“There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required. Neither more nor less.” – Amadeus
In 1981, Frank Zappa released a series of live instrumental guitar records called Shut Up ‘n Play Yer Guitar. A young guitarist named Steve Vai was featured on seven of the 20 tracks. Only a couple of years prior, he was studying guitar under a well-respected musician and teacher in San Francisco, Joe Satriani.
On Thursday night at 713 Music Hall, the longtime friends and collaborators brought their SatchVai tour to a throng of nerdy musicians (and their long-suffering girlfriends) and did not disappoint, playing as many notes as they wanted.
The two have toured and performed on stage many times before, but this was a unique mix of material from each of their own catalogs along with merged tunes and a trio of songs they released as SatchVai over the last few years. The two virtuosos weaved their music and themselves in and out of a nearly two-hour set, sharing the stage at times and allowing the other to take the spotlight in certain moments.
This wasn’t a show for non-musicians. In the same way many “normals” shun bebop music as if the very mention of a horn solo will damage their ear drums, SatchVai was not for lovers of standard rock or danceable pop (despite the kid wearing the Meghan Trainor tour shirt in front of us). If you were there for a sing-a-long, you were out of luck (there were only a couple of songs with vocals anyway).
But, if you showed up to witness the shred of a lifetime, you got exactly what you bargained for.
Opening the show was wildly eclectic prog trio Animals as Leaders. At one point during a particularly intricate moment, my friend pulled out the calculator on his phone and mockingly tried to use advanced math to figure out what in the world we were hearing. It was as mesmerizing as it was exhausting from the sheer complexity of it all.
SatchVai seemed almost restrained by comparison. The two guitarists have managed something few have over their careers. They have survived mostly on the power of their own instrumental music. Satriani even had radio hits in the late 1980s. They have also worked as sidemen — Vai for Zappa, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake; Satriani most recently with Sammy Hagar in Chickenfoot — but their instrumental records like Satriani’s Surfing with the Alien and Vai’s Passion and Warfare were the focus of this show.
They opened with the three songs they wrote and recorded together including a somewhat on-the-nose “I Want to Play My Guitar,” one of the few non-instrumental tunes with bassist Marco Mendoza filling in admirably on vocals (English singer/bassist Glenn Hughes performed on the recording).
After that, the two front men guitarists split time on the stage with each doing selections from their various albums over the years.
The high point came on Vai’s “For the Love of God.” The epic power ballad instrumental rock song, always a favorite of Vai devotees, featured harmony guitar parts from Satriani that don’t exist in the original recordings. If you knew the history of the song, you understood this was a special moment for the two friends and their fans.
While they share fast guitar playing and a penchant for dense, complicated solos, their individual playing is uniquely their own.
Vai is the more experimental of the two, bringing out his three-headed Hydra guitar, which features a partially fretless 12-string, his signature 7-string, and a 4-string bass, for “Teeth of the Hydra.” Vai is, at times, downright avant garde, at least as much as a rock solo guitarist can be.
Satriani, on the other hand, is the more melodic and soulful of the two. He soared on “Flying in a Blue Dream” and rocked on “Surfing with the Alien.”
At the risk of forcing a comparison to more widely known artists, Satriani is Eric Clapton to Vai’s Jeff Beck; both brilliant, but evocative and skilled in their own singular ways.
The night ended with a cover of “Born to be Wild” sung by Mendoza with, naturally, extended solos for the two guitarists along with their third 6-string sideman, Pete Thorn, a fine musician in his own right. And, as if not to be overlooked, stalwart session drummer Kenny Aranoff held down the backbeat on drums.
It was truly a night of many notes, but none out of place. This certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if you wanted to see some truly gifted musicians just shut up and play their guitars, you came to the right place.
