Hard Rock

[the captain]

Steve Vai, Passion and Warfare.

I really can't stand that type of show-off guitarists.

There was a time I'd have said that. Not now, though I'm not particularly into shredders anymore, either. But Vai's unique.

I don't have time now (being at work), but eventually I'll try to get around to explaining why I think it's the best instrumental rock album ever, and the only one that warrants inclusion among great rock albums.

[KDS]

I love that first The Darkness album, and the new on is very good too.

I was a senior in high school and that was probably my favorite new album at the time. Hard rock was definitely my preference then. There was good stuff to be found, but you had to dig a little bit because most rock radio was full of pretty bland stuff like you mentioned. I think losing interest in what on the radio was probably what started my deeper digging and real interest in older music like The Beach Boys.

During middle school, when rock radio fell in love with grunge, is when I started getting into older classic hard rock. 

Queen, Black Sabbath, Styx, Van Halen, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Bad Company.  The list goes on. 

[the captain]

I love that first The Darkness album, and the new on is very good too.

I was a senior in high school and that was probably my favorite new album at the time. Hard rock was definitely my preference then. There was good stuff to be found, but you had to dig a little bit because most rock radio was full of pretty bland stuff like you mentioned. I think losing interest in what on the radio was probably what started my deeper digging and real interest in older music like The Beach Boys.

During middle school, when rock radio fell in love with grunge, is when I started getting into older classic hard rock. 

Queen, Black Sabbath, Styx, Van Halen, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Bad Company.  The list goes on. 

That's partly true for me as well. I was already a fan of some music that predated my real listening years--KISS, Queen, the Beatles, and a few others--but it was in part my total dislike for what happened in the popular music of a post-Nirvana world that got me digging deeper in to earlier years. Simultaneously, I got better at (and more interested in) jazz, so I went in that direction at the same time.

[KDS]

I love that first The Darkness album, and the new on is very good too.

I was a senior in high school and that was probably my favorite new album at the time. Hard rock was definitely my preference then. There was good stuff to be found, but you had to dig a little bit because most rock radio was full of pretty bland stuff like you mentioned. I think losing interest in what on the radio was probably what started my deeper digging and real interest in older music like The Beach Boys.

During middle school, when rock radio fell in love with grunge, is when I started getting into older classic hard rock. 

Queen, Black Sabbath, Styx, Van Halen, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Bad Company.  The list goes on. 

That's partly true for me as well. I was already a fan of some music that predated my real listening years--KISS, Queen, the Beatles, and a few others--but it was in part my total dislike for what happened in the popular music of a post-Nirvana world that got me digging deeper in to earlier years. Simultaneously, I got better at (and more interested in) jazz, so I went in that direction at the same time.

As I got into my late 20s / early 30s, I started to appreciate the lighter side of rock more - The Beach Boys, Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffett, Elton John, etc. 

Getting into the lighter stuff creates a nice light and shade effect when I'm mixing and matching music. 

[Amanda Hart]

As I got into my late 20s / early 30s, I started to appreciate the lighter side of rock more - The Beach Boys, Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffett, Elton John, etc. 

Getting into the lighter stuff creates a nice light and shade effect when I'm mixing and matching music. 

That's why I love a bank like Queen so much. It's a great balance of mixed and matched styles. Everything I like about music I can find in a Queen album.

[KDS]

As I got into my late 20s / early 30s, I started to appreciate the lighter side of rock more - The Beach Boys, Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffett, Elton John, etc. 

Getting into the lighter stuff creates a nice light and shade effect when I'm mixing and matching music. 

That's why I love a bank like Queen so much. It's a great balance of mixed and matched styles. Everything I like about music I can find in a Queen album.

Queen was indeed a special band.  You get everything from early heavy metal, proggy epic numbers, pop rock brilliance, tender piano ballads, power ballads, acoustic songs, and everything in between.

Although I'm not too fond of their dabbling in dance music. 

[Amanda Hart]

Although I'm not too fond of their dabbling in dance music. 

You and everyone else, I think. Touches of it are fine, but when it started to dominate the sound that's where I usually check out.

[KDS]

Although I'm not too fond of their dabbling in dance music. 

You and everyone else, I think. Touches of it are fine, but when it started to dominate the sound that's where I usually check out.

