It’s a truth universally acknowledged that playing through, say, Eddie Van Halen’s rig doesn’t magically turn your playing style into Van Halen’s, as Billy Corgan once learned.

Now, as Joe Satriani and Steve Vai prepare to cement their half-century bond with a collaborative album, The Sea of Emotion, they look back on their years touring together with the G3 project – including the time Billy Gibbons and Brian May plugged into Satch’s amp.

“Do you remember when Billy Gibbons came up and played with us on G3?” Vai says in conversation with Satriani for Guitar World.

“We’re doing a jam lineup. It comes to Joe, and he does his beautiful melodic stuff. It comes to me, and I do my crazy thing. And then Billy, he just hits a few notes…”

“And suddenly we’re in Billy Gibbons World,” Satch continues. “He’d plugged into one of my amps, and you, me, and John Petrucci were just stunned. Like, how is it even possible that he could sound so much like himself?”

The same thing happened when Brian May ran his guitar through their rig. “We’re just looking at each other, going, ‘There it is!’” adds Vai.

As for the differences between the Satch and Vai schools of virtuosity and how these manifest on the record, the two note that, despite using plugins for their new collaborative record, they didn’t compromise their individual playing styles or obscure the nuances of their performances.

“Even with plugins, it’s so obvious to hear the difference in the tones in our fingers,” Vai says.

“Yeah, you can’t help that,” asserts Satch. “That’s always going to happen. We just did a gig in Colorado Springs [on Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour]. Vic Johnson just walked out and plugged into Sam’s amp, and it was remarkable how different he sounded. Same stage, nothing changed, y’know?”

SatchVai’s official debut lands on November 6, via earMUSIC.

For more from the dynamic duo, plus an in-depth analysis of the making of Crossroads and an exclusive interview with Alabama Shakes, pick up issue 611 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Last year’s release of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues satiated the appetite of Gen Xers and Late Baby Boomers who grew up with the original. Now, another ’80s guitar classic, Crossroads, may be receiving the same Hollywood treatment in the form of a potential sequel, at least according to screenwriter John Fusco.

Fusco and Ralph Macchio – who starred as the skinny, stoic Eugene “Lightning Boy” Martone, complete with iconic blonde Fender Tele – have stayed in touch. And, over the years, the topic of a potential Crossroads II has cropped up multiple times.

“Ralph and I, we call… and he’s like, ‘Man, you know we should do some kind of anniversary thing,’” Fusco tells Guitar World’s Adam Kovac in an in-depth feature on the making of the original.

“And I said, ‘We should do the freaking sequel.’ He’s like, ‘No shit, really? Do you have an idea?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I have an idea for it.’ So Ralph and I have talked about it. We’ve got a plan.”

Exactly what the sequel will look like, or when it’s expected to go into production, remains, well, top secret. But Fusco teases that it will be “exciting to music fans, to blues purists.”

“It would be years and years later, less about Eugene Martone and more about someone relevant today,” Macchio says. “I can’t go into a deep dive on that stuff, but I haven’t given up on it.”

Best of all, Steve Vai is game to reprise his role as metal-blues guitar master Jack Butler. “I know Ralph wants to kick my ass,” the virtuoso chuckles. “Jack Butler needs his revenge!”

Vai may need to dig out his iconic red Jackson for the performance, which intrepid GW writer Eric Kirkland tracked down after a 20-year quest.

For more about how Crossroads was made, plus new interviews with Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, pick up issue 611 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Steve Lukather’s 2003 Christmas record Santamental doesn’t crop up as often as, say, Toto’s Hold the Line or Africa, but it does have a cult following.

“It made a little bit of noise for five minutes,” he says now. That noise was amplified by the presence of Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Slash, Michael Landau, and even his son Trev, who was 14 at the time.

“It was so much fun, man," he says of the recording in July 2002. "We brought down Christmas decorations. We just had a blast. All we did was laugh and play music – and we got paid for it!”

Santamental is being reissued now, 23 years later, after Lukather won the rights back. “They said, ‘Wanna put it out?’ And I thought, ‘Why not?’ It’s a Christmas thing and we’re doing it for charity.”

But he has no plans to record a sequel. “I got lucky,” he laughs. “It’s one and done. But I do definitely have the fucking Santa hair now!”

How did Santamental come to be?

It was done as a lark. Elliot Scheiner had put together Bop City Records and they wanted me to be their first artist – and they specifically wanted me to do a Christmas record. I was like, “What the fuck makes you think I’m Santa Claus, man? You gotta be kidding me!” But he goes, “No, man, we think you’re gonna do a weird one!”

Is that how you approached it?

Of course – there’d have been no point in me doing it straight ahead! So I enlisted the help of my dear friend Jeff Babko, who does anything from Dr Dre to sight-reading John Williams’ piano parts. I came up with the overall concept and the grooves and said, “I need some hip changes, man,” and Jeff helped me re-voice all of it. He’s a genius.

You’ve written plenty of songs and solos, but you’re not known for Christmas music. Was that challenging?

The challenge was: “Can you write two Christmas songs?” That’s got to be one of the hardest things, because how do you write a Christmas song? I just called up all of my friends, saying, “Hey, man, can you come down and do this for me?”

Eddie Van Halen plays on Joy to the World, the opening track.

You’ve got to understand this was 25 years ago. Please underline that so people understand I’m not trying to take advantage of my relationship with Ed. I talked to Alex Van Halen about the re-release, but people have a tendency to think weird shit, you know?

But anyway, with Ed I just thought he’d be the right guy for that kind of groove. I thought it would be fun to get a bunch of my guitar player buddies in. We cut the tracks in a week and it was all cut live. There were no demos, no rehearsals – nothing. It’s all analog to tape, and no click tracks. We’d run the tune and after the first take, it was done.

Eddie was more or less inactive at the time.

Ed hadn’t played in a year. This was at a time when he was going through some shit, but he said, “Yeah, I’ll come down. I’ll do it for you – but just me and you.” So, Elliot got sound on him, we kicked everybody out of the room, and it was just me and Ed.

I worked the machine and he played. It was done in like 10 minutes. He said he hadn’t played in a year, but he played great. I didn’t keep him there for very long because he did it for me as a solid, you know, as a bro. I love him for that – but I’m not using it as a calling card, saying, “Come dig this record.” I’d never take advantage of my friends that way.

What was it like working with Steve Vai on Carol of the Bells?

Steve is on another level. I don’t know anybody more dedicated, constantly reaching for the next thing, stretching their abilities and making it better and better, than him. He’s been so good to me as a friend. I owe him about a million favors. I gotta go over and mow the lawn at his new house, you know?

Steve, like every single one of these guys, came in, and did everything in one take, and said, “See you later.” These guys like having me hanging around for some reason, probably because they think I’m funny. I’m just there for the humor, man.

Slash played on Broken Heart for Christmas, and at the time, you called him “the Keith Richards of our generation.”

I think he is – and I meant it as a compliment! We’ve been friends since the late ’80s. We were friends before any musicality was involved, but I just love what he does. He’s a legend. I love Guns N’ Roses, and when you think of a rock star, you see a picture of Slash. I thought he’d be perfect for that track. I think he gave it some credibility because he’s the real thing.

One of your oldest guitar pals, Michael Landau, appears on Look Out for Angels.

Mike and I go back to when we were 12. We’ve always been best friends. I had to have him on the record because we were two punk-ass guitar players at 12 years old who thought we were badass guys in Hollywood! We were these cocky little kids who fed off each other.

The funny thing is that when he did that take for the album, his amp wasn’t even completely turned on! He just blew in there and blew out so fast… it was hysterical. I was just like, “Well, thanks, Mike. I appreciate that. It’s brilliant!”

What role did Larry Carlton play?

Larry is very, very special. We did that live record that we won a Grammy for [No Substitutions: Live in Osaka], which was great, because when I was a kid everyone wanted to be Larry Carlton. When me and Larry went on that tour, I got an hour every day before the show where we’d sit in a room and warm up. I’d get a little fucking guitar lesson from Carlton every night.

Most of what I wanted to learn was chord melody stuff. He was very kind, and spent time with me – and sometimes rolled his eyes – and showed me some things. And I’d go, “It’s Christmas time, so give me a Christmas song.” I’ve gotta give him some credit for a lot of the cool shit, and I gave him an arranging credit.

Last but not least, your son Trev Lukather also appears on Carol of the Bells.

He was still wearing his school uniform and had a buzz cut from being on the football team, man. He’s a far cry from that now! This was his first record. He and his band have got an album and a tour coming now. He’s blossomed into an amazing, tasty player, and a great writer, engineer and mixer. He’s got a lot of gifts. I’m proud of him.

It might have been a lark 25 years ago, but SantaMental is well-regarded now.

I was surprised when I found out I owned it. I didn’t for a long time because these things have to run through their contractual process. Aside from Christmas time, I hadn’t thought about it much – but it’s gotten a bit of love, and now it’s gonna be out again.

I really wanna raise money for the Ed Asner Family Center. I have a vested interest in that, as my youngest boy is autistic. That’s a journey – no two are the same. But it’s a great cause. So this is all about peace, love, and having a Merry Christmas.

• Santamental is reissued on November 7 in CD and digital formats, with vinyl to follow. 100% of proceeds go towards the Ed Asner Family Center. For more info, head to SteveLukather.com.

“Most people who own our bridges aren’t beating the door down to get them on their vintage guitars,” says Matt Blackett, EverTune’s director of market development. “That’s like putting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.”

Blackett, who was Guitar Player editor for 15 years, has always championed industry innovations. So when he discovered Cosmos Lyles’ bridge design that promised to never go out of tune, he jumped aboard. He knows the bridges aren’t for everyone – but the firm’s reach is growing beyond the prog metal realm, gaining prominence in Nashville and in studios.

Lyles dreamed up the idea on July 4 weekend 2005. “I was high,” the designer admits, “and thinking outside the box.” It would be another six years before the EverTune as we know it was considered complete, but the big turning point came in 2007: “My engineering partner, Paul Dowd, successfully tested the first prototype with the current mechanics, which he devised,” Lyles says.

“It had a swinging arm as a cam to balance the change in spring tension, and it worked surprisingly well. That's when I knew we had something; it went from abstract idea to physical model.” In essence, EverTune bridges are alive. Each string gets a dedicated system of springs and levers that react to everything from pick attack to environmental factors, maintaining consistent string tension.

The initial setup is finicky, but restrings after that – so long as you stay in the same tuning – are business as usual. There’s comparable preparation with Floyd Roses and Bigsbys too.

Six-string bridges for Gibsons, Strats and Teles cost $350, and installation potentially doubles that once you’ve found a certified installer – there are 53 approved worldwide. Blackett admits making the jump “is a commitment,” but insists it’ll “intonate flawlessly.”

“You can do a monster bend and it won’t come back flat,” he states. “I just played a gig in more than 90-degree heat and never went out of tune.

“Keeping string tension constant means the pitch of a note’s attack is identical to the pitch of its sustain, so producers love us. They’re on us every day asking, ‘Where’s the bass bridge?’

He points out the system is more flexible than some people realize: “Some producers like it so bends don’t affect the pitch; they don’t want someone squeezing a chord out of tune in the middle of a really good take. But this idea that you can’t bend is completely false; you just need to understand how it works.

“Typically, bends and vibrato are 99% normal. For the system to do its job, there needs to be a slight lag between when you bend a note and when the bend kicks – but it can be very subtle.”

He adds that players can turn off the system on any string and choose the sensitivity of their bends. Still, there are caveats. Installing one requires a fairly extensive route made in the guitar (similar to those for Floyd Roses and Strat trems).

Players who want to drop the low string mid-gig can do it at the headstock, but note that it won’t get the EverTune benefits. Another sensitive point is how, at roughly 1.28 pounds, they’re heavy – given the modifications to the body, an average bridge adds around 0.5 pounds to a guitar’s weight. The changes are more noticeable on lighter instruments. Whether it impacts tone has left players split.

“Some people think it adds highs; some people think it’s darker sounding,” Blackett notes. “But it absolutely changes the way the guitar resonates and responds. In the upper registers there’s a difference in terms of how it sustains. They don’t resonate like a PRS McCarty with a one-piece wraparound bridge.”

He continues: “They play a little bit stiffer too. So 9s feel like 10s, 10s feel like 11s. I typically go with 9-46 strings, but I’m experimenting now with 8s on my ESP, and it's a freaking hot rod!”

He calls these “tradeoffs” and says all bridges have them. That’s why many are embracing his company’s technology. “Ron Nevison was doing a session in LA and needed an EverTune Telecaster,” Blackett says.

“I knew Lyle Workman was a huge fan, so I said, ‘Do you mind loaning him your guitar for a session?’ He goes, ‘Sure, but I haven't played it in a while. It's going to need a setup.’ While we’re on the phone, he pulls it out of the case, hits a chord – and it’s perfectly in tune.

“We installed an EverTune for Steve Vai on an eight-string, and he loved what it did on the low strings; it threw him on the high strings. We told him, ‘You can have the bridge only working on the low strings. Keep those as tight as you want, and take the others out of the equation.”

Then there’s Spiritbox’s Mike Stringer, who craved an EverTune on his multi-scale Aristides. With little resources to spend on the project, the Dutch firm asked to take the reins to make multi-scale EverTune bridges a reality. “They're a very agile company,” Blackett says. “They can turn on a dime. We thought about it for a split second and said, ‘Why not?’”

He wasn’t convinced there’d be demand for them – but he was proven wrong. Now aftermarket options are available, and they’re also options with Kiesel’s new made-to-order Antares guitars.

What about EverTune’s future? Blackett says smaller, lighter bridges with less invasive routes will represent “a natural evolution.” The resonance factor is also under the microscope and headless guitars are also on its radar. The possibilities are endless – sort of.

“What’s really exciting is this technology works for anything that requires tension,” he says. “We could come up with systems for acoustic guitar, piano and drums. We just can't devote any resources to that right now.”

• Find out more at the EverTune website.

Steve Lukather’s Christmas turn back in the early aughts took everyone by surprise – including the Toto guitarist himself.

“Elliot Scheiner had put together a record label [Bop City Records], and they wanted me to be their first artist… and they specifically wanted me to do a Christmas record,” he tells Guitar World in a new interview about the making of his full-blown festive album, Santamental.

“I was like, ‘A Christmas record? What the fuck makes you think I’m Santa Claus, man?’ I started laughing, going, ‘You gotta be kidding me!’”

13 years later, Lukather managed to secure the rights to the album and is re-releasing it just in time for the holidays in aid of charity.

What makes this album special for all the guitar heads out there is that it features a Rolodex of virtuosos that Lukather somehow managed to assemble – all for a Christmas album, no less.

“Larry [Carlton] is very, very special,” says Lukather. Carlton, who had worked with Lukather in the past, came onboard as the arranger on a track for the project.

“We were on that live record that we won a Grammy for [No Substitutions: Live in Osaka]. When I was a kid, everyone wanted to be Larry Carlton. He was one of the cats I looked up to.

“When me and Larry went on that tour, I got an hour every day before the show, where we’d sit in a room, and warm up. We’d be playing, and I’d get a little fucking guitar lesson from Carlton every night.”

Lukather most wanted to learn Carlton's approach to “chord melody stuff”. Understandable, considering his exceptionally tasty, liquid jazz-blues style.

“He was very gracious and kind, and spent time with me – and sometimes rolled his eyes – and showed me some things. And I’d go, ‘It’s Christmas time, so give me a Christmas song.’ We’d start messing around with that stuff, so I’ve gotta give him some credit for a lot of the cool shit, and I gave him an arranging credit.”

Santamental also includes the six-string contributions of Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Slash, and Michael Landau, as well as those of the then 14-year-old Trev Lukather.

The album is set to be re-released on November 7 and is currently available for pre-order.

100 percent of proceeds will go towards the Ed Asner Family Center (TEAFC) for Autism in Los Angeles.

Read Guitar World's full interview with Steve Lukather on the making of Santamental.

All of the electric guitar tones we hear on The Sea of Emotion, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai’s first-ever studio album together, are wholly thrilling yet reassuringly familiar.

There is something unmistakable about how each of these players address the instrument, their tones distinct yet complementary. Within a couple of notes you know exactly who is playing what.

But in a new interview with Guitarist, Steve Vai admits that all is not what it seems – when engineering the tones, he leaned heavily on guitar plugins. They both did.

Vai credits Satriani for the idea. Though, Vai blames Satriani might be the more appropriate construction – because he was definitely not onboard with plugins until he heard what Satriani did with them on 2022’s The Elephants of Mars.

“After I heard Joe’s album, The Elephants Of Mars, he told me he’d used plugins, and I was stunned,” admits Vai. “Because I had a very snobbish attitude: ‘Oh, you have to have microphones.’ So I started fooling around with SansAmp and realised how easy it is.”

Satriani was well versed in this “no amps, no mics” approach. He had a bundle of plugins from SansAmp, Tonex, Brainworx, and Neural DSP. The Neural plugins especially pleased Vai, but he’s not decommissioning his quote/unquote real guitar amps just yet.

“Now, it’s mostly the Neural stuff that I use,” he says. “There were a couple of things where I still used a combination of my [Carvin] Legacy 3 amp and my Synergy module.”

And no one is going to wean Vai off mic’ing his guitars.

“I would mic things ad nauseum,” says Vai. “I’d have two stereo cabs, three mics on the front of each, one in the back, then 4ft away. And then sets of stereo [AKG] 414 room mics. And it’s nice… but it’s a lot of setup, a lot of work.”

The pair also unpack some of the guitars they used to track the album. Satch was using his Chrome Boy JS Ibanez signature guitar and its gold sibling – Gold Boy? He used his Paisley finish prototype and a Taylor nylon-string guitar.

Vai leaned upon his usual complement of Ibanez PIA and JEM guitars, all the familiar faces – Evo, Flo III and friends.

If you are a long-time fan of Satriani and Vai, it should not come as a surprise to learn that there are sitars on the recording.

“Steve and I are always putting sitars on our albums,” says Satriani. Only this time out there was something really radical, a seven-string sitar custom-made by Sterling Ball.

You can read this Satch/Vai interview in full in the latest issue of Guitarist – better still, save and subscribe.

The Sea of Emotion is available to preorder, out November 6 via earMUSIC.

Sterling Ball has resurrected his secret supergroup for a new age, recruiting Joe Bonamassa, Steve Vai, Steve Lukather and more for an upcoming covers album.

Those attuned to Ball’s musical history will know that this is essentially a continuation of the off-the-books supergroup he has been spearheading for decades.

In the past, the group has boasted everyone from Albert Lee to Eddie Van Halen on its roster. Now, it has some fresh faces set for a surprising covers record that will see each of them go out their comfort zones.

Biff Baby’s Allstars features a core lineup of Ball – who is both Ernie Ball’s son and a bass guitar legend for his work on the Bongo Bass – drummer John Ferraro and keyboardist Jim Cox.

Across their new self-titled album, expect guitar solos galore, with everyone from John Petrucci and Steve Vai, to Steve Lukather, Albert Lee, and Joe Bonamassa contributing.

Many of those players are part of the Ernie Ball clan, naturally, but it isn’t an exclusive party, as Vai and Bonamassa’s presence confirms.

Blues Saraceno, who once played in a band with Cream alumni Ginger Backer and Jack Bruce, and drummer Chad Wackerman (Frank Zappa, Allan Holdsworth) also feature.

“So thrilled to be part of another monumental collaboration forged by my dear friend, Sterling Ball,” Petrucci enthuses. “Joining my brothers in shred for this incredible Allstars lineup is an absolute honor.”

The record is made up of newly interpreted cover songs, including Golden Earring’s Radar Love – perhaps in honor of George Kooymans who passed away last summer – and a medley of two Allman Brothers Band classics: Whipping Post and One Way Out.

“It truly is pure joy to hear everyone’s unique interpretations of these classic songs and make music together with my friends,” Petrucci adds. “I can’t wait for everyone to hear this very special release!”

Biff Baby’s Allstars continues a glowing legacy for Ball’s supergroup. They once boasted Eddie Van Halen amongst their ranks, and at one notable gig, Albert Lee had the virtuoso squirming.

“On a couple of gigs, we had Eddie Van Halen playing with us. He said, ‘I can’t play on that!’ I said, ‘Yes, you can – you can do all that tapping!’ And of course he was great,” Lee told Guitar World earlier this year.

“In 1982 I started a band to play California Clubs called Biff Baby’s Allstars,” Ball explains in his own Instagram post. “The original core was me, my brother Sherwood, John Ferraro, Jim Cox and Albert Lee. On my 30th birthday Steve Morse joined the band. We played clubs all over California.

“Along the way Steve Lukather joined. It was awesome. We would call a club and tell the band to not play, they would get paid and I would buy their dinners. In the early ‘90s Eddie Van Halen played a bunch, Rodney Crowell, John Petrucci, Blues Sarasceno Steve Vai, Jay Graydon were regulars. It was ego free, with everybody bringing their best playing and even better accompaniment.”

The band stopped gigging around 15 years ago, but their friendship has gone the distance. So, it was time for a reunion, and to play some “fun old songs.”

“Most of the great guests picked songs that you would never associate with them,” Ball says, which means the 11/8 boogie of Whipping Post may not feature the algorithmic right hand of John Petrucci.

The album releases on November 27. Head to Biff Baby’s Allstars for more.

To call Tony Levin simply a bassist would be doing him a disservice. He’s a full-scale multi-hyphenate musician who’s added his magic to the work of Peter Gabriel, Alice Cooper, King Crimson and more.

For the last two years he’s been touring with BEAT, celebrating Crimson’s music. He has a new Stick Men record out titled Let’s Thrak. Meanwhile he’s writing his memoirs.

“I've been working on it for years,” he says. “I’m lucky to have great stories of these bands I've played with, including playing under Igor Stravinsky. It’s pretty wild to have played with both Igor Stravinsky and Alice Cooper!”

1. What was your first bass?

I started on upright as a classical player, but I don’t have that bass. My first Fender was a Precision I bought in the ’60s. I saw a guy playing one at a show and asked him, “Hey, what’s that?” He gave me great advice: “Don’t buy a new one; buy a used one.” In the ’60s we didn’t use the term “vintage” – it’s just that older instruments were cheaper than new ones.

He said, “Go to New York and for $180 you’ll buy a used Fender Precision.” I did that; and for many years, that was my bass. Later on I switched to Music Man, also designed by Leo Fender. Unfortunately there was a fire in my barn in Woodstock, New York, and all my basses except for my road ones were lost.

2. What’s a quirk or habit of your playing’s become a part of your style?

There are probably a few, but I’m not aware of them because I don’t analyze my playing that way. No matter how complex or simple, when I hear a piece of music, I’m not thinking with the prefrontal cortex. I just let the bass player take over.

3. How many guitars do you own, and what gear do you own that might surprise people?

I don’t have that many, considering how many years I’ve been doing this! We all love to collect instruments, but frankly I can’t tell you how many I have. As for surprising instruments, I have a cello, and if it’s my album and nobody to stop me, I’ll play some cello.

4. Which bass do you have the closest relationship with?

It varies with the band I’m touring with. With Stick Men I play the Chapman Stick. Mine has 12 strings, with six guitar strings and six bass strings, and it’s touch-style with a stereo output.

And then there’s BEAT, which is the music of Crimson from the ’80s and maybe the ’90s, and I’ll play more Stick but also bass. My five-string Music Man is my go-to bass now. But I also have the four-string Music Man I played in the ’80s.

5. Tell us about a time you were faced with a decision that had real implications for your life as a musician.

There is, of course, no single moment; but I’m still going to pick one! I harken back to 1976 in July when I was called to play on an album in Toronto with Peter Gabriel, whom I didn’t know of. I hadn’t even heard of Genesis! One of the guitar players was Robert Fripp, so I met the two of them that day.

Now, there’s a craft to studio work. I loved doing it, and I’d just fallen into it. I’d started playing on rock albums for Lou Reed and Alice Cooper. Then Peter gave me the choice to go on the road with him, or I could continue to be a New York studio player.

I chose to play live, which is what I love to do. I chose to be musically kicked in the butt and given subtle music lessons on how not to be a “normal player,” and how to step outside the business as usual. A few years later I joined King Crimson, where business as usual is not even considered – we wanted to truly be progressive.

6. What’s your most memorable moment with a guitarist or guitar hero?

A day that’s been on my mind lately, is from 1980, when Robert asked me to get together with some guys he knew and think about forming a band. I went to downtown New York, and in the studio were Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford and Robert.

I hadn’t even heard the music of Bill and Adrian, but I knew Robert’s playing because I’d played on his solo album, Exposure, and I’d played on the road with him with Peter.

I vividly remember the first few minutes of them playing, and my jaw dropped. Adrian was a completely unique guitar player, Bill was the same on drums, and then there’s Robert Fripp, who, obviously, was completely unique.

