos and the documentary
Speaker 2: Beyond the Supernova as well. So he's a young filmmaker
Speaker 2: out of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So how old is he now?
Speaker 2: Thirty one?
Speaker 1: Thirty one? Is you off the payroll?
Speaker 2: He's off and on I suppose. I mean I've got
Speaker 2: to pay him for his work, right.
Speaker 1: So okay, tell me more about this documentary to the
Speaker 1: degree you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's interesting because G three the very first
Speaker 2: G three tour we did in ninety six.
Speaker 1: Not everybody who's listening maybe or not be familiar with
Speaker 1: G three, So please explain the concept.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, so back in ninety five, I walk into
Speaker 2: the Bill Graham management office. I was managed by Bill
Speaker 2: Graham and the team there, and I said to the guys,
Speaker 2: I said, look, thank you very much. Everything's great touring
Speaker 2: the world. I'm a solo artist. I can do whatever
Speaker 2: I want. But how come I'm isolated from everybody? I said,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just like to get together with another
Speaker 2: guitar player. It seems like it's impossible. And when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, that was the dream. I always thought,
Speaker 2: when you got to be a famous rock star, you
Speaker 2: could just hang out with your friends and play guitar
Speaker 2: all the time and make music. But in fact it
Speaker 2: was the opposite. The labels, the promoters, managers were very
Speaker 2: protectable of their artists, and you just good luck trying
Speaker 2: to stand next to another guitar player on stage, especially
Speaker 2: if they did something similar to yourself. So I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I just got to turn that upside down. So in
Speaker 2: a moment of contrarian thought, you know, I said, what
Speaker 2: if we just made our own festival where every night
Speaker 2: I'd get to stand next to my favorite guitar players
Speaker 2: and we would just try to I have fun, out
Speaker 2: do each other, whatever you want to call it, but
Speaker 2: we'd celebrate the guitar with the audience and everyone thought
Speaker 2: it was a great idea. We had to figure out
Speaker 2: how to get it down. You couldn't do it with
Speaker 2: like twelve guitarists or so, because as you know, you
Speaker 2: kind of rent the venue every night and there's a curfew.
Speaker 2: You got to get in, do the show, and you
Speaker 2: got to get out. So if I had even seven
Speaker 2: guitar players, they wouldn't really have enough time to play
Speaker 2: to feel like it was worth their while to come out.
Speaker 2: So we eventually in that meeting after a few hours,
Speaker 2: we whittled it down to three. If we could fit
Speaker 2: three guys, we could get them, entice them with the
Speaker 2: offer that they could come with their own band, play
Speaker 2: for forty five fifty minutes, do their hit single, their
Speaker 2: new music, whatever they want to do, as long as
Speaker 2: they stick around for the end jam and we play
Speaker 2: for a half hour, and we'd play not our own songs,
Speaker 2: but we celebrate the music we grew up listening to.
Speaker 2: So that took about a year to convince the promoters
Speaker 2: and the managers that it was a good idea, And
Speaker 2: it was my job to sell each package to the promoters,
Speaker 2: which was also difficult. Some promoters would like one of
Speaker 2: my choices and wouldn't like the other, you know, and
Speaker 2: so that went back and forth, but I had it
Speaker 2: set in my mind it had to be Steve and
Speaker 2: it had to be Eric, and I just pushed that
Speaker 2: and then come October of ninety six, it was our
Speaker 2: first show. It just so happened that a few days
Speaker 2: before then, it was my son's fourth birthday. We just
Speaker 2: moved into a new house and we figured he's old
Speaker 2: enough to travel now. So that was his first tour,
Speaker 2: was the G three tour. So he joined us with
Speaker 2: the bus and it was really fascinating, you know, for
Speaker 2: all of us, I think for myself, my wife Robina,
Speaker 2: having a child out on tour, that was something. For Zez,
Speaker 2: of course, it was you know, life altering. But he
Speaker 2: grew up, you know, hanging out with Robert Fripp and
Speaker 2: Kenny wyn Sheppard and Steve I and Eric Johnson and
Speaker 2: all the band members, and he just kept coming on
Speaker 2: tour until about high school and the schools were like,
Speaker 2: you can't just take your kid out, you know, all
Speaker 2: the time. So we started changing the touring schedule to
Speaker 2: work around that. And you know, he like any kid
Speaker 2: growing up, when he did, he was really into making
Speaker 2: skateboard videos and so he by default was handed the
Speaker 2: camera half the time to film us. You know, his
Speaker 2: dad and his buddies just goofing around trying to figure
Speaker 2: out what to do with the Internet. And he brought
Speaker 2: a lot of life into what was an unusual thing
Speaker 2: for the rest of us, for us grown ups, you know.
Speaker 2: So his history really was about growing up with a
Speaker 2: very strange father who played rock guitar in the era
Speaker 2: of hip hop and pop music, and his observations and
Speaker 2: his life being the son of an almost famous guy.
Speaker 2: And he wanted to make a film about that and
Speaker 2: about G three and about guitar playing and what it
Speaker 2: means to everybody involved. And so the movie has evolved
Speaker 2: quite a bit, and he's interviewed, you know, Robert and
Speaker 2: Brian May and Steve Miller and Steve VII and everybody
Speaker 2: in between, maybe about thirty or forty different guitar players.
Speaker 2: Since then, he came on tour with us on this
Speaker 2: G three reunion tour and for the first time he
Speaker 2: joined me on stage for a song and played a
Speaker 2: song his mind blowing moment for us as Fall and Son.
Speaker 2: But that I think that was a crucial thing in
Speaker 2: the film for him to really experience that. After watching
Speaker 2: from the sidelines for you know, three decades, he finally
Speaker 2: got to figure out for himself what it really feels
Speaker 2: like to walk on stage and play summer song. You know.
Speaker 1: So it's not a typical rock documentary. It's through the
Speaker 1: eyes of your son and what it's like to be
Speaker 1: the son of someone who's a rock guitarist. As you say,
Speaker 1: almost famous or semi four us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a funny genre. I exist in
Speaker 2: instrumental rock. Right, it needs to be defined explained.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to G three. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people think every famous person knows each other. That's
Speaker 1: not necessarily true. And you live in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: so you start G three. Did you already know Eric Johnson?
Speaker 1: And as you press, did you know these people or
Speaker 1: did you have to call up and say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan. How did it all work?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, I mean, first I have to say, in
Speaker 2: case people don't know, I've known Steve I since he
Speaker 2: was twelve. He came to my house when he was
Speaker 2: twelve years old one afternoon, rang the doorbell, and he
Speaker 2: had a pack of strings in one hand. And a
Speaker 2: stringless guitar in the other and he said, can you
Speaker 2: teach me how to play guitar? So we grew up
Speaker 2: in the same town and went to the same public
Speaker 2: high school, and I gave him guitar lessons three or
Speaker 2: four or five years, and we became the best buddies,
Speaker 2: comrade guitar players, and we've remained the closest friends. And
Speaker 2: that's when we've toured together countless times, So we go
Speaker 2: way back. I didn't know Eric Johnson at all, but
Speaker 2: in the years leading up to that, I was really
Speaker 2: a big fan, and we actually toured together and nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: But I have to say I didn't I wouldn't say
Speaker 2: to you like we were best friends or something like that.
Speaker 2: He was just a guy admired that was on a
Speaker 2: tour with us for a few weeks in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: I did twist his arm to do some jamming every night,
Speaker 2: you know, when we completed our set. But he's a
Speaker 2: much mellower guy than me and my buddies, I guess,
Speaker 2: so sometimes he would he would decline. Other times I
Speaker 2: just thought he was amazing, and at that time I
Speaker 2: thought that he represented a really beautiful forward thinking way
Speaker 2: of playing the electric guitar that a lot of people
Speaker 2: didn't know was possible. He really had his own voice
Speaker 2: and a unique set of influences, and he was so
Speaker 2: different than Steve and I. We were just Long Island
Speaker 2: kids listening growing up, listening to Hendrix and Zeppelin and
Speaker 2: Sabbath and and Eric was exotic by comparison, you know.
Speaker 2: So it did. Like I said before, it was arm twisting.
Speaker 2: Because my manager would call their manager, and like just
Speaker 2: about every other response, there's a there's a guarded response,
Speaker 2: you know. Each manager is like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if my artist wants to be seen
Speaker 2: in this light standing next to that person. And very
Speaker 2: often the case, I'd reach out to two guitar players
Speaker 2: and one of them would refuse to play with the
Speaker 2: other for no reason, you know, stylistic, personal, I don't
Speaker 2: know what. And I always used to tell them, look
Speaker 2: that you know, the audience has already decided who their
Speaker 2: favorite is, so you're not going to change your mind.
Speaker 2: It's not a contest. It really isn't. You might think
Speaker 2: it is because that's how we've been brought up in
Speaker 2: the entertainment industry. But the audience is smarter. They've already
Speaker 2: made up their mind. They don't really care. They just
Speaker 2: there's so happy that we're playing together and that we're
Speaker 2: playing songs that are not us selling like our latest
Speaker 2: single or something like that. We're actually just relaxed, casually playing.
Speaker 2: But they do get to see us push each other
Speaker 2: to excel, and not everyone's comfortable with that. That's cool.
Speaker 2: Not every artist has the same set of tools, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's way cool. Steve and I were just so
Speaker 2: comfortable with it. We just as soon as we're standing
Speaker 2: next to each other with guitars, we just start seeing
Speaker 2: how far we can go until someone, you know, taps
Speaker 2: us on the shoulder and says, okay, that's enough. So
Speaker 2: not every other guitar player gets that or feels that
Speaker 2: way naturally, but most do.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you come up with the idea, you sell
Speaker 1: the idea, You have to sell promoters first G three
Speaker 1: to work. What did you learn to actually do it?
Speaker 1: It's totally different from what you think it might be.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing that was confirmed was that Steve and
Speaker 2: I don't need anything to just stand next to each
Speaker 2: other and start playing. That was a beautiful thing. I
Speaker 2: just always felt that, and I know that he felt
Speaker 2: the same way. So there's a It's just the most
Speaker 2: perfect comfort zone you can imagine. And I can't put
Speaker 2: it into words. I just know that as soon as
Speaker 2: we're standing extra other next to each other, when we
Speaker 2: start playing, we just pick up where we left off.
Speaker 2: And it's been that way since we were kids. So
Speaker 2: that was cool. What the other thing that was confirmed
Speaker 2: was that the audience felt exactly the way I did,
Speaker 2: which is they really wanted to see this. They really
Speaker 2: wanted to celebrate with us all the things about the
Speaker 2: electric guitar that you could do. And let's face it,
Speaker 2: when you're in a popular band and there's a lot
Speaker 2: riding on the success of a new album or something,
Speaker 2: you're guarded. You're putting on a show. You don't show
Speaker 2: everybody everything. You just show them what you want them
Speaker 2: to respond to. But this is different. This is a
Speaker 2: G three tour. This is where you can play whatever
Speaker 2: you want. It's the complete guitarist safe zone. You can
Speaker 2: you can be demure, you can be way over the top.
Speaker 2: Anything is acceptable as long as you do it sort
Speaker 2: of within the brother and sisterhood of the band. You know,
Speaker 2: and you know that you're including the audience, they're part
Speaker 2: of the show. So those are the things that were confirmed.
Speaker 2: The things that surprised me that the negative things were
Speaker 2: how some people don't like to play with other people.
Speaker 2: It's kind of is the thing you learn, like in
Speaker 2: the in the playground, like when you're a little kid,
Speaker 2: that there are some kids that love to play with
Speaker 2: other kids and other kids don't you know, and you
Speaker 2: just got to learn how to avoid them.
Speaker 1: Now that you've done so many what have you I
Speaker 1: learned over the course of all these years.
Speaker 2: I've learned that it's good for me. Let's put it
Speaker 2: that way. It is good for my playing, for my creativity,
Speaker 2: for my continued interest in the electric guitar and in
Speaker 2: music in general, and that just doing a rehearsed show
Speaker 2: every night is nowhere near the same as exciting in
Speaker 2: an almost frightening way that the G three shows are,
Speaker 2: because well, first of all, you don't have two and
Speaker 2: a half hours to play all the songs you know,
Speaker 2: and there's no pacing. Really, you get fifty minutes to
Speaker 2: go out there, so it's kind of a supercharge set
Speaker 2: that you do. And then you get to this jam
Speaker 2: and you if you really feel up to it. You
Speaker 2: are pushed to your limit and you really don't know
Speaker 2: what's happening. You just don't know what the guy next
Speaker 2: to you is going to play. And that's happening here
Speaker 2: right now on the sash By tour. Because Steve and
Speaker 2: I are totally crazy. We just don't care if we
Speaker 2: push ourselves to the brink and we fall off the edge.
Speaker 2: We find it so much fun and so fascinating, and
Speaker 2: we know that we've got each other to, you know,
Speaker 2: to pick each other up if we kind of screw
Speaker 2: up or go too far.
Speaker 1: Now, some of the people you've worked with I know personally,
Speaker 1: some of I don't. They all have different personalities. I
Speaker 1: have to ask, even though you haven't worked with them
Speaker 1: very recently. Robert Shripp is known as the guy who
Speaker 1: loves to rehearse and likes things his way. What was
Speaker 1: it like having G three with Robert Fripp?
Speaker 2: It was so great. I mean, he joined us for
Speaker 2: the first two runs and he insisted this is what
Speaker 2: he insisted on, and the first time I heard it,
Speaker 2: I thought it was really He goes, well, I'd like
Speaker 2: to start the show before, you know, right before you
Speaker 2: open the doors. I don't want to be lit. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna set up behind the amp line, and I don't
Speaker 2: want anyone to announce my name. And we thought, okay,
Speaker 2: whatever Robert Fripp wants, we will acquiesce, you know. And
Speaker 2: so sure enough people would come in and they'd be
Speaker 2: finding their seats, and they'd be hearing this beautiful music soundscapes,
Speaker 2: and people who knew about Robert Frip would immediately start
Speaker 2: to look and go, hey, I think that's Robert Frip
Speaker 2: up there playing, and other people wouldn't pay attention at
Speaker 2: all if they weren't, you know, familiar with Robert's music.
Speaker 2: And then the lights would go down and the show
Speaker 2: would start, and you know, I think we had Kenny
Speaker 2: Wayne Sheppard actually opening up. The first G three's actually
Speaker 2: were like fives G fives in a way. But yeah, Robert.
Speaker 2: You know what comes to mind is this photograph that
Speaker 2: really stuck with me for years, which was I think
Speaker 2: it was we were playing maybe Jones Beach or something
Speaker 2: like that, and there's a picture of Robert Fripp by
Speaker 2: his gear with his guitar on. Standing next to him
Speaker 2: is a four year old ZZ holding a plastic pail
Speaker 2: and shovel and to me, that was just like the
Speaker 2: beauty of the tour is that it really was a
Speaker 2: relaxed family atmosphere when it was at its best, everyone
Speaker 2: was so happy to be on the tour and knowing
Speaker 2: as I said before, it was a safe place for
Speaker 2: guitar players. But it was just a really happy group
Speaker 2: of musicians and crew, and almost all of them were
Speaker 2: like that. We only had a few that had the
Speaker 2: usual tensions here and there, but they and last you.
Speaker 1: Know, okay, through the magic of the Internet setlist FM
Speaker 1: one can look up because some of these dates have
Speaker 1: already played that. After you and Steve do your independent performances,
Speaker 1: you get together and you do covers, you do entersand me,
Speaker 1: how did you decide on these covers?
Speaker 2: Well, recently for this tour, I actually was leaning heavily
Speaker 2: on my keyboard player, Ray Thistlethwaite. He was an amazing singer.
