Joe Satriani

Lawrence Peryer:  How are you holding up? You doing okay?

Joe Satriani:          Yeah, we’re safe, you know, we’re not in any fire danger here in the city. The smoke is really bad, you know. The air quality is really bad. So, you know, we’ve been inside. We’ve got a bunch of HEPA filters running, and we don’t go out jogging or anything like that. Yeah, it’s – it doesn’t look as bad, you know? It’s kind of foggy, like it usually is in late summer. Usually, by this time it’s – you know the fog starts to fade and we get that beautiful September, October weather here in the city, but that’s not happening now. We’ve got this huge fog bank, and then we’ve got the smoke that is coming from either a northern fire, a southern fire, or an eastern fire, and we just, you know, we’re just praying for a westerly wind to at least get it out of the city, so – yeah, so for now, you know, I stay in this little room most of the time  [laughter], playing my guitar.

LP:                        Yeah. It’s funny, you sound – I’m in a very similar situation. I’m up in Seattle, and we’ve got the smoke coming from the east, and we’ve got it coming up from the south, and there’s a fog layer sitting on top of us, and we’re just – we’re stuck in that sort of sludgy smoke and like you, I’m sort of – I’m just trying to camp out inside and catch up on projects and you know, every time this sort of shelter in place thing, or stay-home order takes another turn of the screw, I just try to meet it with well, it’s another thing I’m going to get to check off the do-do list I’ve been letting accumulate for the last 20 years, so -

JS:                         Yeah. Yeah, a lot of that going on. Everyone’s stuck at home doing those projects.

LP:                        Yeah. Well, speaking of San Francisco, one thing that – in preparation for this call, the one question I couldn’t get an answer to in advance was how and why San Francisco? What was – what was your choice as a young man to go from Westbury, New York, to San Francisco?

JS:                         Oh, well I’m the youngest of five kids, and my two older sisters – twin sisters – are artists, and they actually made the trek out west. And we’re about nine years apart, so as I was still – I’m thinking I was maybe in 11^th grade in high school, at Carle Place High School on Long Island, they had already started to go to Europe or go out west, and they kind of landed in Berkeley, California and really liked it. So, we kept getting reports like this is the best place ever, you know? And you have to understand the cultural difference between Long Island and Berkeley, California, in the seventies was huge. I mean, it was just really huge, and so that sort of feeling of elation and liberation that they felt being there was reported back to us younger siblings, and so each one of us made the trek out. I think I drove out with one of my sisters the summer before my senior year. That was the first time I went out there and hung out in Marin County for about a month, and then decided to go back out there after a failed attempt at musical education outside high school.

                              I lasted one semester at a place called Five Towns College on Long Island, and once I landed in Berkeley, California, I had that same feeling, which was the West Coast was magical as – for a kid that grew up in New York. And so, I wound up there. I kind of had some diversions here and there. Lived in Japan a little bit, went back to New York a little bit, but just months here, months there. But I really did connect with Berkeley, California, and I met the woman who became my wife back then, in ’77, and we’ve been together ever since, and we lived in Berkeley and then moved to San Francisco I guess it was right after the Flying in a Blue Dream tour, so that would have been 1990, and we’ve been here ever since.

                              So, it’s been a really great experience for me, although I have to say, I still – I’m not really used to the fog. [laughter] It’s – you know, San Francisco has got an edge to it, the weather, that I – it’s – I never, you know – growing up on the East Coast, you’re used to when it’s hot it stays hot; when it’s cold it stays cold, and so it’s easy to put on the appropriate clothing, or the lack of it, and spend all day out, and you never feel like you’re – you did the wrong thing. Here in San Francisco, you need like, three different kinds of clothing if you’re going to be out for six, seven – you know, six or eight hours. I mean, it’s – there’s – it never stays the same. It goes from you know, 57 degrees with biting fog, and all of a sudden, it’s 75 and there’s no wind, and it just keeps swinging back and forth and -

LP:                        Yeah -

JS:                         It’s -

LP:                        I’m from Connecticut, from outside of New Haven, and I didn’t realize, and it’s funny when you talk to people back east, they don’t realize like – they think of, you know, July in New York and New England, it’s that hot, muggy, you know, sort of the buildings are sweating kind of weather. In San Francisco, it’s like the coldest time of the year. [laughter]

JS:                         It is.

LP:                        Up here in Seattle too, you get those first few hours in the morning and like, the sun doesn’t come out to burn everything off till close to noon, you know? [unintelligible 0:06:45] [beautiful]. [unintelligible]

JS:                         Yeah. [laughter] It is different, yeah.

LP:                        [unintelligible]. What was – what was Westbury like, and did you feel more of the suburban pull, or did you and your family have any gravitational pull towards the city?

JS:                         Oh, well, my parents were, you know, kids of immigrants that came over from Italy in 1906, 1907, and they – my father grew up in Manhattan, and my mother in the Bronx, and so they were city kids. And so, after the war, you know, they did what you know, William J. Levitt promised all the returning vets to do, which is come out to the suburbs, to this new way of living. And so they bought a – you know, a small, family house in the middle of old potato fields, which was a little part of Westbury that was part of the Carle Place school district, you know, which is why, after failed attempts of me surviving Catholic school, I wound up being the only kid in the family to successfully make the transition to public school where I thrived, you know. And so that was Carle Place, op my mentality of growing up was Carle Place, even though my address said Westbury.

                              I loved it. I have to say my memories of childhood are early in the morning you know, my mother opening the door, the front door or the back door, and saying go out and play and don’t come back until you hear me, you know, yell for lunch. And so, you know, my – as my older siblings all left, and they were so much fun as sort of co-parents, but as they went on to school, my time alone was fascinating. I just loved it. And we were outside all the time, and I lived on a street that probably at one time had 60, 70, 80 kids that would – you know, the doors would open in the morning and all the kids would pile out, and it was just kids playing, getting into trouble – but nothing serious, you know? And so, I look back on it now, you know, having – I’m a parent now, and I remember when my son was young, the thought of opening the door and saying come back for lunch, forget it. [laughter] That never happened.