Another One Bites the Dust was pretty good.  But the dreadful Hot Space album took it a little too far. 

[the captain]

KDS - have you ever listened to The Paper Chase? I was sent a promo copy of God Bless Your Black Heart when it was released in the mid-00s, as I was writing reviews at that time. While it was a lot heavier than most of what I was listening to at the time, I thought it was great. Dark, dark stuff with a sense of humor in there. Sometimes neurotic like a Roger Waters kind of vibe, sometimes just full-on paranoid, some Faith No More vibe, and most of all just a lot of bandleader/singer/guitarist John Congleton, who has gone on to produce a lot of people across various genres (St. Vincent, the Polyphonic Spree, the Mountain Goats, Angel Olson, The Good Life). I love his guitar playing, an angular kind of stretching and leaping across wide intervals, very creative. Sometimes anthemic, but in a scary way.

I was lucky enough to meet them at a show while they were in the area to record in nearby and somewhat legendary Pachyderm Studios. (I believe that turned into their next album, Now You Are One of Us).

Here's that latter album (though I preferred the former).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4cLlTtpLI4

[KDS]

KDS - have you ever listened to The Paper Chase? I was sent a promo copy of God Bless Your Black Heart when it was released in the mid-00s, as I was writing reviews at that time. While it was a lot heavier than most of what I was listening to at the time, I thought it was great. Dark, dark stuff with a sense of humor in there. Sometimes neurotic like a Roger Waters kind of vibe, sometimes just full-on paranoid, some Faith No More vibe, and most of all just a lot of bandleader/singer/guitarist John Congleton, who has gone on to produce a lot of people across various genres (St. Vincent, the Polyphonic Spree, the Mountain Goats, Angel Olson, The Good Life). I love his guitar playing, an angular kind of stretching and leaping across wide intervals, very creative. Sometimes anthemic, but in a scary way.

I was lucky enough to meet them at a show while they were in the area to record in nearby and somewhat legendary Pachyderm Studios. (I believe that turned into their next album, Now You Are One of Us).

Here's that latter album (though I preferred the former).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4cLlTtpLI4

I've never listened to them.   When I'm at a computer with sound, I'll check out that link.  Thank you

[the captain]

In Defense of—Nay, Praise of!—Steve Vai (Not That He Needs My Help)

“That guy can make his guitar talk!”

I’m not sure who saw it first, me or one of my brothers. But we gathered around the small TV in a little room down the hall to witness the truth: David Lee Roth’s new guitar player was even better than Eddie Van Halen because he could make a guitar speak. Clear as day.

“David.”
“What?”
“[unintelligible]”
“Well, lemme roll up onto the sidewalk and take a look.”
“Whoa!”
“Whoa!”
“She’s beautiful.”
“[guitar agrees]”
“I’m talkin’ about a Yankee Rose.”
“[guitar laughs]”
“And she looks wild.”
“Wild”
“Wild”
“Wild”
“Wild:

Steve Vai blew this 10-year-old’s mind. Granted, this mind wasn’t fully formed. But he made the guitar speak. And he had cool guitars, like an insane green (presumably Carvin?) one in “Yankee Rose,” or a fire guitar in “Goin’ Crazy.” He slithered. Later, he had a triple-necked heart guitar, and he spun his guitar around his back. These traits are all highly prized among 10-year-olds. Or should be.

Now, of course, it’s a different world entirely—several times over. First Guns ’n’ Roses made assless chaps and tiger-print jackets seem silly. Then Nirvana made Guns ’n’ Roses seem silly. Then the crap marketed as “alternative music” made everything seem, well, pointless, causing handsome young Minnesotans everywhere to ditch modern popular music entirely and focus on the classics and jazz. Nobody cared about triple-necked heart guitars and behind-the-back spins by a slithering guitar-talker anymore.

Except this guy. Oh yeah. Through it all, I still loved me some Steve Vai, and I make no apologies. It’s the 30-year anniversary of my discovery of that ultimate guitar superhero, and while he hasn’t been on my turntable on a regular basis in 20 years, he’s still the best.

The.

Best.

In the late ‘80s, research was conducted. Circus, Guitar For the Practicing Musician, Metallix, Metal Edge. Fine publications such as these provided key facts: the slithering triple-necked guitar-talker was named Steve Vai, and he’d played with some (comedian?) named Frank Zappa and replaced Yngwie Malmsteen in Alcatrazz. (The latter meant more to me than the former at the time.)

