Guitaring icon Steve Vai has been in the music industry for more than four decades. He was last in Bristol during his previous tour in 2014 and since then he's done just one show - three years ago.
Last Saturday, he performed in Glasgow, marking his first show and the first time Steve had been on a stage with a band in three years - something he calls "kind of nuts". After spending much of his time recently in a whole other world - working with world famous classical conductors and orchestras in Holland - he'll be performing in Bristol this Thursday (June 9) at the O2 Academy.
For anyone reading who isn't a fan of Steve, or who simply has never heard of him before, the musician describes himself as everything from an "instrumental rock guitar player" to a "wizard".
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The 62-year-old, who celebrated his birthday on Monday (June 6), told Bristol Live: "When I'm asked 'who is Steve Vai', my knee-jerk response is that I'm a primarily instrumental rock guitar player. So, if there's any more interest after that I go deeper and say, well, I compose and I've been in sort of big rock bands in the 80s, but my brand of music is not mainstream.
"It has more of a quirkiness to it, but it also has a beautiful melody. It has intense guitar playing. It has some complexities. It has some emotional investment and it's a show.
"Primarily ever since I was a kid I've always wanted to be a performer and I always pictured myself in my mind's eye performing to my friends and being almost like a wizard, where everything I touch is seamless and effortless. And I'm sending out this wonderful uplifting intensity to everybody there.
"That's been a vision of mine since I was nine, 10 years old and that's what I do. That's what I do now to the best of my ability - make an experience that people won't get any place else and that they can find fulfilling and enjoyable."
'There's people that might be expecting it but there was no way'
His current tour is to celebrate the release of his latest album 'Inviolate' - Steve's tenth studio album since 1984 - and he believes that one of the highlights of the album, as well as the show, is a song called 'Teeth of the Hydra'. The first track on the album, it's named after a three-necked guitar that Steve plays - however, those expecting to see it in person during Thursday's show might be sad to learn that it won't be making an appearance.
"I couldn't bring the Hydra with me on this European leg," Steve said, "because a couple of days after we shot the video (which you should check out because it's marvellous and really over the top) which was only about two and a half months ago, I had shoulder surgery. It was my second one - I had the first about a year and a half ago and I'm still kind of recovering and I can play a guitar but I can't play the Hydra yet.
"Unfortunately I couldn't bring it and I know there's people that might be expecting it but yeah there was no way. By the time I get probably a few months into the tour, I should be able to break out the Hydra."
Steve added that he usually likes to do two sweeps of Europe and America, estimating around 55 shows each that span around six months apart, so there may be other chances for UK audiences to see the Hydra up close. However Steve isn't yet sure what the plan for more dates consists of - he could, however, let us know just what else fans should listen out for on the album.
"When you're an artist and you're young and you find something you love doing and you just happen to stick with it, you're going to evolve it and it becomes more meaningful to you as you do it," Steve said. "So I've discovered - and this is a good message - it's okay for your work to be very very meaningful to you and it's okay for you to love it and really enjoy it, so when I talk about the songs on 'Inviolate', they were made by a 61-year-old guy that has been in the music business his whole life.
"I didn't want anything to get in the way of my ability to do the best I can for the unique musical voice that's in me. So 'Inviolate' is very, for lack of a better term, just very 'Vai' if you know what I mean. So I gave great care to the tracks in their performance.
"There's a couple of really peculiar tracks - one of them is challenging - we do a song called 'Candlepower' and I love playing it, it's got some finger gymnastics in it that are always challenging and I really, really enjoy playing 'Zeus in Chains', it's just so powerful and it feels mighty.
"We also do 'Avalancha' which is a very heavy metal kind of a fast song and we do one of my favourite ballads that I've written called 'Greenish Blues' and it's just a pretty kind of blues track. One of my favourite songs on the record, 'Little Pretty' is such an intensely harmonic and melodic type of piece that goes really deep into my musical theory mind but, on surface level is, I believe, enjoyable and surprising and melodic.
"It's different than my past albums and it's kind of different from a conventional instrumental guitar record in a sense. It's got more edged teeth, sort of.
"It's hard to kind of explain your music. It's just Steve Vai - like Prince is Prince, Tom Petty is Tom Petty - every artist one day, surrenders to their uniquely inspired musical voice. They brand everything they do with their DNA, their musical DNA and then they become that person."
'How do you quantify working with Frank Zappa at 18, 20 years old?'
Steve, who was born in New York City, has worked with some massive names in the world of music (he actually started his music career in 1978 at the age of 18 as a transcriptionist for none other than Frank Zappa and played in Zappa's band from 1980 to 1983) and said that these experiences have shaped the man - and musician - he is today. But added that sometimes, the biggest influences can be more homegrown and more personal - you don't have to bag yourself a gig with a music giant to be inspired.
He said: "You're influenced in some way by everybody you meet. Sometimes it's subconsciously and you don't realise it but it's impossible not to be influenced by somebody. Of course, sometimes it's much more recognisable and, for me, my biggest influence was my high school music teacher because for seven years I took intensive music theory classes everyday and he was a mentor.
"And then I was also taking lessons from Joe Satriani when I was 12 years old because he lived in the same town. So Joe has been a life mentor - my admiration for him and what I've learned about myself through him through our whole life is an unquantifiable gift and how do you quantify working with Frank Zappa at 18 years old, you know, 20 years old?
"I worked for Zappa for six years and what I learnt from Frank I utilise every single day of my career. Then even when I was with Alcatrazz I've learnt a lot about myself - and then with Whitesnake or David Lee Roth, he was another mentor because when I joined his band I was pretty young and I'd never been on a rockstar stage and I had to figure it out and learn how to project my ego to 20,000 people, sometimes a lot more - and Dave was the best mentor for that because he really knew how to do it.