                              So, yeah, I had a charmed upbringing in a typical suburban little neighborhood – Carle Place, Westbury, Long Island, and had tons of fun. Was able to explore becoming a musician. Played in bands in high school and started touring the East Coast when I was 18 and you know, became a professional musician quite early, so – it seems like a fantasy land, compared to now, you know.

LP:                        Yeah.

JS:                         So. [laughter] But, all my relatives were still in Manhattan or the Bronx, so that means every weekend, which was typical for most families like that, of that generation, you’d always go to see the grandparents in the city.. And – so that stayed that way until the late 80s, until that whole generation started to pass on.

LP:                        And I’m assuming sort of a very – that sort of very Italian Sunday, mid-late afternoon meal, the big family, everybody running around; the older kids doing their thing; the younger kids running around; the parents in the other room – sort of that whole vibe?

JS:                         Yeah. Yeah, it was different though, because I – it’s interesting, the street where my father was born and where he lived and where his mother refused to leave until she was 96, was 104^th Street, between First and Second Avenues. So that’s Spanish Harlem. I think the rent there was 85 dollars. I mean, they’d been there since 1930-something, you know? It was just bizarre to think about it. But my father’s mother just refused to leave. She just didn’t – she didn’t understand the suburbs; she just – she just wanted to stay in that apartment. And so that’s – you know, when I – my introduction to Manhattan, besides the museums, and the subways and the trains and all that, was that neighborhood. And so – which now, you know, in the ‘70’s, I remember bringing my wife there, and it looked like films of Poland during World War Two. I mean it was – I think my – the building where my grandmother was living was the only building that was occupied. Everything else was completely abandoned by the landlords and hollowed out, and I don’t know if you had been to New York City during the ’70s, but it was crazy. It was fun, but there were parts that were so completely devastated by the economic turmoil, and I was trying – it was very hard to explain to my wife who – born and raised in Singapore, a very different city-state, very different environment, and – but that was her introduction to the oddness of America. The disparity between the haves and the have-nots, you know?

                              But still, my memories of being there every weekend are fantastic, and I know this is a little slightly off-topic, but years later, when I get – I passed an audition to play with Mick Jagger; I’m – I stayed for about a month and a half in New York City at the Mayflower Hotel – Mayfair Hotel, whatever – Mayflower Hotel - and I saw a part of New York City that I didn’t even know existed. Because up until then, it was my grandparents’ place in Spanish Harlem, it was me going into 48^th Street, taking the subway with my guitar – I was trying to get them repaired – it was playing dingy, scary clubs. It was just, you know, doing things, going to concerts as a young kid and taking the trains at four in the morning. Just really crazy stuff. And then all of a sudden, it’s red carpet everywhere, and I’m going to these clubs and restaurants that I just thought this is some other fantasy world. But it was Mick’s world, you know what I mean? [laughter] And I thought oh, I get it. No wonder people love this place. I’ve been trying to get out of New York my whole life - that’s why people come here. [laughter]

LP:                        Yeah. When I – I first moved to New York in the mid-90s and I lived down on the Lower East Side, and I tell people now yeah, when I moved down there, there were not sushi restaurants -

JS:                         I know.

LP:                        - or vegan macrobiotic, whatever. It was – it’s the only place I ever lived where you know, you can’t – you can only see me from here up, but as a six-foot tall, fairly large guy, it’s the only place I ever lived where I felt scared after 10 o’clock at night. But it was a wonderful neighborhood. It was, you know, Dominican, West Indian, you know, everything about New York that you know. Like incredible food, you know – I find New York to be the warmest city. If you need help, if you need directions, if – I just – I go to other cities and I’m shocked, I think wow, why does everybody think that as New Yorkers, we’re so like mean and callous. It’s just - we’re just direct; we’re in a hurry. [laughter] But it’s [unintelligible 0:14:19] something. I think [unintelligible] [rally].

                              Yeah, that’s incredible. How much of your – how much is – how much does being Italian part of – like, is that – do you – does that resonate for you? Is that part of your self-identity? Like, you connect with that part of your heritage.

JS:                         Well, certainly, being Italian-American is an entirely different thing than being Italian. You know, when I tour – well, in my other life, when I toured every year, I would always be you know, playing where my cousins are in Milan and Como, around there, and so every time we visited the country, they would make the trek to come out and they’d, you know – my crew would be ready, because they knew that once we got to Italy, there would be 30 people on the guest list. [laughter] You know, usually there’s like one or two when were in Copenhagen or, you know, Madrid. But then we get to Milan and it’s like, under Joe Satriani, it’s like 30 guests, you know? And, so - and there’s such a difference between us. It’s just – it’s crazy, you know? I mean, there’s some physical similarities and all that, but being Italian and being Italian-American is just, you know, it’s totally different. And so, my experience is like – kind of like what you’ve seen on TV and movies. Sometimes, it’s absolutely hysterical. Like, I remember, first time I was watching Seinfeld, and the Costanzas you know, were featured in one of the episodes and I was just like, you know, laughing and crying at the same time because I thought I know these characters. These are the characters that I would see every weekend and wonder like why are my relatives so insane, you know what? And because, they were like the Costanzas, you know.