My thoughts while looking down at my bass and Chapman Stick were, “I’m not even going to touch the bass. in this band I’m going to be super-challenged to just belong in the room.”

7. What’s it like being in the room with Adrian and Steve Vai with BEAT now?

It’s the same – but I’m not shocked anymore! I’m used to it. Steve is just a unique player and an amazing technician. I take it as an honor to be in a band with both of them. It’s a challenge to up my game musically; not technically, necessarily, but musically: to be fresh and unique and special enough. To try – and maybe I won't succeed – to be that kind of player, because that's what is called for.

8. What’s been the toughest time you’ve had as a musician?

I’ve been rejected from a band or from a tour. It hurts. It happens to most of us. This strange occupation of being a musician often entails being in situations where you’re not wanted. You put a lot of your deepest self into it, so when you’re rejected, it hurts. It can be rough, but we deal with it.

9. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

I can’t think of verbal advice, but when I was at the Eastman School of Music with Steve Gadd, he was a great drummer even then. He got me on gigs and mentored me, and it was invaluable just standing next to him.

I got to feel what it was like to have good time, never speed up or slow down too much, and just have good feel – which is a pretty advanced lesson. He wasn’t showing me or even telling me; it was just subtle things I picked up.

10. What’s the biggest misconception about you as a player?

The truth is that I don’t think about how people think about me. I’m a little famous in some niches, and that’s nice; that’s okay – but I don’t think about it at all. I’m very aware of how lucky I am to be playing really good music with really good musicians.

11. What lessons have proven most true throughout your career?

With being humble, you want to talk to Peter Gabriel. I’ve been with the guy for 40 or 50 years; he asks if anyone in the room wants tea – and then he goes and makes it! He’s the guy who, at meet-and-greets or an after-show thing where everyone in the room is there to see him, will see the person in the corner not talking to anybody, and he’ll talk to that person.

I’ve been around Peter and people like him a lot. If some of that rubbed off on me, I give them the credit.

• BEAT hit the road again across North America on October 9.

Every musician is faced with a moment, or, if they’re lucky, moments, that can change the trajectory of their entire career.

For full-scale multi-hyphenate musician (but perhaps best known as a bass wielder) Tony Levin, one decision had a real, long-term impact.

“I harken back to 1976 in July when I was called to play on an album in Toronto with Peter Gabriel, whom I didn’t know, or know of,” he tells Bass Player. “I hadn’t even heard of Genesis!

“One of the guitar players was Robert Fripp, so I met the two of them that day. Now, there’s a craft to studio work. I loved doing it, and I’d just fallen into it. I’d started playing on rock albums, like Lou Reed's and Alice Cooper’s, and then Peter gave me the choice to go on the road with him, or I could continue to be a New York studio player.”

Levin chose the touring life, or, as he puts it, “I chose to be musically kicked in the butt.”

That fateful day led to his contribution to Fripp's solo album, Exposure. A few years later, precisely in 1980, he was asked to join King Crimson, “where business as usual is not even considered. It’s out of the question. We wanted to truly be progressive”.

It all started from a simple invitation. “Robert Fripp asked me to get together with some guys he knew and think about forming a band,” Levin recalls. “I went to Downtown New York, and in the studio were Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, and Robert Fripp.

“I hadn’t even heard the music of Bill and Adrian, but I knew Robert’s playing… And I’d also played on the road with him with Peter Gabriel. I vividly remember the first few minutes of them playing, and my jaw dropped.”

He continues, “Adrian was a completely unique guitar player, Bill was the same on drums, and then there’s Robert Fripp, who, obviously, was completely unique. My thoughts while looking down at my bass and Chapman Stick were, ‘I’m not even going to touch the bass… in this band I’m going to be super-challenged to just belong in the room.’”

Levin became a key part of the 1981 to 1984 incarnation of King Crimson, holding down the low-end and occasionally wielding the Chapman Stick on Discipline (1981), Beat (1982), Three of a Perfect Pair (1984), and THRAK (1995).

He would join at several other points in the project’s lifetime, including between 1994 and 1998, 2003 and 2008, and finally, 2013 and 2021.

However, that wasn’t the end of his career with the King Crimson repertoire. In 2024, he was announced as the bassist for the Crimson touring spinoff BEAT, alongside Belew, Steve Vai, and drummers Terry Bozzio and Danny Carey.

One thing is for sure: his initial encounter with Fripp – thanks to Peter Gabriel – proved to be more than fruitful.

Bass Player's full interview with Tony Levin will be published in the coming weeks.

A release date for Steve Vai and Joe Satriani's first join studio album has finally been set.

Considering the pair’s incredibly tight-knit relationship, it seems inconceivable that it took the duo 53 years to write an album together.

Vai was just a teenager when he showed up on Satriani’s doorstep with an electric guitar. That was in 1973. Fast-forward to 2026, and their highly anticipated first full album together is set for release on November 6 via earMUSIC.

Three singles, The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1 (there are three parts in all), I Wanna Play My Guitar, and Dancing, which features a music video directed by Brendon Small, have teased the album over the last 16 months. Those were just the tip of the iceberg.

New single, Mayhem, finds the pair harmonizing and dueling with abandon, with six more tracks set to follow.

“We’ve been planning this since 1973,” Vai laughs. “Just unconsciously.”

The seeds of the record were sown in early 2024 when Vai, Satriani, and Eric Johnson reunited the original G3 line-up. But it’s a record defined by their differences just as much as their virtuosic commonalities.

“The biggest surprise was that we write in completely different ways,” Satriani details. “That’s what made the project so fun and interesting.

“It illustrates just how far we’ve come,” he adds. “We’re these two kids who haven’t found our sound yet, but we’ve got enthusiasm. We’re chasing something, and we’re determined.”

They’re joined by some familiar faces. A wealth of bass greats provides the low end, including Billy Sheehan, Bryan Beller, and Marco Mendoza.

Drums have been tracked by longtime collaborator Kenny Aronoff, who is currently in the Best of All Worlds band with Satch, along with Gregg Bissonette, Jeremy Colson, and former Dream Theater talent Mike Mangini and more.

Eric Caudieux, a recurring figure on Satch’s albums and tours, has pulled a double shift on keyboard and production duties. Glenn Hughes, who recently retired from touring, serves guest vocals on I Wanna Play My Guitar.

“It’s a beautiful coming together of me and my friend in a very intimate musical way,” Vai wraps. “That was the reason we did the record.”

The Sea of Emotion is available to preorder now.

The Sea of Emotion tracklist

• Mayhem
• Bronco Freight Train
• Dancing
• The Feeling I Know
• Zoot Suit Riot
• Old Sins Have Long Shadows
• I Wanna Play My Guitar
• The Sea Of Emotion Pt. 1
• The Sea Of Emotion Pt. 2
• The Sea Of Emotion Pt. 3 / Reflections On A Year And A Half

Ibanez has unveiled a host of surprise electrics guitars, including new star signatures and a firm-first Iceman.

There’s a lot for players to get their teeth into here, so we’ve trawled through the listings to pull out the highlights.

Leading the signatures, Steve Vai’s visually updated PIA77BON2 features an intricately detailed design, including a hand-painted gold leaf body finish and an expansive PIA Blossom fretboard inlay.

Its DiMarzio UtoPIA pickups continue the aesthetic, and it otherwise conforms to the usual PIA spec sheet.

Joe Satriani, meanwhile, has the new JS2470 to his name. It follows a similar tonewood recipe with an alder body and three-piece maple/bubinga neck sculpted to his namesake profile.

At its heart, there’s a DiMarzio Satchur8 humbucker in the bridge and a Sustainiac in the neck, and it’s complete with a dedicated three-way switch, taking in Harmonic/Mix/Normal modes.

Nita Strauss’ latest signature is a Torch Red-colored shredder. The JIVA10R pairs an African mahogany body with a quilted maple top, a three-piece JIVA maple/purpleheart neck, and an ebony fretboard featuring a Beaten Path inlay design.

Aside from the signatures, the pick of the bunch is the newly modernized and weaponized Iceman.

It's a body shape favored by System of Down’s Daron Malakian, inverted by Paul Gilbert (to make the Fireman) and more recently adopted by Knocked Loose’s Isaac Hale.

Here, it gets a seven-string, multi-scale makeover. It’s armed with Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers and has a five-piece Wizard II-7 maple-and-walnut neck, an Okoume body. It looks like it could do damage.

There are plenty of highlights elsewhere. Last year, Ibanez revived the forgotten (and pretty mad-looking) P Series guitar. Now it’s back in a more metal-minded fashion.

Available in White or Black, each model features what appears to be an aluminum pickguard for its exaggerated treble-side horn.

Building on a basswood body, five-piece maple/walnut Super Wizard neck, and 24-fret bound rosewood 'board with Sharktooth inlays, it is one of the most radical-looking Ibanez guitars currently around.

As we said, there’s a lot to absorb, but with the Iceman getting something of the Alpha treatment, three stellar shredders getting new squeezes, and the P Series continuing to reintegrate itself into the modern scene, it’s good news for Ibanez loyalists.

See Ibanez for more.

King Crimson offshoot BEAT have announced a US tour for Fall 2026, for which they’ll be joined by a new member.

The upcoming tour will also expand on the breadth of King Crimson material they’ll be drawing from.

The supergroup was formed by King Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and Tony Levin in early 2024. Steve Vai was recruited to take on the mammoth task of assuming Robert Fripp’s role.

Since their inception, BEAT have been playing music from the band’s 1980s records with Fripp’s blessing and guidance. But changes are afoot for their next run of shows.

Notably, Danny Carey has been replaced by former Frank Zappa and U.K. sticksman Terry Bozio due to the former’s commitments with Tool.

It’s also been announced that tracks from King Crimson’s 1995 album, Thrak – which featured both Belew and Levin – will make their way into the set.

“We feel this will result in a new experience for our audience,” Belew believes. “We’re very excited to play for you again.”

Previously, the band’s material had focused on Crimson’s 1980s trio of records, Discipline, Beat, and Three Of A Perfect Pair. Vai had been put through the wringer learning some of Fripp’s most physically demanding parts.

They’ve toured across the US, Mexico, South America and Tokyo, and have just completed a tour of 31 European cities. The boss, Fripp, was in attendance in Tallinn, Estonia.

This next chapter means that Vai now has some more learning to do, with Thrak’s more industrial clangor adding a new dimension to their upcoming shows. It also means he gets to share more stages with the “underrated” Belew.

“Being a part of this ensemble is an extraordinary privilege and opportunity to perform some of the most beloved, timeless, and monumental music with truly inspired musicians,” Vai purrs. “This music resonates deeply with me.

“Father Robert Fripp is one of our historical geniuses. His highly specific and exceptionally brilliant guitar technique is studied and revered.”

Speaking to Guitar World previously, BEAT’s virtuosic guitar tandem assured fans that they don’t see themselves as the new King Crimson, but they do believe there’s a good degree of legitimacy to their performances.

Given that King Crimson remains quiet despite rumors of a new album, they’re filling an important void.

Tickets go on sale Friday, August 7 at 10 AM local time.

See BEAT for more.

Tour Dates

• 10/09 Santa Cruz, CA - Quarry Amphitheater
• 10/10 Napa, CA - Blue Note Napa Summer Sessions at Meritage Resort
• 10/11 San Diego, CA - Civic Theatre
• 10/13 Las Vegas, NV - Theater at Virgin Hotel
• 10/14 Phoenix, AZ - Celebrity Theatre
• 10/16 Denver, CO - Bellco Theatre
• 10/17 Omaha, NE - Orpheum Theater
• 10/18 Waukee, IA - Vibrant Music Hall
• 10/19 Milwaukee, WI - The Riverside Theater
• 10/21 Chicago, IL - Copernicus Center
• 10/22 Madison, WI - Orpheum Theater
• 10/23 Saint Charles, MO - The Family Arena
• 10/24 Prior Lake, MN - Mystic Lake Casino Showroom
• 10/26 Cincinnati, OH - Taft Theatre
• 10/28 Columbus, OH - Palace Theatre
• 10/29 Detroit, MI - Masonic Temple Theatre
• 10/30 Cleveland, OH - Agora Theatre
• 11/01 Toronto, ON - The Theatre at Great Canadian Toronto
• 11/02 Montreal, QC - Theatre St-Denis
• 11/04 Huntington, NY - The Paramount
• 11/05 Uncasville, CT - Mohegan Sun Arena
• 11/06 Boston, MA - Boch Center Wang Theatre
• 11/07 Hampton Beach, NH - Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom
• 11/09 Newark, NJ - Prudential Hall at NJPAC
• 11/10 Washington, DC - MGM National Harbor
• 11/11 Rochester, NY - Kodak Center
• 11/13 Virginia Beach, VA - Sandler Center
• 11/14 Reading, PA - Santander Performing Arts Center
• 11/15 Philadelphia, PA - Academy of Music
• 11/17 Durham, NC - DPAC
• 11/18 Nashville, TN - Grand Ole Opry House
• 11/21 Charlotte, NC - Ovens Auditorium
• 11/22 Daytona Beach, FL - Peabody Auditorium
• 11/24 St. Petersburg, FL - Mahaffey Theater
• 11/25 Atlanta, GA - Cobb Energy Center
• 11/28 Houston, TX - 713 Music Hall
• 11/29 Austin, TX - ACL Live
• 11/30 Dallas, TX - Music Hall at Fair Park
• 12/02 Inglewood, CA - YouTube Theater
• 12/03 Riverside, CA - Riverside Municipal Auditorium

A young folk guitarist has been praised by several guitar greats after posting an original song on Instagram.

16-year-old Todd Crozier, from Liverpool, England, is winning the hearts of many on social media. His nostalgia-tinged piece, Horned Creature, has received over 230,000 likes since it was posted last week.

Steve Vai, Dave Navarro, and Chimp Spanner are among those waxing lyrical about his talents. Queens of the Stone Age, Vernon Reid, and H.E.R. have also showered Crozier with likes and comments.

Everyone is praising the teenager for his chops and lyricism that extend far beyond his years.

“You obviously have what it takes,” Vai writes. “Now, go boy go!”

Dave Navarro adds: “Count me in as a new massive fan! You are simply amazing, and in this day and age, with the state of the music business, it’s such a refreshing thing to hear something so new, vulnerable, and dissonant. I wish you all the luck in the world, buddy.”

He’s also garnered comments from Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, while the official QOTSA account went as far as to say: “It’s an honor to listen to you free yourself from the difficulties of this life. My deepest respects.”

Horned Creature is not yet on streaming platforms, but we expect it to land in the near future as Crozier’s music continues to draw eyes and ears. He is a raw talent; it’s easy to be swept into the emotionally potent atmosphere of his music.

As another user says, Crozier feels like an old soul in a young body. His future is bright, and the reaction to his vulnerable songwriting online is nothing short of heartwarming. Remember the name.

In related news, Nuno Bettencourt has been left spellbound by another young guitar prodigy on Instagram. Elsewhere, Bay Melnick Virgolino has followed up his stellar America’s Got Talent showing by jamming with Slash and Joe Bonamassa, and playing Jimmy Fallon with Phoebe Bridgers.

This feature was originally published in the June 2016 issue of Guitar World.

By the fall of 1985, David Lee Roth had seemingly put the breakup of Van Halen in his rearview mirror.

Hoping to capitalize on his MTV-driven video stardom, Diamond Dave now set his sights on the big screen.

Along with his creative partner and manager Pete Angelus and writer Jerry Perzigian, Roth wrote a screenplay entitled Crazy from the Heat. Angelus and Roth then sold it to CBS Theatrical Films, secured a 10 million dollar budget, and camped out on the CBS movie lot in Burbank to do pre-production for the musical comedy. Angelus recalls, “I was going to direct it and Dave was going to star in it.” If all went according to plan, Crazy would hit theaters in the summer of 1986.

But in early November, just days before they would begin shooting, the phone rang in their studio offices. It was Roth’s attorneys calling to deliver some terrible news. CBS, facing serious financial woes, had shuttered its film division, leaving Angelus and Roth without a means to make their movie.

Angelus says, “When we put the phone down, I remember we were both kind of speechless for a moment. We’d spent the better part of a year preparing for that film. We’d done the casting. We’d done the location scouting. We’d been working with the set designers and the wardrobe people. We were fully into it and fully prepared.” At that moment, it appeared all their work had been for naught.

This setback seemed tailor-made to trigger a crisis of confidence for Roth. He’d trumpeted his movie plans in the press throughout the summer past, previewing a bikini-packed plot that would see rock star Roth squaring off against his greedy manager while on an island vacation.

He’d minimize the challenges inherent in filmmaking, declaring on the David Brenner Live show that both starring in and making a film was the “next logical step” after his success with video. “It’s the same thing… except our movies have been three minutes and twenty-eight seconds. So now it’s time to just bump it up to 90 minutes.” But now it seemed unlikely that his movie would ever arrive in theaters.

Meanwhile, Roth’s former bandmates in Van Halen had seemingly suffered no ill effects from his summer 1985 departure. They had a new blond-maned, leather-lunged lead singer, Sammy Hagar, and had begun work on the follow-up to their multi-platinum smash, 1984.

Roth also had to live with the fact that Eddie Van Halen, who’d told Roth in the spring of 1985 that he had no interest in scoring Crazy because the guitarist expected the film would “probably stink,” seemed to have made the right decision after Roth’s deal disappeared.

But as the months that followed would demonstrate, Roth was nothing if not resilient.

In the summer of 1986, the rock superstar would re-emerge with a hot new band comprised of virtuoso guitarist Steve Vai, bassist extraordinaire Billy Sheehan, and monster drummer Gregg Bissonette. He’d release a million-selling new album, Eat ’Em and Smile, and two new MTV-hit videos, Yankee Rose and Goin’ Crazy, all built upon the creative foundation he’d laid down for the aborted Crazy from the Heat. He’d follow that up with a barnstorming six-month tour of North America.

Despite stepping out from Van Halen, the massively popular act that had been the vehicle for his stardom, and the unexpected loss of his hard-won movie deal, Roth proved that he could weather adversity and still come out on top, smiling from ear to ear.

In early June 1985, nimble-fingered bassist Billy Sheehan, then a member of the heavy metal band Talas, got an unexpected phone call at his Buffalo home. “It’s from David Lee Roth’s office. He wants me to be in his movie. Can I come out to L.A. right away and talk to him?” Sheehan immediately said yes, passing the word to Roth’s representative that the timing for this meeting was ideal, since the upcoming Talas and Yngwie Malmsteen tour would commence at the Hollywood Palladium on June 7.

Sheehan, who’d gotten to know Roth back in 1980 when Talas had toured with Van Halen, made plans to arrive in L.A. a couple of days early. But prior to leaving home, Sheehan rang up a friend. He says, “I called Ed Van Halen to see if he wanted to come down to the Palladium show. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Van Halen breaking up. Ed said he was busy and couldn’t come, but said, ‘Have a good show!’” Before Sheehan got off the phone, he mentioned that he’d recently received a call from Roth.

“Wait. What! Why’d he call you?”

“Oh, he wants to have a meeting with me at his house.”

“Really? You’re kidding! You’ve got to call me back as soon as you have the meeting, because I think he’s going to pull an Ozzy Osbourne on us.”

In other words, Van Halen’s guitarist suspected that Roth’s next move was to become a solo artist, much like Ozzy had done in 1979 after leaving Black Sabbath.

Sheehan says that he now realized that he’d stumbled onto a minefield of inter-band politics. “I thought, ‘Jeez, now I’m in the middle of something,’ but I went ahead with the meeting with Dave.”

A few days later, Roth detailed his movie plans and laid out his vision for his new group to Sheehan. “We had the talk,” Sheehan recalls, “and decided to start the band. He said, ‘It will be you and me. We’ll find a guitar player and a drummer.’”

Sheehan agreed to join forces with Roth as soon as his two-month tour with Talas ended, but after the singer swore him to secrecy, Sheehan realized he couldn’t return an important call. “So now my head’s about to explode, and I said to myself, ‘Well, I better not call Ed back.’ I felt terrible, because I was friends with Ed.”

As it turned out, Eddie wouldn’t need an update from Sheehan. Around the same time, he and Roth had a climactic meeting of their own at Roth’s place, with the longtime musical partners deciding that it was time for them to go their separate ways.

“When I shook Edward’s hand goodbye,” Roth explained later, “we hugged each other and cried and said, ‘Hey, it’s musical differences and career differences, like all bands.’”

For his part, Roth left that meeting with the impression that their parting was mutual and amicable. But once the star guitarist bitterly denounced Roth for leaving the band to become a movie star in the August 15, 1985, edition of Rolling Stone, an occurrence that Angelus says shocked both him and Roth, the rock world knew that Van Halen had broken up.

Roth shook off this unpleasant episode by searching for a guitar player to pair with Sheehan. After consulting with Ted Templeman, who’d be producing the forthcoming soundtrack album for Crazy from the Heat, Roth offered the gig to Billy Idol axman Steve Stevens. But Stevens told Roth that because of his musical commitments to Idol, he couldn’t work with Diamond Dave sooner than the following summer, a schedule that was unworkable in light of Roth’s movie timetable.

Roth then circled back to Sheehan and Templeman for advice. Sheehan recalls that after Stevens passed, “I mentioned Steve Vai to Dave, and I may have mentioned him to Ted as well.”

Templeman, who’d gotten turned onto Vai’s astounding playing some time earlier, remembers endorsing the former Zappa and current Alcatrazz guitarist for Roth’s new band during an impromptu listening session.

“Dave had a beat-up, noisy cassette of Steve Vai, and we listened together in some garage with the tape player on the fender of a car. I said to Dave, ‘Yes, that’s the guy.’”

Roth then placed a call to the guitarist. Vai said at the time, “I pick up the phone and hear, ‘Hey man, this is David Lee Roth. How ya doin’, Steve? I’m making a movie and I’m looking for some music.’” Vai, who’d just finished working on the soundtrack for the blues-themed movie Crossroads, agreed to get together with Roth and Sheehan once he finished a short summer tour with Alcatrazz.

By August, Vai, along with his drummer Chris Frazier, would appear at the Roth mansion to jam with Sheehan and Roth. Sheehan recalls, “Steve came down to Dave’s basement, and he brought his drummer with him. Chris had worked with Steve on a couple of records.”

Once they plugged in and tuned up, the first signs of the remarkable musical chemistry that made the original Roth band so powerful made themselves manifest, according to Vai. “The moment we started jamming,” he told journalist John Stix, “it sounded great.”

By the end of that day, Vai had the gig, which made perfect sense to Sheehan, and not just because of his remarkable fretwork. “I love Steve Stevens, but Steve Vai had that Zappa-esque, tongue-in-cheek, comedic, entertainment vibe that was really important for the Eat ’Em and Smile band, because we’d be involved in a lot of comedy in our live show.”

Over the next few weeks, Sheehan and Roth, with Frazier on drums, worked up approximately 15 song ideas. In late September, however, Roth abruptly decided to audition other drummers rather than giving Frazier the gig. Sheehan comments, “Chris is an awesome drummer, but for whatever reason, Dave wanted to get somebody else.”

After placing want ads in the local trade papers, Vai and Sheehan set up shop at Hollywood’s S.I.R. Studios. Even though the listings didn’t mention David Lee Roth, word traveled fast in the Hollywood rock community that a coveted spot in Roth’s band was up for grabs. On the morning of the audition, scores of drummers flocked to S.I.R.

One of them was Detroit native Gregg Bissonette. The drummer, who’d gotten an invite call from Vai thanks to a referral from former Kiss guitarist Vinnie Vincent, had a résumé that at first glance seemed ill-suited for a hard rock outfit like the David Lee Roth Band. After graduating with a degree in music from North Texas State, he’d been the drummer for The Merv Griffin Show, soft-rocker Gino Vannelli, and jazz legend Maynard Ferguson. Still, he’d grown up a big rock fan.

Bissonette was thrilled about the opportunity, but when he arrived, his heart sank. “I just remember this huge line, just down the block.”

As he waited, he questioned friends who emerged from the audition room. Bissonette recalls, “I asked Matt Sorum, who later played with the Cult and Guns N’ Roses, and he said, ‘Oh they wanted me to play double bass, but I don’t really play much double bass.’ I did know Hot for Teacher really well, because I was a huge Van Halen fan. So I’m in line, and now I’m getting my feet warmed up, thinking, ‘Here we go – it’s double bass!’”

Soon it was Bissonette’s turn. “So I walk in the room, and it’s Steve and Billy and this funky old drum set. I sat right down and they said, ‘Hey, could you play a solo for us?’” After Bissonette finished, Vai showed him a guitar part that would later be enshrined on Roth’s 1988 album, Skyscraper.

“This piece would end up being Hot Dog and a Shake. Steve wanted me to hit these breaks with him and Billy, and during all that, he would solo. So as Steve was talking I reached into my backpack and took out a Sharpie. I’d brought my own snare, so I started writing out these figures on my snare head. Steve goes, ‘Woah! So you can read and write music? This is amazing!’”