Speaker 2: He's from the Australian band Thirsty Murk and he's just
Speaker 2: a brilliant overall musician, just brilliant keyboard player, great singer,
Speaker 2: frontman when he's in his own environment and he's even
Speaker 2: I don't know how he puts up with me, but
Speaker 2: he plays rhythm, guitar and keyboards for me, and occasionally
Speaker 2: we lean on him to sing. So I thought I
Speaker 2: should just check with Ray some of these weird ideas
Speaker 2: I have. So we were just texting beforehand, like what
Speaker 2: do you feel like singing? Can you sing this? Can
Speaker 2: you sing that? And we just threw threw out some
Speaker 2: silly songs, and at one point I thought, I want
Speaker 2: to do a Metallica song. And I don't know why
Speaker 2: it dawned on me. I just thought, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: because he's he had just recently interviewed Kirk for the documentary,
Speaker 2: but so Kirk was on my mind. So I just
Speaker 2: I thought, what would be a fun song to do
Speaker 2: where we could stretch somewhere, you know, we could stretch
Speaker 2: it out and improvise around it. And I thought of
Speaker 2: Enter Sandman. But when I texted it to Ray, I
Speaker 2: was actually joking because he Ray's got a beautiful voice
Speaker 2: and he doesn't sound like James Headfield at all. But
Speaker 2: the response was positive and immediate from Ray. He was like, no,
Speaker 2: we got to do that song. I want to do it.
Speaker 2: So that's how that happened. And then I wanted to
Speaker 2: balance it with something really old and so I picked
Speaker 2: the Kinks. He really got me. I thought that would
Speaker 2: be a really great one. And for the first time,
Speaker 2: actually we're playing a song that's one of ours. So
Speaker 2: the first piece of music that I wrote for our
Speaker 2: collaboration is a song called the Sea of Emotion Part one,
Speaker 2: and we decided to play that as our first song.
Speaker 2: And it kind of makes sense since it's not a
Speaker 2: G three, you know, it really is a satch by tour.
Speaker 2: So and that's great because it has special meaning to
Speaker 2: both Steve and I.
Speaker 1: So, okay, let's go back to something earlier you said
Speaker 1: about rock instrumentals. From your viewpoint, what is the state
Speaker 1: of rock instrumentals? Verging into what is the state of
Speaker 1: rock and roll? Because not only are you making this music,
Speaker 1: you've made the music, you're seeing the audience live on
Speaker 1: the road.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well know, everything is Brian Eno said, you know,
Speaker 2: everything is context with music. It has grown over the decades,
Speaker 2: over the centuries, So today everything is context. You can
Speaker 2: get music everywhere, and the context of at hand is
Speaker 2: the most important thing. Not everything works in an elevator
Speaker 2: or you know, Carls Junior, or in your car, at
Speaker 2: a concert hall or at a convention, you know, in
Speaker 2: the lobby of a hotel, a club. It's just there's
Speaker 2: so many contexts where full fidelity modern music or recorded
Speaker 2: music is perfect. So where does instrumental rock music belong.
Speaker 2: I have no idea. All I know is that I
Speaker 2: am a child of rock and roll. I love rock bands,
Speaker 2: I love melody, I love harmony. I was taught music
Speaker 2: theory in high school by a Julia graduate who was
Speaker 2: a brilliant teacher that somehow got stuck in this teeny
Speaker 2: little public high school in car Place. And so I've
Speaker 2: got these influences from my older siblings. I'm the youngest
Speaker 2: of five and my parents were total jazz freaks, so
Speaker 2: my influences are huge, and I love all of it.
Speaker 2: I love dense harmony. I love complicated and simple, but
Speaker 2: if it doesn't have a great melody, I don't really
Speaker 2: like it. So I've never been into complicated music because
Speaker 2: it's complicated. I see no charm in that whatsoever. And
Speaker 2: I know that music is I mean, musicians are supposed
Speaker 2: to make music for people. That's what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 2: So we're supposed to make music to accompany life, and
Speaker 2: life is crazy, and sometimes you need music to commiserate with,
Speaker 2: sometimes to celebrate with everything in between. So when I
Speaker 2: was a young kid, I realized that the intervals, the
Speaker 2: space is between the notes and the relationship between the
Speaker 2: melody and the harmony of the most important mood creators ever,
Speaker 2: that tells the story. And if you've got lyrics, then
Speaker 2: you're telling the audience exactly what you want them to think.
Speaker 2: And if you don't have lyrics, well then you've really
Speaker 2: given them a gift where they can listen to Moonlight
Speaker 2: Sonata and decide for themselves whether it's a happy song
Speaker 2: or a sad one, and they can use it as
Speaker 2: they like. And I love that. So like when I
Speaker 2: was a kid and I heard Third Stone from the
Speaker 2: Sun by Hendrix, it was cathartic, it was beautiful, and
Speaker 2: I thought, wow, this is amazing, this is like so powerful.
Speaker 2: And I knew he was being funny at times with
Speaker 2: the song, but to me, the music was so powerful.
Speaker 2: It reminded me of listening to Miles Davis or West
Speaker 2: Montgomery coming from my parents' living room.
Speaker 1: Or.
Speaker 2: Hearing classical music and just love feeling the power of
Speaker 2: the music in an emotional way and how it stimulated
Speaker 2: my mind thinking of new things, bringing back old memories,
Speaker 2: things like that. But I was this rock kid. I
Speaker 2: still love the Stones and the Beatles. I started out
Speaker 2: as a drummer. I studied for three years until I
Speaker 2: figured out I was going to suck, and I became
Speaker 2: a Hendrix fanatic. And when he died, I decided that
Speaker 2: very day I was going to pick up the guitar
Speaker 2: and I was going to dedicate myself to playing the guitar.
Speaker 1: But I wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait, wait
Speaker 1: a little bit slower. You're growing up in Long Island. Okay,
Speaker 1: what are your parents do for a living?
Speaker 2: My father was an engineer. He was super smart. He
Speaker 2: got out of college maybe three years ahead of time,
Speaker 2: went to work for Sperry Gyroscope. I think they eventually
Speaker 2: were called Sperry. He was there for maybe thirty years,
Speaker 2: and then he moved on to Raytheon or a few
Speaker 2: other companies until he retired. My mother was a school
Speaker 2: teacher her whole life. And my three sisters, older sisters
Speaker 2: and one older brother, all smart. None of them is
Speaker 2: silly enough to take up a career in music. But
Speaker 2: I have to say growing up on Long Island was
Speaker 2: at that time was the best thing ever, I mean
Speaker 2: the freedom. First of all, my parents were tired by
Speaker 2: the time I came around, so I benefited from my
Speaker 2: siblings breaking them down continually for years and years, and
Speaker 2: then I came along and they're like, okay, whatever you know,
Speaker 2: do whatever you want. Plus the sixties happened, right, So
Speaker 2: I turned fourteen in nineteen seventy and as you well know,
Speaker 2: from fifty nine to sixty nine, all hell breaks loose
Speaker 2: in America, and so I just you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: my rock band practice in the basement, and my parents
Speaker 2: would woo.
Speaker 1: A little bit slower. Okay, you're the fifth of five children.
Speaker 1: You're the parents are not in the house all day
Speaker 1: because they're working. Are you a goodie goodie getting good grades?
Speaker 1: Are you someone who's dedicated to baseball? What's your life
Speaker 1: like before this music thing becomes an obsession?
Speaker 2: You know? I started out as a good kid, and
Speaker 2: I was on all the teams. I played football and baseball,
Speaker 2: and I was on the wrestling team. I was on
Speaker 2: the fitness team until they tried to get me to
Speaker 2: cut my hair, which was extremely long at the time.
Speaker 2: But I was also in a band, so I should
Speaker 2: point out the car place one national championships four years
Speaker 2: in a row, when my brother and I were on
Speaker 2: the team. But that's you say, the fitness team. People
Speaker 2: don't even know what that means anymore. That's like saying
Speaker 2: music theory classes in public high school. People don't know that.
Speaker 2: But back then in New York there was a board
Speaker 2: of regents. Education in public schools was actually really good.
Speaker 2: So I didn't do well. I was in Catholic school
Speaker 2: for the first five years and got in trouble all
Speaker 2: the time, until both my parents and the nuns and
Speaker 2: the priests decided that kids got to go.
Speaker 1: He said, wait, wait, wait, what kind of trouble were
Speaker 1: you getting into.
Speaker 2: Well, I, first of all, I couldn't believe anything they
Speaker 2: were trying to teach me. I'm and I made a
Speaker 2: point of raising my hand and saying, well, that can't
Speaker 2: be right. How does that work? And yeah, so I
Speaker 2: you know, I've always had a problem with that. So
Speaker 2: when I got to public school, it was like I
Speaker 2: could exhale finally, you know, I felt so free. All
Speaker 2: the kids were different, You could express yourself, and there
Speaker 2: were music classes, I mean, that's crazy. And there were
Speaker 2: sports classes, so I mean, you could physically exert yourself.
Speaker 2: And I, you know, I'm not a big guy or anything,
Speaker 2: but when you're that young, most everyone's the same size.
Speaker 2: And by the time I got around to quitting the
Speaker 2: football team was the right time because at that age,
Speaker 2: big guys are going to start getting big and if
Speaker 2: you're not one of them, you're going to get creamed
Speaker 2: on the football field. And so it turned out that
Speaker 2: the timing was right for me to move on and
Speaker 2: to become a full time musician. By then, though, I
Speaker 2: benefited from the fact that I had a good upbringing
Speaker 2: about exercising in health and whatnot. So I think that
Speaker 2: I I mean, when I walked out of the coach's office,
Speaker 2: I was standing up straight. I was a strong kid,
Speaker 2: not very big, but very strong and healthy, and I
Speaker 2: knew what I was doing. So I felt really good,
Speaker 2: even though I was traumatized by the death of Jimmy Hendrix.
Speaker 1: Okay, what inspired you to pick up drums? And what
Speaker 1: was that three years like?
Speaker 2: Oh, it was seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Speaker 2: As soon as I started to hear Dave Clark five Beatles,
Speaker 2: the Stones, all the British invasion stuff that my older
Speaker 2: siblings were listening to it just transformed my life. I
Speaker 2: would just spend hours in front of a little portable
Speaker 2: record player they had, and I just destroyed those LPs
Speaker 2: and singles. I just played them hours and hours until
Speaker 2: they made me stop. It was a beautiful world. And
Speaker 2: when I got to see Ringo and Charlie Watts playing
Speaker 2: on television, that's you know, I mean, what kid doesn't
Speaker 2: want to make a lot of noise? And drums make a.
Speaker 1: Lot of noise.
Speaker 2: So I actually took lessons for three years from a
Speaker 2: guy I realized I never knew his first name. I
Speaker 2: always knew him as mister Patricuz. I don't know where
Speaker 2: my parents found him, probably in some jazz club because
Speaker 2: he'd always show up in a sharkskin suit. Very cool character.
Speaker 2: You know. He'd sit in the in the kitchen and
Speaker 2: have coffee with my parents and then he'd go down
Speaker 2: to the basement and he teached me for a half hour.
Speaker 2: And that went on for a couple of years, and
Speaker 2: you know, I learned how to read and to play
Speaker 2: all the all the stuff, and he would, you know,
Speaker 2: teach me the beatles and stones, all the stuff I
Speaker 2: was into. But ultimately, I mean I didn't know it
Speaker 2: at the time, but now I can look back and
Speaker 2: say I was a bit too spacey to be a drummer,
Speaker 2: because a drummer has to be attentive to every millisecond
Speaker 2: of a song. They are, they're responsible for keeping it.
Speaker 2: You know, they're driving the bus. Basically everyone else is,
Speaker 2: especially guitar players, are changing seats all the time on
Speaker 2: the bus. But the drummer is driving the bus. And
Speaker 2: I started not to realize that I wasn't cut out
Speaker 2: for that. I wanted to float on top. And when
Speaker 2: rock music really became rock music what sixty six maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, when there was a shift from rock and
Speaker 2: roll to like rock songs that weren't about boys and
Speaker 2: girls and stuff, and you start to hear different sounds
Speaker 2: coming out of the guitars. I started to feel like
Speaker 2: I was, you know, playing the wrong instrument. And my
Speaker 2: older sister's boyfriends were fascinated by the fact that I
Speaker 2: loved anything that they would bring over. So they'd bring
Speaker 2: over the latest Who record or Hendrix or anything, and
Speaker 2: they'd play it for me just to look at my reaction.
Speaker 2: And of course I was enthralled by all of it.
Speaker 2: But Hendricks changed my DNA. As soon as I heard
Speaker 2: the first song, I just my whole life was different,
Speaker 2: and I knew that that was a path. I just
Speaker 2: couldn't intellectually understand what it was going to do to
Speaker 2: me until until I found out that he died, and
Speaker 2: then I knew exactly what I was going to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're living in Westbury? Are you going to shows
Speaker 1: Westbury Music Fair?
Speaker 2: Yeah? My very first two shows I saw Chicago when
Speaker 2: they were called Chicago Transit Authority. They're absolutely amazing. Terry
Speaker 2: cath On guitar. Wow, fantastic. That's a funny place, I
Speaker 2: mean because it's in the round, so that you know,
Speaker 2: right the stage spins. I got to play there for
Speaker 2: the first time ever back in twenty nineteen with Kenny
Speaker 2: and Doug. We were on the Experience Hendricks Tour. What
Speaker 2: a trip. And then about a week later I went
Speaker 2: to see Jethro Tull there. They were absolutely fabulous, just amazing,
Speaker 2: so two completely unique bands for the time. It was
Speaker 2: just fantastic. I absolutely loved it, and I'd go to
Speaker 2: the film more. I remember seeing Steve Miller at the
Speaker 2: fillmore that I think the week that Hendricks died, it
Speaker 2: was the first time I went to the Fillmore East
Speaker 2: and saw Steve play. You know, he tells me a
Speaker 2: funny story about that, because I remember I was sitting
Speaker 2: in the balcony with all the grown ups. You know,
Speaker 2: I was just a little kid, and I just the
Speaker 2: whole thing was magic, just like this is. I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: this is when I grow up. This is what I
Speaker 2: want to do. I want to hang out to rock music.
Speaker 2: And I remember the first time I got to play
Speaker 2: with Steve. I told him the story about what a
Speaker 2: magical show that was, and he said to me, his
Speaker 2: perspective was totally different. Whereas Mungo Jerry was on that
Speaker 2: show and they had hit at the time in the summertime,
Speaker 2: and Bill innocently had given out plastic red plastic clown
Speaker 2: noses to the audience for some reason to celebrate this song,
Speaker 2: I guess. And so when Mungo Jerry played, and I
Speaker 2: think there's another band called Clouds that played as well,
Speaker 2: you know, they played the hit and everyone was happy
Speaker 2: and everything was fun. And then Steve comes out, and
Speaker 2: of course it's kind of somber because Hendricks has just
Speaker 2: died and Steve wants to come out and play a
Speaker 2: set playing tribute to Jimmy Hendricks, except that everyone's got
Speaker 2: these clown noses and they start throwing them on stage.
Speaker 2: And I don't remember that I was sitting in the balcony.
Speaker 2: I don't remember that aspect of it, maybe because I
Speaker 2: was getting high from all the smoke. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we used to go there, Gaelic Park, Academy of Music.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many places, even out to the island,
Speaker 2: like to Coomac and watch all the bands touring.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's reel it back. I remember where I was
Speaker 1: when I heard Hendricks died, so literally, how did you hear?
Speaker 1: And there was a schism? And then how long until
Speaker 1: you took this left turn and started to play the guitar?