“Shredders” aren’t well-regarded in many circles these days, and that’s fine: I’m not so into shredders, myself. But to me, that’s a derogatory term reserved for people whose technicality is their totality. Vai is a brilliant—flawless, actually—technician. But he’s far more than that.

First of all, he’s a musician. Not a shredder. I listen to Vai as a jazz player in a rock environment, more akin to the guys often employed by his former boss, Mr. Zappa. Vai’s own songs are often vehicles in which to solo, sure, but the same is certainly true of Zappa’s instrumentals (or instrument-heavy tunes). The same could be said of beboppers like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Was Diz showing off? Sort of, yeah … but that’s a big part of the reason for that music’s existence. Bebop took a more song-oriented form—the jazz of the time—and made it a vehicle for virtuosity. The key is that it’s done in a musical way, within the framework or paradigm of that genre of music. And Vai is a consummate musician.

For all those flourishes, despite the effects that overlay them, the blonde-streaked bluish-black hair and the slithering figure who spins his guitar around his back did indeed audition for Frank Zappa as a 20-year-old kid. And make the band.

“Ask Vinnie [Colaiuta] how difficult it was, [Frank] was brutal on me!” Vai said. “He’d play something and say, ‘play that.’ OK, and I’d play it. And he’d say ‘play it in 7/8,’ Well…ok, and I’d do it. ‘Now play it in reggae 7/8.’ OK, I play it in reggae 7/8. And he’d go, ‘add this note.’ OK, and I’d do it. Playing reggae, 7/8, and I’m adding these notes. ‘OK, add this note.’ And it was impossible. It was just physically impossible, not just for me, but for anybody. So I said, oh, I can’t do that. And he goes, ‘I hear Linda Ronstadt is looking for a guitar player.’”

After the nastily humorous audition, Vai made Zappa’s band … as a “stunt guitarist.” Let’s be serious, in the world of rock music (or jazz, for that matter), anyone who can play—on demand—some line in 7/8 reggae with “this note” is pretty damn impressive.

Vai isn’t just a stunt guitarist. The songs are songs, after all. Let’s get to Passion & Warfare. Around the same time I heard Vai had joined one of my then-favorite bands, Whitesnake, I also became aware of an instrumental album he was releasing, Passion & Warfare. One might have preceded the other, I don’t know. It was a while back, I’m old, I didn’t take notes. (Actually I did. I kept a journal in those days. I should dig through the college-ruled notebooks in the box in the guest room closet…)

Maybe I owned Joe Satriani’s Surfing With the Alien by then, maybe not. I know I only bought it because I’d learned of Satch via Vai. Via Vai. That’s fun to type and say. Try it. Via Vai. Moving on. Passion & Warfare was either the first or second guitar-heavy instrumental rock album I’d ever owned. And it remains the best, not only for its little corner of the world, but right up there among the best albums of that decade. I promise you that: I could not name 15 albums from the 1990s of any genre that I think are better than that one. I’m getting back to the point soon. I promise.

When discussing Passion & Warfare (or anything else Vai did), there’s not much point in even mentioning, much less praising, the technical brilliance. After all, even his critics acknowledge that: they tend to use it as the main criticism, not the saving grace.

So instead, let’s go back to my earlier statement, that Vai is a consummate musician. It’s the way Vai speaks through his guitar that I’d focus on. Part of that is the near-literal sense, the same as on “Yankee Rose” a few years before. Side two kicks off with “The Audience is Listening,” in which “little Stevie Vai” converses with his teacher before a talent show. He—via the guitar—laughs, speaks, winces. When the song, a true Van Halenesque boogie, kicks into gear, the melody seems to be sung through the wah-wah lead line, nonsensical syllables, but sung.

Beyond that literal speaking, Vai brings lyricism and melody to his music. “Liberty,” the opener to the album, is something of a (lite) metal national anthem, majestic and bombastic: the bombs bursting in air, indeed. “Erotic Nightmares” is a hard rock riff any band of the time would have killed for. “For the Love of God” is a soul-searching masterpiece, deeply introspective even as it searches outward for capital-T truth. Lyricism is again a key word, a fluid, lyrical-though-wordless melody. Beautiful and stunning, probably pushing the boundaries of taste with its dizzying flourishes, and yet the absolute source of truth for the 14-year-old who first heard it.

