A musician’s musician: Joe Satriani

In 1970, a teenager in Westbury, New York vowed to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Jimi Hendrix. That 14 year old boy was destined to become a future star, a legend of Rock music. His name was Joe Satriani.

Starting off as a drummer, then shifting to guitar and studying music with Jazz musicians, Satriani took some time to find his feet in the music industry. Soon after picking up the instrument, he did mentor some of the future guitar mavericks like Kirk Hammett from Metallica, Steve Vai, Andy Timmons and Alex Skolnick from Testament, but he was still far from producing one good album.

What’s with all that ‘Jazz’?

…For Jazz is like not knowing the ground for the next step.

-Anon

As we entered twentieth century, behind us were the musical riches of a great civilization, but twentieth century was not going to be defined by classical music, the glory was destined to be somewhere else. Bach set the benchmark for the classical music that succeeded him. With his extraordinary mathematical harmonies and profound melodies of Beethoven–throw in the genius Mozart and later romanticists like Chopin to complete the picture— the canon of western classical music seemed to have been sailing without any rival. But the discipline of classical music was never going to fall in line with the experience of our messy, tumultuous twentieth century. In place of textually refined sheet music, a taste for free creation, spontaneous making of music was gaining currency. This new music was termed Jazz.