THE TOP 10 Shred PLAYERS

In two interviews, with Guitarist and Classic Rock, the virtuoso talked gear and guitars, revealed the secrets of his creative process, and discussed the art of shredding...

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01 STEVE VAI

IN HIS OWN WORDS

MY FIRST LOVE

“Once I saw a guitar for the first time at the age of five, I immediately knew the infinite nature of the guitar’s ability to be expressive. It was this beautiful thing.”

INSPIRATION

“If I have to sit down and write a new song I’m usually not very good at it, but when I pick up the instrument, something will always come out and I’ll document it. I’ve got thousands of ideas and thousands of boxes of DATs. Sometimes you just know that something’s coming and there are many different ways in which I’ll catch an idea. Sometimes I’ll do it by just singing straight into a microphone, or I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a piece of paper and a guitar; if you don’t document those moments of inspiration you’ll never remember them!”

PERSPIRATION

“The song Oooo (from the 1999 album The Ultra Zone) was one of those where I felt I had to get to a guitar real quick. So I picked up the first guitar I saw – a Bad Horsie JEM that was tuned down to C – and I just started playing that song. I got through it fairly cryptically by just playing and hearing a melody – it’s all ear – and I ran to the nearest cassette player, which was playing all weird, and got it down. Then I put it on the shelf and I didn’t come back to it until two years later. You see, every Christmas, I document all the little ideas. I heard that again and I thought, ‘I have to do this song now or I’m gonna explode’. It took me four weeks of 16 hours a day to complete it.