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The reason
somebody gets to be a guitar hero would appear to be
fairly obvious: He can do things on the instrument that
most mere mortals simply can’t. Joe Satriani passed that
test handily over 23 years ago when he released the
multi-platinum Surfing with the Alien. Jaws were
dropped, fists were raised and millions of music fans the
world over picked up guitars both real and imaginary to
celebrate and emulate a shred god who would continue to
thrill and amaze, dazzle and delight.
But this
business of guitar hero-dom is a funny thing, and for
Satriani, who has received about every guitar award there
is to hand out (he’s also a multiple Grammy Award
nominee), it’s a strange, beautiful and uniquely
challenging one, as well. Making six strings scream and
wail while flurries of notes dance into the heavens is all
very well and good; making music that matters, and more
importantly, sharing deeply personal emotions, that’s his
true raison d’etre. On his 14th studio album, Black
Swans and Wormhole Wizards, Joe Satriani exposes his
soul in ways even he never believed were possible.
For Satriani,
the image of black swans came to him late into his writing
for the new album. Armed with a collection of songs--some
half-finished, others fully fleshed out-- that he had
penned mostly during his highly successful year touring
with his good-time rock “supergroup” Chickenfoot (which
also includes singer Sammy Hagar, ex-Van Halen bassist
Michael Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad
Smith), he sat back and took stock of what he had amassed.
What he noticed
was that the bulk of the material was unlike anything he
had ever written before. “And that’s the thing about the
term ’black swan,’ says Satriani. “The expression is one
that’s very old; it basically means ’unlikely things’--
images, occurrences, extreme rarities in life. That image
stuck with me. I realized that what I had written were my
artistic black swans--songs that my audience probably
might not expect. And truthfully, a lot of them took me by
surprise, as well.”
Satriani’s first
inkling of the “black swan theory” permeating his work
came to him after one of the most pivotal moments of his
life, when his beloved mother, Katherine, passed away late
in 2009. He composed the song “Littleworth Lane” in her
honor--the title is taken from the street in Sea Cliff,
New York, where she lived since the late ‘70s, in a house
built in 1689. While the track features a shimmering,
instantly memorable melody, it’s pure, unadulterated
blues, “which a lot of people might not expect from me,”
Satriani admits. “My mom was bobbysoxer, and she got into
church music, R&B, jazz and blues. When I was a young
musician, she exposed me to a lot of that. So I wanted to
pay tribute to her by writing the kind of song that she
would really like, one that summed up her spirit.”
Completing the
second half of the album’s title is the aptly named
“Wormhole Wizards,“ a massively grooving funk rocker based
on the improbable concept--although probably not to the
sci-fi obsessed Satriani--that one can travel from one
parallel universe to another through wormholes. “What a
cool thing to be able to do,“ Satriani enthuses. “For rock
bands, it would be great--getting from gig to gig would be
a cinch!”
The ease of
which Satriani (or “Satch”--at this point, it’s like
calling Springsteen “The Boss”) has jumped from genre to
genre, and now from solo artist to band member in
Chickenfoot and back again (although the group is already
working on their second album, due sometime in 2011),
you’d swear he had his own private wormhole--along with
multiple personalities. Over the course of his storied
career, he’s resisted repetition the way the greatest of
actors shun caricature. “I had to go deeper on this
album,“ he explains. “It’s like I had no choice in the
matter. I also wanted to touch people more intimately than
I have before. Music they could carry around with them in
their heads and hearts--that was the goal.
“I still like
the idea of creating cool rock music, and I made sure that
there were a lot of what I call ‘big rock moments’ on the
album, but I definitely felt that it was time to affect
people directly and profoundly. I wanted to give them
something they never got from me before. These songs are
my black swans, if you will.”
A month-long
stint as a featured performer on the sold-out Experience
Hendrix Tour (“a wonderful, uh, ‘experience,’” he says,
laughing. “Every night was a rediscovery of some of the
most incredible music ever made”) meant that Satriani had
a three-month window to finish writing, demoing and then,
finally, to record Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards.
“It was tight,” he says, “but I found that I actually
thrived under the pressure. It forced me to focus on what
11 songs should make the album. Too much time on your
hands can cause whatever statement you’re trying to make
drift away.”
