Joe Satriani: chikenfoot knac interview

SATRIANI: Absolutely, you know it’s interesting how when you give everything of what you have to people, it comes back to you in interesting ways. I learned that from my high school music teacher, who I knew was heading towards a career as a classical concert pianist. At this high school he would just offer everything that he knew about music to me, and I thought this is what I should do, if I’m ever doing guitar lessons. I just happened to be teaching Steve Vai at the time and I remember I was just going to do what my music teacher did. I’m going to show Steve everything. And it just turned out that Steve was one of the most talented guitar players ever born. He just happened to be one of my students. He quickly became a comrade and we dreamed about being rock stars as we would improvise together in my backyard in Long Island. I remember very vividly, this conversation I had with him where I started my own record company and I was about to release ‘Not of this Earth,’ and he said, ‘Hey, my first record is weirder than yours, and I just got signed to this crazy label out of Jamaica.’ And he asked if he could send a copy of my record to this guy, he might like it. I said, yeah go ahead, and I didn’t think much of it. That phone call led Steve to introduce me Cliff Cultreri, who is still one of my best friends and musical mentor, and he signed me to Relativity. It was in his personal conviction in me that we got ‘Surfing with the Alien’ because the label really did not think I looked like a rock star at all. They wanted me to be more of a medieval gothic shredder. I thought, no, no, I want to have a little bit more fun with it. It was Cliff that really pushed me through that label and made that record happen for me. That’s really what broke me. It was that introduction through Steve that really made that happen.

full knac interview