                              And but that’s not over – that’s not what we found once we reconnected with our family back in the home country. Interestingly enough though, the, you know, my genetic history is really quite different, and so what I’ve learned over the years is that you know, we identify with where we grew up, you know? For you, outside New Haven; for me, on Long Island. It’s just a part of who we are. We kind of bring that along, and if we have kids, we wind up, you know, sending that message along to the kids, and they think yeah, my dad’s like that. You know. And – but actually, especially if you’re Europe – of European descent, if you dig deep enough, you realize oh my god, this is like, my relatives for the last two, three, four, 5,000 years have been moving around like crazy, and I’m not really just that one thing. I’m kind of a big mix, and so I always take this sort of ethnic identity with a grain of salt, because I do know that where you grow up, and how you’re brought up by your parents is really the big thing, and you can delude yourself into thinking you know, I’m Italian, I’m Estonian, I’m whatever, but actually, you’re just kind of like where you grew up. That’s really who you are, you know? In terms of your personality, and how you relate. Because we don’t really express our genes to people - like when we’re giving an interview, I – you know, we’re not expressing our genes to each other; we’re actually just acting the way we were taught to act by our parents and our friends and our siblings growing up. So, that’s why I think, you know, two people start a conversation, it turns out they’re both from the East Coast, there’s something to relate to, right? [laughter] And with – it’s different when I do interviews, and on any given day and I’m talking to somebody in Amsterdam and then somebody in Tokyo, and then somebody from New Haven, it’s a totally different experience, you know, because we only know - our personalities are based on where we grew up, and how that process of growing up went, you know. So, I – that’s a very long way of answering your question. [laughter]

LP:                        [laughter] Well it – to – along a similar vein though, did you find that when you meet your family from the old country, or even family members that maybe you didn’t know as well - are there other artists? Is the artist – you know – I got it – because I kind of summarize what you’re saying as sort of nature versus nurture thing, or that, you know, your DNA isn’t your destiny, but have you had any of those moments where you’re like, oh, you know, so and so from you know from the old country was immersed in art – or makes his life as an [artist] - do you have those family connections, or is it unique to how you were brought up, given those opportunities in sort of post-war era -

JS:                         Yeah. No, I think it’s more like, the connection to my parents is stronger and my siblings. I suppose because I was the youngest, I really was the ultimate recipient of whatever the family dynamic was, you know. Although I got away with the craziest stuff, because my parents were so tired by the time I came along. [laughter] By the time it was – you know, by the time I was a teenager, they were like okay, forget it. It’s the ‘70s; we’ve given up, you know? Because they had raised kids all the way through the ’60s. They’d been through the biggest upheaval that the last century [unintelligible 0:19:59] -

LP:                        So, what were you going to lay on them that two daughters who moved to Berkeley hadn’t already laid on them?

JS:                         Well, you have to ima – I remember at one dinner, September 18, 1970, I stood up after dinner and I said my hero Jimi Hendrix has died and I’m going to be a guitar player. That’s what I’m going to do with my life. And of course, there was silence, and then there was an eruption of arguments about what little Joe just said and what it meant and, you know, and just the fact they’re thinking Jimi Hendrix? That crazy guy who just overdosed? You know what I mean? He’s Joe’s hero? [laughter] You know, fear and love all mixed up and just, you know. So, but, you know, I think - my father’s older brother, Gino, was a musician his whole life. And these are three brothers – my father and his three brothers – they grow up during – you know, they’re all born – my father was born in 1917, so these three kids have to fend for themselves growing up where they did in Manhattan during the Depression. You know, I always think my father was born during – at the end of World War One; the Spanish flu epidemic; he gets ushered right into having to grow up during the Depression. He goes to – he graduates high school and college early because he’s such a brainiac, and he gets recruited immediately - by Sperry I think it was - to help in the war effort designing things. So, he’s working right away as a very young man, gets married, moves out to the suburbs.

                              This whole time, his older brother Gino is an accordion player traveling the world, after the two other brothers are in the armed services, traveling the world as a musician. So, my dad was like the straight guy out of the three brothers, because he had the smarts, and he was an engineer his whole life. So, when that happened that night, and I said I was going to be a musician, he wasn’t really that shocked. What he knew was that I was going to have to practice. And he’d already sort of instilled in me that – that discipline, because I was a drummer starting at nine, and my parents had paid for a drum teacher to come over once a week and try to teach me how to play drums. And you know, my dad was the guy who would wake me up in the middle of the night if he’d found out I hadn’t practiced and sit there and make me practice with my pajamas on. [laughter] You know, he instilled in me the discipline of what it was going to take to be a musician, a good musician. That if you’re going to do it, then you really have to do it.

                              So, I was very fortunate that way, in that the family – the combination of them being so overwhelmed with what was happening in 1970, and you know, a seven – my parents bringing up five kids, I mean, that was intense. Must have been very intense. Their whole world upside down. Everything they grew up with was challenged by that [current] generation. And so, I often think I got a bit of a free ride there, you know what I mean? I wasn’t forced to go to a particular school and learn a trade that I didn’t like, you know? So, yeah, so here I am, guitar player. [laughter]

LP:                        Yeah, yeah.

JS:                         Still.

LP:                        So, on the Hendrix front, it’s – you know, reading about you, hearing the things you’ve said in various forums, it’s sort of hard to – you wouldn’t be able to overstate the importance of Hendrix, I guess, in sort of your development. And it’s interesting, when I moved out here to Seattle, I’d completely forgotten the Hendrix connection to Seattle which, you know, it’s – I’m embarrassed to admit that, but it – I just – I don’t think of Seattle when I think of – when I think of Jimi Hendrix.

JS:                         Yeah.

LP:                        And there’s not a lot left, in terms of landmarks, you know, Seattle’s the kind of place that tears everything down to rebuild. They don’t really like, cherish old buildings or – it’s a strange Western American sort of vibe that way where it’s – it’s not about preservation; it’s about progress, I guess would be -  [laughter] – but there are some things that are still around, and I lived for a couple of years right down the street from the church where he was – where he was waked, from -

JS:                         Wow.