The next day, Bissonette’s phone rang. It was Vai, who told him, “Hey, you’re a great guy and we love the way you play. We’re all going to meet at Dave’s place today, and we’re going to have you play for Dave.”

As Bissonette explained to Modern Drummer, this jam session couldn’t have gone better. “I went in the next day, met Dave, and we played… It was just like magic.” Soon after, he’d audition for Templeman, who, like Roth, came away impressed by Bissonette’s big-band experience and killer chops.

But before Roth told Bissonette he had the gig, he attended to some pressing film-related business.

On October 27, the Fabulous Picasso Brothers, as Angelus and Roth had dubbed their creative partnership, held an old-time cattle call audition at the Hollywood Palace in order to cast new talent for Crazy. With Sheehan, Vai, and Bissonette looking on, Roth marveled at the droves of the wildly attired actors and scantily dressed actresses, telling the Los Angeles Times, “This is a hell of a way to spend a Sunday, isn’t it?”

Bissonette, who like Vai and Sheehan, had never experienced this kind of rock pandemonium, says, “There were just lines of girls in bikinis.”

Bissonette’s week only would get better.

On a night that underscored just how high Diamond Dave’s star had risen in 1985, Roth informed Bissonette that he’d gotten the gig on the same night the singer would be appearing live on national TV. “It was Halloween,” the drummer recalls, “and Dave said, ‘I’m going to be on The Tonight Show tonight!’ Joan Rivers was the guest host, and we all went down to the set. It was like a dream when they told me.”

Bissonette now went to work with the others as they rehearsed and worked up new material. During these sessions, the three sequestered themselves in Roth’s basement while Roth and Angelus worked upstairs on pre-production for Crazy from the Heat. Vai says, “Once we’d all gotten into the basement and started jamming, writing, and playing, it was a very open, free, creative environment.”

Sheehan stresses that much of this creativity flowed from the fact that he and Vai shared many of the same musical influences. He says, “Steve and I were into a lot of the same bands, like early Bowie and Hendrix. When we came up with musical ideas we’d say, ‘That’s kind of a Hendrix-y thing’ or ‘That’s kind of a Bowie-thing.’ The ZZ Top shuffle and the ZZ Top feel were a big part of the influence too.”

Roth, listening through the floor, would regularly join them to review the new material. Sheehan says, “Dave would come downstairs and tell us what he liked, and what he didn’t like. We threw away what he disliked, and then he’d say, ‘Okay, now come up with a chorus.’ We eventually came up with all of these pieces of music.”

Roth also helped inspire Vai and Sheehan’s manic and sophisticated solo parts. As Sheehan explained in Guitar World, when he’d ask Roth, “Hey, Dave, is this bass part too busy?” Roth would shoot back, “No, do it twice as fast and Steve, you double it.” Likewise, Vai told Guitar Player that when he’d ask Roth if he was “overplaying,” Roth would reply, “No, keep going.”

Along with original material, the band considered a number of cover songs for their upcoming release.

Sheehan recalls, “I was in the Kim Mitchell band briefly. He’d sent me a demo with four songs. Kids in Action was one of them, and I just loved it. I played it for Dave and he really dug it. He also dug a Rory Gallagher song I played for him. It was from one of his mindblowing Rockpalast concert performances. I think it was called Secret Agent.”

Roth had plenty of song suggestions too, one of them being Speak of the Devil by the early Seventies Texas power-trio Stray Dog. “He played it for us,” Sheehan says, “and we all said, ‘It’s perfect.’”

At the same time, Roth and Angelus worked to prepare everyone for filming. Vai, who recalls the zany plot included parts for all of the band members, says, “We had a lot of fun preparing for the movie. We got together with [choreographer] Toni Basil and started working out choreography for the songs. It was going to be really great.”

Sheehan says that Roth and Angelus even arranged for a private showing of a cult film that had inspired them as they worked on Crazy. Sheehan continues, “We went to a screening of a 1940s movie called Hellzapoppin’. It’s just a wild, amazing movie, with a bunch of skits and vignettes and craziness. That was one of the templates Dave and Pete were using.”

Sheehan likewise remembers that as filming drew closer, the tunes they wrote soon made their way into the script. “I know songs like Goin’ Crazy were going to be integrated into the movie somehow. I remember reading the dialogue in the movie, and there were a lot of scenes with the band.” These musical scenes included a concert performance of Shy Boy and a nightclub scene that featured Roth crooning his way through Sinatra’s That’s Life.

All of this planning and scheming, however, came to a standstill on that fateful November day when CBS pulled the plug.

Angelus says that after the initial shock dissipated, they began discussing their options, asking each other: Apart from litigation against CBS for breach of contract, what’s our next step? Sheehan recalls telling Roth that day, “‘The hell with it. We’ve got a band. We’ve got songs. Let’s go out and tour!’ Not that he already didn’t think that, and not that he needed any encouragement from me, but I just remember thinking, ‘I’m ready to play.’”

Roth would get clarity about the next moves to make once he, like Sheehan, considered the full breadth of the creative endeavors they all had underway.

“The movie was just one part of a whole program,” he explained to Creem. “Obviously, when the movie fell out, we just continued with the rest of the program.” Angelus observes that what Roth termed “the program” had included “a coordinated release of the film, the [soundtrack] record, and, of course, the tour to accompany it.”

With his film in limbo, Roth and Templeman held pre-production meetings for what would now be a stand-alone rock record rather than a soundtrack album. They decided that the forthcoming Eat ’Em and Smile would include covers and originals, ones that represented a middle ground between the pop flavored, big-band sound of Roth’s Crazy from the Heat EP and the guitar-oriented pop metal showcased on his albums with Van Halen.

As Diamond Dave would later say, even though he’d put together a band capable of playing the most technically sophisticated heavy metal, he didn’t want fans of California Girls wondering “what happened to the brass on this record? Where’s the saxophone? Where’s the shoobee-doobee-doo-bop?”

In late November, just days after the movie was put on hold, the four musicians entered Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios with Templeman and engineer Jeff Hendrickson.

Hendrickson, who’d already worked with Templeman on Hagar’s V.O.A., Aerosmith’s Mirrors, and Roth’s Crazy EP, recalls that the producer had a particular way he liked to begin recording sessions. “Ted and I usually tracked everything in the first couple of days, so the band could just get a feel for things. Sometimes we would keep those as our master takes because they’d turn out so well.”

Templeman believed that this cut-live approach helped musicians avoid the dreaded red light fright and allowed him to determine which songs would ultimately work best on the album.

“We got a lot of keepers that way,” Hendrickson observes, “because when the band members don’t feel like they are on the spot, they play like they do when they’re out on the road, and so you get a lot better feel. But then again, sometimes you’d hear that a certain track would need a lot of work, or even that a track isn’t going to work at all.”

Templeman and Roth then listened back. They’d initially settle on 11 tracks for the album. These included six Vai/Roth compositions and five covers, including the Sheehan-penned headbanger Shy Boy, which dated from his Talas days.

While Roth was well accustomed to Templeman’s ways of working, it took a bit of getting used to for Vai, who had a very different mindset when it came to studio work.

“At times I didn’t know if I liked [Ted’s approach],” he explained to Guitar Player. “But then I realized, boy, it’s really fun. Get in there and do it. We kept about 50 percent of what Dave sang on the basic tracks. I’m used to sitting in the studio and tweaking and playing and punching and tweaking some more and EQ’ing and punching again. With this, it’s get in there and kill the guy with the ball.”

Templeman’s method, as it had done for him and Roth during their Van Halen days, paid dividends at Fantasy. The four musicians produced high-energy, minimal-overdub takes of Roth classics like Tobacco Road, Goin’ Crazy, and even the frenetic Shy Boy.

In the weeks that followed, the band would reconvene in New York to track at the hottest studio in America, the Power Station. Roth, in particular, loved working there because he felt inspired by Manhattan’s energetic street vibe.

“The Power Station is in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, which is more dangerous than New Guinea,” he proclaimed to a reporter. “When you’re there for more than a month recording, you’re bound to soak up a lot of the anxiety from the surrounding streets, and that comes out on the album.”

One track that generated some New York anxiety for Vai was the languid Ladies Nite in Buffalo.

Vai recalled that his original demo “had tons of keyboards and all sorts of guitar overdubs.” But when Templeman had asked the band to first run through Buffalo, Vai gamely collapsed all of his guitar parts into one so they could cut the song live, fully intending to replace this basic track and overdub multiple guitar lines in the coming days.

Templeman, however, had a different take. When he played the track back for everyone, he thought the guitarist had pretty much nailed the song on his first pass. Vai, in turn, thought Templeman had lost his mind. As Vai told Guitar Player, “Of course, being an artist, I hemmed and hawed: ‘I want to do it again.’”

Hendrickson recalls, “Vai kept fighting us because he felt his rough track was terrible. He was so meticulous. But he’d played this basic track that just blew everybody away. We couldn’t believe he wanted to change it.”

Ultimately, Vai says, Templeman and the others got him to see that his guitar part “was beautiful the way it was.”

Despite Templeman’s aversion to overdubbing, a persistent Vai did convince the producer to let him add additional guitar parts to the album. For example, he says, “I remember we were doing Elephant Gun and I said I wanted to double the guitar part. Because the part is all over the place, Ted goes, ‘What do you mean, double it?’

“I can double every single little thing, perfectly.”

After first saying no, Templeman did give the go-ahead. Vai started to double the part, but before he finished, he broke a string. Templeman said, “Well, probably we should just leave it with the one guitar.” Soon after, the producer departed the studio for the day.

Vai immediately went to work. He says, “I finished it. And when Ted heard it the next day, he liked it, so that’s why it made the record.”

Vai also layered some of his patented guitar eccentricity on what would be the album’s first single, Yankee Rose.

As he explained to Guitar Player, “The half-time section in the middle had this nice little arpeggioed chordal thing that was kind of open and bare. So I said, ‘Let me try putting a solo on it. Let me try something weird.’ I hooked up a couple of delays set to some long delay… and they rolled the tape.”

Roth also had some ideas for the guitar parts for Yankee Rose. While Vai overdubbed, Roth got him focused on constructing an outro solo that might be visually arresting for MTV audiences. Roth coached Vai, saying, “Here in the video I want you to do something where you can take the guitar and ram it between your legs.” Vai then came up with the whipsawing whammy bar licks for the song’s conclusion.

Despite Roth’s MTV-driven mindset, the New York sessions also produced a song seemingly more suited for the Thirties than the Eighties.

I’m Easy, a spirited big-band song originally recorded by Australian singer Billy Field, came into Roth’s orbit thanks to Templeman, who thought it fit perfectly with Roth’s “Gigolo” persona. Bissonette recalls that, weeks earlier, when the producer had played it for the band during pre-production, he said, “Gregg, this is going to be right up your alley, because you’re used to kicking five trumpets, five trombones, five saxes.”

At this point, Bissonette got to draw on his musical connections from his Maynard Ferguson days as Templeman worked to recruit session players for the track. He recalls, “Ted said, ‘Hey Gregg, you seem to know everybody. So can you help us put together a killer big band in New York?’ I said, ‘Man, I sure can.’” On the day of the New York session, Ted pulled Bissonette aside to thank him, saying, “Wow, you got all the A-list guys.”

Vai also played a vital role in making the horn parts on I’m Easy sound great. He explained, “I wrote the score and directed the horn section. You should have seen it. I had snakeskin pants on, my hair was flipped out, and I was sitting in this director’s chair with a baton in one hand and a big score in another. Twelve of New York’s best studio blowers were there, and I’m going, ‘Okay, now, can you make this a little more staccato over here?’”

Bissonette says everyone was amazed as they watched the Berklee-trained Vai, nominally a guitarist, do this work for the track. “He just sat down with pen and manuscript paper and wrote out the big band arrangements. The session guys then played along with our track and overdubbed. It was phenomenal.”

As the final overdubbing sessions wrapped up in the spring, Templeman and Roth looked to trim their song list down to 10 songs from the 11 they’d completed.

Ultimately, Kids in Action didn’t make the cut, to the dismay of both songwriter Kim Mitchell and ace session keyboardist Jeff Bova, who’d added synths to the track while the band worked at the Power Station. Bova observes, “I know they were toying with keeping either Kids in Action or Tobacco Road. I remember when the album came out being a bit disappointed because I did a lot of cool keyboard stuff on Kids.” To this day, the track remains unreleased.

With the album in the can, the Fabulous Picasso Brothers turned to scripting and filming promo videos for two of Eat ’Em and Smile’s forthcoming singles: Yankee Rose and Goin’ Crazy! Determined to make good use of their months of effort on Crazy, Roth and Angelus scripted two mini-movies as preludes to the band performance footage that would be the centerpieces of the videos.

Along with casting many of the performers who’d been slated to appear in the movie, they also drew upon their months of work on wardrobes and makeup. As Sheehan explains, “Most of the clothes we had in the Eat ’Em and Smile videos, and the fat suit that Dave wore in Goin’ Crazy, those were all meant for the movie, initially.”

Bissonette adds, “Goin’ Crazy and Yankee Rose were a big part of the proposed look of that movie. Even though Crazy didn’t happen, the videos sure did, and they were amazing. To this day, nobody makes videos like that.”

In June, Roth unleashed an all-out promotional campaign. He talked about his new band, album, and upcoming tour to the press with enthusiasm, telling a reporter, “If you love Van Halen, if you like rock and rolling, you’re going to be blown away. We’ve got all kinds of new tricks to show you.”

He was much less sanguine, however, when it came to the current incarnation of his former band. Responding to the salvos fired at him over the prior months by Hagar and company, Roth stated, “Whenever you have a big ugly divorce, there’s hurt feelings. On the other hand, Sammy’s only angry because he knows I’m better than he is.”

On July 7, Eat ’Em and Smile finally dropped. Driven by the success of Yankee Rose at radio and on MTV, the album would peak at Number 4 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart. In the weeks that followed, Warner Bros. Records would also release the Van Halen–esque Goin’ Crazy, and the Sinatra standard That’s Life as singles, pushing sales of the LP over one million copies by the fall.

The Eat ’Em and Smile tour, which began in August, likewise did big business, from the first date onward. Vai, who’d never played arenas before, says that in fact the tour’s sold-out opening night provided him with one of the most vivid memories of his career.

“It was just amazing to be on that tour, but being on the stage that first night was a shock. You realize you’re now a rock star performer. There are 20,000 people out there, and you’ve got to deliver. At one point, Dave did this thing where he just stops and puts the mic out to the crowd. The screaming went on for like 10 minutes. It was so loud that Billy and I were looking at each other because we were scared. It was louder than our amps. I just thought, ‘What’s happened? Because this is wild.’”

Every night the four musicians, along with tour keyboardist Brett Tuggle, would blast through a setlist packed with new Roth favorites and classic Van Halen tunes, interspersed by flashy solo segments by Bissonette, Vai, and Sheehan. But as Sheehan explained to Guitar World, the solo performances of the two guitar players became more engaging as the tour progressed, thanks to the input of Angelus and Roth.

“We needed to come up with something to entertain everyone. At the start of the tour, I did my solo the same way I always did it, and Steve did his own solo, too. Although the musicians in the crowd may have loved it, I’m sure a lot of the other people were yawning… So Pete Angelus suggested that we do a guitar duel – and it’s a riot.”

Sheehan says with a smile that Roth’s advice was to “make it like a contest, like a tractor pull. That was the phrase he used. So Steve would come out there and start playing, I’d come up behind him and stop him and push him out of the way and play a while, then he’d push me out of the way. Then we’d push each other, and chase each other around until we’d get to the end when we’d have this big grand finale.”

Over the course of the next six months, Sheehan, Vai, and the rest of the band would play over 100 dates, entertaining arena audiences all across the continent.

Today, members of the group are both nostalgic about and proud of their accomplishments during these years. Sheehan, who’d leave the group in early 1988, says, “My experience with Eat ’Em and Smile and Dave was just amazing and incredible. On tour, places were packed, there were gorgeous girls, and everybody was at the top of their game.”

Vai adds, “Our timing couldn’t have been more perfect, and all the elements came together. You could put on the biggest stage show, and you could wear anything you wanted, and boy did we ever. But what was most exciting to me is the rawness, intensity, and attitude of the music.”

Bissonette remarks that since “the David Lee Roth band was my first big rock gig,” these years will always have a special place in his heart. “Dave,” the drummer says, gave “me my platinum musical passport, good over the world. It’s been the coolest.”

Today, both fans and band members are hopeful for a reunion of the classic Eat ’Em lineup. This is especially true after the Hollywood fire marshal blocked Roth, Vai, Sheehan, Bissonette, and Tuggle from performing at an oversold Lucky Strike Live on November 25, 2015, in what would have been their first performance together in decades.

Vai says ruefully, “The Lucky Strike thing was almost like rock star interruptus. People say the fire marshal stopped us minutes before we went on, but it was seconds. I was standing behind the curtain with a hot guitar in my hands and I was ready to start. I did everything I could to get us to play, but we just couldn’t. Afterward I thought we’ve got to do something together, because there’s just too much cool energy here.”

While everyone’s schedules are packed, there’s a shared desire among the principals that they should all reconvene at some point soon, assuming Roth will light the fuse again.

Sheehan observes, “It’s all up to Dave. This is his game. If he wants to do it, I’m so into it. Ideally, it would be great to record a song or two and then go out and do a bunch of shows: Europe, USA, maybe South America, Japan. It would be great, to get everybody together again, to do it all again, just for the hell of it.”

Vai says, “I think that would be really nice to honor the legacy of the Eat ’Em and Smile album and band. There doesn’t have to be any big commitment. It would just be about getting out there and bringing it home, the way we used to do it, while we still have the juice, which we do.”

Last November, Roth appeared to leave the door open to a reunion, suggesting to fans on his way out of Lucky Strike Live that one day the group might have to book the Hollywood Palladium and give it another go.

Steve Vai’s For the Love of God, from his 1990 sophomore album Passion and Warfare, marked a defining moment in his career.

The epic instrumental showcased Vai’s technical prowess – with harmonics, fast legato runs, sweep picking, and whammy-bar tricks galore – all of which he nailed after four straight days of fasting, meditation, and, naturally, non-stop practising.

“I was trying to push myself to the limit,” he said in a 2016 Guitar World interview when reflecting upon the experience. “When it came time to record For the Love of God, my fingers were totally gone. I had pictures of my fingers taken after that session, and they were bleeding under the skin.”

Equally as iconic as the track is its music video, which features a burned Ibanez Universe seven-string that, as brand representative Scot Schwestska told Guitar World in 1991, was intended to “look like the Stratocaster that Jimi Hendrix burned at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.”

“The next thing we did was sprinkle mineral spirits on the body of a standard Jem Universe, and carefully started burning it to emulate the look of the Hendrix guitar. It was like a family barbeque!”

Now, as revealed by the guitar star’s devoted tech, Doug MacArthur, in a Premier Guitar rig rundown, the storied guitar has made something of a comeback, officially returning to the road with the SatchVai Band during their recently completed American spring tour.

“It's kind of funny that this is the backup, but this is the guitar from the For the Love of God music video,” MacArthur says.

“It's called Bruno…. They blowtorched it and scraped it up. It's funny – when we moved recently, I found the letter from Ibanez that was like, ‘Hey, we're kind of checking out this new aesthetic,’ so this got delivered to him in 1990 or late ’80s.”

However, all those who were (retroactively) hoping to spot it during this past run of dates were left disappointed, as, according to MacArthur, “He hasn't played it yet, though, because he hasn't broken a string on the guitar.”

But now that it’s officially in his roster of touring guitars, we wouldn’t be surprised if it makes an appearance at any of the supergroup’s future shows.

Speaking of Vai's Rolodex of guitars, the virtuoso has recently announced that he just might be retiring his monstrous triple-neck Ibanez Hydra.

Three-time Emmy-winning composer Bear McCreary is merging guitars and orchestra on his new solo album, and he’s got help from Slash, Tim Henson, Guthrie Govan, and Steve Vai.

McCreary has scored some huge films, including Godzilla: King of the Monsters, The Cloverfield Paradox, and Paws of Fury, and, having enlisted Serj Tankian for his 2024 hard rock record, The Singularity, he’s going bigger and bolder with its follow-up, The Singularity: Ekleipsis.

A concept record that picks up where its predecessor left off, it explores themes of disillusionment and perseverance in the face of struggle. Cool Kids, its lead single, pairs Guns N’ Roses stalwarts Slash and Duff McKagan with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and his vocalist brother, Brendan McCreary.

“Cool Kids was born when Duff McKagan sent me a voice memo of a riff he was messing around with,” McCreary details. “My ears perked up instantly – his riff was undeniable! So Duff and I went into the studio the next week with my brother, vocalist Brendan McCreary, and Chad Smith to write the song together.

“When Slash got back into town, he added his signature screaming guitar parts, and there it was,” he adds. “It’s a song about all of us being proudly who we are, but I wouldn’t blame anybody for assuming the title was inspired by the fact that Brendan and I got to create this song with the coolest kids in rock and roll.”

Slash’s scorching blues rock licks are instantly recognizable, with a warm tone that plays off McCreary’s lush orchestrations for an effective double act.

Equally, Black Box, which has dropped simultaneously, hinges on grinding guitars straight out of the Duplantier playbook on a song with a heavy, anthemic edge.

Elsewhere on the tracklist, Steve Vai and Tim Henson double up on the track Blueshift, with Henson also tag teaming with Coheed & Cambria’s Claudio Sanchez on Sweet Misery.

Guthrie Govan (Alexandria), Gojira’s ESP artist Joe Duplantier (Black Box), and Alissa White-Gluz (Our Kingdom) – the latter of whom is fresh from launching her shred-laden new band, Blue Medusa, and joining DragonForce – also feature. It’s quite the lineup.

McCreary will take the album on the road, with dates in the UK and Europe in July and August, before hitting the US and Canada in September.

See Bear McCreary for more.

Few guitars are quite as monstrous as Steve Vai’s triple-neck Hydra, but its tamer is considering retiring it.

The Ibanez guitar was launched in 2022 to coincide with the release of Inviolate, the virtuoso's first album in six years. Vai’s got plenty of mileage out of the near-mythical head-turner since then, but the jig may soon be up.

“This is probably the last time the Hydra will come out on tour,” Vai’s guitar tech, Doug MacArthur, reveals to Premier Guitar.

He doesn’t explain why, but Guitar World can take a wild guess. The Hydra comprises a half-fretless 12-string, a seven-string guitar, a half-fretless bass, and there is also a harp, and a suite of in-built effects for good measure.

As McArthur says, “Really, it’s five instruments in one.”

The maintenance must be astonishing, and it probably weighs as much as a small city. Given that Steve Vai underwent shoulder surgery in 2022 after a pizza oven mishap and was still feeling the effects of those issues as he began tackling Robert Fripp’s King Crimson guitar parts for Beat, it might be too big a cross to bear these days.

“I had some physical challenges with my shoulder, fingers, and wrist,” he told GW in 2024. “I couldn’t play the Hydra, and I was in a lot of pain – I didn’t feel like I was delivering on all cylinders.”

But the guitar, inspired by the steampunk double-neck in Mad Max, may have also run its course as an entertainer. It starred in the deft and dextrous track, Teeth of the Hydra, and has had its place on stage with the SatchVai Band, but maybe the ridiculous 36-string has said all it needs to over the last four years.

“When you see how I performed this piece, it’s so entertaining, because I had to negotiate the left-hand pull-offs so that the melody sounds uninterrupted – like a real melody,” Vai said of Teeth… upon its release. “It was crazy. It took two months.”

Maybe it’s time for a new star to take its place. The obvious contender would be Vai’s custom-built Green Special – a Vai-ified tribute to Brian May’s Red Special.

But given how Vai’s imagination ran amok with the Hydra, who’s to say he doesn’t have another mystical beast up his sleeve? Maybe he’ll go microtonal like Angine de Poitrine...

Matteo Mancuso has revealed that his hero, Steve Vai, pushed for a chance to work together, and taught the young star a big lesson along the way.

The former Frank Zappa, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake shredder is one of a number of virtuosos who championed Mancuso’s talents before he exploded onto the scene, with Al Di Meola and Joe Bonamassa also among them.

But with Mancuso’s newly released second album, Route 96, Vai is no longer just a fan as he features on its opening track, Solar Wind. It turns out that the track was Vai’s idea, planting a seed after welcoming Mancuso to the 2024 edition of his namesake guitar camp.

“That was the first time I met Steve in person,” he tells MusicRadar. “We played almost every night. I was one of the teachers at the camp, and every night, there was a different teacher on the stage.

“He told me that if I had something, like a song or something to work on, he would be happy to collaborate. I immediately started to work on the song.”

Fast-forward around two years, and that idea has now bloomed into a track that entangles Mancuso’s sun-baked melodies with Vai’s golden touch. It was an experience that the younger of the two will remember fondly.

