​Surfing with Satriani

New York born Joe Satriani cultivated an appreciation of music at an early age. Not only is he the world’s most successful solo guitarist, he’s worked with some of the biggest names in rock and roll such as Mick Jagger, Deep Purple, Brian May of Queen, and Robert Fripp of King Crimson, to name a few. Satriani took a minute to chat with HPR about his musical beginnings, guitar building, and his latest artistic endeavors.

High Plains Reader: According to your website, on September 18, 1970 (the day that Jimi Hendrix died), you “dedicated yourself to the guitar.” What did you find most compelling about the instrument, and did you play before that?

Joe Satriani: I was an aspiring drummer starting at the age of nine. I took lessons and worked hard for a couple of years and sort of got discouraged by the lack of my progress. Towardsthose later years, I guess I started to become really interested in the music my older siblings were listening to.

I had three older sisters and an older brother­­with ages ranging up to almost nine years older than myself, so they were really going through the explosive social and musical scene of the ‘60s, and I kind of watched from the other side of the room as a little kid. I really fell in love with what was happening with music in the late ‘60s and I became a fan of Jimi Hendrix.

One of my sisters was a folk guitar player, so I was getting used to the idea of how cool the guitar was up close. It was a lot more private than playing the drums. You can imagine how difficult it was with seven people living in a house and you being the one drummer. I got a lot of crap for making a lot of noise and not being very good.

The day that Hendrix died ­­something just clicked in my head and a path opened for me that was directly connected to my passion. I never looked back and blindly went ahead thinking that it was going to work somehow. Everyday it seemed like I got a little bit better and the experience was much more rewarding.

HPR: You’ve designed and endorsed guitars for Ibanez and multiple other companies over the years­­have you always built and modified your own equipment?

JS: When I go all the way back to the beginning we ­­and when I say we I mean me and my friends, who were fellow musicians­­ we were always modifying cheaper instruments because we didn’t have a lot of money.

Before I was introduced to Ibanez in the summer of 1987, I had a long history of buying guitar parts and putting them together in my own way. Guitar players and drummers become tinkerers after a while because that’s what you have to do to survive. You can’t just buy everything that looks interesting,­­ you learn how to modify.

My relationship with Ibanez, Dimarzio pickups, and Marshall amplifiers has been very fruitful because I’ve got lots of great ideas, and they come from real life experiences like making records and playing on stage. I’m not an engineer and I’m not an electrician, but I get to team up with these companies that have really brilliant designers and engineers. They help complete my vision. That’s not only been fun but extremely important for me to have these tools that I need in order to play music for people.

HPR: Could you tell us a bit about your sci­fi animation series “Crystal Planet”?

JS: Yeah yeah! I know this guy who is a really brilliant singer songwriter whose name is Ned Evett. I’ve known him for many years. He made a video for me a couple years ago at the beginning of the “Unstoppable Momentum” tour, which was a little sci­fi video based on characters from the artbook I put out that year. It just had some of my crazy drawings and he thought we could use it for a tour video.

When he was done with it, we both felt it was the beginning of a sci­fi epic story that needed to be written, so we decided to partner up to complete this story. Fast forward a couple years and he learned digital animation. I did more drawings and created more music for the show. We were able to invite Brendon Small from “Metalocalypse” and “Home Movies” as part of our writing/production team. So the three of us are now working on this project which by Hollywood standards is in its infancy.

It can take a decade to get a show off the ground. It’s very different than the music business, where you go in, write a song, and release it in 24 hours. That part of it is crazy, but the fun part of it is the story. It’s about our reluctant hero who is a time traveling guitarist who uses this weird guitar to travel through time and basically puts the planet Earth in the future after a horrible cataclysm. He is the only guy that can save Earth at that point.

HPR: Do you ever plan on doing a graphic novel?

JS: That’s an interesting question, because it was brought up to us by a few professionals that we consulted with just last year. They were talking about how they felt in a way that it was important for us to complete the project in several avenues, such as a graphic novel, to write it as a movie, and to write it as a comic strip, all as a way to explore the story’s true potential.

Of course that means an enormous amount of work for us (laughs), and you know basically, we’re guitar players, ­­like really? We’ve got to do that too? With some help from our new friends in the movie industry, we’re slowly getting around to doing it. It’s definitely a project I want to see come to fruition. I believe in it.

IF YOU GO:

Joe Satriani

Sunday, April 17, 7 p.m.

The Fargo Theatre, 314 N Broadway