Speaker 2: Oh wow. I was all suited up for football practice
Speaker 2: at Carplace High School. I was right outside the gym
Speaker 2: and a teammate said, Hey, I heard that guy that
Speaker 2: you really liked died, Jimmy Hendrix. And see what was
Speaker 2: Uh I'm trying to I can't remember his name, but
Speaker 2: I I just stood there and I looked at myself,
Speaker 2: you know, in this cheap football outfit that the high
Speaker 2: school could afford, and I just thought I can't do
Speaker 2: this anymore. This is this is you know, I can't
Speaker 2: do it. I don't love and I know, And right
Speaker 2: then I knew what I really wanted to do, so
Speaker 2: I just turned around. I went inside. I went into
Speaker 2: coach Redden's office and I said something like, Jimmy Hendricks
Speaker 2: has died, and I'm gonna you know, I can't be
Speaker 2: on the football team because I'm going to devote my
Speaker 2: life to the guitar. And I maybe, I mean most
Speaker 2: likely because I wasn't such a valued team member. He
Speaker 2: probably didn't put up much of a fuss, but he went, okay,
Speaker 2: I take off your stuff and you know, put it
Speaker 2: in the locker. So I walked home that night, and
Speaker 2: over a typical Italian American dinner, I stood up and
Speaker 2: told everybody that Jimmy Hendricks had died and I was
Speaker 2: going to be a guitar player. And then there's a
Speaker 2: lot of yelling and screaming, but eventually worked out.
Speaker 1: Okay, first and foremost, you need a guitar. So where
Speaker 1: do you get a guitar?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, there's a little bit of backstory to that,
Speaker 2: which is that my sister Marion was a folk guitar
Speaker 2: player growing up, and I actually got to see her
Speaker 2: perform at her school a few times, and of course
Speaker 2: i'd witness her playing in the backyard, playing in the
Speaker 2: corner of her room, very quietly, not bothering anybody. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't lost on me that it was a more
Speaker 2: personal instrument, that she could really enjoy music and express
Speaker 2: herself without announcing it to the entire house, like if
Speaker 2: you're a drummer, you know where everybody hears everything you do.
Speaker 2: And I hadn't really thought very much about that, you know,
Speaker 2: bringing that into my life until that moment when over dinner,
Speaker 2: I announced I was going to be a guitar player,
Speaker 2: and my sister Marian said, well, you can borrow them
Speaker 2: on you can start with that. And then my other sister, Carol,
Speaker 2: who had just started teaching at art at Westbury High School,
Speaker 2: said that she would donate her first week's paycheck for
Speaker 2: an electric guitar, which was at Roosevelt Field. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you remember Roosevelt Field in the Island, the
Speaker 2: first shopping malls, and Matthew's music was there, and they
Speaker 2: had a guitar that I had that I had been
Speaker 2: looking at because it kind of looked like Jimmy's white stratocaster.
Speaker 2: But I think in my little brain at the time,
Speaker 2: I didn't know there was Fender Gibson or in this
Speaker 2: case Hackstrom. But this was one hundred and twenty dollars
Speaker 2: Hackstrom three guitar, a low cost Swedish guitar. And so
Speaker 2: we went there about a week or so and she
Speaker 2: was kind enough to purchase the guitar for me. And
Speaker 2: I had a My family had a woolen sack tape
Speaker 2: recorder that they used to use to record or Jesuit
Speaker 2: speeches all the time. And so since my parents had
Speaker 2: already gone through the drum face and I didn't have
Speaker 2: a big drum kit, it took years, you know, to
Speaker 2: pay off, like getting each little piece. I started with
Speaker 2: a pad, and then a snare drum, and then this
Speaker 2: and that. You know, they were a little skeptical and
Speaker 2: they weren't about to go out and get me an amplifier.
Speaker 2: So they said, well, maybe you can use this, And
Speaker 2: so for I don't know, six months, i'd plug into
Speaker 2: this woolen sack tape recorder and the only way I
Speaker 2: could hear myself would be to record, and I would
Speaker 2: record over the jesuit speeches, sorry Jesuits, and then I'd
Speaker 2: listen to myself. And this was key to my development
Speaker 2: because usual beginners, they you know, the moment passes and
Speaker 2: they don't know how much they suck, you know. But
Speaker 2: I knew because I realized when I'd finished playing for
Speaker 2: ten minutes, I go, oh, I can listen to myself
Speaker 2: back now, and I'd play it back and I'd go like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm the worst. How am I going
Speaker 2: to get better? So it was it was a good
Speaker 2: tool actually, because I started to realize, you know, you
Speaker 2: got to play in tune, you got to play in time.
Speaker 2: There's such a thing as tone. There's a lot to
Speaker 2: work on.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you taking lessons? How are you're learning out
Speaker 1: of play?
Speaker 2: No? I had a magic chord sheet that was in
Speaker 2: my sister's guitar case, the Nylon. She played a Nylon
Speaker 2: acoustic and she was the one who said, you know,
Speaker 2: you have to learn chords, so here take this sheet
Speaker 2: and it was about seventeen twenty chords. So that's how
Speaker 2: I started, and I started to realize that I moved
Speaker 2: my If I took one finger off a chord, the
Speaker 2: sound was somewhat similar to what i'd heard on the
Speaker 2: radio or on a record, and I found that really fascinating.
Speaker 2: So I just thought, well, I'll memorize these and then
Speaker 2: I'll make a sort of a mental note that when
Speaker 2: I lift off my third finger, it's this extra version
Speaker 2: of this chord. And later on I learned I was
Speaker 2: doing suspensions what we call in music suspensions, and changing
Speaker 2: thirds to fourths or thirds to seconds and things like that.
Speaker 2: But I would because I couldn't. I wasn't taking lessons
Speaker 2: from somebody who was teaching me songs. I just started
Speaker 2: writing my own songs and I thought, well, somewhere the
Speaker 2: on line, i'll just get better. And so a lot
Speaker 2: of what I learned in the first six months or so,
Speaker 2: I was just learning how to write it with my
Speaker 2: limited vocabulary.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's not a heavy lift to learn a few
Speaker 1: chords play song, as you know, but from there to
Speaker 1: a level of facility is unbelievably frustrating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you.
Speaker 1: Ever vary in your dedication? Did you ever say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe the guitar is not for me. How did you
Speaker 1: deal with the frustration of gaining your skills?
Speaker 2: Well, there are two things that I would point to
Speaker 2: number one. I realized early on that I had the
Speaker 2: ability to play a song from start to finish, and
Speaker 2: I knew, you know, deep inside, I knew this was
Speaker 2: an important thing because I had been playing drums, and
Speaker 2: although I was never in a band, we used to
Speaker 2: play my friends and I and I realized you got
Speaker 2: to start, keep going, don't stop, and then end. That's
Speaker 2: what playing music for people is all about. So that
Speaker 2: became a skill that I just assumed you got to
Speaker 2: have that, that you got to do that. You may
Speaker 2: not be the fastest drummer, the loudest drummer, or the
Speaker 2: the most complicated, but once you start, you got to
Speaker 2: keep going until the song is over. So I applied
Speaker 2: that to the guitar. And then after a number of months,
Speaker 2: some older kids in the school must have heard me
Speaker 2: playing somewhere at high school, they invited me into the
Speaker 2: band and they were fascinated with the same thing that
Speaker 2: I could just sit there and hang with them without
Speaker 2: being given direction. They'd start a you know, some Joe
Speaker 2: walshong or something, you know, and they and I'd say, well,
Speaker 2: what are the chords, and they say, well, it's just
Speaker 2: kind of like does this thing at a minor, and
Speaker 2: I'd be comfortable with that, and I could hang with
Speaker 2: that and go back and forth and play things around it,
Speaker 2: because that's how I taught myself, which is to to
Speaker 2: build a personal vocabulary around chords as a way of
Speaker 2: making music. And so they asked me to join the
Speaker 2: It was fascinating because I really did not have the
Speaker 2: technique like what you're talking about, but I could carry
Speaker 2: a song with the limited technique that I had, and
Speaker 2: I just learned not to show people what I couldn't do,
Speaker 2: just focus on what I was capable of doing and
Speaker 2: get the song finished. And I found that there was
Speaker 2: so much to share with the bass player, the drummer
Speaker 2: and the other guitar player on a musical level. It
Speaker 2: was like you started speaking a foreign language that you
Speaker 2: were really good at that you didn't know you were
Speaker 2: good at, and other people in your band knew that
Speaker 2: language too, and you would converse during a song and
Speaker 2: you would throw things back and forth and have some fun.
Speaker 2: And I thought, wow, this is the most important technique
Speaker 2: because we would be doing this at a party in
Speaker 2: a backyard or at a high school dance where your
Speaker 2: peers were ruthless. If you didn't play well, they'd let
Speaker 2: you know right away. But I learned the importance of
Speaker 2: being able to play music first and foremost, rather than
Speaker 2: acquiring technical skills. It was, in fact that the best,
Speaker 2: the most important umbrella of technical skills. But it just
Speaker 2: didn't have They didn't have names, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: They weren't written down in books, you know, like chapter one, Start,
Speaker 2: don't stop, finish you know number two. Pay attention to
Speaker 2: the audience. Lift them up when they want to be
Speaker 2: lifted up, bring them down when they want to go down.
Speaker 2: These are the things you learn only by playing for people,
Speaker 2: your siblings, your parents. You play in a kindergarten, you
Speaker 2: play in a club, you play in an arena. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter where you're playing. You still got to make
Speaker 2: it work for the audience. So that was part of
Speaker 2: my earliest instruction was playing for people. And I loved it.
Speaker 2: I was terrified. I'm still terrified, but I love it
Speaker 2: as well. But on the other side of it, I
Speaker 2: had a hunger for music. I really wanted to understand
Speaker 2: the mystery of music. When I heard Beethoven, I thought,
Speaker 2: this is so beautiful. What does he know? How does
Speaker 2: he put that together? I remember sitting in my bedroom
Speaker 2: one afternoon and Roundabout came on the radio, and I
Speaker 2: remember staring at the radio and I admitted to myself,
Speaker 2: I don't know what is going on, Like, what are
Speaker 2: they doing? How do they know how to put this
Speaker 2: all together and play together? It sounds so complicated to me,
Speaker 2: but deep inside I knew it was. I bet there's
Speaker 2: an e minor chord in there somewhere. They're just doing
Speaker 2: it better than the way.
Speaker 1: I do it.
Speaker 2: And just about that time, the music teacher at my
Speaker 2: high schools offered a music theory class and I just
Speaker 2: jumped on it. And it was fascinating because he just
Speaker 2: opened up the world of music to me and he
Speaker 2: answered all those questions. He taught me ear training, taught
Speaker 2: me every scale, every mode, taught me how to write
Speaker 2: a cantata theme in variations, every trick that every composer
Speaker 2: had used for the last four hundred years. We went
Speaker 2: over it in school and I loved it. And he
Speaker 2: didn't care that I played Black Sabbath really loud most
Speaker 2: of the time when I wasn't at school. He would
Speaker 2: just sit down and show me, like, you know, this
Speaker 2: is just music and you can apply it to any style,
Speaker 2: and so it was a wonderful time, very fruitful learning
Speaker 2: experience that I had in high school.
Speaker 1: Okay, this band that you joined, how old are you
Speaker 1: when you joined that band?
Speaker 2: I was still fourteen and I'd been playing less than
Speaker 2: a year. The name of the band was pronounced Mishwa Khan,
Speaker 2: but it was really Mohakan. Of course we didn't know that.
Speaker 2: I think they named it after some weed that they
Speaker 2: had purchased from somebody. And I'm still friends with all
Speaker 2: of them. I just saw the bass player and the
Speaker 2: drummer just two days ago, and all still playing to
Speaker 2: some degree. But they had the good sense to develop
Speaker 2: professional lives, real jobs. But I love that experience. And
Speaker 2: you know the difference when you're fourteen and you're playing
Speaker 2: with a sixteen year old, that's like they're really old.
Speaker 2: And so I paid attention and I learned every moment
Speaker 2: that I was playing with them about, you know, how
Speaker 2: to play music with people and how to play music
Speaker 2: for people, And those two things were the I always
Speaker 2: realized were the foremost. It's not about achieving a technical
Speaker 2: level for yourself or for itself. I don't know if
Speaker 2: I'm expressing myself correct. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: You can get fascinated with just sitting there and playing
Speaker 2: something just a little faster, a little bit more compliment.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's because I loved simple music as much as
Speaker 2: I loved complex music. To me, it was just music.
Speaker 2: And I used to watch my parents with the jesuits,
Speaker 2: you know, drinking scotch, smoking cigarettes, playing folk music on
Speaker 2: my sister's guitar, having a great time. I used to
Speaker 2: watch them have parties listening to jazz. I watched my
Speaker 2: sisters dancing to motown music, funk music, my brother playing
Speaker 2: harmonica to Muddy Waters music. And it always seemed to
Speaker 2: me the music was something that accompanied us in our lives.
Speaker 2: It was part of the expression of being alive. That
Speaker 2: was the most important part. And so how could you
Speaker 2: how could you rate you know, Beethoven, Miles, Muddy Waters,
Speaker 2: Pete Townsend. I mean, you can't say one's better than
Speaker 2: the other. These are giants. They've learned how to transcend
Speaker 2: their instruments and make life, you know, with sound. It's
Speaker 2: just I was fascinated with that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you join this band when you're fourteen. Musicians
Speaker 1: all have different experiences, some have one band they go
Speaker 1: from band to band others. You know, they're out till
Speaker 1: one in the morning, playing three sets. Their schools suffers.
Speaker 1: So you're fourteen, that's about the time you're freshman in
Speaker 1: high school. What is your band situation in playing out?
Speaker 1: While you're in high school? We do.
Speaker 2: High school dances, backyard parties in the summer, we do
Speaker 2: Battle of the Bands, lots of that. Within about a year,
Speaker 2: our drummer decides he's going to go to Cornell. He
Speaker 2: was smart, Tom Gar very smart, still a very smart guy,
Speaker 2: teaches economics and in Atlanta right now. And then there
Speaker 2: was some rumblings about, you know, we should get this
Speaker 2: guy in the band, that kind of man. Typical high
Speaker 2: school stuffs as the social scene changes, and then we
Speaker 2: wind up with a different drummer, and then it's some
Speaker 2: So if Mishwa Khan becomes Tarsus and Tarsus becomes a band,
Speaker 2: that's I'm in for a good year and a half,
Speaker 2: two years. We have two singers. At one point I
Speaker 2: meet some crazy you know this boy that era, that
Speaker 2: period from fourteen to twenty one is insane. It's just
Speaker 2: if you can get through it, God bless you. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how we get through those those years,
Speaker 2: but so much fun, so much drama, but through it
Speaker 2: all well, you know, I moved on from that hackstrum.
Speaker 2: I was able to We used to have classified papers
Speaker 2: back then, and you'd be able to find people selling stuff.
Speaker 2: I wound up buying a telecaster, sixty eight telecaster, and
Speaker 2: then I traded it for a Less Paul a little
Speaker 2: bit later. And I think this is because the other
Speaker 2: guitar player, John Ricchio, it was really brilliant guitarist. I
Speaker 2: learned so much from him. He was really into the
Speaker 2: James Gang. And when when Joe Wall switched to less Paul,
Speaker 2: I was unaware of this. John eventually said, you got
Speaker 2: to get rid of that Telly and get a less Paul,
Speaker 2: and so I moved into the less Paul thing. Never
Speaker 2: stayed in tune God Almighty those late sixties less Pauls,
Speaker 2: and didn't really move on to playing like a Fender
Speaker 2: Stratu till I moved out to Berkeley, California. But we
Speaker 2: had so much fun. I mean, just the craziest of
Speaker 2: times that you know, I mean, when you're doing that,
Speaker 2: when you're playing, when you're when you're playing bars and
Speaker 2: you're fifteen years old. You're living a life that you know,
Speaker 2: you thought only grown ups lived, you know, but you
Speaker 2: see just the craziest part of life. You know, people
Speaker 2: are smoking and drinking and getting in fights and getting
Speaker 2: in trouble, and there's basically sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Speaker 2: But you still have to go back to school, you know,
Speaker 2: at when Monday morning comes. And we used to you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes I remember, for a good long time, I must
Speaker 2: have been in tenth or eleventh grade at the time,
Speaker 2: we drove out to the Hamptons and found a gig.
Speaker 2: I'm not even sure how we got this gig, but
Speaker 2: we found a weekend gig and we started to go
Speaker 2: out there and do these little road trips. And my parents,
Speaker 2: as I said before, had kind of given up trying
Speaker 2: to raise me as a normal person. Had let me
Speaker 2: go with the guys and hang out. And there would
Speaker 2: be like twelve of us in one bedroom cabin in
Speaker 2: the back of a club somewhere, staying for the weekend.