LP:                        - and it’s still there. The church – the denomination has changed, but the church is pretty much – it looks – if you’ve seen photos of the day, it’s intact. But you know, the neighborhood he grew up in, the Central District here, was sort of the African American hub of Seattle’s culture. And it’s where the jazz clubs were; it’s where the – you know, the after-hours clubs, the juke joints – like, it was a very apparently lively – part of it was because Seattle was very segregated, and so the community was forced into one area. But when you hear people, old-timers from Seattle, talk about the Central District, just the – the vibrant culture. And it makes so much sense that - so much sense that somebody like Jimi Hendrix would come from that environment. Sort of urban, but on sort of the edge of the world, and, you know, Seattle’s like California, you know. You turn to the left and you’re looking out to the edge of the world. It’s the Pacific. Like, what else is out there. And I can- I – it just seems very poetic that this would be where Jimi Hendrix is from – such an urban environment but then you go 20 miles inland and you’re in the mountains, and it’s magical and – so there’s so much about this area that when I stopped to think about it, it kind of made perfect sense about him. Have you spent any time in Seattle? Do you – you know, have you walked his streets at all? Did you – was that ever important to you to take in his sort of vibe that way?

JS:                         Oh, you know, I think I’ve always felt more about that connection in London and in New York, which is really where -

LP:                        Yeah.

JS:                         - the person that we knew, the artist that we knew, really flourished. And - I mean I’ve done the Experience Hendrix tours last year we did two tours, and so I got to Janie very well and it was a very interesting full circle, because I – you know, I used - when I was a kid, I used to have a Hendrix candle that I would light every time I practiced to try to connect with his spirit. [laughter] You know? And – but I think as time went on, I realized that, you know, that his magic was with him, you know, and when he passed on, he passed on. And so, I’ve nev – I’ve always thought that going to the gravesite, going to the museum, things like that is – has got no connection with him. And you know, it’s just the thing that – it’s just commerce, you know? And so, it – sometimes it rubs me the wrong way. Kind of like when they first started doing all the reissues of you know, leftover tracks and things like that. I – it just kind of hurt me in a way because I thought well, he was such a perfectionist, it’s so much a part of his story, how he drove people insane with how much time he spent perfecting you know, his music, his recorded music. And the thought that all of the stuff that he hated is being released with more publicity than what he got when he was alive, I mean, you know – I mean, I don’t believe he’s anywhere right now. He’s just – he’s dead, you know? But – so – but if science fiction was true and his spirit was around, I think he’d be really upset. [laughter]

LP:                        Yeah. That whole posthumous release thing, whether it’s in – I guess it afflicts a lot of the arts, right? You see it with authors whose letters or unfinished manuscripts either get finished or released; or filmmakers who you get the missing scenes. How will you control for that? Because you strike me as somebody that has quite an archive, or quite an output. It seems like there’s a lot of Joe Satriani material. How will you control for that?

JS:                         Well, one thing you should do, I think if you’re any artist like myself in this situation is – there’s a couple of things that have come to my mind over the last decade, which is you know, we’re all going to die so, you know, you got to be thinking about your exit strategy. [laughter] And you go it’s sort of like, here’s my analogy: one day you wake up dead and as you’re leaving, you go oh, I didn’t clean the garage, which means that my family is going to have to clean the garage, you know? And you’re like why didn’t I just clean it and then pass on, you know? That way, I’m not leaving them with a mess in the garage. So, it thought to myself, you know, I should really get it together. I’m not going to leave them with stuff that is annoying; that doesn’t make any sense; that might cast a bad light on the legacy. And at the same time, what is it that would help the family once you do go? And obviously, it’s having your affairs in order, in general, you know. And so, that means well get it together now, so that when you pass on, everyone says well, man that guy just got everything together for us before he left, and you know, how thoughtful, you know?

                              The opposite is like - like when I heard about Aretha Franklyn not having a will, I just thought “What?”  [laughter] It’s like, how does somebody so famous, so successful, with so many lawyers, you know, on payroll, not you know, take 10 minutes to say, oh yeah, you know, let’s just open up a trust and it goes there, you know? It baffles the mind, you know. So, you know, most of us have a much simpler profile than Aretha did, you know, so, it’s actually easier. But I’ve thought about that and on the more practical sense, sometimes when I go through my hard drives - I’m pointing over here, because they’re all over there, behind the camera - I go if I died tomorrow, would I want someone to put that out? And say “Unreleased tracks from Joe,” I’d be like, no, okay, delete. Get rid of stuff, you know – and I’m the kind of artist that I’ll write enthusiastically with 100 percent, you know, positive spirit, 10 songs a day, and then tomorrow I’ll go and I’ll listen to them and I’ll go “What was I thinking?” It’s like wow, erase that before anyone hears it, you know? And so, you got to clean, you know, you got to clean house I think, as an artist. It’s a good idea to do that.

                              I think it’s good to review stuff; you – because there are hidden gems that I think need to be looked at again, and you may find that they can be reformulated, or you didn’t understand them. But that’s – I’m not talking about the gems; I’m talking about the obvious scraps that you know, once an unscrupulous you know, benefactor gets a hold of them, it might actually be more of an emotional pain for your survivors, you know? And so, I’ve known quite a few people who have had famous parents who passed on, and they didn’t – and it was a mess, and they are still embroiled in their parents’ stuff, instead of just being who they are, living their life. You know what I mean? And if they have kids, it’s even more confusing, because then you’re always wondering why are my parents always like, embroiled in something that my grandparents did, you know? It’s also like we owe it to our kids to make them feel free to be who they are, and not to be burdened by the legacy that we leave, you know?

