September 18, 1970 was a sad day for guitaristkind – that was the day that Jimi Hendrix left us all too soon. But aside from the tragic events of that day some 40 years ago, September 18, 1970 is noteworthy for another reason, equally important to the world of guitar: that’s the day Joe Satriani embarked on the path that would eventually lead him to rock superstardom, both solo and with Chickenfoot.
“
Back then I was a teenager on the football team,”
Satriani said. “
One afternoon, on my way out to the football field, one of my teammates mentioned that they’d just heard that Jimi Hendrix had died. I just turned around, took off my helmet, went into the coach’s room and told him I was quitting football to be a guitar player. I went home and announced it to my family and that was it – that was the beginning of my long journey.”
This was no rash decision for Satriani. Even though he wasn’t actually playing guitar yet, Hendrix was already a big part of his adolescent life – more so than football, it would seem.
“I was a big Hendrix fan back then,” Satriani said. “I was a drummer first, starting at age nine, but after a few years I gave that up because I realized I just wasn’t going to be that spectacular as a drummer [laughs]. During that period where I was not being a musician, I really got into Hendrix, so I was really expecting to see him any day soon, y’know? I was expecting to go to his concert. I wasn’t thinking of being a guitarist, but that did it.”
Hendrix’s death affected the young Satriani in a deep way. “It was a very traumatic, cathartic event for me,” he said.
To this day, Satriani carries with him part of Jimi’s spirit whenever he performs. You can hear it in the frequent Hendrix tributes during the epic show-closing jams of Satriani’s semi-regular G3 tours, where he trades Jimi licks with peers like Paul Gilbert, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai and John Petrucci. You can also hear it in the free, loose spirit of Satriani’s self-titled 1995 album, where he laid down funky grooves live in the studio with a crack band of skilled improvisers.
And you definitely would have heard it if you attended the Experience Hendrix Concert 2010 tour earlier this year, when Satch tore through a set of his favorite Jimi songs nightly, including “All Along The Watchtower,” “Third Stone From The Sun” and “Foxy Lady.” He also played the latter track (and “Red House”) when he was a member of Mick Jagger’s touring band in 1998.
Naturally, Satch has long been a vocal ambassador of the Jimi Hendrix legacy, and you can hear echoes of Jimi’s influence throughout the basic tracks of Satriani’s new album Black Swans And Wormhole Wizards (to be released October 4 in the U.K., October 5 in the U.S. and October 8 in Australia). The album is largely built on live-in-the-studio rhythm track performances between Satriani, longtime drummer Jeff Campitelli, Allen Whitman of San Francisco’s The Mermen on bass, and former Frank Zappa and Steve Vai sideman Mike Keneally on keys.
Satriani says the decision to record in a more straightforward, performance-based band format was the direct result of the live energy of the Experience Hendrix tour (with maybe a little credit to the runaway success of Chickenfoot, too). The first single “Light Years Away,” in particular, has a relentless, hard blues groove and a soulful guitar performance that owes about as much to The Jimi Hendrix Experience – as a unit – as it does to Jimi himself a guitarist. And if he were still with us, Jimi might appreciate the daring juxtaposition of computerized pitch effects and natural phrasing on the track “Wind In The Trees.”
“It’s really remarkable,” Satriani said. “He put everything he had into it. He was a completely honest player. And when you have performances like that, they will always mean something.”
Thanks for the report to Peter Hodgson, Gibson.com.