Speaker 2: But it was fun. I mean, I just learned so
Speaker 2: much about playing music for people during that, because you know,
Speaker 2: when you're on stage and you're playing, even if you're
Speaker 2: in the corner of a little club. You're observing people
Speaker 2: when they don't think anybody's watching. You just see their
Speaker 2: lives play out. They're just they're getting loose and they're
Speaker 2: doing everything right in front of you, and they don't
Speaker 2: think you're watching, but you are. And it made a
Speaker 2: big impression on me, not only the reaction to the
Speaker 2: way that I played in the songs that we played,
Speaker 2: but I just learned by watching, just like you would
Speaker 2: watch if you were if you were into baseball, and
Speaker 2: you're watching a baseball game and someone does something good,
Speaker 2: you say, I should try to do that, and then
Speaker 2: when you see somebody screw up, you go, I should
Speaker 2: make sure I don't do any of that. So that's
Speaker 2: what I would see night after night, even though I
Speaker 2: was just a teenager.
Speaker 1: So you graduate from high school then what.
Speaker 2: I graduate early. Actually, there was about six of us
Speaker 2: that we had good grades at that point and they
Speaker 2: felt better if we left, and so they allowed us
Speaker 2: to take two of every subject for the first half
Speaker 2: of the year, so that we graduated in January. And
Speaker 2: I loved it. I just thought that was the greatest
Speaker 2: thing ever. So myself, I think my girlfriend at the time,
Speaker 2: and a few other friends. I didn't know them too well,
Speaker 2: so we I mean, it was heaven for me because
Speaker 2: I took two music theory classes and that's what I loved,
Speaker 2: and the other classes are okay. I mean it was
Speaker 2: a bit simpler back then. I was taking French and humanities.
Speaker 2: I think they called it something that was the offshoot
Speaker 2: of geography and math.
Speaker 1: And social studies.
Speaker 2: Social studies, Yes, yeah, that's right. So yeah. So in
Speaker 2: January I was out and I thought I'm just going
Speaker 2: to start working full time. It was kind of rough.
Speaker 2: I didn't really land the gig until I started at
Speaker 2: Five Towns Music College the following September, which didn't last
Speaker 2: long at all. It was an absolute joke. I knew
Speaker 2: way more than every teacher in the school that they
Speaker 2: had at the time. The college has turned into a
Speaker 2: really great school, but that first year, that was their
Speaker 2: first year and they had some different ideas about what
Speaker 2: teachers could be. And I mean Bill Wescott, music teacher
Speaker 2: at high school. He gave us a university level education.
Speaker 2: So I went in there knowing everything, and every time
Speaker 2: they would play a wrong scale, I'd raise my hand
Speaker 2: and go, you know, that's not what you just said.
Speaker 2: You did, and so I didn't make friends there either.
Speaker 2: But two things happened that were important, which is I
Speaker 2: got introduced to someone who was playing in a disco
Speaker 2: band and they put guys on salary, and this was
Speaker 2: important for a young kid looking for a job. And
Speaker 2: so I joined this disco band and I actually got
Speaker 2: I made money every week, I got a paycheck. And
Speaker 2: at the time, they didn't call it disco. They called
Speaker 2: it progressive dance music. How's that for euphemism. I didn't care.
Speaker 2: I was just like, I want to play music. I
Speaker 2: need a paycheck. I got to pay for gas oil embargo.
Speaker 2: You remember those times it was tough to drive her
Speaker 2: around New York to gigs. And the other thing was
Speaker 2: one of my schoolmates introduced me to Lenny Tristano. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you know who Lenny Tristano was, but
Speaker 2: he was the father of cool jazz. He was the
Speaker 2: inventor of free form music, really first guy to ever
Speaker 2: record it for Capital, even though they shelled the record
Speaker 2: for nine years until after the Birth of Cool came out.
Speaker 2: I didn't know who this guy was at all. And
Speaker 2: one of my fellow students at Five Towns was more
Speaker 2: of a jazz head than I was. And he said
Speaker 2: when I was told him, I'm looking for like the
Speaker 2: guy I need, like you know, I need the wizard.
Speaker 2: There's got to be somebody out there who could teach
Speaker 2: me the true nature of music. And he said, you
Speaker 2: have to go see Lenny Tristano. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: who is this guy? Where is this guy? And he's like,
Speaker 2: he's in Queens, He's like twenty minutes from where I live. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, I could go on about this, but I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're not interesting, going, yeah, yeah, you going so Lenny.
Speaker 2: I mean, at that time, Lenny was kind of retired.
Speaker 2: He was teaching out of his Victorian house there in Queens.
Speaker 2: He was blind since a very young age, and he
Speaker 2: was eccentric by anyone's standards. You know. He dressed only
Speaker 2: in full length leotards and would walk around the room
Speaker 2: and he kind of talk like this all the time,
Speaker 2: like hey, Joey, what the fuck are you playing? You know,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing right right to your face, you know.
Speaker 2: And but he was the greatest teacher. He changed my
Speaker 2: life because he kind of went to like the heart
Speaker 2: of what it is to be a musician, Like if
Speaker 2: you think you're a musician and you haven't done these things,
Speaker 2: then you're completely lying to yourself. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: after I basically had been a musician all my life
Speaker 2: that I could remember, but I realized that I hadn't
Speaker 2: really addressed me you know, what are my skills? What
Speaker 2: am I avoiding learning and simple things? You know, even
Speaker 2: though I'd been teaching guitar to kids and some grown
Speaker 2: ups for a good three years by then, there were
Speaker 2: still these big empty places in my knowledge of music
Speaker 2: that really bothered me. And I think the dissatisfaction with
Speaker 2: the professional music world was putting me off to working
Speaker 2: harder on my own musicianship. But so in a practical sense,
Speaker 2: he give you things like learn this scale everywhere, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's a blind piano player, so he doesn't give
Speaker 2: you doesn't tell you where to put your fingers. He
Speaker 2: just say, if you don't know how to do it,
Speaker 2: go out there and find out how to do it,
Speaker 2: and just come back next week play it for me.
Speaker 2: You know, every note, every fingering in every key, no
Speaker 2: matter what it was, you know, huge lessons. These things
Speaker 2: were daunting for me at the time, you know, And
Speaker 2: then there'd be a harmonic section of the lesson where
Speaker 2: you'd be playing these chords. Then you had to memorize
Speaker 2: and scat sing along with a melody and solo. And
Speaker 2: he didn't care if it was Coltrane or Tony Iomi
Speaker 2: he'd made. No, he wasn't biased against any form of music.
Speaker 2: He just wanted to hear you nail every note. His
Speaker 2: whole thing was the music's got to come from inside
Speaker 2: of you. He could care less about sight reading. He
Speaker 2: just got to be in here before it can come out.
Speaker 2: His other thing was, you know, if you made a
Speaker 2: mistake during those parts of the lesson, the lesson was over,
Speaker 2: he'd walk over to his Grail accounting book and he'd
Speaker 2: just sit there and you'd have to give him twenty
Speaker 2: bucks and split. But if you did good, the lesson
Speaker 2: could go on for two hours, and he'd leave everybody
Speaker 2: else in the waiting room. You know, But I'll tell
Speaker 2: you the one, the funniest, greatest story ever from him
Speaker 2: was he said, after I had been doing this improv
Speaker 2: for a really long time, He's walking around the house.
Speaker 2: I'm left in the room. I'm still playing. I don't
Speaker 2: know what to do. I keep playing. He finally comes
Speaker 2: back in and he goes, oh, that's pretty good. What
Speaker 2: do you think about that? And I use the word
Speaker 2: could or should in my description of my playing, and
Speaker 2: he really went off on me, and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: you kids from the suburbs have the subjunctive disease. You're
Speaker 2: always worrying about what you should have played, what you
Speaker 2: could have played, what you would have played, and you
Speaker 2: never play what you want to play, only play what
Speaker 2: you want to play. And it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: a zen lesson. You realize I'll be working on this forever.
Speaker 2: But it was a great lesson because I understood what
Speaker 2: he meant. He would say like, if you don't if
Speaker 2: you don't know what the next note is, don't play it.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to play the next note, then
Speaker 2: don't play it. So it was so foreign to me
Speaker 2: as a rock and roll kid. Everything he was saying,
Speaker 2: don't put vibrato on a note until you've played the
Speaker 2: note perfectly, and then you've decided vibrato is going to
Speaker 2: make it better, because that's how you feel in the moment.
Speaker 2: He was like a supreme improviser, like improvising was a
Speaker 2: way of life and it required like a super discipline
Speaker 2: that was like, I don't know, the only thing I
Speaker 2: could relate to it was like someone devoting their life
Speaker 2: to being a yogi or a zen master or something
Speaker 2: like that. You know, it's just like a total way
Speaker 2: of life. But it really it forced me to work
Speaker 2: harder and to admit to myself when I didn't know
Speaker 2: something that that's what I should work on, like right away.
Speaker 2: Like if you don't know that scale, sit down right now,
Speaker 2: memorize it everywhere. Don't kid yourself. You know that's that
Speaker 2: was tough. That was tough, and he was fascinating, just
Speaker 2: a fascinating human being.
Speaker 1: Well, since you were essentially self taught, did you learn
Speaker 1: any mistakes? You know, when you go through lessons, people say, well,
Speaker 1: put your fingers here and do this. Whatever.
Speaker 2: Did you get into any bad habits? I'm sure I did.
Speaker 2: The thing with guitar playing is that you can get
Speaker 2: together let's say, all the top ten greatest guitar players
Speaker 2: that you see on all the lists, and then you
Speaker 2: see pictures of them playing. You'll notice like, let's see
Speaker 2: if I have a guitar pick here, you know, like
Speaker 2: somebody will will hold a pick in it.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, this is audio only so described.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm going to describe it to you. But
Speaker 2: that typical thing is you see a guitar player. Their
Speaker 2: arm is coming down over the guitar, they're holding it
Speaker 2: pick and the angle is elbow straight down, the wrist
Speaker 2: is straight and they're picking. Most guitar players play like that.
Speaker 2: But then you'll see other guitar players like Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 2: where or Neil Sean where it bends and the wrist
Speaker 2: is coming up from underneath the strings and they're picking
Speaker 2: in what seems like a really awkward position. You'll see
Speaker 2: some guitar players where their wrist of their picking hand
Speaker 2: is anchored and never moves at the base of the guitar,
Speaker 2: which we call the bridge. And then other guitar players
Speaker 2: their hand and their wrist never touches the guitar. It floats,
Speaker 2: and it's the elbow that provides all the movement, or
Speaker 2: their elbow stays completely still and only their wrist moves,
Speaker 2: or even that the thumb and the first finger that
Speaker 2: are holding the pick, those are the only things that move.
Speaker 2: It's it's insane how personal it is, and the one
Speaker 2: of the difficulties of getting through the period of beginner,
Speaker 2: intermediate and advanced player is deciding which position fits my
Speaker 2: anatomy because the guitar is awkward as soon as you
Speaker 2: put it on. If you're a beginner, you go like, wow,
Speaker 2: how do I hold this thing? My fingers hurt? How
Speaker 2: can I possibly stretch? How can I play this? And
Speaker 2: you know, my right hand and my left hand at
Speaker 2: the same time. When I when I was teaching a lot,
Speaker 2: I very often, almost once a day, would I'm right handed.
Speaker 2: I'd pick up the guitar and I'd put it the
Speaker 2: wrong way around, and I'd remind myself, this is how
Speaker 2: it feels to the beginner student when they come in
Speaker 2: and I try to get them to play a decord
Speaker 2: or something. This is how awkward it feels. You know,
Speaker 2: I can't play left handed at all. And it's a
Speaker 2: good reminder that that journey out of being a beginner
Speaker 2: is one of understanding what your body can do and
Speaker 2: what it feels comfortable doing, and how are you going
Speaker 2: to have to work around your anatomy? Again, if I
Speaker 2: drawn analogy, you look at the Olympics, you look at sprinters.
Speaker 2: You see some of the funniest variations of a very
Speaker 2: specific thing. I mean sprinting is like super specific, right,
Speaker 2: but still not all sprinters hold their arms and move
Speaker 2: them in the same way. Why is that what you'd
Speaker 2: think they'd all do it the same, right? Is just
Speaker 2: that we're all so different and we have these little
Speaker 2: quirky gifts that make us excel in a certain way.
Speaker 2: If in this case, we hold the pick like this
Speaker 2: and the guitar like that, and you know, Jimmy Page
Speaker 2: played the guitar really low and John McLaughlin plays it
Speaker 2: really high. I wouldn't want them to trade positions. I
Speaker 2: just love the way that both of them play. But
Speaker 2: isn't that weird? You know? So if you're a student
Speaker 2: and you're trying to figure out, like how am I
Speaker 2: supposed to hold this? You know, how do I which
Speaker 2: which fingers? Van Halen very often would he'd hold the
Speaker 2: pick between his thumb and his middle finger, which is
Speaker 2: really awkward to me, but it allowed him to use
Speaker 2: his first finger for tapping, you know, brilliant idea.
Speaker 1: And what about fingering with your other hand?
Speaker 2: That is again, everybody's hand is a unique size, and
Speaker 2: there's you know, we could we could really get into
Speaker 2: the minuti here about tendons and muscles and flexibility. You know,
Speaker 2: Segovia had teeny little hands that if you met him
Speaker 2: on the street, you never say, oh, there's a guitar player.
Speaker 2: But the guy was brilliant and he got around the
Speaker 2: guitar just fine. And and just because you're long and
Speaker 2: lanky doesn't really give you any edge, you know, precision
Speaker 2: is you just don't know. It's very much like dancing.
Speaker 2: Like if you think there's a body type for dancing,
Speaker 2: you're dead wrong. Just anybody can have that wonderful gift
Speaker 2: of being able to move, to connect their inner feelings
Speaker 2: to every part of their body and just surprise you
Speaker 2: with how great they are dancing. And so I think
Speaker 2: music playing instruments is pretty much the same way. You cannot,
Speaker 2: you know, judge the book by the cover. In this case,
Speaker 2: I hope I'm not mixing metaphors her analogies.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're living in Westbury. Do people know, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's Joe Satriani, He's the hot guitarist. Were you just
Speaker 1: another guy playing guitar on the island.
Speaker 2: I think a mixture of both. There were plenty of
Speaker 2: great guitar players at the time, but very often, you know,
Speaker 2: to give you a start. Sometimes it helps in your
Speaker 2: own little microcosm to be the superstar, you know, for
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks. It just helps you try to.
Speaker 2: It gives you that extra energy to pick it up,
Speaker 2: the instrument up and practice just a little bit more.
Speaker 2: We all need encouragement, you know. I learned that from
Speaker 2: years of teaching. There's no point getting on someone's case
Speaker 2: about what they can't do. Is you really do have
Speaker 2: to focus on their gifts. And that's what we all
Speaker 2: need to carry us through life in general. You know,
Speaker 2: just focus on the gifts, everything else will fall into place,
Speaker 2: you know, again, if you if you keep the you know,
Speaker 2: when I was young, and even when I was teaching
Speaker 2: in a guitar store in the eighties and in Berkeley,
Speaker 2: and I had students that were, you know, eight year
Speaker 2: old kids. I had race car drivers, lawyers, doctors. I
Speaker 2: had you know, all kinds of peace people who had
Speaker 2: real lives outside the guitar store. And you know, people
Speaker 2: would come in and the young kids, the little kids
Speaker 2: just thought I was some weird old guy, you know,
Speaker 2: in his twenties teaching guitar and their parents made them
Speaker 2: come and learn how to you know, play guitar. They
Speaker 2: come in and put their plastic toys on the amp.
Speaker 2: And then they were great though, because they'd learned so fast.
Speaker 2: And you'd have teenagers who just really wanted to be
Speaker 2: rock stars, you know, and you had to figure out
Speaker 2: like do they really want to be rock stars they
Speaker 2: really or do they want to play their instrument really well?
