Photo by Larry DiMarzio
Steve Vai first gained notoriety nearly three decades ago when he joined forces with David Lee Roth after the famous frontman’s split with Van Halen. Almost immediately, Vai usurped Eddie Van Halen’s throne as the king of rock guitar, and throughout the subsequent decades Vai’s continual innovations have distinctly changed the sound of rock guitar. What has always significantly differentiated Vai from other virtuosi in the annals of rock history is that, although he can burn with reckless abandon and fire, he’s also an academic at heart—a passionate player whose mastery of music theory, composition, and orchestration could rival a Julliard professor. While still in high school, Vai wrote his first orchestral piece, an arrangement he called “Sweet Wind from Orange County.” Soon after, he landed a gig with Frank Zappa by sending him a transcription of Zappa’s impossibly difficult piece “The Black Page.”
But even after decades of reigning as one of the world’s most formidable guitar icons, Vai continues to hone his skills as a modern classical composer. In fact, he doesn’t even need a guitar to satiate his musical urges. In some cases, a pencil and manuscript paper are all the man needs. Releases such as 2004’s Piano Reductions Vol. 1 feature strictly piano arrangements of Vai’s compositions (performed by frequent collaborator Mike Keneally), and just this past November Vai premiered an orchestral composition sans guitar entitled “The Middle of Everywhere” that was performed by the Noord Nederlands Orkest (North Netherlands Orchestra). Of course, he has also indulged his inner guitar geek by not only writing for but also performing live with the Metropole Orchestra on releases like 2007’s double-live album Sound Theories Vol. I & II.
For a lot of guitarists, an album like Sound Theories would be their magnum opus—after all, how do you top something as grand as writing for and performing with a symphony orchestra? But not for Vai. His latest release, The Story of Light, is the second installment of a rock-opera trilogy that began with 2005’s Real Illusions: Reflections. As you’d expect, Story of Light is much more than just an instrumental shred fest—it features Vai’s trademark genre-busting arrangements and an unlikely cast of guests, ranging from a gospel choir to vocalists Aimee Mann and (The Voice finalist) Beverly McClellan.
We caught up with Vai to talk about his latest epic, his take on the new Van Halen album, and whether he’d still be content if he were just a mailman rather than a guitar hero.
What’s the concept behind Story of Light?
It’s sort of like a rock opera. I hate using
that term, because I don’t like opera at all,
but basically it’s the second installment of
the Real Illusions trilogy. My plan was to do
this story, and then at the end I would take
all of these records and kind of amalgamate
them into the story—and then, maybe,
the songs would be put in proper order and
there would be new stuff.
If somebody picked up Story of Light before
Real Illusions, would the context be lost?
They’re not in a sequential, chronological,
linear order. It’s not the kind of record
where you have to follow the concept and
know the story in order to enjoy the music.
I wanted it, first and foremost, to be enjoyable
music. Then if you read deeper into it,
each song tells a little piece of the story.
The Story of Light spans a variety of
styles. Does having such a broad range
make it harder to unify things across
the three albums?
What I’m setting out to do is just do what I
really like to hear in music, which is to create
diversity—but with unique dimensions to it.
“Creamsicle Sunset,” for instance, is a clean
guitar sound and a simple piece of music.
Then you listen to something like “The Book
of the Seven Seals,” which is like “contrast”
with a capital C. A lot of people are comfortable
making records that have a musical
theme that’s in every single song. It’s like,
“Okay, this is our 7th string and we’re tuning
down and we’ve got a lot of distortion. We’re
going to do some soft parts now and then …
but this is us.” You could listen to song number
one and song number 10, and it would
sound like the same band. That’s what a lot
of people do, and that’s great, but there’s no
rule that you have to do that. The only time
people believe you have to do that is when so
many other people do it that they think this
is the normal way to do things.
Inside Steve Vai's Harmony Hut home studio. Photo by Lindsey Best
“Creamsicle Sunset” starts off with the
simple opening triad and inversions, and
then morphs into some delicious dissonances
that most rock guitarists probably
couldn’t gracefully maneuver.
Yeah, a song like that was like a little gift for
me, because it was so simple. I picked up the
guitar and I was just playing these triads—like an exercise you do when you’re learning
chords—but this particular time I played it,
it transcended the exercise and it sounded
like music. The whole song unfolded to me
and all I needed was that first bar—the triad
thing. When I came up with that idea, I had
my iPhone and I turned it on and played
those first three chords and left myself a
voice note, “Create a track that has these
inversions that keep building and building,
and going higher and higher, and has the
really juicy, beautiful chords in between.”
The whole thing was done before I finished
playing the third triad. My goal was that
every note in the song had to have its own
zip code, and it had to sound like a little
church bell that it owns. When you imagine
these things, that’s how you get them
to come into reality.
Parts of “John the Revelator” are reminiscent
of the scene in Crossroads that’s
right before the grand-finale guitar
duel—and then it morphs into “The
Book of the Seven Seals.” Were the two
songs conceived independently?
I came across this version of “John the
Revelator” online. The vocal arrangement
was done by two guys, Paul Caldwell
and Shawn Ivory, and sung by a high
school choir called The Counterpoint
Singers. I contacted the woman that ran
the choir and she sent me a cassette of
the only stereo recording they had. I put
it into Pro Tools, cut it up, and built the
song around it, but it still wasn’t good
enough. The piano was dull, so I hired
10 of L.A.’s finest and they came in and
sight-read this very intricate arrangement.
Then I triple-tracked them, so it’s
like a hundred voices.
But as far as “John the Revelator” and “The Book of the Seven Seals,” they were one song. It was a vision. To go from “John the Revelator,” which is heavy guitars and tuned-down octave dividers with these gospel singers—that to me is always the way gospel should be presented, heavy, hardcore guitars playing very musical things—to the second part, with this extremely white-sounding, Republican, Midwestern vocal arrangement. That’s such a contrast.
How did Beverly McClellan get
involved on that track?
I needed somebody to sing “John the
Revelator” and I thought I could do it,
but it wasn’t in my range. When I hosted
an event for NARAS [National Academy
of the Recording Arts and Sciences] with
Sharon Osbourne, I went into the audience
to check out what it sounded like
and this woman, Beverly McClellan, took
the stage and just tore it up. The moment
I heard her sing, I was just stunned dead
in my tracks. I thought, “She’s gotta
sing ‘John the Revelator’ for me.” I was
also thinking, “I don’t know. She doesn’t
know me and she probably thinks I’m
this crazy shredder guitar player,” which
a lot of these people who don’t know
anything about me just think. When I
got backstage, she was there waiting in my
dressing room with her CD and she said,
“I’m a big fan. I know your music and I’d
love to give you this CD.” I said, “Look,
we’ve got to do something.”