“I wanted to have the most Steve Vai song possible on the record,” says Mancuso, who ended up altering his usual playing style to harness some Vai-ism.

“That’s why even I’m playing some stuff that maybe you can associate with Steve, some legato runs or some of the sounds that I used. I wanted to build an environment where Steve was comfortable playing. And that was very important to me.”

The guitarist had written the song with a key lesson from Vai, which had been said to him on the last day of the camp and still reverberated in his head.

“He told me, ‘Play what excites you the most about the instrument.’ And it’s one thing that I always think about,” Mancuso details. “Because the guitar has so many ways it can be played. You can play like Tommy Emmanuel. You can play like Yngwie Malmsteen. You can play like Allan Holdsworth.

“There are so many different techniques. You have tapping, legato. You have sweep picking. And that is why it’s such a personal instrument. You project a lot of your personality in it; you can play it in a really personalized way.”

Having now worked with one of his biggest influences, Mancuso is now eyeing another big-name collaboration and a signature version of his beloved Yamaha Revstar. But he’s also been quick to herald the next generation of players, saying there’s one star-in-the-making everyone should know about.

Steve Vai has revealed he’s heard a raft of unreleased Van Halen material and is in high hopes for the band’s highly anticipated forthcoming release, which will revive some of Eddie Van Halen's older demos.

Alex Van Halen recently caused a stir when he revealed that he and Steve Lukather were working on a posthumous Van Halen album using material the band recorded before Eddie's passing, intended as a successor to 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth.

The two rock heavyweights have a wealth of ideas to work with. And it turns out Vai has heard some of it.

“I was up at Edward’s house once, in his studio,” Vai tells Guitar Player in a new interview. “He had a room filled with tapes, and he was pulling them out, and we were listening. He would just sit, record, and play.

“I’ll tell you, nobody plays like they do when they’re sitting in their room alone,” he continues. “It was a whole library of tapes, and it was such great stuff.”

He adds that he asked Eddie about the prospect of turning his swathe of riffs and ideas into a solo album. The late virtuoso said that “he always felt that Van Halen was his solo records”.

In turn, Vai has given his blessing to the Lukather-guided project. Lukather is, he says, “the best guy to help with this” given how close Eddie and Lukather were.

However, after early rumors got out of hand, Lukather was quick to clarify his role in the album shortly after its announcement, explaining that he won’t play a single note on it after fans reacted to the news.

While details of the record remain scarce, we do know that Bad Company vocalist and recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Paul Rodgers turned down the opportunity to front it.

Former bassist Michael Anthony, meanwhile, who was replaced by Wolfgang Van Halen in the band’s latter years, has his own thoughts on how the record should be released, and such a move would render the need for a vocalist redundant.

Vai, of course, has his own chapter in the band's history, having been chosen by Diamond Dave for his solo band. He says he got the gig with a little help from Billy Sheehan.

Some bassists lie back, but not Gary Shea – as he tells Bass Player, “Always remember: no bass, no party!” And it’s been quite the party for Shea, who’s played in New England, Warrior and Alcatrazz with John Fannon, Vinnie Vincent, Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Stump.

“I always wanted to be the bass player on the jukebox original track as opposed to the bass player playing the song in a bar,” he says. At 74, he continues to do just that with New England and Alcatrazz. “I’m very fortunate to have played with some of the best of the best over the years.”

He admits that involved dealing with some tough customers: “I set out to find the music that inspired me and met some incredible musicians along the way. Not bad for a left-handed guy living in a right-handed world! All talented musicians can be difficult. That’s what makes them special – they stick to their guns and follow their vision.”

What sounds were you going for when you formed New England?

New England was a progressive rock band that played short songs. With Jimmy Waldo’s Mellotrons and an array of other keyboards, we had a huge palette of color that could take us from heavy orchestral rock to quiet ballads. It was a great opportunity to play some very creative basslines. New England is a great fit for my style.

What was your rig like then?

I used three Ampeg SVT heads with four 8x10 cabs and two Cerwin-Vega B48 MF 18'' reflex horns, each with a front-loaded 12'' speaker. I also had Moog Taurus bass pedals. I used my 1965 L Series Jazz Bass with a P neck and Tele pickguard.

I played with my fingers, using my fingernails for more clarity and attack. I also had a 10-string Explorer bass, a Hamer Blitz bass with a Kahler bar, and an 8-string Cruise bass, custom-built by Paul Hamer.

The 10 strings had a high B string and could be tuned to fifths for more chordal work. I had one of the last ’76 Bicentennial Gibson Thunderbird basses from the factory. I had the top painted white by a young Mike Pedulla, who lived nearby.

What was it like having Paul Stanley produce New England’s debut? Was he miscast in that role?

On the contrary – working with Paul was very comfortable. We were all the same age and had the same influences like Free, Terry Reid and The Move. Our goal was to re-record our 16-track demos to 24-track, and Paul was an excellent fifth voice in making it sparkle.

We also had ace engineer Mike Stone from the Queen camp, who got massive sounds for us with his expertise at the recording desk. Being part of The Kiss Army was nothing to sniff at; it got us on their 1979 Dynasty tour.

Despite strong material, New England fell short. What happened?

Our big problem was that our record company, Infinity/MCA, folded during its first year of business, just as we’d started tracking our second album. We had six major-label offers for our first album, and chose to go with Elektra for our second and third albums.

The transition took precious time. Although we were doing great musically, working with Todd Rundgren and touring, Elektra let us down on the promotion side of things. You can hear what would have been our fourth album on our Cherry Red boxset.

Is it true that New England’s management was focused on Kiss and neglected your band?

I have what I call the David-and-Goliath theory of management. You can have your cousin manage your band, who’ll lay his life down for you, but has no major contacts. Or you can go with Mr. Big, but he has big-name clients that you must compete with for attention.

We chose Bill Aucoin for his vision, experience and direction. It was up to us to be great and earn attention. We’re all still friends with Kiss. I recently played at a convention in Finland with Bruce Kulick.

How did you meet Vinnie Vincent and form Warrior?

As New England went into pre-production for its fourth album, guitarist John Fannon left the band for family reasons. We put the word out to replace him and got some great inquiries. The best one was from Gene Simmons, who told us of a guitarist named Vinnie Cusano who was writing with them for their new album in L.A. [Creatures of the Night].

They were looking for a replacement for Ace Frehley, but there was a concern that Vinnie was too short to be in their band. Gene suggested we contact each other. Vinnie sent us a demo tape that we really liked. It was in the Foreigner vein but a little heavier.

He flew to Boston to audition for us, and, unbeknownst to him, we learned his demo tape. He played our music very well, but we blew his mind when we played his music. He smiled and said he couldn't find anyone who sounded like us in LA. We decided to pool our resources and start a whole new band in Los Angeles.

Tell us about the recordings you did with Vinnie.

At the time, Vinnie was very together musically. As well as working with Kiss, he was working on the television show Happy Days. Prior to that he’d played with Dan Hartman and Edgar Winter.

His style was more like Jeff Beck, and the music was straight-ahead, radio-friendly rock. Vinnie has a cool voice, but didn't want to sing and play guitar. We auditioned Fergie Frederiksen, who would later join Toto.

I taped rehearsals on my Sony TCS 350 cassette deck for my own benefit. A few years ago, a CD was released of these sessions under the name Warrior that we were floating at the time. The tapes are bass-heavy because I wasn’t taping the whole band.

I had a great roaring midrange sound at the time, using my 1980 G&L 1000 bass, played with a pick. I was playing through a very beat-up Acoustic 360 bass amp rental at SIR Sunset. I offered to buy it on the spot, but they declined!

Is it true that Vinnie took some of Warrior’s material and used it for Kiss and The Vinnie Vincent Invasion?

Warrior only lasted two months when Vinnie was asked to join Kiss full-time. Great for him; not so great for us, but a deal hard to refuse. We kept in touch a bit as time went by. Vinnie had many songs, and we’d touched on some that showed up later down the line on his solo albums. His only shortcoming at the time was stressing over making final decisions on arrangements and mixes.

How did Alcatrazz form?

Jimmy Waldo and I decided to stay in LA rather than go back to Boston. I got a call one night from manager Andy Truman, who was a neighbor of Graham Bonnet.

Graham had just left the Michael Schenker Group and Rainbow. They were looking to start a new band as opposed to a solo artist band. Barrymore Barlow from Jethro Tull was to be on drums and Zal Cleminson on guitar. Andy asked if I knew a keyboard player, and I mentioned Jimmy.

Jimmy, Andy, Graham and I met at the Hyatt Hotel bar on Sunset and discussed forming a band with a European rock feel. We were offered a record deal with no demo on Rocshire/MCA through our freind Bob Sifkin, A&R for MCA.

How did the young Yngwie Malmsteen come into the picture?

Barry was asked to play on Robert Plant’s solo album so he stayed in England. Zal was not in the picture. We auditioned two guitarists that weekend – Laurence Juber from Wings and a young Yngwie.

Laurence is a great player; but obviously, Yngwie was what we were looking for to complement Graham's background with Ritchie Blackmore. I came up with the idea of using Alcatrazz as the band name. Later on, we added an extra Z like in “jazz” or “nazz.”

What was your rig like by then?

I had my three Ampeg SVTs and four 8x10 cabs that I’d brought out from Boston. Later on I switched to a Randall endorsement, using their RB 500 solid-state heads and eight 2x15 cabs.

I continued to play my G&L 1000 and later switched to Aria Pro SB Elites with EMG pickups and Badass bridges. Yngwie got me in with Aria basses, and I got him in with my D’Angelico endorsement for strings and picks. I later sold all of my Ampeg gear and cases to Yngwie’s band – I didn’t want to deal with tubes any longer.

Yngwie takes a lot of credit for the music he made with you. How accurate is that?

Yngwie actually has a great sense of humor in private. Of course, he didn’t write all the songs, vocals, keyboard parts and basslines. Island in the Sun was a New England song that Jimmy had written. Graham wrote new lyrics for it, and he wrote General Hospital.

We were a band, not a solo project. I put in a B minor ascending arpeggio at the intro of Hiroshima. Yngwie told me I was stepping on his solo, but the lick stayed. He did write a major part of the music but it was no-one’s solo album. Because of the band’s structure, he played some of his most memorable solos on No Parole.

What led to Yngwie leaving, and how did Steve Vai enter the picture?

Yngwie was replaced for becoming difficult to work with. We’d auditioned Chris Impelliteri and Steve Vai in secret. We chose Steve, but both are brilliant guitarists. This was prior to going a major tour with Ted Nugent in the summer of ’84. Our label agreed to the swap, but asked that we do it going into our next record. We all agreed to that.

Steve seems much easier to work with.

Yngwie is great, and Steve is awesome. They’re bookends. Steve was a joy to work with musically and brought a whole new bag of tricks from the Zappa camp. I’m very proud of the level of musicianship on Disturbing the Peace. Along with producer Eddie Kramer, I felt we’d come into our own sound and looked forward to more down the road.

What led to losing Steve, and Graham torpedoing the band?

Once again, a guitarist of ours was offered a deal you can’t refuse! This time it was from David Lee Roth. Of all the guys David could get to play with after Eddie Van Halen, he chose Steve Vai. We split amicably and are still good friends.

Graham refused to record some outside material Capitol Records A&R suggested to us, and they didn’t renew our contract for a third album. That’s life in the big city.

What led to New England and Alcatrazz both reforming?

New England got back together in 2003. We realized we had great chemistry and we’d been away for too long. Our first rehearsal produced two great songs, which led to some spot live appearances.

Eventually we took things further by playing over a dozen shows on the East and West Coasts as well as Tokyo. We’ve recorded an EP and a live album over the last 10 years on a part-time basis.

Alcatrazz reuniting morphed out of The Graham Bonnet Band. Jimmy was asked to play some keyboard tracks on an album, then joined as a touring member. Joe Stump was added as lead guitarist.

I went along on a Graham Bonnet Band tour doing an Alcatrazz set, testing the waters on a few gigs in the Southwest and Japan. It went very well and led to reforming Alcatrazz properly, signing a record deal with Silver Lining Records. We took drummer Mark Benquechea and guitarist Joe Stump with us.

Would you work with Yngwie or Graham again?

Over the years I’ve learned to never say never. Music is a very liquid gift. It ebbs and flows in sometimes strange ways. All of us have worked extremely hard making music together, and that strength shows when we get back together as if nothing happened. Life is mysterious, and I rule nothing out. Keep an open mind and a warm heart.

And you finally put out those long-lost Warrior recordings.

Yes – a combination of live rehearsal tapes and demos done at the Record Plant in LA. It’s a showcase for what might have been.

What are your thoughts on Vinnie charging hundreds of dollars per song?

I don’t know any more than everyone else knows! He’s welcome to sell his music however he wants. He seems to be in a rough spot, and I wish him well.

Out of John Fannon, Vinnie, Vai and Yngwie, who’s the best guitarist you ever worked with?

That’s the old question – which flavor of ice cream is best! Ther’s no definite answer. I love them all, each for a special reason. I must also add Joe Stump to the group. He’s a master shredder. He has also been an associate professor at Berklee for the last 20 years.

What’s next?

Most of our shows are fly dates. I recently played on Hirsh Gardner’s new solo album, Three Times the Charm. My latest endeavor is my new book, No Bass No Party – it’s about walking into a department store, buying an inexpensive guitar, and eventually playing Madison Square Garden. It’s a story of patience and persistence, navigating through the music business with its pitfalls of contracts, lawyers and record deals.

Alcatrazz has begun work on the band’s seventh studio album, due for release later this year. Touring will resume at that time.

• Warrior Featuring Vinnie Vincent: The Complete Sessions is out now via Cherry Red. Shea’s book No Bass No Party is available via BWL Publishing.

Billy Sheehan knows a thing or two about holding down the low end for some of the world’s top virtuosos, having worked with everyone from Paul Gilbert and Mike Portnoy to David Lee Roth.

And, it just so happens that Sheehan who introduced another virtuoso – a certain Steve Vai – into the fold when he was playing alongside the former Van Halen vocalist.

In 1984, Vai found himself replacing Yngwie Malmsteen as the lead guitarist of Alcatrazz, with whom he recorded their sophomore album, Disturbing the Peace. However, Vai was soon recruited to join the solo project of post-Van Halen David Lee Roth – although, as Sheehan recalls, Vai wasn’t his first pick.

“The original idea was Steve Stevens, but he was busy with Billy Idol and wisely decided to stay with him,” Sheehan remembers in a new interview with Guitar Player.

“I told Dave I know another Steve, ’cause at the time my band Talas was on Relativity Records out of New York City, and Steve was also on that label, and we’d talked about doing something together before the Roth thing happened.

“Steve, because of his association with Frank Zappa, had a sense of humor about his playing, which was very important for the Roth band.”

As Sheehan describes it, Vai’s stint with a musician as left-field as Zappa left an imprint on his playing, which became “kind of quirky”.

“He had all the fundamentals very, very down, then added the quirkiness from the Zappa thing. So Vai came in and was just awesome, a great, great player,” he continues. “So he was in, and we had a great time putting that Eat ’Em and Smile tour together.”

As for what he remembers from those heady days with Vai, Sheehan immediately replies, “He’s such a dedicated player. We’d be in the dressing room before the show, and he’d be there for hours, just working on stuff, head down for hours at a time before every show, pretty much.

“That also shows how much he cares about the audience, too, ’cause you want to do the absolute best for them all the time. Steve is definitely in that club.”

Later on, Sheehan would join Vai on some of his solo tours as part of his backing band, The Breed.

“It was always a blast,” he recalls. “ We had so much fun on those tours – no nonsense, no drugs, drinking, disrespectful rock star bullshit. We were all just legitimately having fun, and it was like a 24-hour comedy show.

“There was a lot of mutual respect in the bands I played in with Steve. I have nothing but great things to say,” he concludes.

And speaking of Vai, for those in the hunt for their own top-tier home studio, the guitar maestro just listed his LA property – which comes fully equipped with his famed Harmony Hut studio – for $11.7 million.

Steve Vai has put his Los Angeles property up for sale – and it comes complete with the electric guitar virtuoso’s famed Harmony Hut home studio.

As reported by the Robb Report, Vai purchased the Encino home for $1.2 million 30 years ago, and promptly turned the run-down shack at the end of the backyard – which had once been the residence of gardener, who died in the space some time in the past – into the ultimate guitar paradise.

Vai once retold the tale of the Harmony Hut’s creation in a blog entry posted to his official website, documenting the various renovations he had done to the place while he was on the road for the Ultra Zone tour.

“The house itself was vacant for 10 years before we bought it, but there’s two acres of land so we saw the potential,” Vai wrote. “There was a gardener that lived in the little shack out back while the house was vacant for 10 years. The poor guy died out there and was not discovered for 2 weeks when the neighbors noticed a funny smell. Ah, a perfect place to make beautiful music, right?”

Nonetheless, Vai gave it a much happier next chapter – reinvigorating the building and turning it into a light-filled home studio space.

“I added a small room to it and bumped out the front and put in a huge window, so now when I work at the desk I can look out over the backyard and see the kids, the sun, etc,” he continued. “It’s a very comfortable environment with various fabrics on the walls and colored tiffany-type lamps that set the room in a warm glow…”

It became something of a sanctuary for Vai, who used the fully functioning studio extensively to write and record. He also filmed live performances there, and ended up working on The Story of Light and Modern Primitive.

It also became a safe space for his comprehensive guitar collection, with a huge array of builds hung up across the wall.

During a studio tour video posted to YouTube last October, Vai showed off some of his Harmony Hut collection, which included guitars personally gifted to him by the likes of Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, Mick Mars and Frank Zappa.

There’s also Vai’s first-ever electric, his Whitesnake Ibanez, the three-neck Heart guitar which spurned an absurd arms race with Michael Angeo Batio, and more.

Unfortunately, the listing doesn’t include the guitar collection, so any prospective new owner will be left with plenty of empty wall hangers to fill with their own guitars.

Head over to Sothebys Real Estate to explore the full listing.

The ever-outrageous shred wizard Michael Angelo Batio has revealed the origins of his iconic quad-necked guitar, which was designed to go toe-to-toe with Steve Vai.

The 1980s was a decade that pushed the electric guitar to new extremes. While Eddie Van Halen lit a fire under a new generation of players with his tapping fireworks, and Yngwie Malmsteen was breaking the speed limit with lightning-fast arpeggios, Michael Angelo Batio was standing out by shredding on not one, not two, but four fretboards at once.

He’d already turned heads with his double-neck guitar, which, in contrast to the traditional parallel neck designs – see Jimmy Page playing Stairway to Heaven – found Batio’s necks pointed opposite ways, allowing him to legato two fretboards simultaneously. But this was the ‘80s, and he was quickly outdone.

“Steve Vai came out with his three-neck heart guitar,” Batio says in the new issue of Guitar World. “My label wanted me to challenge Steve to a duel. I didn't see the point in competitions like that.”

Mark that down as another ‘what if’ moment in music history. Michael Angelo Batio versus Steve Vai would have been a guitar duel for the ages. But luckily, the story didn’t end there.

He continues, “The label went, ‘Michael... Steve's got three necks, and you have two. You know what you need?’ And I went, ‘Four.’ They loved it.

“As it happened, Wayne Charvel was building all my guitars,” he adds. “I said to him, ‘Can you do this?’ I have a good engineering mind for guitar design, so I designed the Quad. I told him how I thought it should be four separate guitars, and that was that. It was the wildest thing. There was no limit to what we were trying to do.”

When the maverick shredder unleashed the fury of the Quad, playing at Formula One speeds with not a single guitar pick in sight, many thought there was some studio wizardry (read: cheating) going on.

“No, no,” Batio returns. “Those songs were clocking at 200 bpm, which was nothing for me – that's all 16th notes. That was all analog tape. There were no punches. There are a lot of guitarists who can play like that now.”

Batio’s full interview features in the new issue of Guitar World. Print and digital copies can be ordered from Magazines Direct.

The SatchVai Band recently treated fans to a spectacular jam at a show in Portland, covering two bona fide rock classics and littering them with three-part guitar harmonies and oodles of guitar solos.

The band, spearheaded by resident virtuosos Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, powered through a high octane take on Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll, before riding through Steppenwolf’s ever-cool Born to be Wild.

The show at the 2,700-capacity Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall was the second date of the band's latest run, marking their first dates since last summer and their first US run.

The Surfing with the Hydra tour is now making its way across the US for the first time. Before, the SatchVai Band's only show on home soil prior to this tour was a debut gig in New York in 2024.

So, to mark the occasion, they dropped in two rock guitar staples into their encore.

Marco Mendoza handled vocals pretty damn well across the two songs, but given the context of the night, all eyes were on the fretboards of Vai, Satriani, and their well-picked third guitarist, Pete Thorn. It was the latter, after some extravagant three-part harmonies, who delivered the first solo, unleashing a flurry of hot pentatonic licks on his Suhr signature guitar.

Vai was next up, and as is to be expected, there was a little more weirdness sprinkled in, including some whammy-lavished mimicking of Robert Plant’s crooning vocal lines, all while staying faithfully in blues rock territory.

Satriani actually didn’t get his chance to strut his stuff until Born to Be Wild, and he serves up tapping and harmonic licks aplenty. It's like his time in the Best of All Worlds band is rubbing off on him.

There was also a tasty wah solo from Thorn, more screaming leads from Vai, and some dextrous arpeggios from Satch, who was seen to be rocking his EVH-coded 3rd Power Dragon amps. A nod to Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love to top it all off was a doozy, too.

The band’s first US tour sees Animals As Leaders in tow – for even more virtuosity – and a SatchVai album has been teased for the near future. They released their third single, Dancing, earlier this year, with the help of Dethklok’s Brendon Small.

Steve Vai has recalled the time he played Brian May’s legendary Red Special electric guitar at just 20 years old – but admitted he struggled to get a tune out of it.

In a new interview with Q1043 New York, Vai looked back on his early years as an aspiring artist who'd just moved to Los Angeles to make it big as a guitar player. While there, he crossed paths with one of his heroes.

“It was bizarre because I had just moved out to LA,” Vai says “Just a year before that, I was in my teenage bedroom with Queen posters and Led Zeppelin all over the walls. And I walk into the Rainbow [Bar & Grill], and there's Brian May standing at the bar. And I just thought, ‘How is this [possible]?’”

The Rainbow is LA’s famous rockstar-friendly watering hole, which has been frequented by the likes of Guns N' Roses, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper and more.

But for a young Vai, walking in and seeing a bona fide rockstar was still a shock. Yet May was welcoming to the starry-eyed fan.

“He actually invited me to a Queen rehearsal,” Vai continues. “I was just this unknown kid, and there I was. And then there it was, the Red Special. I said, ‘Is that it?’ And he goes, ‘That's it. You wanna play it?’”

May has been loyal to the electric guitar he built with his father throughout his entire career. So loyal, in fact, that last year’s Gibson SJ-200 was his first-ever signature guitar, after a series of Red Special releases via Brian May Guitars.

As such, it was made to his liking – no one else’s. Vai figured that out pretty quickly. Some of the specs were just too far removed from his own personal setup – particularly the neck.

“I just remember thinking, ‘I can't play this thing.’ The neck is like a bat,” he goes on. “It's got like, what, gauge 0.8 strings? But it was a miracle to actually have the guitar under my fingers, and he allowed that.”

Indeed, when showing off his custom-built Vai-ified Red Special guitar earlier this year, Vai said the neck was “the size of a small tree,” and him trying to play it was like “a giraffe on roller skates.”

May signed with Gibson in a surprise move in 2024, and while there's been speculation that a Gibson-made Red Special is in the works, there’s sadly no sign of movement there yet.

Elsewhere, May says he gave the Red Special one mod after taking inspiration from Jimi Hendrix, but he quickly regretted it.

From playing Van Halen with David Lee Roth to replicating Robert Fripp's prog wizardry in Beat, Steve Vai has often taken on demanding gigs. But his toughest tonal challenge came during his Whitesnake days.

Roth famously singled out former Frank Zappa guitarist Steve Vai to be the lead guitarist of his new solo project, believing he could outgun the one and only Eddie Van Halen. More recently, the physicality of Fripp's playing has been a huge undertaking for Vai.

In both cases, he pulled through – but to this day, the task of following in the footsteps of John Sykes in Whitesnake was a completely different challenge.

“I discovered that it would be harder to try to replicate his tone than anybody else,” Vai says in conversation with Eddie Trunk. “When he recorded those Whitesnake records, all the stars aligned for him. He really delivered, not only the writing and the construction of the parts, but the tone.”

Sykes, who also played on Thin Lizzy’s final album, Thunder and Lightning, passed away last year. He played on two Whitesnake albums, 1984's Slide It In, and their self-titled LP three years later. Vai took his place for Slip of the Tongue in 1989 as a new-look Whitesnake closed out the decade. Sykes was a tough act to follow.