Once Satriani
set about demoing--and many of his initial takes wound up
as keepers--at Studio 21, his home facility, he found that
the emotional reach of the material he had written called
for richer guitar tones--“very ‘un-Joe Satriani’ sounds,“
he calls them. This can be heard most dramatically on the
album’s opening cuts, “Premonition,” a surging, ominous
yet majestic epic in which the imposing weight of the
guitar frequencies could move air, and the intoxicating,
positively transporting “Dream Song,” which, true to its
title, Satriani composed in his head while sleeping. “I
woke up and I had the whole thing,” he says. “I had to run
into my studio quickly before I forgot it. All you need is
that one little thing to change from the original idea and
the whole vibe is lost.”
Some changes in
the recording process were welcomed, however: When Satch
and co-producer Mike Fraser (whose credits include AC/DC,
Metallica, Aerosmith, as well as several Satriani albums,
such as Crystal Planet, Is There Love in Space?
and Super Colossal) convened in late spring at
George Lucas’ Skywalker Sound Studios in Marin,
California, along with longtime band drummer and
percussionist Jeff Campitelli, they added a couple of new
faces to the mix. Bassist Allen Whitman from the San
Francisco-based band the Mermen was brought on board (“he
has such a unique style,” raves Satriani. “He’s a very
creative rock and groove-oriented player”), as was
keyboardist Mike Keneally, who has played with everyone
from Steve Vai to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. “Every time you
hear a simple keyboard swell or something that sounds very
synth-y, that’s me,” says Satriani. “And any time you hear
the piano and keyboards being played really well, that’s
Mike!”
The new lineup
of players challenged Satch, but in ways he relished. To
“Light Years Away,” a tough, gritty stomper, they pushed
the guitarist to bring his “big rock moments” to the
forefront; and on the funky yet sweeping “Pyrrhic
Victoria” (the phrase means “winning at a great cost”),
what sounds like a rousing finale is but a precursor to
another, more overwhelming coda. “On a song like that,
because of its very theme, you have to go through some
sort of physical sacrifice,” says Satriani. “The guys in
the band helped me to not let up.”
Returning to the
album’s cathartic, intimate theme, the jazzy, almost
George Benson-ish Two Sides to Every Story” is another
song in which Satriani pays homage to his mother. “My mom
turned me on to Eddie Harris, a brilliant saxophone
player,“ Satriani explains. He had a lot of songs that
cross genres, and he was really great with odd times. When
I wrote the piece, I knew it was Eddie Harris, and again I
knew I was tipping my hat to my mom, for the musical
education she instilled in me.” The guitarist recalls both
of his parents in the stirring solo electric guitar
interlude “Solitude,” which at first concerns the need to
“be alone with one’s soul, but ultimately I realized I was
channeling my folks, thinking of where they would go
mentally in their need for reflection.”
Satriani kicks
up some musical dirt on the gonzo but equally soul-barring
“Wind in the Trees.” Remembering how he loved to sit by
his bedroom window as a kid in Long Island and listen to
the sound of leaves being whipped around, Satriani ran his
guitar through the pitch correction software Auto-Tune
(frequently used by singers and rappers, but seldom
utilized by instrumentalists) to re-create a surreal yet
wistful memory. “I just cranked it to full-on Auto-Tune
destruction mode,” he laughs, “and it really did sound
like gusts of wind blowing tree branches every which way.
Crazy stuff.”
On the
album-closing “God is Crying,” Satch pulls out all the
stops, unleashing torrents of shred-tastic guitar on a
track that ranks as one of his most panoramic of efforts.
“I don’t want to say that I was intentionally holding back
on the blazing guitar throughout the record,” he says,
“but every song is about choices. How many notes? What
notes? When writing this song, I started thinking about
the concept of God and what He would do if he actually
came down to Earth--I mean, physically. And I thought,
He’d probably start crying at all the things we’ve done.
To properly convey that message, I couldn’t hold back on
my instrument. I let loose with everything I had.”
Like its
creator, Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards is an
album that asks as many questions as it answers. But
unlike most records where you know exactly where each song
is going to go, it takes off in a multitude of dizzying,
disorienting directions, probing the human condition and
proving once again that Joe Satriani is one of the world’s
most gifted and inventive instrumentalists and composers
working today. Like the black swan, he’s a shape-shifter.
Artists of his caliber don’t come along every day, and
neither do records like this. |