LP:                        I’ve wondered about that point with some of the things, like the reissues around the Miles Davis catalogue. Like, it’s incredibly fun to have that box set with every note recorded around the “Bitches Brew” sessions, but like, I like knowing it exists, but I don’t really – it’s not like it’s something you could sit down and enjoy, the way you could sit down and enjoy the 20 to 40 minutes that he and Teo Macero actually labored over and edited and crafted into that final album. You know, the power of that music. So, I don’t know how – even as a fan, I don’t know how to contextualize that. It’s like I want it, but I don’t really need it. And I don’t even really consume it.  [laughter]

JS:                         Yeah, I know. It’s odd. I mean, I suppose if we try to argue in favor of it, we’d say that if you know, unearthed in Vienna was a chest filled with Mozart’s second-tier ideas, we would be all over that thing, you know? Even though we – you know, you and I may not listen to Mozart every day, we’d still be like “I got to hear that. Whatever it is, I’ve got to hear it.” And so, you know, I understand that contextually, once you’re gone and things move on, you have no way of knowing what tomorrow’s world is like, and how your scraps may actually be incredibly relevant. So, that’s all good. And I for one would want to open up that chest with Mozart’s, you know, second tier [comps] that he didn’t like, just to see what was there. But you’re right. It’s a funny thing. You want to know what’s there; you may not consume it every day; you may not buy the vinyl, the CD, the box set or you know, the streaming version, whatever; but it’s complicated, and it shouldn’t be, but it is. It’s – and - but I think that the way I look at it is that it – there’s a human cost to it. I know that out there in the business world, it’s completely separate from the family. But I think that if you’re, you know, if your last name is Mozart, you’re still burdened and - you know, by the legacy of the great, great, great grandfather, and – but – and besides being a beneficiary, and you know, get all the notoriety that goes with it, but you still – I – it’s different from being just who you are. I mean, think about it.

                              You know, this whole thing about the American dream is that everyone’s from somewhere else, you come here, you start fresh, you can be whoever you want to be. And that was the difference from the way the Europeans thought; everything was connected to the family and the family name. And we’ve seen all those stories about how the super-powerful wealthy families, the kids just suffer, crash, and burn, because it’s just too much of a burden. All that what’s the word I’m thinking of? All that – well, [then] let’s just say the family legacy and power and money is a weight for some reason. You know?

LP:                        Yeah., that’s right. That’s right.  There’s that station, there’s a sense of like self-worth - did I deserve this; and do people want – do people want to associate with me because of my name and legacy or because of who I am as an individual. Yeah, I can – I hear what you’re saying.

JS:                         Yeah, I mean, you know to – without – I’m making it bigger than it really – your question was, but I remember when being a – you know, young guitar player and there was a really cool head shop-record store place that opened up at the Roosevelt Field Shopping Mall just about two miles from my house, and my mother was kind enough to go in there one day, and because she had heard through me that they had Hendrix bootlegs, and I was just like I had to get this bootleg, you know, what was it, you know? And so [laughter] – I can’t explain the scene, it was just so funny. It was so early ‘70s, it was – it’s like a joke. It’s like out of a bad movie or something, but – but god bless my mother. She walked in there and she said, “I’m interested in the Hendrix bootlegs, so don’t tell me you don’t have it.” [laughter] You know? So, she procured the bootleg for me, which, you know, was – everything was under the table back then, and – but when I got it, I hated it. I was – I couldn’t understand it. It was like I thought this isn’t Jimi Hendrix; what is this? Jimi Hendrix playing with Curtis Knight or something like that. I mean, I was too young to understand what I was listening to, but I remember thinking as the years went on, as I started to really become more of a human being and understand the world a little bit more, I thought how did that happen? Why – who made this thing happen? A

                              And you start to realize ah, greed, that’s all it was. Someone just said I got something that I can make money on, and I don’t care who gets hurt or tarnished. I’m just going to sell it in any way I can, even if, you know, suburban kids have to drag their mothers into a headshop and buy something under the table.

LP:                        The most ungodly scenarios. [laughter]

JS:                         [laughter] ah, god. So, yeah, I’ve always had that funny thing about that, although you know, I have to say I love the – like, I know the fa – like Janie and Henry Brown and just like, you know, the relatives of Jimi, they’re all such wonderful people, and I love being the – you know, the privilege of being associated with that group and being able to play Jimi’s music onstage last year was just so great. It was just – it was a wonderful experience. So, there’s a lot of good that comes from it, so I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining about it.

LP:                        No, no, no. And it’s- it is a complicated topic. I think one of the – I was thinking about Hendrix also in the context of – I was listening to the – there’s a Spotify playlist that – it says you made, so I’m going to assume that you made it.

JS:                         I did. I did, yeah.

LP:                        It’s a collection of your ballads -

JS:                         Oh, okay.

LP:                        - and I was going through it, and you know, a lot of times, the – and I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this, but the guys that are like in the guitar virtuoso camp -

JS:                         Mm-hm.

LP:                        - or [unintelligible 0:39:21] - aren’t necessarily associated with the blues. You know, they kind of come from like a post-classic rock sound, or the fusion tradition. I don’t - I think you see what I’m articulating, even if I’m not articulating it well. They’re not ident – not necessarily identified as blues players.

JS:                         Right, yeah.

LP:                        But when I listen to your ballad work, I – mean that’s – that’s almost - I heard it, it was – it would have been impossible not to hear it. And I was listening to “Come On, Baby” -

JS:                         Oh, yeah.

LP:                        [The] melody to that – it was, you know, some of my favorite Hendrix songs – I think of “Third Stone from the Sun,” and or “Cries Mary,” these songs with just great, great melodies -

JS:                         Yeah. [They do].