“It was uber fat, you know?” Vai says of Sykes' guitar tone. “I tried to think of his harmonizer [pedal], and how it spread, because it didn't sound like [there was] a lot of doubling. But it was spot on; it seemed to cover a lot of audio real estate.”

Vai’s experiments and research led him to accept that this new-era Whitesnake was a very different proposition. So, instead of copying Sykes' tone and style verbatim, he had to get more creative.

“When it came time to play those classic John songs live, I would hit a preset, and it would widen up a bit,” Vai says. “But I’ve got to hand it to him. What he did on that [self-titled] record is stupendous. His tone, attitude, vibrato, the choice of notes, and the songs themselves; he delivered in a big way.”

Sykes, the man who once dived into a burning car to save his 1976 Les Paul, was one of rock’s most underrated players, with Guns N’ Roses among those paying tribute to him in the wake of his passing. Vai was also among his admirers.

In related news, Doug Aldrich has revealed the guitar he found best replicates Sykes’ tone, having played with the group in the early 2000s.

Coca-Cola has enlisted Steve Vai to reimagine the Van Halen classic, Jump, as an anthem for the 2026 FIFA World Cup – and yes, it's got shredding galore.

One of the world’s biggest sporting competitions, the 48-team soccer tournament is being hosted by the USA, Canada, and Mexico this summer. To celebrate, Vai has lent his virtuosic hands for a lead-laden version of the track.

Vai’s licks pepper the song like confetti, with whammy bar wails, luscious harmonies, and a flash of tapping – in a nod to the song’s co-writer, Eddie Van Halen – characterizing its tasteful but impressive guitar solo.

“I never know what might come across my desk as an inquiry, but this was a taker,” he says of the wild reworking of the track, which also features Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, Colombian vocalist J Balvin, and American singer-songwriter Amber Mark.

It also continues Coca-Cola’s tradition of reworking a classic track in honor of the World Cup, having been an official sponsor of the competition since 1978.

Van Halen released Jump in December 1983, and it became the band’s first and only song to top the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It was also nominated at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards, losing out on Best Rock Performance to Prince’s Purple Rain.

Despite its success, Eddie initially had to work hard in order to convince the band to put it on the record.

“When I first played Jump for the band, nobody wanted to have anything to do with it,” EVH told Guitar World in 2014. “Dave said that I was a guitar hero and I shouldn’t be playing keyboards. My response was that if I want to play a tuba or Bavarian cheese whistle, I will do it.”

The track has been covered countless times, including a percussive acoustic version by Mike Dawes and an all-star live performance by Billy Idol, Steve Stevens, and Derek Sherinian.

Meanwhile, Alex Van Halen says a new Van Halen record was virtually finished before Eddie passed away. The project, which includes Steve Lukather, is now looking for a vocalist after Paul Rodgers turned them down.

When Guitar World scheduled an interview with Dethklok mastermind Brendon Small, we had no idea that a few hours prior, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai had premiered their latest SatchVai music video, for their new single, Dancing.

In the comical clip, Small portrays a misguided manager who tries to convince the guitarists of the importance of “motion” and “energy,” which leads to a series of auditions by a wave of impressive dancers as the duo perform in a school gymnasium.

The video isn’t Small’s first collaboration with Satriani and Vai, as both served as guest voice actors on Small’s cult animated TV series, Metalocalypse. Since then, Small explains, both guitarists have proceeded to serve as mentors.

“When I was discovering guitar, Flying In A Blue Dream was about to come out and Passion and Warfare had just come out, so I was in guitar heaven,” Small says.

“Joe's music is so creative, and his [sense of] harmony and melody are so strong. I think he's one of the great songwriters, and I could say the same thing for Steve. It felt like they were playing these kind of dream melodies in this dream universe.”

Years later, Small met the pair at a Guitar Player-sponsored competition (“they put me on as the funny guy at a dais, where I would just make jokes the whole time”), where they “became very friendly, very easily, very quickly,” he says. Soon after, Satriani left an indirect stamp on Dethklok’s music.

“Joe actually helped me find guitar sounds for Dethalbum II,” Small explains. “I had just finished Dethalbum I and was working on Dethalbum II, and he said, ‘Where are you at with the process?’ I go, ‘Well, I’ve run out of studio time, so I'm doing overdubs from my home studio.’ He goes, ‘What are you using to record the guitar?’ I said, ‘I'm using my Line 6 POD,’ and he goes, ‘I’ve got something that may work better.’

“He asked me for my address, and he sent me two things in the mail,” Small continues. “One was his new distortion pedal, the Satchurator, and he [also] sent me his old Palmer cabinet simulator, because I didn't have an amp mic room or anything. And he said, ‘Get this stuff set up, and then give me a call.’

“Later, I found myself on the phone with Joe Satriani, and he's kind of giving me tech support and showing me, like, ‘Hey, this filter knob – that's going to be your best friend,’” Small continues.

“Steve Vai has done similar things for me. Both of them have been mentors to me in many different ways – musically, business-wise, financially, all kinds of stuff. Steve gives such great advice, and so does Joe. Joe's a natural teacher, and so is Steve.”

While Small says he had a blast filming the Dancing video, his favorite moments on set were off-camera.

“There's a lot of downtime on a video set – they're shooting all these dancers and everything – so we were huddled in a corner just talking the whole time,” he says. “For me, it was one of the most glorious days because there are my two guitar heroes, and we're just talking about the inner game of guitar the whole time.

“It's really funny, because in the world that I've kind of carved out for myself – which is part-time producer/director/writer, and then part-time musician – while I'm doing one, the other atrophies. So while I'm directing a movie or something, my guitar playing is just kind of going, like, ‘All right – you're on hold. I'll get back to you in a while.’

“I noticed that some parts of my guitar playing had atrophied over the years, and some parts had gotten better,” Small explains. “I took a lesson last year with Jason Richardson, and [as] I sat with Joe and Steve, I talked about how I kind of took my guitar-playing apart and cleaned the engine and put it back together again. They were very curious about that – ‘How does that work? How are your muscles working?’

“I'm talking to these guys who are kind of the statesmen of the entire guitar industry, and they're giving me really great advice. Steve Vai’s giving me posture advice. All this stuff, I'm taking in like a sponge, because it's a different game of guitar. It's the mental game of guitar, and Steve had a lot to say about that, and so did Joe. That day was pretty amazing.”

The complete Guitar World interview with Small – whose band Dethklok will soon join forces with Swedish viking metal warriors Amon Amarth on the North American “Amonklok Conquest” tour – will be published in the coming weeks.

In recent years, Matteo Mancuso has deservedly been heralded as one of the greatest players of his generation. Now, he's named a fellow young virtuoso who he believes deserves more recognition.

Mancuso, who is set to release his second studio album, Route 96, next month, has famous fans in Steve Vai, Tosin Abasi, and Al Di Meola. He’s also shared the stage with Joe Bonamassa and more than held his own, all while shredding without a guitar pick.

But, speaking to Guitar Player ahead of Route 96’s release, he’s turned the spotlight away from himself and towards a player he’s willing to put the ‘guitarist of a generation’ tag upon.

That player is Daniele Gottardo. The modern electric maestro recently shredded his Charvel Super Strat during Jeff Beck tribute shows, which also involved Joe Satriani and Steve Vai band members, and former Jefferson Starship players.

He’s also earned the mantle of being Steve Vai’s new favorite guitar player.

“He is truly one of the best players in the new generation,” Mancuso purrs. “And I’m not just saying that because he’s Italian. Daniele is a complete player. He can literally play everything.

“I remember when Daniele’s videos came out. Everyone was mind-blown by his tapping technique, his taste, and his tone.”

Indeed, the guitarist, who is fast approaching 40,000 Instagram followers, isn’t short of praise, with Vai also waxing lyrical over his talents.

“He has an elegant touch, stunning intonation, and innovative style,” Vai once said of him. “He honors the melody.”

Gottardo has released four solo albums since 2010, with his latest, INKBlot, arriving in 2022. He’s pretty prolific on YouTube, too, and he executes complex two-handed tapping parts with a frightening ease.

A quick look across his socials shows that he's got Gretchen Menn and Jordan Rudess under his spell too, and he's part of Hedras’ Apex Breed trio of virtuosos. His future is bright.

Meanwhile, Jason Becker has prophesied an equally blinding future for Mancuso, having won the guitar hero's heart during a visit to his home last summer.

Despite having served under Frank Zappa, releasing one non-genre-conforming solo record (1984’s Flex-Able) and scoring a key – and now legendary – role in Crossroads, which hit theaters in March 1986, Steve Vai was still relatively unknown in the land of regular humans. But after joining the solo band of former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth, he’d become a household-ish name.

“At 26, I got to live the ultimate guitar rock-star fantasy,” Vai says. “I wish every rock guitarist could experience a piece of that, but it would need to be the ’80s when that type of thing was flourishing.”

The “thing” Vai is talking about is glammed-out shred, which was popularized by Eddie Van Halen (and a few others), who, in the eyes of Roth’s fans, Vai was about to be directly compared to. Not that this bothered Vai.

“I believe I worked well in the band because I’ve had rock in my blood since I was a teenager,” Vai says. “I was able to authentically express that, with my quirk, of course.”

Also helpful was Vai’s habit of coming in behind iconic shredders. “I’ve been lucky that way throughout my career,” Vai says. “I replaced Warren Cuccurullo with Zappa, Yngwie with Alcatrazz and Edward with Dave. Somehow the fans kept welcoming me in. Maybe they just like watching a guy try to keep his head above water!”

In all fairness, judging by Roth’s debut solo record, 1986’s Eat ’Em and Smile, Vai did more than keep his head above water. Tracks like Yankee Rose, Tobacco Road, Shyboy and Vai’s favorite, Big Trouble, tell the story of a match made in hair metal heaven.

Eventually, Vai would break out solo and turn the guitar world upside down, but he couldn’t have done it without having served under Roth. “I always look for things I haven’t done before, or I haven’t really heard from any other guitar players,” Vai says.

As for how he looks back on working with Diamond Dave – one of music’s most notorious characters – post-Van Halen, Vai smiles, saying, “He was a handful in the best possible way. Working with him was like being strapped to a rocket made of charisma and fueled by tequila.”

How did you end up playing guitar for Dave?

I was living in a little apartment on Fairfax in Hollywood when I heard he was looking for a guitar player. For some strange reason, I just knew it was my gig. It wasn’t an ego thing – I didn’t think, “I deserve this” – it was more like a quiet voice inside saying, “This is yours.”

The next day, the phone rings; it’s David Lee Roth. Turns out [bassist] Billy Sheehan had mentioned my name. Dave tells me he’s putting together a band for an album, a tour and even a movie, and he asks if I want to come down and jam. I knew they’d been trying out other guitar players, but once we started playing together, it just clicked. Sparks were flying, musically speaking.

How did you handle being compared to Eddie Van Halen?

I knew all ears would be on me. It was probably the most coveted guitar chair in rock at the time. I adored Edward's playing, so from a fan’s point of view, I understood that people would be skeptical. I would’ve been too. But competing with Eddie Van Halen? Forget it. You don’t compete with Mount Everest – you just admire it.

My mindset was simply to contribute something authentic, be myself and let that speak for itself. Once the album came out and we hit the road, the reception was fantastic. I didn’t feel the backlash people warned me about. I think fans realize you can’t replace Edward; you can only bring your own voice.

What did Dave expect from you?

Dave wanted a young hotshot who could play their ass off. He wanted a supergroup with players who could really throw down, and he nailed it: Billy Sheehan, Gregg Bissonette and me. It was wild chemistry. I knew I had to supply some riffs, and the ones I did resonated with Dave.

He has a great ear for what works for him and what doesn’t. As a soloist, I was quite the “shredder,” and that was popular at that time. I knew that was important to Dave, but he was also interested in solos being a musical statement and not just a flurry of notes.

What gear did you use in the studio, and what was the vibe like?

When I joined Dave, I was embarrassingly inexperienced with what people would call “big rock guitar tone.” I didn’t even own a Marshall! I was using Carvin X-100B amps, which I brought into the studio for Eat ’Em and Smile.

I tracked a few songs with them using my yellow Jackson Soloists and also my pink one. I also used my Charvel “Green Meanie.” But the Carvins weren’t cutting through for the more aggressive tracks.

Luckily, Steve Stevens was recording across the hall. I mentioned my tone troubles, and he lent me one of his favorite Marshall heads and cabs. Boom! Instant magic. I ended up using his rig for most of the album. Thanks, Steve. You saved my sonic bacon.

Ted Templeman produced Van Halen and Roth. What was he like?

He was brilliant. I learned a ton from him. He gave you total freedom, but his suggestions were so insightful that you wanted to follow them. I came from a background with Frank Zappa, where precision and complexity ruled the day.

Ted taught me the opposite – how to capture raw energy. He knew how to bottle the chaos of young lunatics like us and make it sound big, tight and alive. We respected him as the Yoda that he is.

What do you remember about working on Yankee Rose, That’s Life and Tobacco Road?

I knew this record would be forensically examined, so I leaned into my quirks. I’ve always had this playful, slightly mischievous streak in my playing. One such example is my “guitar talking” technique. I thought it’d be fun to open the album with it, just to grab people by the ears.

That’s Life was pure Dave – swagger, humor, and showbiz all rolled into one, and I was happy to support it. And Tobacco Road? That was a blast. Dave suggested it, and I went home and cooked up a guitar arrangement filled with weird little twists and turns. I remember thinking, “There’s no way they’ll let me get away with all this nonsense.” But they did. And that freedom made the whole session magic.

You handled the horn arrangement on I’m Easy. Did Zappa prepare you for that?

I started writing horn charts in high school and really dove into it at Berklee. I’ve always loved big band arrangements. It’s like sculpting sound with brass. Doing the horns for I’m Easy was… easy.

What’s your favorite guitar moment from Eat ’Em and Smile?

Perhaps my solo on Big Trouble. I had full creative freedom on that one, and it came out exactly how I heard it in my head – melodic, daring and unapologetically “Vai”. To me, it didn’t sound like Edward or anyone else, and that’s usually a sign that I was hitting the mark I set for myself for this record.

And the riffing with Billy on Shyboy? Total mayhem. Imagine two electric eels wrestling inside a transformer. That’s what it felt like.

Were you satisfied with the album?

It felt gloriously surreal to listen to that record from top to bottom and be embraced by its audio energy elixir. I still feel that when I listen to it now. A part of me ponders, “How the heck did we do that?”

We were holed up in Dave’s basement for about a year putting this thing together, completely under wraps. I couldn’t tell anyone what we were doing, so I had no clue how it would land. But I loved it. It had energy, humor and attitude. It felt alive.

Were you prepared for the wave of popularity that followed?

One funny moment – I was at the gym, walking through the parking lot and nearly got hit by a car. The driver slams his brakes and yells, “Hey, you dumb fuck – watch where you’re going!” All the while, he was blasting Bump and Grind at full volume while headbanging. I just smiled and thought, “At least he bought the record!” [Laughs] Soon we were playing to 20,000 people a night.

Would you do anything differently?

That gig was a gift for many reasons. It launched me into a whole new world and taught me how to command an arena stage. I can’t think of anything I would have done differently. It was financially rewarding, too, but after a 45-year career, I discovered that success is very nice – the money, fame, respect and so on. It's all quite fine and good, although it does come with certain challenges.

But of vital importance is the people you meet along the way, the experiences you have with them and the bonds you create. This is the real payoff, and when I look back at Eat ’Em and Smile, those are the things I'm most appreciative of.

To this day, Billy, Gregg and I are unbelievably close. They’re like brothers. There’s no way to put a value on our friendship that could compete with worldly success. I could even pick up the phone and call Dave. We were actually good friends back then.

He was like a mentor to me in many ways. When I look back, I thank my lucky stars. The whole thing feels extraordinary to me now. Touring, the videos, the huge stage, crazy clothes, girly hair, the backstage parties, the mayhem – it was outstanding.

Beyond that, what does Eat ’Em and Smile mean to you?

In all the bands I’ve been in, be it Frank Zappa, Alcatrazz, Roth, Whitesnake and the others, I knew there was a brand of music bubbling up in my imagination that I had to get out. Those eccentric ideas were there for as long as I can remember.

When I quit all those bands to make [1990’s] Passion and Warfare, I thought it might be the end of my career, but it was an easy choice. If you don’t allow your true creative impulses to manifest, it usually leads to depression.

I was fortunate in that Passion and Warfare and my brand of music and playing found an audience that has sustained me and my music. When I think of Eat ’Em and Smile, it’s like a wild, beautiful chapter in a fairytale. Somehow I got to be one of the characters.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Where demand for pedal effects grew exponentially during the early ’70s as musicians sought new sounds, many stompbox designers turned to the synthesizer for new inspiration.

Mike Beigel was among the earliest engineers who realized that synth modules could easily be adapted into standalone effects. Although Guild hired Beigel to develop a synthesizer in the early ’70s, the project got canned, which inspired Beigel and former Guild chief electronics engineer Aaron Newman to form their own effects company, Musitronics, in 1972.

Beigel and Newman developed the prototype for their first product, an envelope filter called the Mu-Tron III, during the summer of 1972, and it became an overnight sensation when Stevie Wonder used the effect for his supremely funky Clavinet riff on the hit Higher Ground released in mid-1973.

The circuit consists of an envelope follower that uses optocouplers to control a voltage controlled filter. The optocouplers respond to input signal playing dynamics to sweep the EQ filter, resulting in a funky wah sound that is exceptionally expressive and responsive.

The wah sounds go well beyond those of a typical wah pedal, producing a wide variety of textures that include duck-like quacks, vowel-like vocal tones, piercing synth squeals and bowel-shaking bow wows.

Controls on the Mu-Tron III include a Mode switch with low-pass, band-pass and high-pass filter settings, a Peak (Q) knob for adjusting the resonant peak, a Gain knob and low/high Range and down/up Drive rocker switches.

Most guitarists prefer the fatter, thicker sound of the low-pass setting, which provides full bass and rolls off harsh treble frequencies. The early versions run on either two 9-volt batteries or an 18-volt power supply, while late-’70s versions (when Musitronics was owned by Arp) have a built-in power supply.

“We used a dual supply instead of a single supply so the effect could have a wide dynamic range,” Beigel said. “That way you could really smash on the guitar and not distort the whole effect.”

When combined with other effects like distortion, phase shift/flanging and pitch shifting, the Mu-Tron III can generate some dazzling, unusual sounds. Because the effect is dynamically responsive, it should be placed at the front of the signal chain and effects like compression and distortion should be plugged in after it.

Although the Mu-Tron III’s sounds are undeniably funky, and the pedal made a strong impression in the hands of funk musicians like keyboardists Stevie Wonder and George Duke and bassist Bootsy Collins, most of the guitarists known for using one hail from genres other than funk. Psychedelic jazz fusion guitarist Larry Coryell was an early adopter during the ’70s, as were Jerry Garcia and Frank Zappa.

Andy Summers and Steve Vai (taking a cue from his mentor Frank Zappa) employed a Mu-Tron III frequently during the ’80s and ’90s, and more recent, users include Trey Anastasio, Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo), Larry LaLonde, and Peter Frampton, who expertly summoned vocal-like textures from his Mu-Tron III on his 2006 cover of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Steve Vai has looked back on the time Steve Stevens came to his rescue while he was in the studio tracking his first album with David Lee Roth.

Sometimes, songs demand specific gear to let them truly shine. Fortunately for Vai, whose own gear at the time left much to be desired, he had a bona fide rock guitar great right next door to call upon.

In 1985, David Lee Roth left Van Halen – apparently, Van Halen's secret recording of Michael Jackson’s Beat It solo was the last straw for him. So, he set out on a solo career and recruited a new guitar foil who he thought could outgun Eddie’s alien talents.

Vai, coming off the back of grueling work as Frank Zappa’s transcribist and then his guitar player proper, was the man handpicked by Diamond Dave for the job.

Their debut album, Eat ‘Em and Smile, thanks to the MTV-championed single, Yankee Rose, would go on to be certified platinum. But behind the scenes, getting the right sounds for an album that was meant to see DLR stick it to his former bandmates wasn’t easy.

“When I joined Dave, I was embarrassingly inexperienced with what people would call ‘big rock guitar tone,’” Vai confesses in the new print issue of Guitar World.

He arrived at New York's Power Station studios – where Chic, David Bowie, and Dire Straits had recorded before them – armed with his Carvin X-100B amplifier. He quickly realized it wasn’t up to the task.

“The Carvins weren't cutting through for the more aggressive tracks,” he explains. “Luckily, Steve Stevens was recording across the hall. I mentioned my tone troubles, and he lent me one of his favorite Marshall heads and cabs. Boom! Instant magic. I ended up using his rig for most of the album.”

Judging by the timeline, with Eat ‘Em and Smile released in 1986, Stevens could have been recording his parts for Billy Idol's Whiplash Smile at the time. However, recording for Ric Ocasek's This Side of Paradise and the Top Gun soundtrack also took place around then, so we can't be definitively sure. Either way, Vai was thankful for his aid.

“He saved my bacon,” Vai laughs.

Vai is among the Ibanez artists to get a new signature model for 2026, and his Gold Flame PIA is a work of art. Vai will also feature on Matteo Mancuso's forthcoming second album, having once called the young shredder “the evolution of the guitar.”

The guitarist’s full interview can be found in the new issue of Guitar World, which also features conversations with Ola Englund, Andy Powers and more. Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy.

NAMM 2026: Ibanez reliably stuck to NAMM tradition by showcasing a load of new signature guitars at this year’s show, giving Nili Brosh’s first-ever artist electric guitar its long-awaited debut.

Talk of Ibanez going into the show was focused mostly on the Alpha series – which nods to Tosin Abasi’s guitar designs – but the majority of eyeballs on the show floor were trained on the ‘Wall of Fame’ signature display, which offered new axes Brosh, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Kiko Loureiro and more.

We’ll be as impartial as possible, but Brosh’s is our favorite of the lot. That purple finish? Those yellow EMG pickups? Those exclamation mark inlays?! From top to bottom, it’s a sensational signature, one that puts the virtuoso’s spin on the classic RG template.

It’s been a long time coming, too. Back in 2022, the long-time Ibanez endorser revealed she’d worked on a custom shop model that was later played on stage alongside Danny Elfman. It’s been one of her main touring guitars since, with fans calling for a signature release.

This is slightly different from the OG custom model, with a deeper finish and purple inlays, instead of yellow. Still, it retains that distinct Brosh vibe, and leads the charge for the rest of Ibanez’s 2026 signature line.

“My thing basically was, you don’t see too many RG signature models these days,” Brosh told Guitar World. “I’ve always been an RG player so that’s something I felt like made sense for me.

“I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here. It’s a workhorse that I’ve been using for everything that I do.”

The line also includes an official racing stripe-adorned signature for JB Brubaker, new-look models for Nita Strauss, Joe Satriani and Kiko Loureiro, and an extraordinarily styled Gold Flame PIA for Steve Vai.

Ibanez has gone big on visuals this year, it seems. The Gold Flame PIA has specially tailored pickup covers and inlays, while Satch’s Cherry Sunburst model puts a vintage spin on his usually Sci-Fi-esque six-string.

The Ruby Red Sunburst Flat finish of Loureiro’s KIKO300RRT, meanwhile, is very nice on the eyes, as is Strauss’ appropriately named Torch Red JIVA.

While we’re on the topic of visuals, we should also give a shout to Ibanez’s limited-edition RG, which celebrates 250 years of the USA with a very tasty blue, red and white art-style splash finish.

None of these models have been put on the Ibanez website just yet, but GW was able to get up close and personal with each of the models while scouring the Anaheim Convention Center for gear.

It’s only a matter of time before they do go live on the site, though, so keep your eyes peeled on Ibanez for more info when it lands.

Matteo Mancuso will release his second studio album in 2026, and not only does it feature Steve Vai, but the LP will also be emboldened by the advice that Vai gave the young virtuoso during its recording.

Route 96 will continue where the Tosin Abasi and Al Di Meola-approved guitarist left off with his 2023 debut LP, The Journey, which cemented his reputation as one of the hottest young talents around.

That was succeeded by the single Paul Position, a baritone guitar romp inspired by Paul Gilbert. This time, Vai has gone one better than just honoring one of his heroes: he’s enlisted one.

Vai features on the track Solar Wind, joining forces with a player he once called “the evolution of the guitar,” while also offering him some crucial recording advice. Unlike his debut, Mancuso's Route 96 – named after his birth year – was recorded at a 96kHz audio sample rate, thanks to Steve Vai’s intervention.

There are plenty of technicalities behind why this sample rate can be beneficial, but the long and short of it is that it can reduce digital artifacts and improve the overall sound quality of recorded material.

“I know myself better musically thanks to this album,” Mancuso believes. “I went through a process of eliminating things, and through that I realised more about the things I liked best about the music I compose and hear.