Speaker 2: And then you had professional people who just wanted some relief.
Speaker 2: You know. They'd come in for a lesson and they'd say,
Speaker 2: can you just teach me how to play this Creeden song?
Speaker 2: So after I have a hard day, I can come
Speaker 2: home and just you know, have a glass of wine
Speaker 2: and play a song with my partner some And so
Speaker 2: you have to focus on, you know, how can you
Speaker 2: get that to how can you help them achieve that
Speaker 2: whatever it is they want. And so, like when I
Speaker 2: was teaching Kirk Khmid, he had a real job. After
Speaker 2: the first year, he went from being an exodus into
Speaker 2: Metallica and he had a serious job and some requirements,
Speaker 2: and he had to learn really fast. The great thing
Speaker 2: was he was dedicated. He had his own opinions about
Speaker 2: what he thought was great, and he was super hungry,
Speaker 2: and you know, started taking two lessons a week. That's
Speaker 2: how dedicated he was. And so you And again, even
Speaker 2: if it's someone like Kirk, or if it's just the
Speaker 2: race car driver who comes in after a crazy day
Speaker 2: on the track and he just wants to play some music,
Speaker 2: you know, you just focus on the positive and the
Speaker 2: strengths that everybody has. He don't worry about the little
Speaker 2: you know, where you put your finger and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Everyone's different.
Speaker 1: So how do you become the teacher to the stars.
Speaker 1: How does Kirk kamide find you?
Speaker 2: I don't really know how that happened. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: really freaky that so many of those players were in
Speaker 2: that area that wasn't my hometown. You know. I went
Speaker 2: out to Berkeley, California, because my older sisters had moved
Speaker 2: out to the Bay Area, and they said, this place
Speaker 2: is nothing like Long Island. You'll love it. You can
Speaker 2: do whatever you want. Nobody cares. You know. That's a
Speaker 2: typical reaction to California. Oh yeah, from New York, you know.
Speaker 2: So and I did like it. And I just happened
Speaker 2: to move into this little bungalow across the street from
Speaker 2: a guitar store, and I used to go in there
Speaker 2: and play all the guitars all day long and never
Speaker 2: buy anything. And one day, the owner, Jim Larson, he
Speaker 2: says to me, you know what, if you're just gonna
Speaker 2: sit here and play all day long and not buy anything,
Speaker 2: you might as well give lessons. And I said, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I gave lessons on Long Island. I don't want to
Speaker 2: give lessons. But anyway, I realized that there was very
Speaker 2: little in the form of work for me out there
Speaker 2: because I didn't know anybody. I had no contacts in
Speaker 2: the Bay area. So I started teaching and I had
Speaker 2: no I mean, I have no idea why I wound
Speaker 2: up seeing guys like Larry Lalande and Alex Skolnik, and
Speaker 2: Kirk Hammett and David Bryce and Kevin Cadogan. I was
Speaker 2: just like the luckiest guitar teacher ever that all of
Speaker 2: these very different kids would come in and they were
Speaker 2: so motivated to learn, and they were so different. Perfect
Speaker 2: example would be like one of one of the luthiers
Speaker 2: who worked for the store. She had a little kid, Charlie,
Speaker 2: and so one day she comes in and she's like, Joe,
Speaker 2: Charlie's driving me crazy. You just could you just teach
Speaker 2: him how to play guitar. So he's you know, he
Speaker 2: leaves me alone. So this little Charlie comes in, and
Speaker 2: Charlie's like not even though he's growing, he's growing up
Speaker 2: right alongside all these what are going to become thrash
Speaker 2: metal players and metal players, he has no interest in
Speaker 2: any of it. And so teaching him was a lot
Speaker 2: of fun because he was just into anything that was
Speaker 2: against what was trending. And of course he becomes the
Speaker 2: Charlie Hunter that's just preeminent funk, jazz, whatever you want
Speaker 2: to call. He just created his own genre and he
Speaker 2: grew up to be just an amazing man and just fantastic,
Speaker 2: just you know. But at the same time, like I said,
Speaker 2: they would, there would be Kirk and who had a
Speaker 2: gig that was extremely important and he was making history
Speaker 2: like with every album, and then like right after him,
Speaker 2: it would be like David Brison from County Crow's who
Speaker 2: was like, you know, he said, look, I don't care
Speaker 2: about soloing, I don't care about shredding. He said, how
Speaker 2: how do you write songs? How do you change keys?
Speaker 2: What chords go with this? How many different ways can
Speaker 2: I give this feeling? And then shift into that feeling.
Speaker 2: It was really fascinating for me as a teacher to
Speaker 2: have this unique variety walking through the door every day.
Speaker 2: And I did that for about ten years.
Speaker 1: And what was the dream other than teaching guitar, which
Speaker 1: wasn't the dream? What did you want to actually do
Speaker 1: other than be free in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think it never really changed. I always thought
Speaker 2: I'd be like a Jimmy Page figure, I'd be in
Speaker 2: a fourth piece band with a singer. I still really
Speaker 2: love rock music in general, just the attention to songwriting
Speaker 2: is I really love that, and that the bands can
Speaker 2: be unique, that each band member can be celebrated for
Speaker 2: their uniqueness in the band. You know, it's just to me,
Speaker 2: that's what's different than pop music or other forms of
Speaker 2: music that are really strict. You know, like blues is
Speaker 2: really strict. You got to basically quote every cool blues
Speaker 2: player in the world to be accepted by the audience.
Speaker 2: They don't celebrate originality, you know, it's weird. But rock music,
Speaker 2: I thought, well, it's so inclusive. They celebrate everyone's originality
Speaker 2: and they just want you to keep writing great songs.
Speaker 2: And I just thought this is really great, you know, so,
Speaker 2: but along the way I started. I was in this
Speaker 2: band called the Squares for about four and a half years.
Speaker 1: A little bit slower. How many bands you in before
Speaker 1: the Squares? And how did you join the Squares?
Speaker 2: So I wasn't. I did not find in the whatever
Speaker 2: year and a half that I was there floundering around,
Speaker 2: you know, just enjoying the northern California lifestyle. I started
Speaker 2: a band because my ex brother in law moved out
Speaker 2: there as well, and he was nine years ten years
Speaker 2: older than me, very smart guy, worked for Cutter Laboratories.
Speaker 2: But he had always been a guitar player and a
Speaker 2: singer songwriter back in his days at Villanova and Harvard.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: So we were writing songs together when we were when
Speaker 2: I was really young, when he was still dating my sister,
Speaker 2: and when he moved out, we got the idea to
Speaker 2: start a band, a rock band, and he would manage
Speaker 2: and write lyrics. I would write the music. We just
Speaker 2: needed to find some people to play us. I found
Speaker 2: Jeff Campitelli on drums, Andy Milton on bass, guitar and
Speaker 2: lead vocals, and we were kind of like a not
Speaker 2: good version of Green Day and Blink one two. The
Speaker 2: only way I can describe it. We were very dedicated,
Speaker 2: but I have to admit we were not as good
Speaker 2: as those guys, so no wonder we didn't get anywhere.
Speaker 2: But we practiced like crazy and we were as pro
Speaker 2: as you can get. And during that time I was
Speaker 2: always teaching, so my day job was teaching at the
Speaker 2: guitar store, and then we would either rehearse or gig
Speaker 2: at night. And somewhere along the line, I really wanted
Speaker 2: to produce our own record, but our manager and our
Speaker 2: agent at the time, Neil and Kevin, they just they
Speaker 2: were saying, no, we should just keep trying to go
Speaker 2: down to LA and ironically try to get John Carter
Speaker 2: at Capital to signs to a label. I see, I didn't.
Speaker 2: I mean I could jump ahead and say the first
Speaker 2: time I met Carter again, we laughed about he was
Speaker 2: how he was my nemesis because he turned the squares
Speaker 2: down so many times. That was was, Oh, anyway, I
Speaker 2: love John, But anyway, so, uh, I on a break,
Speaker 2: this is really I mean, you'll be editing all this out.
Speaker 2: But so we rehearsed down by Seventh Street in the
Speaker 2: Berkeley Flats area, in a warehouse that was part of
Speaker 2: the NOLO Press publishing company, and they had a dumpster
Speaker 2: right outside where we rehears, so when we go out
Speaker 2: there to have a cigarette and a drink between songs,
Speaker 2: there'd be this dumpster overflowing with their books. So they're
Speaker 2: how to books, you know, like how to get a divorce,
Speaker 2: how to start a bakery, how to do this, and
Speaker 2: inside the books were tear out sheets. So one day
Speaker 2: we're out there, we're going nowhere, you know, with this band,
Speaker 2: and I'm looking at I'm looking through the dumpster and
Speaker 2: I see how to start a company, how to do
Speaker 2: your own books. And I take this book back to
Speaker 2: my apartment and I go, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 2: to start my own publishing company, my own record company.
Speaker 2: I'm going to make a recording. I'm going to put
Speaker 2: it out when the band takes their Christmas break, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring it to the band and show
Speaker 2: them that it can be done. So that's what I did.
Speaker 2: And it was a very weird, avant garde EP that
Speaker 2: I recorded in late eighty four. And you know, I
Speaker 2: went down to the courthouse. I started Strange, beautleful Music.
Speaker 2: I started Rubina Records. I was the president. I was
Speaker 2: also the first client, and I got this record pressed.
Speaker 2: I brought it to the band and no one, no
Speaker 2: one really liked it. I did it. Jeff was intrigued
Speaker 2: by it, you know, and the reaction made me realize
Speaker 2: this is going nowhere. I got to get out of here,
Speaker 2: you know. I started the band, but I just said, look,
Speaker 2: I'm quitting this band. You guys could do whatever you want,
Speaker 2: but this obviously you've got to do it yourself now.
Speaker 2: So I just thought, the next thing I'll do is
Speaker 2: I have to do an album with drums and bass
Speaker 2: and keyboards that people.
Speaker 1: I mean, just for one second. That was the Squares.
Speaker 2: The Squares that yeah, from in nineteen eighty late late
Speaker 2: seventy nine to very early eighty five.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so you leave the Squares continue?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I leave the Squares. I'm teaching. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to play with some other bands, not really going anywhere.
Speaker 2: I get a credit card offer in the mail with
Speaker 2: checks totally five thousand dollars, which I go back second
Speaker 2: round to all studios and engineers and I say, look,
Speaker 2: what if I paid you in advance, would you give
Speaker 2: me a break? And I got like the fifty percent break,
Speaker 2: you know, discount if I paid everybody ahead of time
Speaker 2: to do this album. I finished the album. I'm in
Speaker 2: debt for just under five grand. I'm really struggling to
Speaker 2: pay this thing off. And I get a call my
Speaker 2: second call from a local band do a great kin
Speaker 2: band who once again having guitar player problems, and they
Speaker 2: want me to come to the studio like that day
Speaker 2: because I have to finish their album Love and Rock Role,
Speaker 2: And there was no argument. I was like, I need
Speaker 2: cash like today, you know. So I went down there
Speaker 2: to Fantasy Records. They literally recorded me just like listening
Speaker 2: to music for the first time. I'd like, tune up
Speaker 2: and they'd play something and I'd just play along and
Speaker 2: they'd say, we got it, Joe, all right, let's move
Speaker 2: on to the next song. And by the end of
Speaker 2: the early evening they handed me ten thousand dollars cash
Speaker 2: and they said there's more money coming just you know,
Speaker 2: give us twelve months. And I was like, you got it,
Speaker 2: no problem. You know. I really did like the band,
Speaker 2: and we played with them a lot. Greg was a
Speaker 2: fantastic singer in front Man, and I didn't know the
Speaker 2: guys in the band that well, but I knew from
Speaker 2: opening up for those guys for years that they were
Speaker 2: the real deal. It was like a cool not my
Speaker 2: style of music, but I recognized that they were really
Speaker 2: good at it, and so that what followed was well.
Speaker 2: First of all, I paid off the credit card, and
Speaker 2: because about the same time, I'd sent a cassette of
Speaker 2: it to Steve vi Iika. Steve and I were always
Speaker 2: trading cassettes of stuff we were working on, and he
Speaker 2: had just signed with Relativity Records out of Jamaica Queen's
Speaker 2: for his Flexible album. And the way Steve put it was,
Speaker 2: he goes, Joe, my record is so much weirder than yours,
Speaker 2: and they signed me. They gotta sign you. So I said, okay,
Speaker 2: you can to send them the cassette. I don't care.
Speaker 2: I wasn't even thinking that I get anywhere with it,
Speaker 2: but Clifficaltrairie at Relativity Records liked it. We met and
Speaker 2: it took about twelve months, but eventually a P and
Speaker 2: D deal was struck while I was just finishing my
Speaker 2: year with Greg Kin, and in November of eighty six,
Speaker 2: they released Not Out of This Earth, which was my
Speaker 2: first full length LP that I had produced and played on,
Speaker 2: and that was probably the strangest instrumental album I'd done
Speaker 2: outside of the EP, which was certifiably weird.
Speaker 1: But okay, you're playing with Greg Kidd. You get the
Speaker 1: money to pay off the credit card. Everything was slowly.
Speaker 1: It takes you twelve months to make the deal. The
Speaker 1: record is released, and then what.
Speaker 2: I go to New York because Barry Kober and the
Speaker 2: president of the company, is not convinced that they that
Speaker 2: I have the goods, you know, to do an instrumental record,
Speaker 2: and they booked this sort of like a showcase at
Speaker 2: the China Club. I don't know any musicians in New
Speaker 2: York anymore, but I had just played with Danny Gottlieb
Speaker 2: in Sweden along with Jonas Hellborg, Swedish fusion bass player,
Speaker 2: and so I called him up and I said, Hey,
Speaker 2: would you do this one thing for me at the
Speaker 2: China Club. You know, there's no rehearsal, just show up.
Speaker 2: The songs are so easy, you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: because Danny's a great jazz drummer. And I said, you know,
Speaker 2: all you have to do is just play a little
Speaker 2: heavier than usual, don't worry about it. And I didn't
Speaker 2: know a bass player, so he said, well, you know
Speaker 2: Mark Egan. Let's get Mark. And I thought Mark's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's like, why would he be playing, you know, satch
Speaker 2: Boogie and stuff like that. But I needed somebody. So
Speaker 2: we met, we set up, we played, and when we
Speaker 2: got done with satch Boogie, the deal was made. Barry
Speaker 2: heard something in what I was doing, because I when
Speaker 2: he asked me what I wanted to do, I said, look,
Speaker 2: I want to make an album that celebrates everything I
Speaker 2: love about guitars. And I said that means Chuck Berry,
Speaker 2: that means Hendrix, that means some fusion stuff, some classical stuff.
Speaker 2: You know. I said, that's that's who I am, you know.
Speaker 2: And I should point out that earlier, a couple of
Speaker 2: days earlier, when I went out to the company the record,
Speaker 2: I'm standing in the middle of their their main room,
Speaker 2: all the employees around, and Barry's looking at me, and
Speaker 2: he's very uncomfortable and he goes, you don't look like
Speaker 2: a rock star. And I was just thinking, like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is really embarrassing. I got it was like, sorry, Barry,
Speaker 2: but this is what I look like. But you know,
Speaker 2: I kind of knew it, you know, and I understood
Speaker 2: where he was coming from. Because he had he had
Speaker 2: just signed Steve I and Steve looks like a rock star,
Speaker 2: you know, he was a rock star. But he looked
Speaker 2: a part and I didn't, and and and he was
Speaker 2: about to sink some money into me. So I totally
Speaker 2: got it. So it's him being nervous. But it turned
Speaker 2: out all right because they did give me complete freedom
Speaker 2: to do what I wanted. And that album was Surfing
Speaker 2: with the Alien, and thank god that people like that one,
Speaker 2: because that one really reflected my true nature. So you
Speaker 2: know that thing where bands that they get famous for
Speaker 2: the wrong song and it destroys the band or you know,
Speaker 2: they it's the single that killed the band. But in
Speaker 2: terms of that album, Surfing was the best of all
Speaker 2: the albums of mine that could have got that kind
Speaker 2: of embrace, you know, from a world audience, because that's
Speaker 2: exactly who I am, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, a little bit slower the album you make by
Speaker 1: yourself with the five thousand dollars from the credit card.
