Joe Satriani has opened up about the time he was forced to find new ways of playing the guitar after a hand injury left him fearing his shredding days were over.
Satriani also knows first-hand just how impactful these injuries can be. As he explains in a new interview with The Weekly Show with David J. Maloney, Satch was required to effectively relearn how to play the guitar after one of his original tracks pushed his hand strength to the limit.
Article continues below“I wrote this song called Shockwave Supernova that had this really funny part where I had to stretch,” he explains. “And there are these tendons [in the hand] and the fourth one [along the pinky] is the weakest one.
“And I'd written this song, and like the crazy guitar playing idiot that I am, I probably played it for 12 hours a day until I got the perfect sound. And I didn't think anything of it. Usually when you make records, you work on a song until it's done, then you forget, then you work on the next song.
“Six months later, you find yourself on stage and you go, ‘How did I do that? Oh, that's right.’ It wound up as the first song of the show for this tour, and I realized I never really practiced it after I'd finished recording it.
“I started to play it, and after about two weeks on tour, I'd wake up in the morning and I wouldn't be able to move my pinky. I’d think, ‘Oh, is this the end?’
“I didn't know what to do, and so every night on tour was this cathartic process of not being able to move the finger, and then finally getting it to move, and then getting through the show and having the pain.”
After braving it out for the entire tour, Satriani sought out some help from a specialist. A thorough massage helped solve the problem, but to prevent future issues Satch had to find a new way to play Shockwave Supernova – and more.
“My chiropractor just spent an hour massaging my hand, and it solved the problem. And he said, ‘There's nothing wrong. It was just tight from doing something. Whatever it was, don't do that.’
“So I realized I have to learn how to do a lot of my things differently, because I hadn't thought that I may have written something unnatural for my body, and that it was just going to get worse if I kept doing it like that.
“I literally had to relearn so many songs with different fingerings on different strings, and it was a great process. In the end, I wish it hadn't happened, but it opened me up to a different way of getting around the fingerboard.”
In related Satch news, the Surfing with the Alien shredder recently revealed he once recommended Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal for the Guns N’ Roses gig.
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