If there is one thing that can be said about veteran guitarist Joe Satriani, it is that he loves to play in front of a crowd. His legions of fans world-wide are ecstatic to learn that recent live show was been recorded; more great musical moments captured forever. Satriani’s 14th album, Live in Paris: I Just Wanna Rock, is that great moment and so much more. This very special recording, set for release on February 2, 2010 thru Epic Records, includes a “live” 22-track double CD set. This stirring May 2008 Paris performance was also captured for a “live” DVD, also set for same day release. The quality of music by the 15-time Grammy nominee is unquestionable, yet the extraordinary editing and artful stage lighting makes this Satriani “live” DVD a pleasure for the new viewer, as well as the long-time fan. A bonus offering on the Live in Paris DVD is an in-depth interview with Satriani as well as behind-the-scenes footage. Following the success of his other “live” DVD releases, Satriani Live in 2006 and Live in San Francisco in 2001, Satriani has reached even higher with Live in Paris.
Never one to rest on his laurels, in 2009, Satriani joined with former Van Halen front man Sammy Hagar, former bassist Michael Anthony, and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith, to form the stand out rock collaboration, Chickenfoot. The band’s first single, “Oh Yeah,” was immediately embraced by radio, topping both the mainstream and classic rock charts at #1. Satriani and the band completed a successful 30-city, cross-country, U.S. tour in support of their debut album, which was recently certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America with over 500,000 in album shipments.
Satriani’s last studio album, Professor Satchifunkilus and the Musterion of Rock, started with two strange piano chords and a cryptic line: It’s a mystery… Satriani says, “I became obsessed both by the chords I was playing and the line that I wrote. They came out of nowhere, as if they were dropped from the sky, so I knew I had to figure out what was going on.“ The legendary, multiple Grammy-nominated guitarist began to research, and in his readings he discovered that the word “mystery” had ancient origins. “The word first appeared in ancient Greece as ‘musterion’ to describe some of the false doctrines of Greek fraternities that were popping up 2000 years ago. St. Paul, however, used the word in a different way. He said that once you embrace the ’musterion’ that the truth will be revealed. Then the subsequent English translations of the New Testament took the word and changed it to ’mystery.’ The word mutated in both spelling and meaning.”
Okay, so he’s not your average shredder. That much was clear in 1987, when he stormed the gates with Surfing with the Alien, his second album and the follow-up to his self-financed debut, Not of This Earth. An action-packed record of bracing, delirious guitar instrumentals, it was a runaway success, cracking Billboard’s Top 20 and going Gold (it has since gone multi-Platinum). Satriani (or “Satch,” as he became popularly known from his song “Satch Boogie”) had done the impossible, hitting a bulls-eye before anyone knew a target existed. But for the former guitar teacher turned pro, a David amongst the Goliaths of the music industry, it was the culmination of a dream he had the day he quit his high school football team (not coincidentally on the day of Jimi Hendrix’s death) to devote his life to the guitar: that six strings could rule the world.
It was an ascendant notion then, and it remains so now. Over a two-decade- long career, Satriani has released a dozen critically acclaimed studio albums that have sold over ten million copies worldwide. In the process, he has established himself as a player whose emotional musical dexterity equals that of his physical gifts. His solo concerts are sell-out events, but in 1996, need a new challenge (and perhaps a big of fun) he formed G3, a concert tour of galvanizing guitar music featuring Satriani with his close friend and former student(!) Steve Vai, along with a floating third member (the notables have included Eric Johnson, Yngwie Malmsteen, Robert Fripp, among others). But for Joe Satriani, it is the creation of music that is its own reward, and on Professor Satchifunkilus and the Musterion of Rock, he embarked on his most fascinating journey.
An album this ambitious and filled with epic themes -- they range from the deeply personal ballad “Revelation,“ originally written about the death of a friend’s father until Satriani realized he was writing about his own father’s recent passing, to the heart-on-his-sleeve love note to his wife, Rubina, “Come On Baby,“ to the all-out gonzo sci-fi crunch of “I Just Wanna Rock,” about a giant robot on the lam who encounters a rock concert -- would have one easily expecting a double-CD to contain all of the grand impulses and matchless music-making. Satriani, however, set a goal for himself and stuck to it. “The album would be 10 songs and no more,” he says.
“As is the case with most of my albums, I started with between 30 and 40 songs, knowing full well that most of them were going to bite the dust. I decided early on, even before we started tracking, that this record was going to be 10 tight tracks -- a clear, succinct statement. Satriani explains, “How can I use brevity to my advantage? What I found was, 10 songs helped me focus my energy on every aspect of my writing. Most of the time, I try to do too much -- I have so many pieces of music floating around, and my temptation is to want to give the audience everything I have. This time, I tempered that impulse. Instead of 18 or 19 songs that go off the rails and leave you feeling scattered and fuzzy, I wanted to give you a sharp shot to the senses.”
Satch wrote quickly, recording elaborate demos in his home studio during the summer months of 2007. (“Come on Baby” is a notable exception: the guitarist began the song while snowed in during a vacation in Lake Tahoe in 1993; it wasn’t until last year that, upon the urging of his son, ZZ, he realized it was strong enough to finish.) When Satriani convened in the fall with longtime co-producer and engineer John Cuniberti, drummer Jeff Campitelli, and bassist Matt Bissonette at the Plant in Saulsalito, California, he felt “more ready than I ever have to start an album. I could literally see and hear the record before me. It’s almost like it was already there. All I had to do was wish it.”
There will always be songwriters who aren’t great guitarists and guitarists who aren’t great songwriters. Satch, however, possesses both talents in equal and extreme measures. He’s a storyteller, sketching tales and characters, as concerned with mise en scene and mood as any master filmmaker. Of course, a Joe Satriani album wouldn’t be a Joe Satriani without the wild and woolly, and on a handful of pulverizing cuts such as “Overdriver,” about a pernicious Funny Car with a mind of its own, “Professor Satchifunkilus,” concerning a cartoonish mack daddy decked out in an explosion of “Soul Train” finery (by the way, that sax you hear is courtesy of none other than ZZ Satriani), “Diddle-y-a-doo-dat,” a mad dash of jacked-up swing, and the soon-to-be-audience participation classic “I Just Wanna Rock,“ Satch kicks out the jams six ways to Sunday, unleashing fusillades of sound that rages with fire and brimstone and damnation to Hell.
“It’s funny,” says Satriani. “There’s part of me that still gets off on playing wild, out-of-control guitar. I think I’ll always stay in that state of arrested development. But another part of me tried to do more with less on this album. There’s less songs, for one. But there’s also less notes on some of those songs. Still, I tried to make sure that every second was filled with something -- a new sound, a new riff, a new emotion. Every time I found myself doing what I’d done on earlier albums, I stopped myself and said, ‘What else do I have inside of me?’”
Distinguished, hypnotic, brilliantly conceived and executed, and positively electrifying, Professor Satchifunkilus and the Musterion of Rock, despite its lighthearted title, is filled with the kind of arty vigor and bratty fever that has made Joe Satriani one of the greatest guitarists of his day. But if the measure of a musician is the human spirit he can coax out of a note, then Satch is doing something quite worthwhile with his extraordinary gifts: He’s letting you in on a feeling.
Or as he might say, It’s a mystery.
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