Speaker 1: Relativity does put that record out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took a long time, but they put it
Speaker 2: out in November of eighty six. By then, I'd already
Speaker 2: started working on Surfing. I'd already recorded a couple of
Speaker 2: demos that went oh okay.
Speaker 1: But even though that record was out, Very still wasn't convinced.
Speaker 1: It was after that record that YE had to do
Speaker 1: the audition.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's crazy, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're some guy from the Island living in Berkeley.
Speaker 1: You're with Relativity, which is independent, although not that small
Speaker 1: at that particular time. Yeah, a lot of people find
Speaker 1: out about the music.
Speaker 2: Terresta radio was really important. I can't really tell you
Speaker 2: how it was done. I do know that some of
Speaker 2: the most colorful people worked radio. I guess you call
Speaker 2: it in the companies and in you know, the parent
Speaker 2: company was called Important Record Distributors, and they had a
Speaker 2: couple of labels. They had Combat, Relativity, and maybe something else.
Speaker 2: But I was on Relativity. And so between the office
Speaker 2: in Torrance, California and Jamaica, Queens, they had radio people
Speaker 2: whose knew other radio people and they knew disc jockeys.
Speaker 2: And I did IDs for hundreds of stations. I visited
Speaker 2: hundreds of stations. I played guitar at hundreds of stations,
Speaker 2: and stations like wherever Redbeard was in Texas at the time,
Speaker 2: and Chicago, the Loop and La Boston, unbelievable support. When
Speaker 2: that record came out, they would just spin it and
Speaker 2: I was, you know, klex. They would they would play
Speaker 2: the whole record on Sunday twice, you know, top to bottom.
Speaker 2: The record that I thought was so completely out of time,
Speaker 2: the one that both myself and my co producer John
Speaker 2: Kuniberty thought would definitely seal our fate as never being
Speaker 2: hired again, turned out to be the one that got
Speaker 2: embraced by the fans.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: The trick was to get the radio station to play it,
Speaker 2: and in pre internet days, that that was it. If
Speaker 2: you couldn't get it on the radio, you were dead
Speaker 2: in the water.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're the guitar teacher to the stars. You have
Speaker 1: a band that can't get signed by a major label.
Speaker 1: You know right now, I wouldn't quite call it sonny,
Speaker 1: but an upbeat disposition. You go from being completely unknown
Speaker 1: to having traction. What was the experience emotionally.
Speaker 2: That was It's really hard to describe the depth of
Speaker 2: despair in like early December eighty seven, like the or
Speaker 2: more like more like October of eighty seven. I just
Speaker 2: really didn't think there was I didn't I was getting
Speaker 2: feedback from the world, only from the people I knew.
Speaker 2: And I thought, it's okay, the recor will come out
Speaker 2: and I'll just teach and I'll just keep going and
Speaker 2: I won't think about what I can't imagine or it's
Speaker 2: not happened yet, and I'm not going to fear and
Speaker 2: imagine future, you know. And then Barry called me one
Speaker 2: day and he said, you know, you're one eighty seven
Speaker 2: on Billboard. And I was shocked that even was on
Speaker 2: the Billboard charts. And I said, wow, what does that mean,
Speaker 2: you know? And he said, well, it means you got
Speaker 2: to put a band together. And I said, Barry, I've
Speaker 2: never played instrumental rock in front of an audience before.
Speaker 2: I said, there is no band. It's like, what do
Speaker 2: I do? You jump around? You're serious, like, you know,
Speaker 2: do you need lights, smoke bombs?
Speaker 1: What do you do?
Speaker 2: And he said no, just put a band together and
Speaker 2: you got to go out and play. And so after
Speaker 2: that phone call, I was like really wondering, like really,
Speaker 2: like as a career, I mean, I always thought you
Speaker 2: put out an album and it might be embraced by
Speaker 2: a small group of people, but as a viable touring act,
Speaker 2: I thought, well, no one that anymore. Jeff Beck maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, but even he would intersperse working with big
Speaker 2: vocal stars, you know, you know, because the genre didn't
Speaker 2: exist anymore really outside of Jeff and so but I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: I have to I'm going to have to figure this out,
Speaker 2: you know. And so I called ste and Jonathan Jonathan
Speaker 2: Moover drummer and Stuart Ham bass player who we had
Speaker 2: played just briefly in the summer at a NAM show,
Speaker 2: and I said, well, you know, they record company wants
Speaker 2: a tour, so we put a tour together. I gave
Speaker 2: my last guitar lesson to Kirk Hammett in early January
Speaker 2: of eighty eight, and we're all excited, Wow, going on tour.
Speaker 2: And I go out on this tour. I'm playing two
Speaker 2: shows a night, six seven nights a week. We're out
Speaker 2: there for about three weeks. Maybe it was awful. It
Speaker 2: was just so hard. You know. There's as you know,
Speaker 2: just because you have a record doesn't mean you can
Speaker 2: sell a ticket. Some people have tickets and they don't
Speaker 2: they can sell tickets and they don't have record sales
Speaker 2: or whatever. So it's a funky business, right. So but
Speaker 2: I was in that position where I was unknown, I
Speaker 2: was untested, Promoters didn't know how to pronounce my name,
Speaker 2: you know that kind of thing. And and I was
Speaker 2: projected to lose about maybe eight grand a week, which
Speaker 2: I didn't have at the time. And I remember we
Speaker 2: were in Boston staying at some awful motel and my
Speaker 2: tour manager gave me the news of how much money
Speaker 2: we're going to be losing. And a little while after that,
Speaker 2: one of my former agents, Kevin Burns, calls me from
Speaker 2: the Bill Graham management office and he says, you're not
Speaker 2: going to believe this. How would you like to audition
Speaker 2: for Mick Jagger? And so we both laugh for about
Speaker 2: a minute because we knew I was the worst guy
Speaker 2: to audition for Mick Jagger, like, you know, I didn't
Speaker 2: look right and I haven't been playing the Stones songs
Speaker 2: for ages. But we both said, you're going, like you
Speaker 2: have to go and then report to the rest of
Speaker 2: us how funny it was. So I go down, I
Speaker 2: do the audition, I get the gig. It's like really
Speaker 2: fun and Jagger is like the funnest guy ever. Plus
Speaker 2: he sings amazing. The band is amazing, and suddenly my
Speaker 2: problem with the tour vanishes because I've got to stay
Speaker 2: in New York City whehearse with Jagger and then go
Speaker 2: off to Japan. So this is this is like all
Speaker 2: part of this explanation because during that those few weeks
Speaker 2: and then getting in Jagger's band, getting in Rolling Stone magazine,
Speaker 2: seeing the chart number just go up and up and
Speaker 2: up and it lands at twenty nine, stays there for
Speaker 2: like six weeks. It was life changing because wherever I went,
Speaker 2: people knew how to pronounce my last name all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, and Mick was great wherever anytime I was
Speaker 2: with Mick, Mick would make sure that I could take
Speaker 2: advantage of any of this because he knew it was,
Speaker 2: you know, one of those things that only happens once
Speaker 2: in a while and you just got to do all
Speaker 2: of it. So he was always saying, if you need anything,
Speaker 2: you need a room, you need transportation, you need time
Speaker 2: to do an interview, let me know, I'll take care
Speaker 2: of it. And it was fabulous the help that he
Speaker 2: gave me. But it was a whirlwind. What other words
Speaker 2: can you use to describe the change of fortune in
Speaker 2: such a short amount of time. It's just great and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, it's March. I'm at the Tokyo
Speaker 2: Dome and I'm playing satch Boogie where it's just a
Speaker 2: couple of months ago, you know, I was at the
Speaker 2: China Club trying to cue the guys where the bridge is.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, well, was the success of the
Speaker 1: album driven it all from the press in the fact
Speaker 1: you were working with Mick or was it just the
Speaker 1: record caught on with the audience.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think it's you know, it's everything. You can't
Speaker 2: really discount any little thing that might happen that might
Speaker 2: introduce you to the to the the group of people,
Speaker 2: or that right person who was just waiting to hear it.
Speaker 2: There were plenty of times where people would say to me,
Speaker 2: you know, you're playing with Mick Jagger, you know, like
Speaker 2: they didn't get the connection because they knew me as
Speaker 2: surfing with the Alien guy. And just just like you know,
Speaker 2: when a fan becomes a fan at your fifth album
Speaker 2: and has no idea that you had four other albums,
Speaker 2: and they go back and they listen to it and
Speaker 2: they're like, I don't know that guy. I only know
Speaker 2: this guy album number five, you know. So, But there
Speaker 2: were other people who obviously most of them Let's say
Speaker 2: you playing at the Tokyo Dome. They don't know who
Speaker 2: you are, and Mick would let me go out and
Speaker 2: play two songs. I'd play Midnight all by myself. That
Speaker 2: was so frightening on such a huge stage in front
Speaker 2: of ninety thousand people. A little delicate, two hand tapping
Speaker 2: classical piece. What a crazy idea. But you know, everything
Speaker 2: is everything, you know. Just that one article in Rolling
Speaker 2: Stone doesn't mean anything to people who don't read Rolling Stone.
Speaker 2: But if you read Rolling Stone, then you go, well,
Speaker 2: this must be really happening, because I read this magazine
Speaker 2: and I trust it. You know. The most important element
Speaker 2: of all, though, is if people don't like what they
Speaker 2: hear you know you, As Glenn Johns once told me,
Speaker 2: he said, it's not your job to decide what people
Speaker 2: are going to like. It's your job to play your guitar.
Speaker 2: So if you people will decide what they like you
Speaker 2: just you can't make them like you. And there isn't
Speaker 2: any press or any bit of good luck that is
Speaker 2: going to make that happen. They really have to like
Speaker 2: listening to your music, to put it on day after day,
Speaker 2: week after week, year after year, and to take a
Speaker 2: chance on your follow up album and the next one
Speaker 2: and the next one.
Speaker 1: Well, that begs the question of as the guitarist, to
Speaker 1: what degree do you feel pressure to deliver what you
Speaker 1: think people will like.
Speaker 2: I don't know what people like, and I mean, you
Speaker 2: just can't tell what people are going to like, and
Speaker 2: so you got to let that go, you really do.
Speaker 2: I can say that sincerity is important, and when somebody
Speaker 2: is up on stage doing, you know, doing what they
Speaker 2: believe in, you have the best shot of reaching somebody.
Speaker 2: But if you're being false, I don't think you have
Speaker 2: as much of a chance to find your audience. And
Speaker 2: that's as important to embrace as the fact is. You
Speaker 2: can't make people like you. You just can't. They're just
Speaker 2: gonna either like it or they won't. I mean, just
Speaker 2: look at like fans who love one particular band more
Speaker 2: than any other band but still will say, oh, album
Speaker 2: number three is just the worst to the artist's face,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. So people it's their prerogative
Speaker 2: to like or not like, so you might as well
Speaker 2: just you.
Speaker 1: Know, Okay, so you cut a record, it's ready to
Speaker 1: come out. What do you feel inside? Are you super anxious?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Because you didn't finish it. The whole idea of
Speaker 2: finishing an album that you abandon it. You are forced
Speaker 2: to abandon it because you've run out of time and money.
Speaker 2: That's the reality.
Speaker 1: You know that.
Speaker 2: Every artist wishes they could just keep working on it,
Speaker 2: keep working on it, and you know, thank god there's tours,
Speaker 2: because that's where you get to work on it. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: here's a perfect example. Like when we recorded Surfing with
Speaker 2: the Alien. I went in. I left my apartment that
Speaker 2: morning to do that session. I'm looking around the apartment.
Speaker 2: I'm going, what you like, you know, like what I
Speaker 2: need something, And there's a Wahwa pedal sitting in the corner,
Speaker 2: dust on it. I purposely did not play it for years.
Speaker 2: I just sort of like made a rule like do
Speaker 2: not plug that thing in, Joe, you know. So I
Speaker 2: just thought, on a whim, I'm going to bring that.
Speaker 2: So I bring it. I plug it in. I remember
Speaker 2: John looking at me like, Wowa pedal, Like I thought
Speaker 2: you'd like swore those things off, you know, And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: let's just try it, you know. And we get around
Speaker 2: to getting a sound late in the day, it's just
Speaker 2: about four o'clock. We're supposed to be out of the
Speaker 2: room studio see at Hyde Street in San francisc Go.
Speaker 2: The other clients are at the door. They're literally looking
Speaker 2: at me, like, you know, with their arms folded, like hey,
Speaker 2: it's four o'clocket out of here. And I'm like, just
Speaker 2: let me do a pass, you know. And so I
Speaker 2: hadn't played the melody yet or it's melody solo section
Speaker 2: melody and then solo at the end with the melody guitar,
Speaker 2: and that was the one we had set up. So
Speaker 2: I do this one long take. Guitar is not entirely
Speaker 2: in tune. The even type processor that we're plugged into,
Speaker 2: you know, is not working that great. And I get
Speaker 2: through the end of the piece, all the way to
Speaker 2: the very end of the song where the fade out
Speaker 2: would have happened, and that's it, and we have to
Speaker 2: turn everything off, break everything down, no chance of fixing,
Speaker 2: you know, like coming in a day later and changing
Speaker 2: a note because we had to strike the amp and everything.
Speaker 2: And I just I remember my heart sunk because I thought,
Speaker 2: oh man, it's like it's so promising. I think I'm
Speaker 2: onto something right. So, as fate would have it, we
Speaker 2: could never do anything better to it. So that's what's
Speaker 2: on the album, and thank god people liked it, you know,
Speaker 2: but every time I play that on stage, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: now is Joe, now's your chance to fix that, you know,
Speaker 2: bar sixty three, to make this in tune and maybe
Speaker 2: you should try this on the B string instead of
Speaker 2: the G string. And I'm still working on it, and
Speaker 2: that alleviates that anxiety of having to abandon a piece
Speaker 2: of music.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you go work with Mick Jagger, your
Speaker 1: record moves up the chart, you're done with Mick Jagger.
Speaker 1: Then what.
Speaker 2: I wanted to do an entirely different kind of album.
Speaker 2: I was so satisfied with the way that surfing was embraced.
Speaker 2: I guess it was the way that it was embraced,
Speaker 2: you know, like it's not like people focused on one song.
Speaker 2: What I gathered from touring in all of eighty eight
Speaker 2: was that people really liked the ballads, the melodies, the
Speaker 2: guitar magazines like the pirate techniques and the flashy bits,
Speaker 2: and people that wouldn't normally interview me, like the upbeat,
Speaker 2: fun attitude of the album. All these things. I thought, well,
Speaker 2: this is great. If they liked that part of me,
Speaker 2: then there's no reason for me to try to do
Speaker 2: this again that I want to keep going in my quest,
Speaker 2: you know, with guitar playing and so Flying in a
Speaker 2: Blue Dream was born the idea, and I shocked everyone
Speaker 2: by saying, look, I want to sing, because what people
Speaker 2: did know is I'd been in the Squares for five
Speaker 2: years and I was one of the lead singers. So
Speaker 2: and as I said before, I always thought i'd be
Speaker 2: in a vocal rock band, and I realized that after
Speaker 2: touring with instrumentals in eighty eight and having two tours
Speaker 2: with Mick Jagger, that there was this real benefit for
Speaker 2: having vocals because you could really reach people, you know.
Speaker 2: And the question was would people accept me being in
Speaker 2: character because I don't have a lead singer's voice. I
Speaker 2: don't have that talent, you know, but I could hit notes.
