54 Joe Satriani Quotes

Joe Satriani quotes

1. If someone can relate my guitar solo to an exercise in a book ... that's no fun at all.

2. It really sucks when music is so perfect you just don't need to hear it anymore.

3. I'm ready to take the heat.

4. My inspirations don't come from outer space, they just come to me. I have no idea why they come when they do.

5. Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

6. I write the songs first and in most cases teach myself the technique second.

7. My first [guitar] lessons lasted two weeks and it was 'Jingle Bells.' It didn't make any sense at all. I wanted to know how to play like Hendrix...

8. I've always spent a lot of time on my records with what I think were unique rhythmic approaches ... but no one ever writes about your rhythm playing

   Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

9. When you hear an instrumental song someone is singing over, you know right away it's wrong.

10. I can embarrass myself very easily on guitar. It's funny because people say to me I can play anything; I'm God on the guitar. But I could make a big list of everything I can't play... I'm grateful that people don't notice that.

11. Eee-nee-mee-nee-my-nee-moe

12. I think it's quite painfully obvious when someone's practicing through an amp, as opposed to someone who's really laying down some stuff that just happens to be fast.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

13. The Squares [his former band] never really fit in. We weren't rock enough. We weren't alternative enough. We weren't new wave enough and we weren't punk enough. Maybe we just weren't the right people for the band.

14. Mozart was a freaky kind of shredder.

15. I assume most guitar players are like me. They're playing, having fun; then they get a magazine in the mail that says 'Shred Is Dead' and they say, 'What the Hell?' They throw it away and keep on playing.

16. When you think about where guitar playing is going today...: it's going everywhere at the same time.

17. I'll tell you one thing: I will always play the sh** out of my guitar.

18. Sounds cool. Looks cool. Feels cool.

19. Relax. Be yourself. Play a lot.

20. When these guitar mags bring up that stuff up and say such and such came up with this and that which is pushing the boundaries, I just say, 'let's step back for a minute and admit something: nothing has happened for the last 100 years.' And it's okay. It's not a bad thing ... We're all working with 'tools' that have been in existence for the last 100 years and there hadn't been a new 'tool' for a long long time.

21. Basic anatomy. That has got to be the ongoing frustration: Why can't my fingers do what I want them to do? Not being able to play what I hear in my head - that is the ultimate source of frustration.

22. When you hear something you don't like, don't ever play it again.

23. Satriani's Law: There's at least a 30% chance that someone will print the name Satriani incorrectly

24. Guitars are fun. There are plenty of different kinds to play. They look cool. They sound cool. Don't *you* want to play guitar?

25. There's a fine line between giving the sense of freedom and being too free.

26. Solos I kind of [couldn't] care less about. I know most people probably think that's what I care most about, but it's really the melody playing that is the cornerstone of what I'm working on.

27. I've always done 'the wrong thing' and had a pretty wonderful time doing it.

28. I pride myself on being incorrigible. I have a very hard time being told what to do.

29. When I want to play music, you've got to get me on tape or else it goes.

30. 18th September, 1970; Jimi Hendrix dies. I'm still on the football team when I get the news. So I take my helmet off and confront the coach to tell him I'm quitting the team. In a moment of brilliance he gives me one look and says 'OK'.

1. I was a guitar player in a band that had two keyboard players, sometimes two other guitarists, a bass player, and a drummer, four or five singers, and percussion. We did a two-and-a-half hour show where the music spanned from the early Sixties to the present. Whereas the David Lee Roth thing was like, Now. Very big and intense.

2. Boy, if anyone wants to get visited from an alien, it's me. I'm dying, and I've been sending out that invitation to the universe ever since I was a kid. I don't believe in little green men. That's collective neurosis of society. So I don't believe that.

3. As the years go by, I realize how unique a style rock music is and how delicate you have to be with it sometimes; otherwise, you turn it into pop music or progressive rock or something else.

4. Rock music is a funny thing: You can actually take it too far sometimes, and then it's not rock music anymore - it's something else, but it's not rock.

5. When we play an outdoor venue, you'll see whole families - boys, girls, men and women - from kids to grandparents who somehow heard the music... Think about how hard it is for artists who can never get a gig at an all-ages gig. Who goes to hear music in bars? People who can get into bars; people who drink.

6. 'Flying In A Blue Dream' was quite automatic. I was working on another song, and I took a break and picked up my acoustic guitar, tuned it strangely, and instantly wrote the tune. It's funny how you can struggle with one piece and write a better one in a minute. Usually, when things come easy, it means it's good.

7. I worked at a vintage guitar store, and the owner had ties with a lot of Japanese manufacturers and U.S. manufacturers that were beginning to pop up. So I was ordering parts and screwing them together and contacting local luthiers to finish and do frets and things, and I had put together two guitars, a red one and a black one.

8. I did tons of gigs where I didn't move around very much because I couldn't. There's a pole over here and wires and a monitor there.

9. I see something in her eyes, sends me to a better place.

10. I started many years ago using the Boss DS-1 and then graduated to the Satchurator and putting that right into that clean channel, and that sounds great. I've done many tours with that setup. Then we took the next two channels that were part of the JVM sound in channel 1 and made them a little more subtle.

11. I started out playing guitar because Jimi Hendrix was my hero, so my roots were really based on Jimi Hendrix and his style of playing.

12. Every year that I go out on tour, I think about all the craziest ideas that would be great to go out with, and I think, 'I should see if Jeff Beck wants to join my band for a month or something.'

13. I personally am into the minstrel technique - if I hear someone playing a lute or playing a crumhorn, it just moves me. I don't know why.

14. It's funny how you can struggle with one piece and write a better one in a minute. When things come easy, it means it's good.

15. If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

16. I put together the idea for G3 because I felt isolated. The success of being a 'guitar hero' kept me away from all my friends who were guitar players. I thought it would be a lot more fun to play with them.

17. It's a funny thing, my relationship with Deep Purple. I already felt the pain and confusion of trying to replace Ritchie Blackmore, which is a difficult thing to have in your head - since the time when you were a kid, that guitar sound and approach is what you associate with Deep Purple.

18. Mike is a genius guitar player and keyboard player. I realized that, with this group, I just joined Mike Keneally's band!

19. Guitarists shouldn't get too riled up about all of the great players that were left off of 'Rolling Stone Magazines' list of the Greatest Guitar Players of all Time' ... Rolling Stone is published for people who read the magazine because they don't know what to wear.

20. You couldn't make a Steve Vai. That's a one-in-a-billion type of personality that comes out together with an incredible talent facility. You grow it; you help them grow it. Hopefully, it matures, and they don't hit any roadblocks along the way.

21. I started learning to sing what I liked, to experience it in a visceral way. Then it's inside. Get rid of the neurosis and then you can improvise.

22. It's important for me not to peak before I hit the stage. In other words, I save all of my creative and physical energy for when I walk on stage. If I can get 45 minutes of just easy going, playing rhythm, songs, stuff like that, then that's what I do to make sure that I'm all stretched out and ready.

23. I was doing clubs when I was 16. I grew up in New York, so back then, you could do that.

24. Guitar players I find kind of boring - and that's not meant as a dig. I find myself boring.