LP:                        And I think that really comes through in your ballad work. And I wonder if you could talk to me a little bit about your relationship with – like, how do you incorporate your influences and sort of transmute them? How do you not become a mimic?  [laughter]

JS:                         Oh, yeah. Well, it helps if you’re – if you’re not burdened with runaway talent, where you can imitate anybody. Because it – you know, and what I’ve noticed in terms of when it comes to musicianship, if you can, you will. And that’s something I’ve noticed ever since I was a very young teacher, that if a student could play fast, they will play fast. And if they don’t have that ability, they look for other things to do to impress the audience, you know. The audience of one or a group of people, however big it might be. I had this experience because, you know, I started teaching when I was in high school, and so I was teaching kids that were a little younger than me, and I taught some of the teachers in the high school, and so I very quickly got to see the difference between kids and grownups, and then also, very often, some of the kids, like Steve Vai, would come with his friend, because they didn’t have enough money to pay on  his own so they’d take group lessons. And right away you go okay, this kid is amazing; his friends, not so much.

LP:                        [laughter]

JS:                         You know? And you begin to realize like wow, I mean, you know, you see things that students are doing, and you go, oh, you know, what if I looked at myself the same way? What assessment would I make? And you know, it’s part of like that personality like, like – like if someone decides to go running, they – some person takes an easy-going pace and says I’m just going to cruise for the next two hours. And then you have the other people who say all right, I’m just going to see how fast I can run today, and they just take off. And then they don’t run so long. And so, in music, as with just in basic personality, we see that all the time. Some people go right to the edge of what they’re capable of doing, and that’s what the artistic space that they like to occupy. And other people have this way of just taking two steps back, and saying okay, I’m just going to hang back here, because this is comfortable, and I know I can get through the next 12 hours being just like this, you know?

                              And as I started to realize that, I started to look at my heroes at the time which were the mid and late-‘60s guitar players, and I thought okay, now I know how to organize Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, you know, all these players, and I started to see the personality and how it affected how they would go and play. You know like Jeff Beck would go right to the edge of the cliff, do something that would just totally blow your mind, he might crash and burn, and then he would stop. And then he would say okay, I’m going to do something else. Give me a second to regroup, you know? So, his buddy Eric Clapton, totally opposite personality. Never went to the cliff. He just [unintelligible 0:43:31] two steps back from the cliff and shares the view with everybody, and never makes you feel like he’s going to crash and burn or miss a note or anything. He’s just always with everybody. And other – you know, other performers are different versions of that, where they just have to be in front of everybody; they’re the scout; they make all the mistakes; they find all the gold, you know? They’re not the second line or the third line, you know. They may not write all the greatest stuff, but they’re the ones that set the tone. They are the ultimate influencers; the pioneers, you know what I mean?

                              And every once in a while, you find a very interesting combination of all these elements in players. Sometimes it takes a whole lifetime for you to look back and say wow, I always thought that was the one; no, it turns out he or she was the one that was doing it, you know? It – I know this is slightly tangential, but I used to think about that when I thought about like George Harrison, Keith Richards – that you know, you’d look at one record at a time and you’d go like, well, okay George is doing this, but you know like, oh my god, look what Pete Townshend’s doing at the same time, or Jimi Hendrix or something. But then, over a period of decades, you look back and you go oh my god, George Harrison wrote some of the most amazing stuff and laid down some of the most perfect, like never, never would you ever challenge what he played and how he wrote it and the choices he made. And you go all the time I was looking at this guy with all the lights and the feathers and everything, but actually, this demure fellow with a good sense of humor was actually laying down the heavy shit, you know? It’s a conundrum in a way; it’s the challenge of being in the entertainment industry to not get distracted by flashy lights.  [laughter] And shiny things, you know what I mean?

                              So, as that as sort of an introduction in me growing up, listening to everything my parents - jazz-age kids - were playing all the time. Coltrane, Miles Davis, all the way into Motown and funk music. My siblings being rock and roll generation kids. My brother turning me on to John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, because he was a few years ahead of me and you know, I’d hear him playing blues harp, you know, along to these records and I was like wow, this is the greatest stuff I ever heard in my life, you know. You, it’s all part of me. I can’t help but do that. I mean, I like to say I’m in total control of the way that I play, and I’ve made those choices on purpose, but in fact I’m just being Joe, you know what I mean? And so, I was raised by my parents and my siblings and I’m sort of a sum total of all the records they gave me, you know what I mean? As they left the house when they grew up, they said oh yeah, you can have these singles, and I’d be like thank you. [laughter] And I devoured the Dave Clark Five, and I devoured John Lee Hooker and Wes Montgomery and Miles Davis and everything that the whole family was laying on me, and I watched them experience. And so that’s – I think that’s what you’re hearing, because I can’t help but show it. It just comes out; you know what I mean?

LP:                        Yeah. Yeah, I really appreciate that. It’s a dif – you – there’s a lot of tangents to pull apart there and talk about and I know our time together is starting to run out, so we won’t get to talk about all that, but there’s a lot in there and, you know, the George Harrison bit alone is – he’s fascinating. He's so fascinating. I think - you know, you said it, it’s – his sort of taste is unbelievable. Like -

JS:                         [laughter] Yeah.

LP:                        - [you] forget that - as just a songwriter, he’d be, you know, he’d be up here; but then you think about just those melody lines that he lays down on his own songs, it’s just- it’s ridiculous. And I think the thing about George in not being flashy is that, the more time that elapses I think the greater the appreciation is for him, right? It’s sort of like that’s what happens: the quiet one emerges over time.

JS:                         Yes. [laughter]

LP:                        Really – it’s really – but something you said at the beginning of your answer, it’s actually very funny to me, because I spoke to [Yor McCalkinan] a few weeks ago, and we were talking about, you know, his love for Reverend Gary Davis, and we were just talking about how, you know, Gary Davis is a massive influence on him. And he said you know, I was never good enough to mimic him, and I would play his songs as faithfully as I could, but I played them as me. And he said you know, I’d always get shit because people would say oh, you know, that’s not how the reverend played it. He’s like that’s - I’m not – you know, you have the recordings of Reverend Gary Davis playing it. You don’t need me -

JS:                         Yeah.