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, if I can get into a
Speaker 2: character and sing rough for Big Bad Moon and sing
Speaker 2: in a very heartfelt, demure version of myself where I
Speaker 2: believe and you know, have these different vocals and try
Speaker 2: to sing like prints for strange, you know that people
Speaker 2: would get the joke and they say, yeah, he's not
Speaker 2: trying to it's just Joe, just Joe having fun in
Speaker 2: the studio. But it was a big album, eighteen tracks,
Speaker 2: lots of crazy two hand tapping, harmonica playing. It had
Speaker 2: a lot of things that I was so excited about
Speaker 2: that I was just dying to bring out on tour.
Speaker 2: And again we were really fortunate. I mean those each
Speaker 2: time I've released a record, it's the records have found
Speaker 2: their audience, which is just mind blowing, you know. And
Speaker 2: so I still on this tour right now. I'm singing
Speaker 2: Big Bad Moon and playing harp and it's so much fun.
Speaker 2: You know, people get it. They know I'm not a
Speaker 2: real singer.
Speaker 1: Let's jump forward. How do you meet Sammy Hagar?
Speaker 2: I meet Sammy Hagar taking a piss in the men's
Speaker 2: room of the one of the bammis that's taking place
Speaker 2: in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: The Bay Area Music Awards when there used to be
Speaker 1: a magazine BAM.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, and he and I were both up for awards.
Speaker 2: I was jamming with Ronnie Montrose that night and playing
Speaker 2: some songs myself. We were both giving awards out, you know,
Speaker 2: and I knew I'd known who Sammy was. But you're
Speaker 2: not if if you've never met Sammy Hagar, You're not
Speaker 2: prepared for the actual event that is being in his presence.
Speaker 2: Man is like twenty men in one body. You know,
Speaker 2: he's hysterical, he's so funny, full of energy, even in
Speaker 2: the men's room in an semi awkward moment. But I
Speaker 2: guess we hit it off. I don't think because it
Speaker 2: was the men's room. I'm just saying we hit it off,
Speaker 2: and then we wound up just bumping into each other
Speaker 2: at different things like rehearsals or something like that. A
Speaker 2: gig here, a gig there, and but we didn't really
Speaker 2: formalize a relationship until he and Neil Neil Sean invited
Speaker 2: me to join the band Planted Us a few years later.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was really right in the middle
Speaker 2: of making an album and booking a tour, and I
Speaker 2: wasn't quite sure how that was going to work. We
Speaker 2: did one live radio show and when and then I
Speaker 2: went on tour, and when I came back, the band
Speaker 2: had broken up before I had a chance to just
Speaker 2: even figure out what I was supposed to do in
Speaker 2: the band, Like, how do you play in a band
Speaker 2: with Neil Sean? I don't know. He just he's amazing.
Speaker 2: He covers all the bases, you know. But and then
Speaker 2: Sam came around again and called me to do chicken
Speaker 2: Foot back in two thousand and eight, and yeah, one
Speaker 2: thing led to another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, how was the experience with chicken Foot? You
Speaker 1: put out two albums?
Speaker 2: That's so great. I mean, the x, the palpable excitement
Speaker 2: in the studio, Sam's Little studio, bringing in a song.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd email like a song to the guys
Speaker 2: and someone would say, like, okay, three weeks from now,
Speaker 2: we got two days at Sam's studio and we arrive,
Speaker 2: they'd say, oh, yeah, that that that thing you sent us, Joe, Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's do that right now. And you know, as a band,
Speaker 2: we'd sort of chop it up and rearrange it, and
Speaker 2: then we recorded and that would be on the album.
Speaker 2: I was like stunned that they would want to record
Speaker 2: that way, but that's how they wanted to record. And
Speaker 2: so a lot of the first album was done right there,
Speaker 2: maybe half of it in Sam's little place, the rest
Speaker 2: of it at Skywalker. And it was always fun, always dangerous,
Speaker 2: that first tour with Chad destroying drums every night and
Speaker 2: is so much fun. It was really like it was
Speaker 2: like being fourteen years old and you know, totally losing
Speaker 2: control at a high school dancer or someone's backyard party
Speaker 2: and doing a professional gig all at once. It had
Speaker 2: that insanity to it and that love of you know,
Speaker 2: trying to create a true rock and roll moment on stage.
Speaker 2: Just tons of fun.
Speaker 1: So what's this tour you're going on with essentially chicken
Speaker 1: Foot with a different drummer this summer?
Speaker 2: You know, my perspective of it is so different because
Speaker 2: Sam called me and he said, I want to do
Speaker 2: a career retrospective tour where we play Montrose and Hagar
Speaker 2: and chicken Foot and a couple of your songs and
Speaker 2: a lot of Vhalen songs, even some roth era songs.
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, there's no way I'm missing this.
Speaker 2: This is like my friend, my buddy's having a career
Speaker 2: retrospective and I'm part of it. I'm lucky enough to
Speaker 2: be actually part of his career. And so I wanted
Speaker 2: to do it, and I think I agreed before I
Speaker 2: really thought the weight of it when it came to
Speaker 2: the Van Halen stuff, but it was, you know, he said,
Speaker 2: well it'll be at that time, you know, next summer,
Speaker 2: and I thought, Okay, I've got these other projects, but
Speaker 2: I'll have a couple of months to sit down and
Speaker 2: try to figure out all this Edward van Halen stuff
Speaker 2: that I avoided learning on purpose all these decades, you know.
Speaker 2: And then of course he calls me and he says, oh,
Speaker 2: by the way, we're doing this Howard Stern thing. And
Speaker 2: at the time, I'd been painting canvases and guitars for
Speaker 2: three weeks. I was literally I had no callouses left.
Speaker 2: I hadn't been playing. I was trying to cram for
Speaker 2: this art show at the Wentwer Gallery that was happening
Speaker 2: the same week as the Stern show. And so I
Speaker 2: explained to him myself, well, we can't do it. You know.
Speaker 2: It's just I'm not gonna play Eddie van Halen music
Speaker 2: at six in the morning, and besides, I'm painting, you know. Anyway,
Speaker 2: long story short, they twist my arm. We wind up
Speaker 2: doing this show and they were great, and they were
Speaker 2: I mean, Jason, Mike and Sam have been doing these
Speaker 2: songs for decades now, so they were totally. I just
Speaker 2: was sort of trying not to screw up too much,
Speaker 2: remembering each bar as it was coming in front of me.
Speaker 2: You know, luckily, I'm a big fan of the Van
Speaker 2: Halen music. So that's that's the memory I was drawing upon,
Speaker 2: not rehearsal memory, which you know there was none, but
Speaker 2: now it's the set list that Sam was put together.
Speaker 2: Is really a lot of fun. It's and super challenging
Speaker 2: for me for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell us about the painting thing.
Speaker 2: So about I mean, I've been drawing ever since I
Speaker 2: was a little kid, but I didn't really get into
Speaker 2: painting until about eight years ago. My wife, Rabinis, got
Speaker 2: a degree in graphic arts. My son wound up getting
Speaker 2: a degree in art as well, and so there was
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff around the house begging me to
Speaker 2: test it out. So I asked my wife, you know, look,
Speaker 2: I just get me going. When do I use this brush?
Speaker 2: When do I use this one? Do I have to
Speaker 2: do something to the canvas before I put on the
Speaker 2: acrylic or the oil and whatnot? So she gave me
Speaker 2: a crash course, and I took all the stuff that
Speaker 2: I had been doing with pen and pencil and with
Speaker 2: the computer, and I thought, okay, now it's time to
Speaker 2: get your your fingers dirty, you know, And I found
Speaker 2: I really loved it, and then I started doing some
Speaker 2: more guitars as a test. Now I'd done illustrating guitars,
Speaker 2: you know, with pen just drawing goofy figures, but hadn't
Speaker 2: done real works of art that stand on their own
Speaker 2: until I started down this process. And I wasn't thinking
Speaker 2: of selling them or becoming an artist, so to speak,
Speaker 2: until I was invited by Corey and Robbiet Scene for
Speaker 2: Art Collective to do these time laps photography pieces in
Speaker 2: the dark where you wear led lace gloves and you
Speaker 2: play your instrument, and then they create these photographs and
Speaker 2: manipulate them in the in the computer and then print them.
Speaker 2: And so during a break of the one of the
Speaker 2: photo sessions, I took up my phone and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I've been I've been checking out this stuff.
Speaker 2: What do you think about oil versus acrylic? You know?
Speaker 2: And I was just asking art questions, you know, and
Speaker 2: they got really interested in what they saw and they
Speaker 2: wanted to collaborate. So we started to do these collaborations
Speaker 2: with my artwork, getting going into into the computer, using
Speaker 2: it as backgrounds, adding the images that we were photographing
Speaker 2: of me playing. Uh. And then one thing led to another,
Speaker 2: and Corey Denzigers said he wanted to introduce me to
Speaker 2: Christian O. Mahoney at Wentworth Gallery and he was like,
Speaker 2: would you paint a lot if people liked it? You know,
Speaker 2: It's kind of a funny question. And I thought, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I would. I think, like, what's a lot? You know.
Speaker 2: And so once I start talking to Christian, you know,
Speaker 2: he's like, well it you know, I mean minimum, we'd
Speaker 2: love to have three hundred pieces. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'd never painted, you know. It was just like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, Like how does an artist do that? So
Speaker 2: but I thought it was a really great thing to
Speaker 2: try and and it has been so wonderful for me
Speaker 2: just to be able to have the opportunity to express
Speaker 2: myself not only on the canvas, but also on the guitars.
Speaker 2: And it's when when I walk into one of the
Speaker 2: Wentworth galleries and I see nothing but my paintings, it's
Speaker 2: like hearing your song on the radio for the first time.
Speaker 2: It's that crazy. It's just it's a bizarre experience. It's
Speaker 2: very difficult to explain because it's something that you know,
Speaker 2: it came from inside, that was very personal and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, it's in the real world and people
Speaker 2: are seeing it and commenting on it and buying it
Speaker 2: and taking it home and looking at it every day.
Speaker 2: It's just it's It's like when someone says I use
Speaker 2: your song to get married or at a funeral or
Speaker 2: at you know this thing. I listen to it every
Speaker 2: day when I'm on my bike or whatever. It's it's heavy.
Speaker 2: It's heavy.
Speaker 1: So you said earlier about music, the public either likes
Speaker 1: it or does the public like your art so far?
Speaker 2: Yes, you never know what people are going to like,
Speaker 2: and that again, this is a perfect example of that.
Speaker 2: Where I'll do a painting of the moon, I'll do
Speaker 2: a painting of flag, I'll do painting of guitars, alien,
Speaker 2: a beautiful woman, and a Drodyn his figure. I don't
Speaker 2: know what people are going to like. I don't even
Speaker 2: stop myself, and Christian never stops hanging whatever it is
Speaker 2: I send him because I think he realizes the same
Speaker 2: thing is that someone will walk by the shop one
Speaker 2: day and they'll see a painting of something that I
Speaker 2: did that we never thought twice about, and they'll say,
Speaker 2: this means so much to me. And that's what I
Speaker 2: learned at the art shows. It's really fascinating how it works.
Speaker 2: So I go there. I spend about twenty minutes with
Speaker 2: each person that buys a piece of art, and I
Speaker 2: get to hear from them what they like about it.
Speaker 2: They want to know all about why I created it.
Speaker 2: And then at the end of the day I play
Speaker 2: for about forty five minutes to an hour. If somebody
Speaker 2: buys one of the painted guitars, we get up and
Speaker 2: we jam together they if they play guitar. So it's
Speaker 2: really a fun personal experience, and it's small, you know,
Speaker 2: it's what fifty people or something like that. It's not
Speaker 2: like doing a concert at the Beacon Theater or something
Speaker 2: like that. It's very personal and you really do spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time with people and the stories that
Speaker 2: they tell me about how they feel when they look
Speaker 2: at the painting. It's really touching. It's a profound experience.
Speaker 2: I have to like get ready for it.
Speaker 1: I know everything has a different price, but approximately how
Speaker 1: much does a painting or a guitar or retail for.
Speaker 2: The guitars are hanging up for about eighteen to twenty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars the paintings, depending on the size. Maybe I
Speaker 2: don't know, fifteen to eighteen for a forty by forty canvas,
Speaker 2: and I know that recently they've done a series of
Speaker 2: prints on canvas as well as metal. Really beautiful process.
Speaker 2: I don't really know how they do it, but they
Speaker 2: transfer the photographs I take of the artwork to this
Speaker 2: metal medium and it adds this dimension, especially the psychedelic
Speaker 2: city scapes that I've done blown up, you know, forty
Speaker 2: or fifty by forty on metal. It's wow, really cool looking.
Speaker 1: Switching gears totally once again, to what degree are you
Speaker 1: a gear ahead?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, I love gear I mean this is the
Speaker 2: how far I'll go. When Sam called me for this
Speaker 2: summer gig, right, the best of all worlds gig, you know,
Speaker 2: after I said yes and I started to play some
Speaker 2: van Halen through my amp, I realized my amp is
Speaker 2: not the proper amp to do the songs properly, you know,
Speaker 2: and that put me on this quest of you know,
Speaker 2: I had to put the gearhead hat on and figure out, like,
Speaker 2: how am I going to represent decades of this genius's work,
Speaker 2: and because he was a gearhead, you know, how am
Speaker 2: I going to condense it down into something that's manageable
Speaker 2: that I can play every night. I went through every
Speaker 2: manufacturer that made an AMP that could really scream that way,
Speaker 2: and eventually landed a third power and guitar player designer
Speaker 2: and owner Delana Scott totally got what I was asking
Speaker 2: her to do and everything, all the teeny little things
Speaker 2: that bug guitar players when they're trying to pull things off.
Speaker 2: And she made me this amp called the Dragon, which
Speaker 2: blew everybody away. When I showed up at the satch
Speaker 2: Vi tour and at the very first one and only
Speaker 2: rehearsal we had in Orlando with this new amp, and
Speaker 2: I said, I've never played this before, but I want
Speaker 2: to start playing this thing right now. And I plugged
Speaker 2: into this thing. I didn't even set the controls. Delana
Speaker 2: had set all the controls up herself, after you know,
Speaker 2: weeks of describing things over the phone, email, text and everything,
Speaker 2: and I haven't touched the dial since. And every night
Speaker 2: that app sounds so amazing, it's so inspiring, and so
Speaker 2: to that degree that would that would be a good
Speaker 2: example of how far I'll go to achieve the right sound.
Speaker 2: Just for one tour, I will commission a special amp
Speaker 2: and just dive right in and start using it in
Speaker 2: front of my audience who's heard me play Marshals forever.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But gear is important. It's you know, it's the thing
Speaker 2: that is going to set you free so that you
Speaker 2: can be inspired and that the audience can tell if
Speaker 2: you're inspired or not. They don't care so much about,
Speaker 2: you know, mistakes like if your strap breaks or your
Speaker 2: antlows up. That's kind of cool for them because they go,
Speaker 2: I remember that show that's where his trap broke, his
Speaker 2: amp blew up, and and he talked to the audience
Speaker 2: for twenty minutes while they fixed it. You know. But
Speaker 2: if you go and you do a show and it's
Speaker 2: lackluster because you're not inspired by your gear, that's the
Speaker 2: kind of memory you don't want your fans to have.
Speaker 2: So the gear is there to inspire the artist and
Speaker 2: the musician.
Speaker 1: And then how did you decide to play the brand
Speaker 1: of guitar that you do? That took a long time.
Speaker 1: I mean, wow, not to bore or your non guitar
Speaker 1: playing audience. But if I had to whittle it down,
Speaker 1: I could say, you know, there's Fender, and there's Gibson,
Speaker 1: there's single coils, and there's humbucking pickups. There's the scale length,
Speaker 1: tight and snappy of a Telecaster and a Fender, and
Speaker 1: then there's the warm, fat sound of the Gibson scale
Speaker 1: length which is shorter Les Paul's three thirty five sgs,
Speaker 1: and guitar players struggle with that. If they're lucky enough
Speaker 1: to own two guitars, they'll probably wind up getting one
Speaker 1: of each. So they're prepared if they're going to do
Speaker 1: session work.