It’s a diverse album. “Answers” is an exotic, rhythmic workout with a typically legato melody that sounds much farther-out than its Mixolydian (that is, major chord with a flat 7…in effect, a 7th chord) reality. “Ballerina 12/24” is exactly what many of the man’s critics despise, an exploration of how effects can alter the music as played: in this case, the Eventide Harmonizer’s digital delay and pitch shifter making something far more complicated than what is being played. Brian May’s old solos, but for the (then-)modern age. “I Would Love To” is straight-ahead power pop: like “Erotic Nightmares,” a worthy part of any vocal band’s repertoire, if it had been put to that use. “Blue Powder” is bluesy in its initial approach, if not its underlying structure.

Throughout, the album is a masterpiece of production. I recall an interview in Guitar For the Practicing Musician in which Vai discussed this, mentioning that he listened to the contemporaneous pop as well as his inspirations for ideas. New Kids on the Block were invoked, and I nearly choked. But in hindsight one can see how smart he was in that respect. For one thing, layering that many guitars is going to create production challenges. Wide as the range of the instrument is, as well-arranged as the songs are, it’s going to take a good mix, proper EQing, to keep it from sounding like distorted mud.

Beyond that, he got a guitar album to sound like a diverse rock album. The fact that one album could communicate anthems, metal, blues, Latin, comedy, pop—whatever—minimized the omnipresent shredder’s risk of monotony. This wasn’t 45 minutes of guitar solos (even though it was). This was a rock album. His Flex-Able solo album was great. I really loved it. But Passion & Warfare is an absolute wonder. Check it out with an open mind to hear a masterpiece of heavy, but diverse and melodic, music.

Second—but not necessarily less importantly—he shone as a second fiddle to David Lee Roth, to David Coverdale. The man is a rock ’n’ roll entertainer, and being an entertainer is absolutely essential to a lot of that form in the same way that being a talented soloist was essential to playing with Zappa (or being a bopper in Diz’s band). Sure, you can stand still, look at your shoes, and make brilliant music, and I’ll love you for that, too. But DLR’s stuff had nothing to do with that kind of music, and so neither did Vai. This is where having a triple-necked heart guitar comes in handy, you know? Or having your moves down just so, the kind of moves that might make someone like Frank Zappa make fun of you for doing. (Oh wait, that happened with some regularity. “On guitar and blue hair, Mr. Steve Vai…”)

Popular metal of that era was a spectacle. Its excesses were essential. When grown men are playing cartoonish music of endless adolescence, when they’re dressed and made up like that, they damn well better have a sense of humor about it. It’s all a kind of cabaret, tongue-in-cheek. Roth understood that in and after Van Halen. Freddie Mercury knew it. KISS knew it. If you’re “serious,” maybe playing simple, adolescent music isn’t the right line of work for you. That’s why we have “classical” music, or jazz. Of course the guys on stage look like silly, and if you don’t want to suspend your disbelief, if you don’t want to engage, the only reasonable reaction is mockery. Hell, Diz—even Louis Armstrong—were sometimes treated the same way when they made shows into something more than just music, puffing out their cheeks comically or doing routines.

But this guy, this slithering, triple-necked, heart-shaped-guitar-playing devil (“Crossroads”) … he’s playing at that serious level of music without the seriousness attached to it, all in the context of eternal adolescence. And it’s fucking spectacular.

[Emily]

In Defense of—Nay, Praise of!—Steve Vai (Not That He Needs My Help)

“That guy can make his guitar talk!”

Not a big hard rock fan in general, but I thought Steve Vai was pretty masterful and interesting.

[alf wiedersehen]

I use to be really into hard rock when I was younger. If it was slow or a ballad or something along those lines, I had absolutely no time for it. It had to rock, damn it. I don't know what changed, but now I don't listen to it all. In fact, a friend and I were at a record store while they were playing Appetite for Destruction, and all I could do was laugh as Axl squealed "it's so fuckin ee-zay!" I mean no offense to anyone else who may like the song/band/genre, but it doesn't seem to be for me anymore.

[the captain]

You'll be back.