Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 20, 1990 TAG: 9007200103
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: J.D. CONSIDINE THE BALTIMORE SUN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Unlike the tough-and-tuneful hard rock he plays with Whitesnake, the music on "Passion and Warfare" is diffuse, even difficult at times. In addition to the sort of fleet-fingered rockers you would expect of a guitar god, there are funky fusion tunes ("The Animal"), quietly beautiful ballads ("For the Love of God"), even a few flings with sonic experimentation ("Alien WaterKiss").
It is a guitar maniac's dream album, no doubt about it. But are there really that many guitar maniacs out there? Even Vai found himself wondering why so many people were buying his album.
"I sign albums for 15-year-old girls," he says over the phone from his parents' home in New York's Long Island. "And I quiz them, too. I say, `Did you really like this album?' and they say `Yes, I listen to it a lot.' So I start quizzing them on the album just to see if they're not pulling my leg, and they know the record."
Vai does have a few theories, though, to explain how his album took off the way it did. "I have a built-in following," he says, and though it sounds like boasting, it is not.
Ever since his days with Frank Zappa - he joined the ensemble at age 18, becoming its youngest member ever - Vai has had a cult following among the fret board fanatics who subscribe to Guitar Player and other instrument-oriented magazines. But there are also those whose first exposure to his turbo-charged guitar technique came with Whitesnake or, before that, David Lee Roth - and those fans add up.
"If you stay on alongside David Lee Roth, and if you end up with 2 percent of his following, that's a lot of people. It's the same thing with all the other people I've worked with. You add that up, and you've got enough people to go out and buy a record. And if the record's good, they say `Hey, this is great,' and the word of mouth spreads.
"I think that explains the initial sales. But once people heard it, they realized that it's not just a regular guitar-solo album. It's got depth to it. I really took chances, but it's accessible. It's a very different album.
"I'm not saying it's better or worse than anything else that's out there," he adds, "I'm just saying it's extremely different. People aren't as dumb as I think they're made out to be with their musical palate."
That is a particular point of pride for Vai, because "Passion and Warfare" was originally deemed too non-commercial by the label which had commissioned it.
"I was originally signed to do a solo record for Capitol Records," he explains. "That was years ago, and it kept getting pushed off because of my engagement with David Lee Roth. When it finally came time for me to do it, I told them what I wanted to do, they approved it and signed a deal."
Part of the deal was that Vai would get no money up front, but neither would he be saddled with a company-chosen producer or production schedule. "I needed my freedom to make this type of a record," he says, "because records like this aren't made with record company execs breathing down your back.
"So I made the record myself, and paid for it myself. But when it came time for me to collect from the record company, they didn't want to give me all the money that they signed to give me, and they said that they thought the record would probably sell about 30,000 copies."
So much for industry foresight.
Luckily for Vai, he was able to get out of his contract, and signed, on the advice of Joe Satriani, with the Relativity label. It has been happy endings ever since.
But then, Steve Vai is a real happy-endings kind of guy. Cool and confident at age 29, he has none of the heavy ego associated with big-time rock virtuosi; instead, he exhibits an impressive amount of humility.
Ask him about his own prodigious technique, and he turns unexpectedly modest. "I've got to work extremely hard to play what I can play," he says. "And there's a lot of things that I'd like to play that I'm just physically incapable of doing.
"But there's one thing I do believe: that, given time, I could probably accomplish anything. I feel that way about a lot of people. Given time, you can accomplish anything on your instrument. You just have to be extremely disciplined and dedicated. That's all it is. Dedication and discipline. That equals technique, basically."
Technique is not everything, though. "The bottom line is imagination," he says. "The bottom line is your personality and how it translates itself into your instrument and into the notes that you play.
"You can have a person with a very colorful imagination who can hardly play, and he can be more entertaining on an instrument than someone who has tons of chops. I don't think there should be any lines drawn. It's all up to the individual."
A lot of people use a lack of technique as an excuse why they can or can't do certain things. And that, to his mind, is silly.
"The bottom line is, it's your personality that's going to be the motivating factor behind what you play. That's where I think originality stems from - being able to take your intuition and make it a reality. That's genius, being able to take something that's just deep inside and just make it real."
by CNB