Speaker 2: Or they're going to be playing in a cover band
Speaker 2: and they've got a switch between imitating Hendricks or Jimmy
Speaker 2: Page or whatever you know. But fast forward to this
Speaker 2: modern world. There's other things that guitar players do now
Speaker 2: that are expected, and it has to do with the
Speaker 2: vibrato bar and then the amount of frets on the guitar.
Speaker 2: So the early guitar, I mean Fender and Gibson, we're
Speaker 2: talking guitars that were designed late forties, early fifties, brilliant guitars.
Speaker 2: They're so brilliant most people still play them. I mean,
Speaker 2: you just can't do that any better, but you can
Speaker 2: do something different that gives you more tools, more frets.
Speaker 2: Most of us play twenty four frent guitars now. It
Speaker 2: does allow us to play higher, but it also gives
Speaker 2: us access to what used to be difficult to play
Speaker 2: in the normal high range. We also have these vibrato
Speaker 2: bars that allow us to change the picture of the
Speaker 2: strings in a radical way, and that's become totally accepted
Speaker 2: now to hear guitars screaming super high and doing dive
Speaker 2: bombs super low. It's just like normal. So I play
Speaker 2: a guitar that has been carefully and slowly meticulously fashioned
Speaker 2: to help me do what I love to do, which
Speaker 2: is to play beautiful melodies, appropriate solos, memorable chre progressions
Speaker 2: and makes a lot of strange noises when the time
Speaker 2: is right, and the thing stays in tune and is
Speaker 2: just rock solid, you know. And and it's a team
Speaker 2: effort because you know, the strings from the Dario and
Speaker 2: the pickups from Demarzio, I mean, everybody, all these companies
Speaker 2: chip in to help me feel comfortable every time I
Speaker 2: hit the stage or I'm in the studio and.
Speaker 1: You go out on the road. Now, how many guitars
Speaker 1: do you bring with you?
Speaker 2: No more than ten? I always try to keep it,
Speaker 2: you know, six, you know, one on the bus, one
Speaker 2: for backstage, and then I hate the idea of making
Speaker 2: you know, my tech change strings like four hours every
Speaker 2: day on every guitar. You know, And so the reality
Speaker 2: is why so we always try to trim down. If
Speaker 2: I can get through a show with three guitars, I'll
Speaker 2: do it. If I've got a couple of songs that
Speaker 2: have weird tunings, then we're kind of stuck. We have
Speaker 2: to have them there. But I don't like having to
Speaker 2: relate to a lot of guitars on a physical level,
Speaker 2: you know, because they're all different, they all feel a
Speaker 2: little different. If I could get through a show with
Speaker 2: one guitar, that would be great, But I abuse them
Speaker 2: so much. You know, after three songs they need a
Speaker 2: little tuning up. And this is not the seventies anymore,
Speaker 2: So you can't do that while people are watching. So
Speaker 2: you got to hand it off and get a new
Speaker 2: one and keep the show rolling, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Okay, and your three favorite rock guitars. Don't put
Speaker 1: a lot of time and effort on it, just you know,
Speaker 1: give me off the top of your head.
Speaker 2: Top of my head, I would really say, Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 2: is my all global god of all time. H an
Speaker 2: innovator to two above all innovators, and uh, it's oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I can't. I'd have to say I'm going
Speaker 2: to leap ahead from the guys who I mean everybody,
Speaker 2: uh influenced somebody else. But I mean I still hear
Speaker 2: and rely on the pacing and the ingenuity of George
Speaker 2: Harrison and Keith Richards. I know they don't fit with Hendricks.
Speaker 2: People expect me to say, you know, Jeff Beck and
Speaker 2: out in the Holdsworth and stuff like that, but uh,
Speaker 2: those those three guys, they really laid down some stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, they it's just it transcended their technique. They
Speaker 2: weren't neither of them could play everything, you know, even
Speaker 2: Hendricks he was not like McLaughlin or Holdsworth. He certainly
Speaker 2: won't like a Segovia or Christopher Parkning or something like that.
Speaker 2: So each these were individual human beings that somehow use
Speaker 2: their bodies to produce music that is so memorable and
Speaker 2: so loved and so solid and so enduring. They were
Speaker 2: so inventive all the time, and I rely on that.
Speaker 2: I feel that, Like every time I'm playing something in
Speaker 2: me says that's enough, that's not interesting. You know, it's
Speaker 2: I refer back to the great things that they recorded
Speaker 2: and and and I'm lucky that they were part that
Speaker 2: they've been part of my foundation, I think.
Speaker 1: And if you listen to Hendricks, what do you listen to.
Speaker 2: Everything? Uh? You know, he was I'm a moody person,
Speaker 2: and he was very moody, and he produced music that
Speaker 2: could really make you forget every other song I ever did.
Speaker 2: So nineteen eighty three, I Meerman and I should turn
Speaker 2: to be like, that's like four guitar players. I don't
Speaker 2: know how he did that. That's like so intense, that
Speaker 2: song so beautiful, and again you get I would say
Speaker 2: one of the things about Hendricks is that you never
Speaker 2: got the sense that he practiced or that he was
Speaker 2: showing you something that he practiced or he learned from
Speaker 2: a book. It just didn't Nothing was methodical, nothing was didactic.
Speaker 2: Nothing sounded like I practiced this scale for twelve years
Speaker 2: and now I'm demonstrating, which a lot of guitar players
Speaker 2: they you know, they use that for effect. And that's cool.
Speaker 2: But that's what's so beautiful about what Hendricks did. He
Speaker 2: just transcended it. I mean a machine gun from Live
Speaker 2: at the Fillmore, that's the greatest live performance ever. It's
Speaker 2: just you can't touch it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you said that you're moody. Listening to you today,
Speaker 1: I would not have guessed that at all. So am
Speaker 1: I just getting one aspect of your personality?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm trying to be a professional musician giving an
Speaker 2: interview to a very professional person who I respect, and
Speaker 2: so I don't want to waste your time. But if
Speaker 2: I was deep in songwriting, if I was writing a
Speaker 2: sad song, I'd be so deep in it.
Speaker 1: And well, let's pull it back from music. Are you
Speaker 1: the type of person who gets depressed? Are you an introvert? Extrovert?
Speaker 1: Who's the Who's the Joe Satriani behind the curtain?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, you'd have to ask my wife and son
Speaker 2: about that. But I think I enjoy diving deep into
Speaker 2: a mood, uh, you know, to write music, to paint,
Speaker 2: just just to feel it. And and if I if
Speaker 2: I something's bothering me about something like you know, let's
Speaker 2: say I'm looking at the I pull up a CNN
Speaker 2: and I see a report about something I wasn't thinking
Speaker 2: about and it shocks me. I'll dive deep. I'll keep
Speaker 2: researching that story. And you know, most people will go, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to read about that tragedy
Speaker 2: or that horrible thing. You know, I will. I'll go
Speaker 2: all the way deep into it. I want to know
Speaker 2: about that and and and it's different, it's separate from
Speaker 2: that part of me that just would do that to
Speaker 2: write a song. Although that's how I write songs. I
Speaker 2: can't write songs for order, you know, Like if you
Speaker 2: ask me, you know, Joe, I need a song for
Speaker 2: my podcast, you know, I'd be like, oh God, this
Speaker 2: is work, you know, But I will write it. I
Speaker 2: will write a few songs by the end of the
Speaker 2: week about what I've seen, experienced and felt, what I dreamt,
Speaker 2: something real, something imagined, because that's the way I write.
Speaker 2: I just write about real experience, which means I have
Speaker 2: to go deep and like find out what the real
Speaker 2: truth is about this feeling that I have. And that's
Speaker 2: the only method I have to edit myself. And you know,
Speaker 2: when you're writing music, you have to edit. You got
Speaker 2: to take out all the notes that mean nothing to
Speaker 2: get down to the notes that mean everything, so that
Speaker 2: the song is specific about this story you're trying to
Speaker 2: reach people with, you know. So that's when the mood thing,
Speaker 2: my moodiness is beneficial, so I can really turn it
Speaker 2: on and I don't mind wallowing in it or brooding.
Speaker 2: That said Michael Tilson. Thomas said to me once he
Speaker 2: was listening to my catalog and he wrote me an
Speaker 2: email and he said, brooding, brooding is good.
Speaker 1: Okay, As someone who has worked as a musician for decades,
Speaker 1: did you ever sew your wild out? So you're basically
Speaker 1: the guy from Westbury, Long Island, not drinking and drug
Speaker 1: and going back to the room or back to your
Speaker 1: bunk after the show.
Speaker 2: I was famous for delaying going to the party during
Speaker 2: high school because they'd say, come on, we're leaving. It'd
Speaker 2: be like eight, you know, we're going out to so
Speaker 2: and so place is going to be insane, and I'd go,
Speaker 2: I'll meet you there at eleven thirty, you know. And
Speaker 2: because if I hadn't done every scale at every metronome
Speaker 2: level whatever, I just couldn't live with myself. So I
Speaker 2: would practice and practice and practice, and then i'd meet
Speaker 2: them later and I'd arrive at the party and everyone
Speaker 2: would be totally wasted and so and I'd go like, oh,
Speaker 2: this doesn't look very cool. So I mean, I did
Speaker 2: my share of partying but it never took over my life.
Speaker 2: It never confused me. It never took the place of
Speaker 2: connecting with my friends or the people I fell in
Speaker 2: love with, and certainly never got in front of the music.
Speaker 1: You know, how'd you meet your wife?
Speaker 2: Okay, let's see if I can do this sinkly as possible.
Speaker 2: My older sister's current boyfriend at the time had a daughter,
Speaker 2: and the daughter had a roommate, two roommates. One of
Speaker 2: the roommates was my future wife. And I had moved
Speaker 2: to Berkeley and I'd been practicing like twelve hours a
Speaker 2: day for like two months, and I was living with
Speaker 2: my sisters at the time. And one night, my sister
Speaker 2: Jones said, you have to get out of the house,
Speaker 2: like you cannot just you know, be a hermit with
Speaker 2: the guitar. And I was like, okay, okay. She said,
Speaker 2: you know, my boyfriend's daughter is having a birthday party.
Speaker 2: You're a wich want don't you just come? And I
Speaker 2: just said, okay, I just gave up. You know, I
Speaker 2: was tired from practicing. So I went there and there
Speaker 2: she was. That's how we met.
Speaker 1: And was it an instant romance for me?
Speaker 2: It was. It took a lot of work to convince
Speaker 2: my wife because I was unemployed. I kind of looked
Speaker 2: like Cat Stevens when it was Maybe I shouldn't have
Speaker 2: looked like Cat Stevens at the time, you know, long hair, beard,
Speaker 2: wearing clothes that were maybe a couple of years too old.
Speaker 2: But that was nineteen seventy seven, so we've been together
Speaker 2: ever since.
Speaker 1: And when you're off the road, are you the type
Speaker 1: of person who's deep into your mood or you're burning
Speaker 1: up the airways on the phone, whether it be text, email,
Speaker 1: actual phone calls.
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, you, I mean, there's so much business that
Speaker 2: is on the artists today. You know that there there
Speaker 2: there's no more staff at the label to handle things.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just the artist has to be online
Speaker 2: every day keep things going. So I'm not obsessive about it.
Speaker 2: I don't. I never post about private things. I don't
Speaker 2: show people what I'm meeting for lunch or dinner or
Speaker 2: any of that kind of stuff. I keep that part private.
Speaker 2: And I focus on the music and you know, the
Speaker 2: the albums and the and the tours. But I I
Speaker 2: always find that I have to structure practice for the
Speaker 2: next project. I have to carve out time to be
Speaker 2: left alone to write. I like writing alone. I love
Speaker 2: having two months to brainstorm and to collect all the
Speaker 2: materials that I write. I write a lot, you know,
Speaker 2: and only use a third maybe or a quarter for
Speaker 2: an album. But I think in the last twenty years
Speaker 2: it seemed like there's been more randomness. I mean, the
Speaker 2: album cycles have changed. Social media has completely upended the
Speaker 2: old model of how to deal with press and going
Speaker 2: away and coming back, you know, that that whole routine
Speaker 2: of trying to maintain an audience, you know, presence through absence,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing, and so you were always kind
Speaker 2: of like doing something, you know, but then having the collaboration,
Speaker 2: especially with Sam and Chickenfoot, was quite unique, and then
Speaker 2: the cycle of the G three's, and it's just it's been,
Speaker 2: I want to say, more different. It sounds kind of weak,
Speaker 2: but it just seems like it's been a little bit
Speaker 2: more random the last fifteen or twenty years than the
Speaker 2: previous fifteen or twenty which were a little bit more streamlined.
Speaker 1: Well, hanging on that same point, if one talks to
Speaker 1: someone who's a professional sideman, professional studio musician, to the
Speaker 1: degree they still have those they're really big networkers Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is the way, it is, just talking.
Speaker 1: You know. Well I was doing this and this person
Speaker 1: called me here and I was driven, you know, who
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't network. I don't. Yeah, I don't. As
Speaker 2: people call me, I guess they reach out or they
Speaker 2: reach out to my manager, and you know, eventually, if
Speaker 2: they know that it's okay to call me in a
Speaker 2: particular week or something, they'll say, hey, you interested in this?
Speaker 2: I just got this from so and so. You know,
Speaker 2: but I, yeah, I don't do that. I you know,
Speaker 2: back in eighty eight, I signed to oh this company,
Speaker 2: gour Vain and Schwartz down in La to do soundtracks.
Speaker 2: Everyone was, oh, you're going to be doing soundtracks. Everyone
Speaker 2: loves the Sincerenrato music. I had this deep u suspicion
Speaker 2: because right away they thought, oh, they don't want to
Speaker 2: listen to my music as it is. They have to
Speaker 2: see something in order to accept music. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's just like work. You know, you spend enough decades
Speaker 2: not working as a musician. You never snicker at the
Speaker 2: offer of employment, you know. So I thought, okay, I'll
Speaker 2: try it, and then then I you know, they were
Speaker 2: sending scripts that were horrible, and then there were all
Speaker 2: these you know, invitations, Oh, you should go lunch with
Speaker 2: this guy, you should go, you know, And I kept saying,
Speaker 2: you realize I live in San Francisco. I'm not in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: you know, and you should move to Hollywood, you know.
Speaker 2: And because you got to hang out with this these
Speaker 2: people know those people, and I just said no, and
Speaker 2: I that was the end of that contract, and I said,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be bothered by any of this.
Speaker 2: It's like I can't write music while I'm I'm prefer
Speaker 2: people not to be their friends, but to get work.
Speaker 2: I just didn't seem sincere at all. And so I
Speaker 2: mean there are I mean, you know, I gave up
Speaker 2: doing drugs because I realized that people who were making
Speaker 2: money making and selling drugs were people that I wouldn't like,
Speaker 2: So why would I help them? You know? And I
Speaker 2: thought the same thing, like why would I be insincere
Speaker 2: in friendships when I don't believe in being insincere. So
Speaker 2: that was easy for me just to tell management, like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to
Speaker 2: keep doing what I'm doing. And if people like the music, great,
Speaker 2: if they invite me to go on tour. Great. If
Speaker 2: they don't, I'll take my lumps when they come. But
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be fake. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: you know, move where I don't want to live and
Speaker 2: go to lunch with people I don't like.
Speaker 1: Well, you know that brings up so many questions, but
Speaker 1: I think we've come to the end of the feeling
Speaker 1: we've known for today. Joe, You've been so sincere, so upfront.
Speaker 1: I can literally continue for hours. There's so much more
Speaker 1: stuff I wanted to ask, but I wanted it the highlights.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for taking the time to
Speaker 1: talk to me and my audience.
Speaker 2: Oh this has been wonderful. I love your newsletters. They're
Speaker 2: really great. Don't stop.
Speaker 1: I won't and I know you won't either.
Speaker 2: Fantastic And the podcast are just that's really great that
Speaker 2: you do this a voice of reason and insight that
Speaker 2: people need and I enjoy.
Speaker 1: Well. Thank you, Joe. In any event, till next time,
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sense