“The first album was made when I was studying a lot of things. Now I study less but listen more to just the music that attracts me. Route 96 is a more honest-sounding record, I would say.”

It’s not the first time that Vai has offered tutelage to the young star. He’s previously spoken to him about being himself as a guitarist and how no player can truly copy another. It sounds like that’s led him on a journey of self-discovery, where his voice leads the way.

We’ll have to wait a while longer to hear Solar Wind, but the record’s first single, Isla Feliz, has dropped, and it features the gypsy jazz talents of Antoine Boyer. The track sees Mancuso wielding, as he usually does, his Yamaha Revstar, and is seen as a love letter to his Latin influences for classical guitar, despite boasting some electric guitar distortion for good measure.

“This album has come at the right time,” Mancuso feels. “I want to have a busy 2026 in terms of tours, [and] I wanted something newer and fresher to play. These ideas are more original and melodically stronger. There are more explorations, harmonically speaking. I think it shows who I am musically a lot better.”

In related news, Al Di Meola has offered his take on Mancuso's rapid rise, while Mancuso himself recently discussed why he prefers baritone guitars to seven-strings for when he wants more low-end.

Steve Vai has paid tribute to Brian May, after finally getting his hands on his eye-catching reimagining of the Queen legend’s iconic Red Special guitar.

May famously built his Red Special with his father, but for his own radical take on the famed build, Vai went down a different route. He linked up with the UK-based Guyton Guitars for a truly radical variant, which included “Steve specified woods, electronics, and scale length.”

May's original electric guitar has been treated to several spin-offs over the years, including a fundraising pink model and, more recently, Tony Iommi received an exquisitely made left-handed version.

However, Vai and Guyton have gone all-out with theirs, which boasts a quilted maple top and an intricately carved custom pickguard, alongside a host of other Vai-isms. It’s left the For the Love of God shredder in a reflective mood.

“In the 1970s, when I was a kid trying to figure out how to play anything in tune, Brian May was one of my absolute heroes,” he says in an emotional Instagram post. “His tone and touch oozed rock and roll class, the songs he wrote, and the notes he chose dug deep into my psyche and helped shape a future fantasy image of myself in my mind.

“But his Red Special was not just a guitar to me, it was a mythical object, an alchemical wand built by a young genius and his dad. I studied every photo and rumor I could find. That guitar planted the seed that maybe someday I could build my own, which thankfully never happened, due to a total lack of expertise.”

Drafting in Guyton, then, proved to be a masterstroke from Vai, who is now able to honor his hero in the right way. It's an apt full-circle moment for Vai, arriving years after a rather memorable meeting with the British virtuoso.

“At 20 years old, I moved to L.A. and started working with Frank Zappa,” Vai continues. “One night, I walk into the Rainbow Bar and Grill and see Brian just standing there. I thought I was hallucinating.

“Brian was incredibly kind to this unknown kid and then did the unthinkable: he invited me to a Queen rehearsal at Zoetrope. Sitting in a room with the entire band was already unreal enough, but then I saw the Red Special… time definitely slowed down.”

Vai was given the guitar to play. “It was heaven,” he reflects. Then, years after Vai sat in on that Queen rehearsal, May was the musical director at a guitar legends concert in Seville, Spain – and Vai was on the bill.

“Brian told me the story about a young guitarist he once let play his guitar at rehearsal,” Vai adds. “A kid who was in town working with Zappa and who played amazingly well. I let him tell me the whole story and then said, ‘Brian, that was me.’ This stands as one of the most satisfying full-circle twists the universe has offered me.”

Vai says he’s “truly humbled” to own the ‘Green Red Special,’ calling it “beyond beautiful,” crafted with a “devotion made tangible.” It’s certainly living up to its special billing.

It might not be the only high-end Red Special that we see in 2026, either. Gibson – to whom May signed in 2024 before releasing a signature 12-string acoustic last year – could be planning to release Murphy Lab-aged replicas.

Tom Morello’s 14-year-old son, Roman, has continued to prove himself a chip off the old block by shredding Steve Vai’s finger-burning For the Love of God in Mumbai.

The Rage Against the Machine guitarist and political activist has been championing his son’s talents for a few years now. There have been videos of him shredding at a RATM soundcheck and jamming with Jack Black, and last year, the father-son pair put a song out together as part of Morello Sr.’s first rock-leaning solo album.

Playing a customized Stratocaster, complete with a chrome pickguard and 'Full Power' scrawled on the body above the strings, Roman Morello makes pretty light work of Vai's endurance- and talent-testing track, in a video posted to Instagram by his dad. The post also includes the hashtag #thereishope, with Morello clearly putting his offspring in the same bracket as the two bands he deems the future of rock n' roll.

“For the Love of God, written by Steve Vai and performed by my 14-year-old son Roman in Mumbai, India,” Tom's caption reads. “Happy New Year.”

Cynical viewers might say it isn’t the cleanest performance, but that’s forgetting he’s only 14, less than half the age the already-vastly-experienced Vai was when he wrote the song. I know I couldn’t do that at his age.

The Morellos have been out on tour together, with Tom eager to prove why he once said his son could “shred circles around me.”

Their setlists have pulled from across Tom Morello’s career, spanning Rage Against the Machine cuts to Audioslave’s Like a Stone, alongside a host of well-chosen covers. Mr. Crowley has seen the pair pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, while John Lennon’s Power to the People underscores the family’s political values, and Bruce Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad nods to Morello’s unlikely stint as The Boss’s onstage foil.

It’s not clear at what point on the night Roman took on Vai’s now-35-year-old shredathon – perhaps as a warm-up act – but what’s clear is that his dad’s praise wasn’t just hyperbole. The kid has chops; he’s likely to make news headlines plenty more yet and surely, given time, branch out to stand up on his own two virtuosic feet.

Roman Morello, though, isn't the only youthful shredder to have mastered the song. One Hungarian guitarist nailed a performance of it at his prom, a feat that even got the approval of Mr. Vai. There is hope indeed.

The Positive Grid Spark was one of the unarguable entries on our list of the Greatest Gear of the 21st Century. It wowed in its original format, quickly dominating the smart amp space. We’ve since had the Spark 2, Spark Mini, Spark LIVE and even Spark Neo Core headphones taking the concept into new forms of all shapes and sizes. However, Steve Vai maintains good things come in small packages...

To say Positive Grid’s Spark Mini is essential to Vai would be an understatement. “I carry one in my luggage at all times,” he says. “I have one for my dressing room and one on the bus. Before every show, I use it to warm up, and I’ve even used it in the studio directly into my DAW.”

After years of dealing with archaic and unreliable tech, Vai was overjoyed to discover the reliability and larger-than-life sound of the Mini. This led him to develop a signature version of the Mini, the Spark Mini Vai. And, yeah, he loves it.

“Virtually every guitar-player friend of mine that I gifted one to is over the moon with it,” he says. “They write me all the time and tell me how much they love it… even people I didn’t think I’d ever hear from.”

It goes without saying that the Mini, in all its forms, changed the game for guitar players on the road, in small spaces or on a budget. It allows players of all shapes, sizes and skill-sets to feel like they're dominating the stage without a massive Marshall cabinet taking up space.

“It takes the headache out of having to fiddle with page after page of digital controls,” Vai says. ”Every time I go to plug into my Spark Mini Vai, it feels like Christmas. As soon as I received it, I knew it was going to be useful. I just didn’t realize how useful and indispensable it’d become.”

What’s your history as far as this class of amp goes?

Ever since mini-cassette recorders were being used – before tiny amps for guitars were even a thing – I’d check out virtually everything that was coming out. First there were small amps, but they were still too big and clumsy to throw in your luggage.

Eventually, those novel little cigarette-pack-size amps started to emerge, but they were horrible sounding. Then, a category of portable guitar headphone amps and multi-effects units started to become popular in the mid-Nineties and 2000s, when digital signal processing got small and cheap enough to put into a pocket-sized box.

The original Korg Pandora PX1 came out around 1995. It was a palm-sized digital multi-effects processor with amp modeling and a headphone output.

When did things start to change, leading to the Mini class of amps?

Other companies such as Korg, Line 6, Zoom, Tascam, Boss/Roland, Vox and Yamaha started creating these pocket guitar processors, and I used many of these. A lot of them had the ability to load tracks to play along with.

The challenges were that you had to use headphones, they could be a bit complicated to use and edit, and they always seemed to be missing something “real” in the tone; a lot of latency and thin tone was just something you tolerated. The tones were very digitized-sounding. So none of these pocket rockets were ideal, but it was what was available at the time.

Once I tried the Spark Mini, the light bulb went [on]. It was perfect for me. It’s small enough to take virtually anywhere – you just plug and play – and it sounds real right out of the little speaker. It has four instant presets, which is all I really needed; it has jam tracks, and you can upload anything to it. It has an aux-in, so you can plug any backing-tracks player into it.

Where does the app fit in?

The app allows for virtually endless combinations of amps, cabinets, microphones, effects, and so on. It has a headphone input when I don’t want to disturb anyone. And the AI function blew me away! You can describe the kind of sound you’re looking for, and it pulls from its plethora of digital delights to create a tone that is its idea of what your description sounds like.

How did the Mini Vai happen?

I reached out to Positive Grid and started a relationship with them to create a signature Spark Mini Vai that has various accoutrements that reflect my workflow and aesthetic.

Why do you feel the Mini is worthy of being on this list?

It’s real. It’s such a well-received device because it’s so easy to use and travel with. You can dig into it, and it responds like an amp usually does. If I didn’t have it, at this point, I’d probably just warm up without anything, because I’m done with those little pocket boxes. And none of the other smaller amps, that are not quite as small, have a sound I can hang with.

• Find out more at Positive Grid.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Joe Satriani and Steve Vai's maiden European tour as the SatchVai Band this past June and July was a milestone moment for the guitar world.

Now, the two are bringing their band to the States for a new leg of the aptly-titled Surfing with the Hydra tour in April and May 2026, with Animals as Leaders as support on all dates.

Speaking about the two’s first-ever collaborative States-wide tour, Vai says, “The SatchVai Band summer Euro tour of 2025 far exceeded anything I could have imagined. Joe and I struck pure jammin’ gold night after night.

“Being in the same band with Joe, playing songs we actually wrote together on stage, in real time, felt like watching a childhood fantasy step out of my teenage brain and stroll onto the stage. And somehow, it was even more rewarding, satisfying, and downright fulfilling than I ever thought possible.”

Alongside Satriani and Vai, the lineup is rounded out by drummer Kenny Aronoff, bassist Marco Mendoza, and guitarist Pete Thorn. They will not only be performing the collaborative releases the duo have put out so far, but also new material from a forthcoming Satch/Vai album and favorites from the pair’s prolific catalog.

Pre-sale tickets for the tour have just kicked off today with an Artist Presale, followed by local pre-sales tomorrow (December 11) and public on-sales on December 12.

For more information, head to the SatchVai Band's official website.

Earlier this year, the electric guitar titans released their sophomore collaborative single, the ’70s-flavored I Wanna Play My Guitar, with Glenn Hughes on vocals, which continued to tease what fans can expect from their upcoming album.

Steve Vai has partnered with a UK guitar builder to reimagine Brian May’s iconic Red Special, with a few tweaks of his own – and the result is quite something.

The Queen guitar hero’s legendary Red Special is one of the most well-known electric guitars of all time. Originally built by a young May and his father, it laid the foundation for a huge selection of Queen hits and, later, nspired the creation of Brian May Guitars – a brand that offers accessible remakes of the instrument.

As such, we’ve seen a few different takes of the Red Special over the years, but trust us when we say you’ve never seen one like this. And, what’s more, it was built for none other than Steve Vai, bolstered by a few tweaks that take it closer in line with the shredder’s Ibanez signature guitars.

Showing off the build on social media, Guyton Guitars writes, “What a pleasure it is to finally be able to share this. It's been a long term project, but now it's finally in the very talented hands of its owner, the one and only Mr. Steve Vai!!

“Steve specified woods, electronics and scale length, all subtly different from the original RS [Red Special]. The scale length is 25.5", with the neck being much closer to his Ibanez Jem/Pia guitars than Brian's Red Special.”

To compensate for the longer scale length – the OG is 24” – Guyton made the body itself slightly bigger. It comes with Yonderbosk Vai-Sonic pickups (custom-wound pickups made for Vai that fit the Red Special schematic), and some faithful expansive switching, including Series/Parallel and a built-in KAT treble booster.

Oh, and we should probably say, it looks absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. That veneered 5A quilted maple top – which has a matching headstock – is sensational. The birdseye maple fingerboard? Phwoar. Even the smallest details are exquisite; just look at those Yin Yang fingerboard inlays, cut from mother of pearl and Tahitian black pearl, with 9ct gold dots. Double phwoar.

And we haven’t even mentioned the pickguard yet. Crafted by Greg Goodwillie of Goodwillie Guns and Guitars, it depicts Vai’s logo among a swirl of elegant motifs, and raises the humble pickguard to high art levels.

“It’s not every day you get to work for a guitar player rightfully belonging on the pantheon of rock gods,” Goodwillie writes on Instagram. “There’s loads of little bits added into the scroll work .. the more you look the more you see, it was a seriously fun job and I’m very VERY proud to have been part of the build.”

“Mr. V is ELATED with his new guitar,” Guyton Guitars adds. “Rumour has it, Steve and his tech Doug have filmed an unboxing video, watch this space…”

At the time of writing, an unboxing video has yet to be shared by Vai, but we’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for when it lands. Here’s hoping we see him play it soon, too…

It might not be the only high-end Red Special that we see land. Gibson struck up an official partnership with May last year – and, when we spoke to May in June 2024, he dropped a heavy hint about the prospect of US-made Murphy Lab replicas of the Red Special.

We think of child guitar prodigies as a product of the YouTube era. Li-sa-X shredding Scarified at eight years old. Nine-year-old Maituo going viral with death-defying sweeps. America’s Got Talent contestants wowing judges with guitars bigger than they are. But Thomas McRocklin was tearing up an Ibanez JEM back in the 1980s – and winning over some of the biggest names in guitar with abilities far beyond his years.

At eight years old he landed a support slot with Ozzy Osbourne. By nine, he’d caught the attention of his hero Steve Vai, who helped secure him a record deal, and produced his band Bad4Good’s first album – but not before giving him a starring role in the Audience is Listening music video and handing over the original Passion and Warfare seven-string.

“I'd never seen a swirl before, never mind this seven-string with the handle,” McRocklin says of the Ibanez Universe – a priceless artifact now. “It's almost eerie to play that guitar. So much of Passion and Warfare was recorded on it. It's faded a little in color, but it's just as awesome as it ever was.”

His guitar journey began at four years old. By seven he was practicing eight hours a day and shredding in social clubs around his hometown of Newcastle, UK. “It was just an obsession. The guitar was right there all the time, on my lap. Even breakfast time when my dad would feed me: ‘Get that porridge down you, boy!’”

Nowadays, McRocklin – real name Thomas McLaughlin – is the definition of a modern-day guitar entrepreneur: he runs his own plugin company and teaching platform, and makes music as part of shredwave duo McRocklin and Hutch. He had a signature guitar deal with Kiesel and his sights are on a fresh collaboration with Strandberg.

But finding his place in a changing guitar world wasn’t easy. When shred gave way to grunge, McRocklin walked out on his childhood record deal – and before long he’d hung up the guitar entirely. When he came back the best part of two decades later he had to relearn everything, and abandon his Vai-isms to find his own voice.

What inspired you to pick up the guitar in the first place?

It was actually my dad. He was really into rock, metal, Van Halen, Ozzy, early David Lee Roth. He was never a big player, but he was into it enough to have one around the house. He would go to work and leave his guitar hidden behind the TV, and I would always drag it out. I would come back from school and pick it up straight away.

Once he saw that I had an interest he was like, “Let's teach him some chords.” He wasn’t a virtuoso or anything, but he knew enough to get me started. And once I nailed Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back in Town chord changes, and it sounded like something real, that’s when the bug started. I was four or five at that time.

You developed into some serious shred stuff relatively quickly.

Between seven and eight is when the shred obsession came in, when I heard the early Roth stuff, all the EVH stuff, and the early Satriani stuff like Surfing with the Alien and Paul Gilbert.

By the time I got my Tony McAlpine B.C. Rich guitar, that’s when I got really into the shredding. That led to getting my first Ibanez. By eight to nine I was all over the place, tapping, trem dives – all the classic techniques were there.

You were gigging from a young age as well, right?

Often in places that I shouldn’t have been! That was always hilarious. My favorite place was social clubs, because there’d be strippers on. They’d hide me behind Marshall stacks, or I’d be booted out the place through the back doors, tthen they’d rush me onto the stage.

Gigs started for me really early; I think that was a good thing because it helped me to be confident. It was very difficult to get a conversation out of me when I was kid, which made for some horrendous TV moments – just so awkward. But being comfortable playing on a stage in front of people developed really early.

What did audiences make of it?

I think they were just in shock a lot of the time! They were expecting some nice little tunes, and then it’s a Marshall cranked up and there’s full fireworks. But it really caught people’s attention.

It’s that type of mentality and approach that led to my first big gig supporting Ozzy when I was eight. My dad was a bit of a chancer, let's say – he’d try things and often they’d just work.

Ozzy is playing in Newcastle and we're obviously going to go. Next thing, I’m a little kid dressed head to toe in leathers, big cowboy hat and boots five times too big for me – you couldn’t get Steve Vai-like boots in my size! – so I looked absolutely ridiculous!

But it worked. We’re knocking on the back door of Ozzy’s gig. Management, security – whoever – look at me and think, “What the hell is this all about? Drag him in.” Plug me into Zakk Wylde’s amp and next thing I’m going crazy. Harmonics flying everywhere! That leads to Ozzy going, “Let’s get him on tonight.”

How many times do you hear an amazing story like that now? It’s a different world.

Totally. But it’s that approach led to me meeting Steve Vai. We didn’t even have tickets to Monsters of Rock in ’88; we just drove down to Donington because David Lee Roth was playing. No tickets, no passes, no guestlist – just turn up, drive right through security, because I’m dressed like this little rock star kid.

We parked up right beside Steve’s caravan. I’d recently got a Steve Vai floral JEM. Little Gallien-Krueger amp powered up, sit in the back of the car with the boot lid up, and play. His guitar tech or someone saw me, spotted the JEM, and it's like, “Get him in the caravan.” Next thing you know, Greg Bissonette and Steve’s there, and the rest of the band, and I’m trying my best to play Tobacco Road.

How did the relationship with Steve evolve?

There was a bit of record label interest in the US. Interscope brought me over to play in their office, like, “Can we form a band around Thomas here?” So I was in California and there was a knock on the door. It was the Ibanez Artist Relations rep, who we’d been speaking to for a little while.

He brought the Passion and Warfare prototype seven-string guitar, which would go on to be the guitar that was on the record cover. And then there was a cassette of Passion and Warfare, unreleased. I listened to it and I was absolutely mind blown.

What were your memories of the Audience is Listening video shoot?

I had to learn the song as best as I could so it looked realistic. They blew a Marshall stack up behind me – they didn’t tell me they were going to do that! That’s a natural reaction when you see me tense up; and they had snakes and spiders on the set, which I hated.

The best part was seeing Steve shoot his end scene, where he’s doing the “I am the passion, I am the warfare” speech. Being there in the sports hall with a big blue screen, and seeing Steve do his performance, was pretty cool.

You were also writing songs with Steve during this time for Bad4Good’s debut album, Refugee. What’s songwriting with Steve Vai like?

He was writing songs which I think, in hindsight were a year or two out of touch with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The Bad4Good band didn’t love the Refugee record or the songs, so we’d always spice them up heavily when we played them live. I’m much more fond of that record now.

Steve would send me tapes and tapes and tapes, and it was all somewhat produced Steve Vai riffs like David Lee Roth meets Whitesnake meets Passion and Warfare. It was something of that time. From a guitar point of view, very, very cool – but commercially it was out of touch with what was happening with grunge.

You were the youngest person to play the Jason Becker benefit concert. What are your memories?

It was so chaotic. You can imagine all these guitarists arriving for soundcheck! There was a little bit of friction – one of the guitarists, who was assigned to be with me, saw me play and he was like, “Eff that little bastard! I’m not playing on the stage with him!”

A lot of the guitarists, in particular Zakk Wylde, had something to say about that. I ended up playing with Zakk – he was all for it. By the end of the songs we played together, I was on his shoulders!

The only thing I remember is my final solo on the top of Zakk’s head. I’ve got this JEM, and it’s probably bashing all over his head. He’s swaying around; he’s had a few drinks, and I’m sure I saw my dad almost ready to catch me!

When did you realize Bad4Good was over?

When I walked out of the whole record deal. We were doing a lot; I was on tour with the band, we’d support Joe Satriani for a couple of months, and I’d do three, four months in California, and then a week or two in my hometown, Newcastle.

In a lot of ways it sound cray – it was the absolute dream to be living in Hollywood and LA and doing all these things. But by the time I was 13 or 14 it just felt like the tables had turned. Every time I’d come back to Newcastle, I just wanted to do regular things.

So I walked out of Interscope Records. That took a lot of people in LA by surprise. But fair play to my dad, because he always said, “As soon as it isn’t fun, no matter what you’re doing, we’re going back to whatever you want to do.”

Why did you walk away from the guitar in general?

After I walked out of the LA thing I was 15 or 16, and then I became obsessed with drum and bass, breakbeat and jungle music. At that time it was difficult to incorporate guitar into electronic music. I stopped playing, and it just didn’t occur to me for many, many years to pick it up.

It got to the point where, after so many years of not playing, it felt so alien – all my mechanics and motor skills and dexterity, the strength, everything, just felt horrible.

In 2016 I picked up the guitar again and I was just starting to get on social platforms. I posted a little clip playing a Fender Stevie Ray Vaughan Strat. And there was like a big reaction that I wasn't expecting – people were like, “You’re back!” I was like, “Wait a minute – it’s been 20 years since I did anything. How does anyone remember?”

But from there, the obsession came out of nowhere. The spark came back, and the love of playing came back, and then the obsessive personality came in, and that was it. I was practicing hard because I had so many years to make up for, and that began the start of the next journey. But it was a very difficult and long first year just to really work on the actual techniques again.

I immediately became the player that I was when I was at 13 or 14. I went to Bogner Amps’ factory and I was jamming around on an amp, searching for tones that I could relate to as a player after so many years off.

One of the guys walked past and he’s like, “That sounds great – sounds just like Steve Vai!” I was like, “Oh, shit. This can’t happen again.” As amazing and lovely as Steve is, I didn’t want the Vai association again as an adult.

So the hardest thing was how to find a new sound that’s my own and identifiable. I spent a year or so breaking every habit I’d built. I was drawing from drum and bass, electronic music, Skrillex. I love rap music, hip-hop – anything but guitar in terms of phrasing.

There’s a Strandberg currently sat in your lap. I know your endorsement with Kiesel recently came to an end… what can you say about where you’re going next?

I’m really excited by these Strandbergs. They work so well for me – first of all they sound and play really nice. Second, they're so light. I’m at a keyboard and mouse all day; I have this guitar on my lap so much.

And having played the same type of guitar for a long time, to play something that’s fresh gives me that extra bit of inspiration. If something really resonates with you and it makes you want to pick up the guitar more, go with it. It doesn’t matter what it is.

I’m not at that stage where we have anything official. But so far I’m really enjoying playing them. That’s all I could ask for at this stage – that I don’t take 20 years off from playing again. Because I think you’d see me with a walking stick, playing banjo or something!

• For more information, head to McRocklin.com and Polychrome DSP.

Young guitarists dream of playing the same stage as their heroes, but few ever realize the fantasy. Guitar prodigy Thomas McRocklin, however, had the opportunity to open for Ozzy Osbourne when he was just eight years old – and he landed the spot on the day of the gig.

Nowadays McRocklin – real name Thomas McLaughlin – is Polychrome DSP’s headless guitar-toting head honcho, but back in the ’80s, he was a kid with outlandish outfits and technique far beyond his years.

At eight years old, he was shredding up social clubs in his native Newcastle, UK after school – and it’s fair to say audiences were taken by surprise.

“They were expecting some nice little tunes, and then it's a Marshall cranked up and there's full fireworks,” he says in a new interview with Guitar World. “But it really caught people's attention.”

It was that mentality that led to the Ozzy support slot, with a little help from his dad, who McRocklin describes as “a bit of a chancer” – the kinda guy who wasn’t afraid to try outlandish acts to make his son’s dreams come true.

“Ozzy is playing in Newcastle. We're obviously going to go,” recalls the guitarist. “And then next thing, I'm a little kid dressed head to toe in leathers, big cowboy hat and boots five times too big for me. I would look absolutely ridiculous. But it worked, because now we're knocking on the back door of Ozzy’s gig.

