GUITAR WORLD What sort of memories, feelings and reflections came up for you in the process of remastering Flex-Able?
STEVE VAI A lot of things come flooding in when I listen to Flex-Able. It was made at a time when life seemed so easy. I was surrounded by friends and people I loved. I was with Pia even back then. I didn’t have a care in the world. I had no expectations of being great or having to survive in the world. We were just basically glorified college students living in a house that I had purchased off my proceeds with Frank Zappa. It was a wayward home for musician refugees. At any time, we’d have nine or 10 people living there. Most people who you know that I know lived in that house at one time or other. It was really, truly a glorious time. We had chickens in the backyard. Right outside my window was a fig tree…all these things come flooding to mind.
GW But why Sylmar, of all places?
VAI Back then Sylmar isn’t like it is today. It was very rural. There was no smog. It’s at the base of the San Gabriel mountains. We would go hiking and camping in the mountains. There was a ranch across the street with horses. It worked out really well that it was far away from L.A. Pia actually found the place. I needed a house that had somewhere I could play music. And this house had a tool shed in the backyard, with two good-sized rooms, built by the previous owner. I spent five months and $5,000—money I earned giving guitar lessons—and I built this studio, Stucco Blue, in that backyard shed. There’s photos of me doing it. I went out, bought the wood, built the studio and put the gear in, entirely by myself.
GW And Frank Zappa contributed some of the studio gear?
VAI If not for Frank’s support—with the equipment he gave me and his encouragement—I never would have made or released Flex-Able. Frank taught me a lot about editing. He taught me how to edit tape with a razor blade. He loaned me the two-track [tape] machine that I mixed down to and that I ended up purchasing from him. He gave me the Linn drum machine I used on the album. And when I gave it back to him I had to go to using a real drummer. Frank gave me compressors, a flanger, phasers…real rack gear. I could never have afforded anything like that at that time.
GW Zappa’s musical influence is also profoundly present on the album, especially on tracks like “Little Green Men” and “Salamanders in the Sun.” I don’t think anyone has ever approximated Frank’s compositional style as effectively as you have.
VAI Frank was my mentor. If I wasn’t in my apartment, or later my house, I was at Frank’s house. He was Frank Zappa and I was this 20-year-old kid. I was naïve, very innocent and completely coarse in my makeup. I had no understanding of culture, really. I was just this kid from Long Island making this crazy music. And I think Frank really got a kick out of it, because he supported me. He was the only one I ever played this stuff for when I was working on it. I played it for him, and for friends who were there.
GW Along with more composition-oriented pieces like “Little Green Men,” Flex-Able also introduces a lot of the extreme guitar acrobatics that would become signature Steve Vai techniques. Something like “The Attitude Song” is almost like a brief synopsis of what was to come in your career.
VAI “The Attitude Song” was originally recorded in Sy Vy Studios on Fairfax Avenue as a demo for Alice Cooper, ’cause I’d heard Alice was looking for a guitar player. The audition tapes were due the next day. So I wrote and recorded “The Attitude Song” in one night, and it was called “The Night Before.” I improvised a bass part, and then I just built the guitars on top of it. And then when I got to Stucco Blue, I rerecorded it.
GW Were the more rock-band-oriented songs on Flex-Able, like “The Attitude Song,” cut live in the studio with the rhythm section? Would you cut a basic track with the drummer and bassist?
VAI No. I could cut a basic track by myself, and then I’d get the drummer in there and tell him what to play. I didn’t rehearse that stuff—it was all built up track by track in the studio. Or at least “The Attitude Song” was. Something like “Viv Woman,” we would just play that together all the time, and then we just threw it down to tape.
GW Your sole guitar for Flex-Able was a Seventies Fender Strat?
VAI A ’77, I think, yeah. I also had a blue guitar made by Performance Guitar, but I’m not sure if I used that one or not.
GW You mention the Fender in the liner notes.
VAI Yeah, that’s probably the one I used. There’s so much material; it’s hard to remember everything.
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