LP:                        - playing [Gary] Davis. It’s – what makes it interesting, is that he’s – you know, he’s bringing his interpretation to the songbook, and I feel like that’s really what you’re doing. And it’s not a specific songbook, but it’s the guitar tradition.

JS:                         Yeah.

LP:                        And it’s – you know, it’s an – it’s like, you just add another block to it, or another mile of the highway. And it’s this long road that people contribute their sort of stretch of highway to. So, to go onto the home stretch with you, I’ve read that – and I’m wondering if you’re still doing this but - over the summer, it sounds like you’re – when it became clear that you weren’t going to be able to go out in support of the new record, it sounds like you got right back to work. Are you still working on the two projects you’ve talked about in other interviews?

JS:                         Yes. I’ve got those [laughter] songs up on the board over there, and I’ve been working on them quite – just like, every day. And my keyboard player-singer is Australian and so he’s stuck in Sydney; my drummer-bass player in L.A. proper; and a little bit outside of L.A. is my other keyboard player, co-producer-editor, Eric Caudieux. And so, yeah there’s files flying back and forth, as long as Comcast allows for me to upload and download. Yeah, I mean, we – I kind of knew when I got back from doing a promo tour in early February of this year, that most likely, the European tour that was going to start April 15^th was going to get cancelled. And so, you know, behind the scenes, those conversations were happening before anybody knew that there was going to be any kind of lockdown anywhere in the United States. So - but because I knew a few doctors and because I have an extensive network of friends and coworkers in Europe who were experiencing the pandemic in its earlier stages, I knew what was coming, and my gut told me there’s no way to do this. There’s absolutely no way to justify trying to make money with rock and roll while this is happening. This might be a – you know, death might be a consequence, right?

                              So, the – you know if – I think that I went through what everybody else went through, whether they were planning on, you know, planting a garden or launching a world tour and an album, this kind of disbelief, like – because you’d think okay, I’ve been through a lot, but his is a new one, and so there’s no playbook for this one. What does an instrumental guitarist do with a new album and a tour – you know, what do they do in the face of a pandemic, and the monumental loss of all that rock and roll fantasy and economy was too much, you know, to think about in one like, really coherent moment. So, it took days and weeks and just phone calls and emails and then finally, everybody started to realize this is so serious, and we have to start putting things off and then you reach out to your other people and you realize they’re just a little behind you in the curve of realization about how bad this is going to be, you know?

                              I do – I was really happy to find out that my partners at Sony Legacy felt like I did, which was if there ever was a time to release a record, it should be now. Let’s not think like, if we hold onto the record for six months, we’ll be lucky and it’ll be a hit record; let’s just forget about all that, and let’s just take one step back from commerce and say what are we doing this for? Like, what is music for? What are – as a musician and as a company, what purpose are we trying to fulfill here? Besides the obvious thing – we all need money to get along in life, that’s obvious - but at some point, like the baker says, I know things are tough but I’m just going to go down to the shop and make some bread, because that’s what I do, and people eat. I often thought about that when I’d see stories about war-torn Iraq, Lebanon, and still, there are people out going to a café and I see they’re eating croissants and I’m thinking who the hell woke up at four in the morning in this bombed-out city, to bake? You know what I mean? That’s like human spirit, right?

                              So, I thought this is nowhere near as bad for me. So, the conversation was really short where I said look, I really think we should just release the album, just like it was before. The campaign will be weird; I can’t show up like I usually do, we’ll probably take the biggest hit in physical sales that we’ve ever seen in my 35-year career, but let’s do it anyway because I’m a musician, and my job is to make music for people, like the baker’s is to bake bread for people. So, people still got to eat; people still need music; I’m the guy. So, we’ll just go ahead with it. But luckily, the pandemic will be over some day, and I’ll go back to the other model of, you know, promoting an album. So, it’s easy. It sounds a little bit lighter when I discuss it with you like this, but - with all the emotion taken out of it - but it was really heart-breaking to think that a record that I love so much would not get its day ion the sun. So, but I am – I’m joined with thousands of artists who are in the same predicament, and very few as lucky as me that had a good relationship with a company like Sony, who [has] been with me for decades and who understood and who were willing to release the music for the right reason, you know what I mean?

                              And then we all just - we’re learning every day like how to keep the commerce part going; it’s an important part of it, so we’re not shying away from it, but we’re – you know, you have to admit like okay, it’s – people aren’t going out to see you in concert; you’re not going to sell CDs at the merch table, there is no merch table  [laughter] – you know, it’s just all crazy. So…

LP:                        Yeah. Is – have you – have you - did you work remotely with your bands in the past or is this model even new for you?

JS:                         It’s not entirely new, because I think starting in ’99, Eric and I got this idea to do three albums – a rock album, a techno album, and a classical album, just the two of us, with computers, in the box. And I brought it to the – my buddies at Sony Music, and I said this is what I’d like to do. This was right after the “Crystal Planet” album and the G3 tours, and you know, things were changing. File sharing had just laid waste to the world of music, you know. And people don’t understand that, but just - catalog sales and new records just like 60 to 80 percent drop in all sales devastated musicians and the music industry. And everyone was figuring out like what to do next, you know? And so, the label was like well, how about a techno record? That sounds interesting. That could be fun. And we thought yeah, we’re into that. So, I would work at home and I would send [mini] files to Eric down in. L.A., and then every – once a week, I’d jump on a plane and stay down there for a day and a half, and he would record me playing in the newly configurated arrangements that we had figured out.