“Management, security, whoever, look at me and think, ‘What the hell is this all about?’ Drag [me] in. Plug me into Zakk Wylde’s amp. And then next thing I’m widdling, going crazy. There’s harmonics flying everywhere.”

Be it the harmonics or the hat, McRocklin says something caught the attention of the metal god. “That leads to Ozzy going, ‘Oh, let's get him on tonight.’”

Back then, the young guitar player would simply go up and shred sections of his favorite solos from Van Halen and Steve Vai before being dragged offstage – sometimes literally – when he reached the end of his 15-minute set.

As a result, he didn’t get a whole lot of time with Ozzy – which was probably for the best, given he was terrified of the Prince of Darkness’ persona.

“The only thing that was in my mind was the stories of Ozzy biting the head off a dove or something,” explains McRocklin. “And he was behind me in this picture with his arms right out, wrapped around me. I was petrified, but he was super-cool. Zakk Wylde was super-cool.”

McRocklin and his dad would go on to employ similar tactics to attract the attention of Steve Vai, who ended up producing the young shredder’s debut album with rock band Bad4Good – and later handed him the historic Ibanez Universe featured on the cover of landmark album Passion & Warfare.

But that’s a story for another time. To be precise, later this month, when McRocklin’s Guitar World interview will be published in full.

Guitarists know all too well about gear acquisition syndrome. But before you order that new pickup, pedal, or amp to fix your niggling tonal troubles, have you considered that your pick, even how you hold the pick, could be the answer you’re looking for? It certainly was for Steve Vai and his own playing.

“I just was getting tired of not having a great tone,” he once said. “I went through all these amplifiers. I was searching for something that sounded like some of the things I was hearing at the time. Edward Van Halen had hit the scene. You had Yngwie. So many players. And I could never figure out why I don’t sound good.

“I started to experiment with the way that I pick, where I pick, how I pick, the angle, all of these things. You get to a point where you hear it and you know it, and then the work starts.”

As Vai points out, the pick is your most tangible link to the sound you make on the guitar, and is often the tonal secret to a player’s identity. It’s difficult to imagine Brian May without the metallic rasp of his sixpence, Yngwie Malmsteen’s thunderous 1.5mm fury or Paul Gilbert’s precise pick attack which owes a lot to his pointy 1mm (or thinner) pick played at an angle.

Not only can the pick help inform your tone, it will also help hone your technique, so it makes sense to consider your options. If you want a loud sound and/or play quickly, a 1mm or thicker (even 2mm+) pick is great as it won't flex when you dig in. If you want a bright tone for acoustic or electric playing, a thinner pick such as 0.88mm with light playing is ideal. It certainly works for many strummers as well as funk legend Nile Rodgers.

This article will help you discover, as Steve Vai did years ago with his own practice, that focusing on your picking technique and hand posture can provide immense improvements for both your technical versatility as well as a much broader sound palette.

Before you get to the playing examples (from warm to bright, pinch harmonics to the secretive clarinet tone), the photos below highlight beneficial options about holding the pick, how to pick and where to pick.

How to hold the pick

Examples

Example 1 - Flat and angled picking

Play this single string B harmonic minor [B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A#] lick with alternate picking throughout. Start with your pick flat against the string, then rotate the pick angle 45 degrees to the string so the edge of the pick cuts through the string. Listen to how the pick angle changes the tone, becoming brighter with the angled picking.

Experiment with the angle as well as the guitar's pickup selections – a Stratocaster's neck, middle and bridge pickups all sound very different and can enhance your picking choices.

Example 2 - Varying picking dynamics

This A harmonic minor scale [A-B-C-D-E-F-G#] lick is phrased firstly as 3 groups of 4 notes, then 4 groups of 3 notes. As you alternate pick, accent the initial note of each grouping with a louder down or upstroke to expand your volume dynamics.

For the accented notes (shown above the music notation with this symbol >) use your wrist to snap the pick through the string with more force and conversely pick the regular notes more softly.

Example 3 - Picking in different places along the string

Use this example to pick at different positions along the string to access different tones. The two phrases are based in the A blues scale [A-C-D-Eb-E-G].

For the first phrase, pick nearer the neck for a warmer, fuller tone then compare to the brighter attack. You may find that your preference is somewhere between these extremes, so do experiment.

Example 4 - The clarinet tone

And now to the clarinet tone – the secret sauce for connoisseur pickers! Whatever you're fretting, pick the string exactly 12 frets higher. The photo above shows a 10th fret note being picked at the (virtual) 22nd fret. The tone noticeably changes to a thick, almost hollow sound that is akin to a clarinet. For sure, it's a game-changer when playing melodies with only downstrokes.

This melody is based in D Lydian [D-E-F#-G#-A-B-C#] and outlines two triad arpeggios: D major at the 7th fret and E major at the 9th fret. Maintain note separation by fretting each string with a different finger.

Next, count up 12 notes and pick the string exactly an octave higher than the fretted notes, which in this case would be at the 19th and 21st frets. Use down strokes for all notes to get the clarinet tone.

Example 5 - Palm muting and pinch harmonics

Based in A minor pentatonic [A-C-D-E-G], this incorporates palm muted notes and pinch harmonics. Use the bridge pickup for a bright tone and touch the string with the side of your thumb nearest the strings just after you've picked.

As you pick the string, lift off your thumb simultaneously. It's this very fast, double contact (pick then thumb) that generates a pinch harmonic.

Experiment with picking at different points along the string to produce different harmonic pitches (there are a wealth of different pitches to be found between the neck and bridge pickups).

If you want inspiration for pinch harmonics, check out Billy Gibbons, Eric Johnson, Zakk Wylde and Steve Vai: all know how to make a distorted guitar scream with their pick.

Example 6 - All picking approaches together

This longer piece is an amalgamation of the previous techniques. Based around the G Phrygian dominant scale [G-Ab-B-C-D-Eb-F], it starts with alternate picked accents with heavier pick strokes played every 3 notes, then every 4 notes.

Next, move your pick near the neck to give the sweep picked notes a fuller, rounder sound. Finally, pick nearer the bridge for a bright tone and to awaken squealing pinched harmonics.

Three pick masters in action

Eric Johnson - Cliffs Of Dover

This is one of the most loved guitar instrumentals ever written with some of the most articulate picking recorded, here in a ramped up live presentation.

The intro features hybrid picking for the chords while the distorted lead lines feature masterful pick based playing including precise economy picking, up picks and pinch harmonics.

The otherwise mellow tone is balanced by the zingy attack of the fabled red Jazz III, which has a sharper point than traditional picks and a harder material which provides a very quick attack.

U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

The .88mm blue Herdim pick is the secret to The Edge’s early sound, not only because of the particular sound nylon picks provide, but also how he holds it.

By gripping the tip backwards, with the tip of the pick between the thumb and first finger, the strings are strummed by the textured, dimpled grip side of the pick, adding a unique scratch to the proceedings.

Holding a pick backwards isn't unique to The Edge – Pat Metheny and Robben Ford both favour this, too.

John Scofield - Blue Matter

Jazz fusion legend John Scofield uses a signature Ibanez 1mm pick which has a small teardrop style shape. His recognizable clear, articulate sound is in part due to his picking close to, or directly over, the bridge pickup.

Stevie Salas has backed up Rod Stewart, started a guitar trend via Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and was asked to join both David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar’s bands. But he doesn’t take any of it too seriously.

“I like to surround myself with super talent,” he tells Guitar World. “I always like to be the shittiest guy in the room – that makes me learn more and become better.”

Salas picks out his early ‘90s opening slot with Joe Satriani as a significant learning experience.

“I stole a lot of shit from Joe!” he admits. “But when I do it, it doesn’t sound like him; it sounds like me. I couldn’t do it when was there, but I was able to watch.”

While he’s promoting the reissue of his 1994 album, Back from the Living, his calling card remains the frenzied work from Bill & Ted. He didn’t like it when it arrived in 1989 – but he’s warmed to it now.

“A year ago I was with Keanu Reeves, and we talked about the third movie,” Salas says.

“I told him, ‘I’ve done a lot of amazing things, but when I die people will say, ‘That’s the guy who did Bill & Ted!’ He started laughing – we all feel like, ‘I don’t want to be known as the guy that did Bill & Ted.’ But it’s been an insane blessing – young guys are always like, ‘You’re the guy that did Bill & Ted!’ So there you go!”

Early on you rubbed elbows with George Clinton and Bootsy Collins, and eventually started working with producer David Kirschenbaum.

I left San Diego in ’85 after I got out of school and spent a couple of years rocking out with my band. My band was pretty good, but I didn’t think it was going to make it. I quit and moved to LA in 1985.

I was living in someone’s house with my next band, Color Code. We all got kicked out, and I was homeless from August to September ’85. Then I met George Clinton in the studio, and Terry Costa, wife of Don Costa, who produced Sinatra and Elvis. They let me live in their house in Beverly Hills. I was living in a rock star pad, but I had no money!

In ’87, David Kirschenbaum called me, because he knew I’d worked with George and Bootsy. At the time rap was very new; I was a big fan of Eddie Martinez’s playing with Run-DMC, and I was kind of emulating his funk-rock thing.

Someone said to David, “This kid knows about rap music.” I really didn’t, but I told him I did! So I became a producer for David at a studio called Power Tracks.

How did you end up working on movie soundtracks?

I met a Motown arranger named Gene Page, who told me about two African American boys called West Coast Posse, these badass rappers. There was this movie called Big Shots, about two black kids who steal a car and go across the country on an adventure.

They said, “We need some rap music.’ I said, ‘I can do it!’ and I went into the studio with these two kids. We created this song called Put On the Brakes. Atlantic Records loved it and released it as a 12-inch single.

That led to the next movie, Action Jackson. They needed another rap song, so I called the West Coast Posse kids and cut a song called Protect and Serve. That was another Atlantic 12-inch – and all of a sudden I’m the expert on hip-hop in LA, but only because no one in LA really knew shit about it. It was all being done in New York.

Is that what led to your memorable guitar solo at the end of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure?

David said, “Stevie, I need your help. There's this movie about these two kids who play guitar and want to be in a rock band, but they don’t know how to play, and they go on this history trip. They put a score down for the movie, but there’s no guitar at all. They want you to redo the whole movie over the score.”

So that was unusual, but it was dope. Once the movie was done, I forgot all about it and moved on. I got a call from David, who said, “The Bill & Ted movie is coming out, but the ending isn’t testing well.” I was like, “I don’t even know what that means!” I was a stupid fucking kid! He goes, “They’re gonna reshoot the end and they want some kind of guitar solo.”

What do you remember about recording the solo in a scene with George Carlin?

I drove to this house in the Palisades. They had the whole Bill & Ted setup in the garage, and Keanu and Alex Winter were there. Everyone thought I was a big shot, so they had me share a trailer with George! He told me stories all night; it was one of the most amazing nights of my life.

So they called me up to the set with George, and we’re wearing matching outfits. They stood me up on this crate, handed me a guitar, and Keanu, Alex, and the two girls were standing in front of me.

I said, “What do you want me to do?” The director, Stephen Herek, said, “Just play something crazy!” I wasn’t plugged in, and I knew it was a comedy, so the first thing I did was hit the A chord like it was Eruption. Then, I just started spazzing out with my fingers!

So the solo wasn’t premeditated.

No – I just started moving in the most unorthodox, weird way all over the fucking place. I was trying to be funny, playing air guitar, and you couldn’t hear anything. My fingers were going bananas and everyone goes, “That’s great! That’s perfect, thanks!”

A couple of days later I got the cut. I went into Power Tracks and used a Rock Tron, which made these really cool pre-amps that you could plug into a pro-gap, like a yellow Bass overdrive. Joel Dantzig from Hamer sent me an amazing Tele-shaped Hamer, so I had that guitar. All I did was follow my hands – I hit the A chord and followed my fingers the best I could. It sounded ridiculous to me, which I thought it was supposed to.

I got the gig with Rod Stewart after I’d done it. I took off on a world tour, and when I went to see the film I thought it was the worst, crappiest film I’ve ever seen in my life! I was super-embarrassed. But somehow that guitar solo became part of the franchise.

Tongue-in-cheek as it was, you started a trend that Steve Vai and Tosin Abasi followed.

The next movie came out and Steve Vai was the guitar guy. And then the third one came out and Tosin Abasi did it. It became this rite of passage to be the guitar guy in Bill & Ted, which is really weird!

In the early ‘90s you opened for Joe Satriani. What was that like?

A fucking nightmare! I was managed by Bill Graham, and by then I was hot shit, playing on big records and going on MTV. I was the guy in LA, I’d just gotten this huge gig with Rod Stewart, and then I signed the biggest recording contract Island had ever given a new artist.

I made my album – the Colorcode album with Bill Laswell – and Bill Graham said, “We should put you on tour with Joe Satriani,” because they also managed Joe. I was up for it, but I was scared shitless because everybody who went on tour with Joe got booed off the stage. You can ask him!

Satriani really wanted me to do it and I wanted to go back on tour. But I’d just finished with Rod Stewart, where we were playing 20,000-seaters, with mostly women in the crowd. Now I was going out with Satriani with 5,000 people a night, and it was all dudes. They would just stare at your hands, and I’d never taken a lesson – I just play.

So I was like, “This is going to be gnarly,” and I was scared shitless. But in the end it was one of the greatest things I ever did. I got standing ovations every night!

What’s the biggest lesson you learned from Satch?

Joe was so good to me. He was really bummed when I had to leave because my European label wanted me to do a more alternative tour. He never tried to shut me down – he’d sit up the front watching me.

He’d measure the volume every night of what the amp was doing, and it had to be the same. Then he’d measure the volume of the monitors, and they had to be the same too. He’d measure between the monitor and his amp to be exactly the same, no matter how big the stage. At soundcheck, he’d hit a note, walk around, and put an “X” on the stage.

During the shows he’d go over to that spot, hold that note, and the crowd would go crazy. He’d worked all that out – he knew exactly how it was going to sustain forever and do that shit. That was a big thing I learned.

In 1994, you made Back From the Living, which has built a cult following.

I went from being this cult guitar player with tons of dudes who’d show up to see me play to having a ton of chicks in the audience! I shot the photos for the album in New York with a Vogue photographer. It sounds corny, but she made me look beautiful!

Suddenly I had all these chicks piling in to listen to me play. That album never caught on in America, but it was number one in other countries. It was life-changing for me; it made me rich. I got this multi-million-dollar contract where I kept all the money!

Steve Lukather lived up the street from me, and he asked, “Where’s Stevie getting all that money – is he a drug dealer?” I swear to God! But that album changed my life in the most amazing way. I was just trying to blend James Brown and Jimi Hendrix; that was my thing.

Is it true that both David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar asked you to join their bands?

Sammy called me two days after he got fired from Van Halen, and David Lee Roth called me after Steve Vai left. I might be the only guitar player in the world who was called by two Van Halen singers!

Why didn’t you take the gigs?

I was a huge Van Halen fan. When I was with Rod Stewart I got to meet Eddie Van Halen, and we became friends. I was a Van Halen nut – but when Roth called me, I thought somebody was taking the piss! He talked to me for about an hour, but he kind of sounded like he was out of his mind.

He was talking about making a blues album, like B.B. King. I’m thinking, “What am I doing?” I didn’t like where Dave was going. I didn’t like [Roth's 1988] Skyscraper album, and I just didn’t think it was what I wanted to do.

With Hagar, I was a Montrose fanatic. He called me, flew me to San Francisco, picked me up himself in his Porsche, and I stayed at his house. We started to write together. I wanted to write a Montrose album, and he wanted to write an album more like the Eagles – and I hate the Eagles!

No disrespect, but that didn’t work for me. Plus, I still had a recording contract, and Back From the Living was blowing up in Europe. So I played on his album, but I couldn’t commit to the tour.

What’s next for you?

Well, I’m 100 years old now, so I don’t know! But Deko has been talking to me about rereleasing my shit – so I’m kind of letting people rediscover my old shit like it’s new shit. In 2006, I started producing television; I’m still writing and producing movies and TV now. But I’ll still do music stuff if it’s something that’s good and interesting.

• The reissue of Back From the Living is on sale now.

Founded in Japan all the way back in 1957, with roots stretching to the Hoshino Gakki company in 1908, Ibanez stands today as one of the key players in the guitar market.

The brand has always been synonymous with high quality – so much so, in fact, that there’s even a now-collectable ‘lawsuit’ period of instruments from a time when American brands felt threatened by their Eastern imitators.

And while it’s easy to think of Ibanez as a company that’s at the cutting edge of metal machines for the modern age, it's also innovated much further afield: producing timeless acoustics, semi-hollows, and hollowbody instruments – not forgetting, of course, some of the world’s best-selling overdrive pedals in the Tube Screamer series. Which is exactly why this list of the 25 most important Ibanez players crosses through various genres and styles.

It's become the go-to brand for all kinds of players, from original jazz cats like George Benson and fusion pioneers like Pat Metheny to acoustic renegades like Jon Gomm and Marcin and modern trailblazers like Nita Strauss and Yvette Young.

Steve Vai

Could Steve Vai be the most quintessential Ibanez player of them all?

After all, it was his first JEM signature in 1987 that inspired the RG series, which quickly became a bestseller for the company. And then just a few years later, his Universe signatures made history as the world’s first mass-produced seven-string electric.

More importantly, however, Vai ended up cementing his name as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, from his stints with Frank Zappa, Whitesnake, and David Lee Roth and game-changing solo records like Passion And Warfare, Real Illusions: Reflections, and his latest instrumental masterpiece, Inviolate.

Joe Satriani

How many guitarists can say they taught the likes of Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett, and Alex Skolnick? Joe Satriani is truly one of a kind in that sense, but more significantly, he took rock guitar to new heights with the double Grammy-nominated album, Surfing With The Alien, and continued to innovate on the releases that followed, most notably Flying In A Blue Dream and The Extremist.

The legato-loving legend has also been prolific as a collaborator, having conquered arenas as part of Mick Jagger’s band and Deep Purple, as well as starting the G3 supergroup alongside Steve Vai. More recently, he’s been busy working with ex-Van Halen members on the Best Of All Worlds tour.

Paul Gilbert

Alongside Vai and Satch, Paul Gilbert completes what many would consider to be ‘The Big Three’ of Ibanez shredders.

His work in Racer X and Mr. Big sets him apart as one of the most advanced minds to pick up a guitar, as well as one of the most ferocious alternate pickers the world has ever seen, fusing the neoclassical edge of Yngwie Malmsteen with the impromptu bluesiness of Edward Van Halen.

He’s had all kinds of Ibanez signatures through the years, from the PGM series to the Fireman models he’s usually seen with today, having designed the latter, reversed-body model himself.

Pat Metheny

Since the release of his debut album in 1975, Pat Metheny has continually proven himself to be one of the most revolutionary minds to ever work in jazz, cross-pollinating elements of the traditional with more worldly and experimental meditations.

He currently has two Ibanez signature models, the PM200 and PM3C, and his most famous works include Still Life (Talking), Letter From Home, and Bright Size Life.

As well as these sizeable contributions to the world of electric guitar, he’s also recorded unaccompanied acoustic albums like 2003’s One Quiet Night and last year’s MoonDial release, which saw him wielding a custom-built baritone guitar made by the luthier Linda Manzer.

Tim Henson and Scott LePage

The genre-smashing guitarists from Polyphia could very well be two of the most ground-breaking names in the company’s roster of signature artists, at least in terms of recent additions.

Their most recent album, 2022’s Remember That You Will Die, was voted as the best guitar album of that year by GW readers and was also notable for featuring fellow Ibanez endorsee Steve Vai on its mind-melting closing track, Ego Death.

By that point, both guitarists already had their own signature electrics, but what really got the industry talking was Henson’s TOD10N nylon-string electric, as prominently featured on the album’s lead single, Playing God.

Ichika Nito

As the very first Japanese guitarist to become an Ibanez signature artist, you could say Ichika Nito is making history for all the right reasons.

Much like Tim Henson and Scott LePage, his take on guitar is an incredibly contemporary one – combining the sounds of tech-metal with spanky and funky cleans while dazzling listeners with an array of legato and two-handed techniques.

He currently has two Ibanez models, the Talman-inspired ICHI00 and the headless Q Series-style ICHI10.

John Scofield

Having worked with everyone from Miles Davis and Charles Mingus to Herbie Hancock and Weather Report, John Scofield’s jazz credentials are as impressive as they come.

His most famous works include 1986’s Still Warm, 1994’s Hand Jive, and 1997’s A Go Go, as well as 1994’s I Can See Your House From Here – which saw him team up with fellow Ibanez signature artist Pat Metheny for an absolute tour-de-force of modern jazz. He’s also ventured into bluesier sonic pastures, having collaborated with John Mayer and Gov't Mule.

Josh Smith

Continually featured in lists of the best blues guitarists in the world today, it’s no wonder that Josh Smith ended up being recruited by Joe Bonamassa and has become a regular face in the blues giant’s backing band. The pair also work together regularly as producers, lending their expertise to fellow blues powerhouses like Eric Gales and Larry McCray.

The guitarist/singer currently has two T-style signatures, the FlATV1 and FlATV2, and is also highly regarded for his informative tutorials, some of which he has authored for this very publication.

Manuel Gardner Fernandes

As the driving force behind progressive metal band Unprocessed, German guitarist Manuel Gardner Fernandes is someone who knows how to blend the power of gargantuan riffs with blistering lead work.

Last year he was awarded his own signature guitar, the MGFM10 – a stunning headless model in Obsidian Black Low Gloss, boasting the same advanced switching system he uses to make his guitar go from apocalyptic roars to spanky cleans.

This year’s latest Unprocessed album, titled Angel, served as yet another firm reminder of his all-encompassing talents.

George Benson

Now at 82 years old, George Benson is one of the dyed-in-the-wool veterans of jazz guitar – a multiple Grammy-winning master who influenced the sound of an entire genre and ended up inspiring countless players that came after him.

Over the years, as well as releasing an extensive solo discography, he’s worked with mainstream greats such as Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, and Frank Sinatra, making him one of the most prolific jazz artists of all time. He currently has six Ibanez signature models, all of them hollowbody designs.

Yvette Young

There’s a wonderfully abstract quality to Yvette Young’s sound – of course, there’s plenty of dexterity and technicality, but the real magic lies in the sheer amount of personality the Covet guitarist throws into every note she plays.

Part of this comes down to her alternate tunings, which she has often cited as a secret weapon for yielding interesting results, as well as her experimental approach to tone, but then there’s also her piano background – which has led to her unique sense of phrasing and ear for melody.

Marcin

Having just turned 25, it would be fair to say Polish wunderkind Marcin Patrzałek is spearheading a new generation of daredevil acoustic guitarists.

He rose to fame partly thanks to his viral videos that shocked listeners in how they were able to blur the lines between classical and contemporary music. This all led to the release of his first signature in 2022, the Ibanez MRC10, and a major label deal that started with last year’s debut full-length, Dragon In Harmony.

Nita Strauss

In 2018, Nita Strauss made history as the first woman to have her own Ibanez signature model, which she named the JIVA. It was certainly well-warranted, given her background playing in Alice Cooper’s band, as well as the all-female tribute band The Iron Maidens.

Since then she’s worked with pop sensation Demi Lovato and has also released two solo albums, the latter of which featured an array of high profile guest stars, including Marty Friedman, David Draiman, and Lzzy Hale.

Andy Timmons

When it comes to tasteful shredding, Andy Timmons is up there with the likes of gold-standard legends like Eric Johnson and Steve Lukather.

He knows how to impress people, but more importantly, he knows when to focus on the melody. Which is exactly why he’s worked with high profile names like Olivia Newton-John, Paula Abdul, and fellow Ibanez endorsee Paul Stanley.

He currently has three Strat-style Ibanez signatures, which come fitted with three DiMarzio humbuckers, including his own AT-1 pickup in the bridge.

Jon Gomm

English guitarist Jon Gomm became one of the early standouts in the modern percussive acoustic scene thanks to the 2011 track Passionflower going viral, which led to both national and international coverage.

In 2020, he announced he’d joined the Ibanez roster, and two years later he unveiled a pair of signature models – the JGM5 and the JGM10 – tailor-made for wanting to implement two-handed ideas based on open tunings, while also using the body of the guitar for drum beats.

Lari Basilio

Over the last decade or so, Brazilian virtuoso Lari Basilio has established herself as one of the most tasteful players of her generation – striking that perfect balance between technical wizardry, emotional phrasing, and an inimitable sense of feel.

Her Seymour Duncan-equipped LB1 signature was debuted in 2021, making her the third female signature artist for Ibanez, with the latest update being this year’s version in black.

Her latest album, Redemption, was also released earlier this year, with no shortage of dazzling fretwork and earworm melodies.

James ‘Munky’ Shaffer and Brian ‘Head’ Welch

Steve Vai may have helped invent the world’s first mass-produced electric seven-string with Ibanez, but it was Korn who took that extended range to new (or nu) metallic heights, inventing a whole subgenre in the process.

