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COOL #9 Joe Satriani (Relativity, 1995)

One of my favorite tracks on the new record. It’s sort of the flagship song of the record, for reasons I’m not quite sure of yet. It’s just that every time I hear it, I feel like I’m hearing something new. In terms of the solo, I had a vision very early on, when I did the first demo. I wanted to play around with the idea of dividing it up in sections. You had maybe a John Coltrane play the first solo, a Jimi Hendrix do the second solo, and then the third solo was gonna be... I don’t know who, but something really weird.

S.M.F. Joe Satriani (Relativity, 1995)

I can’t stress how blown away I was when I heard this track back on the first day of recording. I turned to Glyn and said, “That’s me?” Because if you listen to Surfing or The Extremist or Flying In A Blue Dream, you hear a very carefully overdubbed, planned-out, produced-with-a-capital-P sound. And you know, there’s some distance there between the listener and where the music is coming from. Glyn eliminated that distance. When you put the CD on, and it’s coming out of some speakers in your living room or wherever, it sounds like the band’s right there. That’s how we did it. All I did was stand in front of my amp, a few feet away from Manu, Nathan and Andy. And I just played. Glyn put us all on the spot, and it turned out great.

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