                              Everything was DI – his whole living room in Studio City was turned into a studio. It was just – it was just a crazy scene. And – but we – that’s how we did the record, and that became “Engines of creation.” A total recorded-in-the-box album. More [trance] than techno, but – so what I realized is that well, I can do a lot of work at home, and with the help of my other co-producer John Cuniberti, he started to help me put together this small little space shuttle recording system at home. And I have to say, I went kicking and screaming, because I love being in a professional studio. I love those million-dollar rooms with beautiful sound, and you get a drummer and they spread all their stuff out and play loud and I just love that, you know. And so – there’s no real romance about recording by yourself.  [laughter] The only thing that’s great is that you’re so not self-conscious, you know? And so, more personal things come out. But what I think was missing is your most trusted friends telling you to do it again. And that’s – I’ve always benefitted from that. Whether it’s just recently Jim Scott sitting there for six hours waiting for me to come up with a good solo instead of the 170 “eh” solos, you know [laughter] Or John Cuniberti looking at me like you’re not going to play that, are you?  [laughter]

                              You know, I like that. I like it when your drummer, your bass player, just says man., this song is horrible, you know? Can we do another one? It - that interaction is golden; it’s great, you know. And not only does it I think force you to be better, but you create great memories and lasting friendships from just that experience of recording with people in a heightened state of awareness. Unfortunately, it costs so much money to be in a studio, that’s why hardly anybody does it anymore, you know? Everything gets recorded on laptops and things like that. All because we – you know, the monetization of recorded music has been reduced to almost nothing, so musicians have to figure out a way not to spend money. [laughter]

LP:                        And they have to become engineers and producers and multi-instrumentalists and everything else. Yeah, yeah. And so -

JS:                         Yeah. You know - I’ll tell you, you’re not going to get an Andy or a Glenn Johns. That’s the sad part about it. Those – you know, I mean, I’ve spent years watching John Cuniberti go out into the music room and move a microphone around my Marshall cabinet and I’m just amazed at how he can tell where the best spot is for the microphone. And we’re on like the second generation of musicians who will never have that experience; they wouldn’t know what to do with the microphone. You know what I mean? And so, these super-talented people that have created this enormous catalog of beautifully recorded music – there just – it’s not there. It’s not there anymore. And [unintelligible 1:00:21] -  

LP:                        I love that record where you can hear – I know you’re not supposed to be able to hear it, but I love it when you can hear the mic placement, and it’s like oh, I know where that mic is in relation to the amp, to get that guitar, set that depth or – I love that.

JS:                         Yeah.

LP:                        You don’t get that with DI, or what have you. But again, it’s also like – what I appreciate about what you’re saying is, there’s a – you have a proper level of nostalgia for it, but you’re not – I don’t hear you saying like, everything else is invalid. You know -

JS:                         Oh, absolutely not. It’s just different, that’s all. And as a matter of fact -well, here’s the obvious thing that I found very early on in my recording career is that, you’re in a studio all day long; you’re totally stressed out; it costs too much money; everybody’s arguing about this take, that take. You like take seven because you played great; the drummer likes take six because he got through it and played his best shit; you know, the bass player’s like still waiting to do the take that he thinks is great; and then all of a sudden, someone says oh, by the way, let’s just do the solo right now, and you’re like well, I’m not ready to do my solo. I’m not in the right head space. And I’d finish these sessions back in the old days, and I’d go I’ve just documented me being pissed off and playing my worst -

LP:                        [laughter]

JS:                         - like what is – what is the point of this, you know? So, the flip side is I’m at home now, and if I want to record 1,000 guitar solos, completely non-destructively, I can do that. And I can go and have lunch, I can go to the wine country with my wife for a weekend, come back, and work on the solo again. And so, in some ways my audience is hearing me at my best, finally. Rather than them going I don’t know about that guy. It sounds like he really wasn’t in the moment.

LP:                        [laughter]

JS:                         You know? I – composers -  

LP:                        But man, the drummer was good.  [laughter]

JS:                         Yeah. I remember I was reading – Roger McGuinn once was talking about Mr. Tambourine Man, and he – and I love that sound, and I love the recording. It’s just something that unlocks something in my – in my youth, you know, when I hear it. And I never thought of it at – from a musician’s point of view, right? As a re - someone who records music. And he was saying how man, that was like the 85^th take, and he said that was not the best take; that was simply the take where most of us made the fewest mistakes. So that became the single. And I thought see, I’m not alone. Like, even the Byrds had to go through this with their biggest like single, you know, and how important it must have been for them to do this Bob Dylan song. And they had to do it 85 times, and it wasn’t the best take for all of them. They all probably thought take 35 or seven or, you know, 52 was the real one, but they wound up with this one.  [laughter] Because they finally, all of them got through it without stopping or something like that, you know?

LP:                        That’s [unintelligible 1:03:21].

JS:                         And you find these things out that just – it just cracks you up, you know, when you think about it and you go oh man, there’s no rule; there’s nothing. And – but no matter what - he couldn’t tell me any bad story about that song that would change the way it makes me feel. So, there you go.

LP:                        Right. Joe, thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your generosity of spirit, and I don’t know what’s going on there, but you look like you’re about 17 and -

JS:                         [laughter]

LP:                        - I resent you for it.  [laughter]

JS:                         I don’t know, must be the HEPA filter going on outside the door there – it’s breathing fresh air [unintelligible 1:04:04] -

LP:                        I was going to say you’re using a newer version of Skype than I am or something, but  [laughter] – it’s so great to talk to you, and I wish you well, and you know, good luck getting through our American reality, but it sounds like you’re well-suited to it, and I’m looking forward to hearing those records, and seeing you back on the road.,

JS:                         Yes. Thank you so much. Thanks – I hope my answers weren’t too long.

LP:                        Beautiful. Thank you. Stay safe.

JS:                         All right, you too. Bye bye.

LP:                        Bye bye.