For guitarists Munky and Head, the extra low-end only intensified the heaviness and helped them reinvent guitar music in the mid-90s.

Head left Ibanez for ESP back in 2016 but made his official return to the fold earlier this year with the launch of the K7 series.

Fredrik Thordendal and Mårten Hagström

Much like Munky and Head from Korn, Meshuggah guitarists Fredrik Thordendal and Mårten Hagström were early adopters of the seven-string, as demonstrated on the 1995 tech-metal landmark, Destroy Erase Improve.

Other releases like Chaosphere, Nothing, and Obzen would also become hugely influential on the tech-metal scene, with bands like Animals As Leaders, Periphery, and Tesseract taking metric modulations and polyrhythmic concepts to new sonic horizons.

The Swedish pair would later move onto eight-strings, leading to signature models like the M8M, M80M, and FTM33.

Paul Stanley

It’s easy to think of Kiss as a Gibson band, given the kind of instruments usually seen in the hands of lead guitarists like Ace Frehley and Tommy Thayer.

Singer and rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley, however, has been using Ibanez guitars on and off since 1977 – most notably the company's Iceman offset – which led to the five signature models that currently bear his name, including the striking Cracked Mirror PS1CM.

Kiko Loureiro

There’s a golden rule for anyone who plays lead guitar in Megadeth – you have to be, without question, one of the best shredders on the planet.

Brazilian virtuoso Kiko Loureiro had already proven his merits in Angra and was a perfect fit for the thrash titans when he joined in 2015. He recorded two albums with the band, 2016’s Dystopia and 2022’s The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!, before announcing his departure in 2023.

He currently has three Ibanez signature models, all of which feature his custom DiMarzio pickups and a double-locking tremolo system.

Dexter Holland and Noodles

As the two guitar players in The Offspring, Dexter Holland and Noodles are well-known for dialing in tones that are guaranteed to cut through any mix.

The pair were at the very forefront of the 90s punk rock scene, with key albums like Smash and Ixnay On The Hombre setting them up for the mainstream success that followed with the 1998 bestseller Americana, which yielded hit singles like Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), Why Don’t You Get A Job?, and The Kids Aren’t Alright.

Holland sticks with ARZ and RG models while Noodles has had several signatures, the latest being 2020’s NDM5.

Daron Malakian

Joining Paul Stanley, Fredrik Thordendal, and Tom G. Warrior in our list of Iceman devotees, System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian is someone deeply connected to the striking offset shape.

“I went to Guitar Center, and I saw this Iceman sitting there, and I was like, ‘You know, that’s a guitar that not too many people use’,” he once explained.

The Armenian-American group became one of the biggest bands of their generation thanks to the world-conquering success of tracks like Chop Suey!, Toxicity, and Aerials.

Nili Brosh

Well-renowned for being one of the most versatile musicians in the Ibanez roster, Israeli-American shredder Nili Brosh has performed with Danny Elfman, Cirque Du Soleil, Dethklok, The Iron Maidens, and Tony MacAlpine – a list which perfectly demonstrates just how well-rounded her skillset is.

Her third solo album, titled Spectrum, was released in 2019 and her main guitars include an Ibanez LA Custom RG770 and a Desert Yellow RG550.

Jake Bowen

The sole Ibanez endorsee in Periphery’s trio of hotshot guitarists, Jake Bowen is also their longest-serving member after founder Misha Mansoor.

Over the course of seven full-length albums, they’ve become torchbearers for the modern tech-metal scene and in many ways typify the ‘djent’ wave of bands that arrived roughly 10 years after the new millennium.

He currently has three signature models: the JBM9999 and JBM10FX six-strings as well as the JBM27 seven-string.

Martin Miller

Martin Miller is a man of many talents. The German musician is a highly respected educator, with books and video courses to help rock guitarists expand into fusion.

He also writes, records, and tours original music, but his biggest calling card has been a series of live studio performances that find him enrolling guitar heroes old and new to cover hits of every kind. Hey Jude with Paul Gilbert, Kiss from a Rose with Lari Basilio, and Get Lucky with Kirk Fletcher are just three prominent examples.

He has a pair of Ibanez signatures to his name, the most recent being the MMN1, which was released in 2023.

Fresh from launching his namesake guitar brand, Nuno Bettencourt has announced the Six String Sanctuary guitar camp, set to take place in Las Vegas in January.

The Extreme guitarist, who recently revealed he turned down the chance to join Ozzy Osbourne’s band, has curated the four-day and four-night event to be a “celebration” of shred, and has tapped into his Rolodex of contacts to make it memorable.

Running January 16–20, 2026, at the Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa, the event will host a handful of guest stars, including Steve Vai. He’ll be in attendance across the four days, holding masterclasses, while there’s promise of a “never-to-be-seen-again performance,” too.

Breakout workshops will be held by Rick Beato, Eric Gales, Richie Kotzen, Mateus Asato, and Taj Farrant. They’ll be organized by skill level to ensure all participants get the most out of their time with the elite musicians running the workshops.

There'll be nightly concerts by the house band. Bettencourt has drafted in drummer Marco Minnemann (the Aristocrats, Joe Satriani, Steven Wilson), keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater, Black Country Communion), and bass player Vincen García (Funkiwis) on bass for those performances.

Furthermore, there will be late-night jam sessions, with Kyle Brian, Doug Doppler, and Larry Mitchell among those burning the midnight oil.

Attendees will also be among the first players in the world to try out Nuno’s all-new electric guitars, which featured at Back to the Beginning.

Beyond that, attendees will shred over a new, original track penned by Bettencourt for the event.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to do this, and it’s finally happening; four days and nights of nothing but guitars, attitude, and music that hits you in the chest,” Bettencourt enthuses.

“This isn’t just about sitting back and watching us play. Everyone who comes to Six String Sanctuary will lay down a solo on a brand-new track I’ve written and recorded with the house band. You’ll walk out with your version in hand. This is gonna be raw, loud, heavy, and real. If the guitar has ever been your sanctuary, you already know you need to be there.”

Players must be over 16 to attend alone, and you’ll need to bring your own axe, guitar cable, and tuner to the party.

Head to Nuno’s Six String Sanctuary for more.

In related news, Bettencourt has unveiled a wild Mad Max-inspired Custom Shop Washburn that takes the keytar concept to ridiculous new heights.

It’s interesting to speculate on how the instrumental guitar boom might have gone if Eric Johnson hadn’t released his 1986 debut solo album Tones. It was a pivotal moment – but the virtuoso admits he enjoyed session work so much that he considered sticking with it.

Johnson insists that Satch and Vai had “a lot” to do with the explosion in technical players, and his record came after years of working with the likes of Cat Stevens, Carole King, Christopher Cross and Steve Morse. But Johnson admits that others were probably better in the session field, as his style of creativity thrives on a slow burn rather than a light-speed race.

“Sometimes I came up with stuff that was just different than jumping in and playing a generic guitar part,” he says of his best sessions. “It’s composing something like a part, instead of just filling stuff in.”

His departure from that world worked out. Tones was the gateway toward virtuosic success, culminating in 1990’s Ah Via Musicom, which featured signature track Cliffs of Dover.

“Sessions helped me get a wider grip on music,” he says. “It’s impossible not to let a little bit of that rub off on you when you watch songwriters like the ones I worked with. Without that I’d probably be like a chimpanzee hacking at the guitar!”

How did you first get into session work in the ’70s?

“I was in a contract that just wasn’t working out, and I wasn’t able to pursue records and touring. I kind of went insular and underground for a few years, and I got offered different session things.

“I guess it started with Cat Stevens. I moved to New York for a while, and I had a manager called Nat Weiss, who had Emperor Records at the time. I met Cat Stevens through Nat and he asked me to play on some of his recordings.”

On the surface – mostly based on what you’ve done since – working with Cat is an interesting juxtaposition.

“I didn’t play with him for that long. I played on a couple tracks, and we were going to do a tour and we were rehearsing for it. But it was right at the point where he was deciding to get out of music and follow his spiritual practices, so the tour never happened.”

What were Cat’s expectations of you as a guitarist?

“Well, it never got to the point where I felt like I could add as much as I wanted. I don’t mean playing crazy guitar – just stuff that would have supported him. He just wanted some kind of atmospheric guitar behind what he did.”

What was your typical rig like at the time?

“I’d either use a Fender or Gibson guitar, and a Fender Twin Reverb. I might have used a tube overdrive or an Echoplex. That was pretty much it – either a clean tone, or urn the amp up for a semi-dirty tone. And I had this thing called a Mini-Boogie, which was a predecessor to the Tube Driver.”

How did you end up working with Carole King?

“That was great – I was fortunate to play and tour with such a brilliant songwriter. She liked Austin, Texas, and wanted to come down here to make a record. There was a real nice studio on Sixth Street at the time. When she started a record here, they were looking for musicians and they called me in to audition.”

What kind of tones and textures did you use on Carole’s album, Pearls: Songs of Goffin and King?

“It was mostly clean guitar and rhythm stuff. Every once in a while there’d be some kind of little lead thing she’d want me to do. But it was mostly just backing her up with rhythm parts and little licks behind her vocals.”

You also worked with Christopher Cross – you’d known him since the early ’70s.

“I met Chris when I was in a group called Mariani. We were opening for Deep Purple, and Ritchie Blackmore got food poisoning and was in the hospital overnight. Deep Purple had to do this gig, and Christopher was a real hot-shot guitar player, and he knew all the songs, so they hired him for that gig.

“I met him that night. At the time he was more of a rocker. He played a Gibson Flying V and had long hair! He was totally different from what he did later. We got to be friends after that gig.”

Is that why you played on Minstrel Gigolo from his album Christopher Cross?

“Yeah – years later, after he became very successful with his first record, he asked me to do a guest spot. He had three or four different guitarists, like Larry Carlton and Jay Graydon. He asked me to play on that one song with him.”

Given Chris is a player himself, did he have different expectations than Carol or Cat, for example?

“A little bit. Hard rock guitar had been his main gig, and he just happened to have a really great voice and he got more and more into writing pop tunes. But he had a real affinity for guitar; he understood all the old guys – rock players, blues players. He was well aware of all that vocabulary on guitar.”

Before you recorded Tones you did a session with Steve Morse’s band, which ended up being the song Distant Star. That seems like it was the start of what we’d come to know as your style.

“Steve and I became friends when I was in the Electromagnets and he used to play with Dixie Dregs. We’d be touring around and we’d cross paths. Steve really, really helped me get my career started – and he also gave me a lot of good musical direction.”

A year later you went solo as a career. Could you have become a go-to session ace instead?

“Yeah, because I always enjoyed doing that. It felt good – it’s fun, you know? It’s not about having to be in the spotlight; it’s about how can you contribute to helping someone make their song better. But I think a lot of cats would be better at it than me because they write faster.

“Sometimes I take too long, you know? I want to sit and think about what to write. When I was working with Carol or Cat, during rehearsals, I’d have time to formulate a part. But sometimes a session pro only has five minutes to come up with something and nail it.”

Did you ever encounter any disasters during your session career?

“Oh, yeah! There was a famous country artist – I can’t remember his name. The piano player had played almost every fill in-between the vocals. He was doing a thing between every vocal.

“The producer wanted me to put something in there besides chords, but I couldn’t find any room. I hadn’t learned every lick the piano player had done, so I couldn’t harmonize, double, or come up with a continual part. I got fired from the session because I couldn’t get it.

“I once worked on a session for Donald Fagan – that didn’t work out too well either. Not because of him; he was just looking for a certain thing, but I don’t think that I came up with it immediately.

“Sometimes you want to go with that first impulse. But I guess the first thing I came up with wasn’t good enough or something. So, those two things were learning experiences – or examples of times that it just didn’t work out.”

Tones pre-dates the virtuoso explosion of Satch and Vai. Could you have set the table, so to speak, without your training as a session player?

“I like to approach guitar like a compositional, orchestral type of thing. With Carol, Cat and Chris, I saw these great songwriters. Doing an instrumental thing, it’s about how you can make it speak like a song with constructed, composed parts.

“I learned to try to have a melody and to compose structural parts that would make the song play as if it were a vocal tune.”

What do you think the instrumental boom might have looked and sounded like without Tones?

“Oh, there’s so many great players, as we know from watching YouTube today. There’s a lot of great players you’ve never heard of, or who never pursued a career. Maybe they just didn’t have ambitions to do it as a career, or to get known.

“So I think it would have always been there. People like The Ventures and Duane Eddy, and even some things with Hendrix – even though he was a vocalist – did that. The groundwork was already laid. But as far as the ’80s instrumental guitar stuff goes, of course, Joe and Steve have a lot to do with that.”

The culmination on your end is Cliffs of Dover. How did your session experience contribute to writing it?

“It allows you to be tuned into when you’re ready to step into something. It’s not always simple. When you do all this homework, you learn about music and you construct something. It’s more than just ‘you do your part’.

“That’s readying yourself technically and emotionally. You have to have the mechanical ability to reproduce something that comes out of the air. With some songs, I don’t think we can really take full credit for them. I think they’re just floating around as ideas.

“I think I wrote Cliffs of Dover in, like, five or 10 minutes. And then I could take a song I’d spent months trying to write, and it wouldn’t work. I don’t know where that all comes from.

“But I think it’s important that I learned a lot from those guys about not just settling for some guitar things. That’s kind of the purpose, you know – It’s about trying to come up with something that is really built into the songs, and to lift the song up.”

• Eric Johnson’s next tour commences on September 28.

As time goes on, the modeling amp world claims more and more tube amp converts into its digital realms, and Steve Vai has now explained how he ended up falling in love with his new go-to travel amp.

The virtuoso has been a key champion of Positive Grid’s Spark Mini amps, after releasing a signature model in August 2024. After early conversations with Positive Grid, Vai says a love affair was quickly established.

“Like many companies I end up working with, it started with a product they have that I am interested in,” he says in a new interview with German retailer Thomann.

“Because I'm in this position where companies are interested in working with me, I can make suggestions, I can change it a bit, and they'll do a signature series. So, they had this model, and I ended up getting three of them, because I just fell in love with them.

“[I’d use them] everywhere: backstage, I’ve had one on the tour bus, in my luggage at the hotel. So, I was using them, and they were just so great, because I've gone through every kind of little guitar amp that has been out there.”

For years, he says, Line 6’s POD modeler – which almost single-handedly helped inspire the djent and thall movements of metal guitar playing – was his go-to. The Spark Mini has seen him switch allegiance.

“They get over-complicated, it's all digital, and then you’ve gotta put the headphones in,” he continues. “You're lucky if it sounds halfway decent, and there's always latency.

• Save 10% off the Steve Vai Positive Grid Spark Mini signature amp

“I just wanted something I can plug into and play with. The end. And that was that those little Positive Grids were really doing it for me. So then I started thinking, 'Well, what can I do to alter it?'

“Now, I've got to tell you something. I've worked with a lot of companies in the past. I've hawked gear, and I'm not comfortable trying to sell shit. But I'm telling you, man, this is the greatest little thing a guitar player could use. The test is, how do I use it? I want simplicity, and I want it to sound great.”

Vai’s very mini amp packs 10 watts of battery-powered output, and comes with four signature presets. Yet it’s the practicality of the unit that has come up trumps for him.

“If there are people around, I just plug the headphones in, and it sounds just as good. I can go under the hood with an app, and it's like a space station with this thing. The editing possibilities are incredible. It's so useful and it's so simple, I want players to check it out.”

Of course, having a signature amp certainly helps, but it was always going to take a unique modeler to turn his head.

In related news, Vai was forced to play a Fractal modeler during a Beat show in Dubai when his rig was lost in transit. Elsewhere, Billy Corgan has quizzed Vai on his epic guitar battle with Yngwie Malmsteen and the lick that left them both in disbelief, and the virtuoso has detailed how his onstage chemistry with Joe Satriani works.

Visit Positive Grid to check out the Spark Mini.

Derek Day can be forgiven for having swagger – that’ll happen when Steve Vai tags you as the next big thing. But if Day has a big head too, you’d never know it.

“Two record contracts back in 2021, Steve graciously called me to give me some advice,” Day tells Guitar World. “He said, ‘At the end of the day, you gotta sit your ass on one horse’ – amongst other really cool phrases!”

With new album I Can’t Imagine and an appearance on the Satch/Vai track I Wanna Play My Guitar among his recent achievements, the 32-year-old has evidence the guitar is alive and well.

“Guitar music speaks and it can do virtually anything,” he asserts. “A lot of the synths you hear are actually juiced, geared-up guitars. It’s the instrument that sounds most like us. It’s timeless – 12 notes, six strings and one strum can emulate any of nature’s elements.”

What inspired you to pick up the guitar?

“I heard the original electric version of Layla by Derek and the Dominoes. Weird… I just realized my name’s in the band title! I thought I was hearing a violin at first, but then I didn’t know anything about instruments as I was about eight years old. I knew I’d found something sonically defining when I started writing my own songs.”

Your sound has a unique glam-meets-prog edge.

“I love that combo! I’m always trying to find something – anything – undone before. Sometimes the meat n’ potatoes of my style come out like that word: UNdone-UNdone-UNdone-UNdone-UNdone. That’s the prog.

“Then glam because swagger stays undefeated. Dirt is the cleanest. Slurring makes more sense. It comes from a childhood of rolling around in the mud and scraping my knees to the sounds of Off the Wall and Physical Graffiti.”

Your sound appeals to Gen Z and also to boomers. Have you considered your have cross-generational appeal?

“I don’t think any specific age group would particularly dig it – it’s just more for the weird. But I attribute all relatability in each bar of music to culture. I think I make a strong effort to bring out my Latino in the licks, my Polish in the arrangement, and my North-East L.A. in the delivery.

“I traveled quite a bit as a child. Maybe it’s not so much that both the young and old can dig it, but that a lot of storyline bases are being covered.”

How did Steve Vai come to discover you?

“He saw a video of me busking some SRV on the streets of Santa Monica, and gave me a chance to open up on his 25th anniversary Passion and Warfare tour. Ever since then my career has been immaculate and fun. He brought my confidence levels up and showed Los Angeles that I have a voice; and shortly after, showed the world.

“In my opinion Vai is the greatest living guitarist for so many emotional reasons – even though he’s perfect, he seeks out the broken. I’m honored to have played a couple of songs with him on stage for charity, as well as sing backup vocals on I Wanna Play My Guitar with Glenn Hughes and Joe Satriani.

“In the studio he’s just as godly as you’d expect. He writes the vocal harmony parts on the spot, very quickly, on his Ibanez, and I sing ‘em. With all of his chops from different star systems, he makes a conscious effort to feel. He picked up where Hendrix left off.”

Is his influence audible in your playing?

“He’s extremely influential on my playing, since I was 10 years old, in fact. Steve is always searching. I haven’t had any guitar advice from him because he demonstrates the best: always search; it’s your musical journey – no-one else’s.

“When I toured with him, on my band’s last song of the last show, my guitar was slightly out of tune. I told my drummer, ‘I was a little out…’ Vai walked past and said, ‘Your low E was four cents flat.’ And he’d been upstairs in the green room for that song!”

Are you a gearhead?

“Gear is fun! What’s cool is, we all find the right pedals at the right time, it seems. It’s tailored to our current personal state of grime or sparkle. Fender guitars make me feel like I’m tellin’ the Lord’s truth, or like I’m eatin’ Mama’s homemade tortilla con huevos. But I don’t discriminate.

“Gibson feels like I’m about to close a billion-dollar business deal – no mistakes, smooth and savvy. PRS and Ibanez necks are delightful. I can get away with a lot of fakin’ on those.

“Lately, I’ve been digging into Cream guitars from Mexico. They have weight and a lot of personality. And I love cheap guitars, the ones with fake names and funny bodies. I often write my music on them.”

What are the challenges of being a young guitarist?

“One challenge is finding your own voice and standing out. The scene is oversaturated with cats who can play Bach backwards, which is awesome. But that proves it’s an old instrument, man. God made Adam, then Eve, then a baritone Rickenbacker!

“I overcome this originality ordeal by thinking ‘memento mori’ when a guitar’s is my hand. If there’s something you can’t say out loud, she’ll do it for you. That sort of play makes something old feel forever new.”

Why does guitar music still matter?

“A guitar is a very temperamental body of mass. The wood breathes, the neck changes; it literally has good days and bad days. In a way, it has a perspective. We will always come back to guitar because we all need to touch grass and accept our own temperamental changes, and the occasional need for re-wiring.

“I’m hearing big ol’ solos in the new Chappell Roan single. There’s some beautiful legato in the next Dua Lipa album, and some sharp, tasty ‘chikkas’ at the start of Harry Styles’ new track.”

• I Can’t Imagine is out now.

As one of the all-time standout electric guitar virtuosos, it’s fair to say that Steve Vai knows a thing or two when it comes to scaling the heights required to reach the top of the metaphorical technical and melodic guitar mountain.

As such, when Vai talks technique, we listen, and his latest nugget of wisdom – arriving courtesy of his recent conversation with Billy Corgan – has us listening intently.

While in deep discussion with the Smashing Pumpkins frontman about the level of the average guitarist today, Vai proclaimed it’s actually not as complicated as one might think when it comes to becoming a proficient shredder.

“I can tell you how to become a virtuoso very easily,” he says, before laying at a fool-proof – and, to be honest, completely expected – methodology.

“You have to practice nonstop and practice perfectly,” Vai explains. “You have to practice fast, and you have to get bulletproof intonation. This is an intellectual exercise, and when I was younger that's what I did. I set the clock and I set the metronome.”

Also in his chat with Corgan, Vai shed more light on the gruelling practice routine he adopted as a young aspiring shredder.

“My schedule back then, I was happy if I got nine hours a day,” he recalls. “I was very neurotic, very myopic. It just had such a pull, such a joy.

"Sometimes I would go to sleep early on a Friday so I could wake up and practice all the way till Monday, when I had to go to school. So I get like, 20–30 hours in. I’m not a very disciplined person; it was a passion. Because passion is a much more powerful engine of creation than discipline.

“Discipline implies you have to fight something, you have to push yourself to do something that you really don’t want to do. But passion says, ‘You're going to do this because you want to do it.’ There will be challenges along the way, but there's never the thought of giving up.”

Technical proficiency aside, an appreciation for melody – and how these technical skills can be channelled accordingly – is equally important.

“I love melody. The ability to shred is fine and good, but without melody, there's no shelf life in a performer's career,” he asserts.

Elsewhere in his Magnificent Others guest spot, Vai discussed his guitar battles with Yngwie Malmsteen and reflected on what it was like going up against Van Halen when he joined David Lee Roth's band.

Steve Vai has locked fretboards with a long line of elite electric guitar players over the years, be that through the various guest collaborations he’s participated in, the numerous G3 tours he’s helped head up, or the Generation Axe supergroup.

But one of the most challenging six-string adversaries he’s come across in all his years was Yngwie Malmsteen, with whom he formed Generation Axe back in 2016 – and ended up going toe-to-toe with him each night on tour for an epic guitar duel on Black Star.

Vai's epic guitar-off with Malmsteen was put to him by Corgan, who remembers seeing the pair share the stage in Dallas.

“I don’t remember the song you guys were playing, but you were out there with Yngwie and you guys were trading back and forth,” Corgan says. “And he played this one run… I can’t even describe it; it was probably the greatest 10 seconds of guitar playing I’ve ever seen in my life.

“He does his thing, and you’re supposed to go, and you literally went… ‘Okay, I’m done.’”

The exact moment that Corgan mentions can be found at the 4:10 mark in the video above, in which Vai can be seen laughing in disbelief at Yngwie’s guitar run.

When asked about ‘Vai versus Yngwie’, Vai recalls, “Yngwie is a special, special case. I loved the idea of being able to shred, as they say, and I honed that skill. But Yngwie, when he hit the scene, it was a different kind of a shred.

“He had a different kind of approach from the germination of his interest, and that was violin playing. His inner ear was hearing that kind of thing, which is, in a sense, not as guitaristic as somebody listening to Jimmy Page or that kind of thing.

“And when we get up on the stage together and we're trading like that, it's a great moment. Standing with another musician and actually trading licks like I do with all the G3, Generation Axe, all this kind of thing, it requires listening very intently and then responding in a way that you know is appropriate.

“With guys like Yngwie, you can't compete. If I'm with Joe Satriani or any of these guys, you can't compete with the best of them. They force you, if you're smart, to compete with the best of you.

“Like, I have to be more Steve Vai – that weird, quirky guy – than I have been before when you know somebody does something, that's the top of their game. So it's a wonderful opportunity.

“So when Yngwie does his monstrous thing, it's part of the show because it's fun. I can't, I don't do that.”

Elsewhere in his interview with Corgan, Vai recalled joining David Lee Roth’s band and spoke about what it was like to go up against Van Halen.