"Even when I was doing the 'Sex and Religion' album - all those people. But the way we express ourselves creatively can be greatly inspired by other creatives in that field. More of the time I believe simple events in your life that have nothing to do with your creative expression, can change you as a person."
'Bristol has a sort of bohemian funkiness to it that I love'
A place that has certainly acted as a bit of an inspiration for Steve, who is a lover of the creative mind and soul - is Bristol, a city that features among the likes of Glasgow, Manchester and London as the UK favourites that Steve had to put on his tour schedule. On the city and why he returns here, Steve said: "I've been touring in the UK and there's charming places everywhere.
"I look for things to appreciate in all the different places I go but Bristol moreso for me at least than any of the other UK cities I play. It's certainly one of the most interesting cultural kind of artistic centres in the UK.
"It has a sort of bohemian funkiness to it that I love. It seems to be more of an artsy centre and I noticed that when I was last there with my wife and we got to take a long walk through a beautiful park near the venue and it was a gorgeous day and I got to walk around a lot and that's always been very attractive to me.
"And the audiences are fantastic. The UK audiences in the old days, you know the 80s or 90s were obviously enjoying concerts but it seems like moreso lately in the past five years, 10 years their response to concerts has really been more engaging - and I'm looking forward to it."
Steve has certainly missed touring and performing live to such audiences, despite having quite a comfortable setup during the Covid-19 pandemic - the reason why he and musicians around the world weren't able to venture out and spread their new musical creations far and wide for two years. And this - being told you weren't allowed outside - Steve said, only made his want to go on tour stronger.
"During the lockdown everything was kind of fine for me, everything worked because I had a studio and I just stayed there and I got accustomed to being home like many people," Steve said, "and at one point it just felt like 'wait a minute I want to go on tour, I really want to get out there' and then there was a realisation where you just can't because everything is still a little precarious out there. So we really looked forward to finally getting out and it's going to be quite a summer because many, many bands are out - everybody that's been holding off for years are going to be out there, so there's a lot of entertainment out there this year."
One craze that took off throughout the pandemic(s) was Tik Tok and, despite being a super-busy legend in the world of guitar playing and inspiring others through music in general, Steve Vai of all people often finds himself getting lost in the abyss of scrolling aimlessly through videos - so bad is it that he's even had to limit his time doing so to no more than 15 minutes a day!
'The next thing you know you start scrolling and you're lost in the abyss'
"I'm kind of watching a lot of Michael Jackson Tik Toks right now, because he was a freak, man. He was so talented," Steve said. "I could watch him dance all day, just the intensity and his dedication to it.
"There's nobody really like him - you can get the best imitator in the world but there was something about that guy and, I liked the music through the years, but I never really paid much attention because you get bamboozled by over-ridiculous press and all this stuff. When I watch him I see such brilliance and just in the dancing and the music and the singing.
"So I find myself lately just watching a lot of those - and when I say a lot of them I don't mean I sit around watching but when they come up I'm like OK! I'll be looking at my Instagram, checking out my friends and then next thing you know you start scrolling and you're lost in the abyss.
"They become addictive but I give it 15 minutes a day. Sometimes those Tik Toks can actually inspire you to be creative because I see amazing things. I see people doing extraordinary things and sometimes that will inspire you completely."
As well as finding inspiration in others - and his day to day scrolling on Instagram and Tik Tok - Steve is well known for passing on inspiration, too, having written his knowledge down to pass onto others in book form. He's even set a Guinness World Record for the world's largest online guitar lesson (in March 2011, in conjunction with the online education division of Berklee College of Music).
And he has a swathe of knowledge and inspirational advice to pass along to anyone who wants to follow in his footsteps. He told Bristol Live: "I think they're on the right track if they're thinking that way - not necessarily to be like Steve Vai, to be like the best of Steve Vai would mean that you're surrendering to your own personal unique musical voice without any excuses because me at my best, that's what I do.
"But I can give everybody a shortcut - nothing else will work for you. When you are engaging in a musical situation that doesn't feel organic or natural to your likes and dislikes, it's not going to work for you.
"So I've done that and I discovered that I'm really only happy when I'm exploring the interesting, weird, quirky, innovative things that I know can come out of me, so everybody can do that and that's the most fulfilling thing. It can just take courage sometimes but a true artist doesn't have a choice, you know, Prince wasn't going to be anything but Prince.
"But having said that, if you're a guitarist and you love the guitar but you don't feel like an accomplished songwriter or a creator playing that is absolutely fine. As a matter of fact many guitar players do that, they just love playing.
"They're almost like orchestra musicians where they don't want to be the composer, they don't want to be the conductor, they love getting music and learning it and playing it the way the composer intended. That's what they love and many, many guitar players do that and it's important for them to know that that's fine."
Steve, who will no doubt be travelling to Bristol with his entire Tom Waits catalogue (which he said he never goes anywhere without) also admitted to dabbling in a bit of art and said that there are a plethora of famous older musicians who have been known to start careers doing so - think certain members of the Rolling Stones. So could we be seeing artwork by Steve Vai in galleries anytime soon?
There's a number of musicians that also turn to painting or other kinds of mediums of their art form," Steve said. "It's very common that creative people later on in their life may explore other creative endeavours.
"I did that with art - it was my own little secret because I don't intend to, at least right now, cultivate a career as an artist, but I meet a lot of older people that have wanted to play guitar - maybe they started out with fantasies and desires and dreams to play the guitar and then they slowly decided to pick up another field. That's very common and, to those people, I say that the guitar is a great friend for life.
"You can always play it and also abandon all fantasies and just enjoy playing in the moment and the rest will take care of itself, and many times those people come back to it later. I mean our guys are 50,60,70 years old that have sold their businesses and just want to get that Strat or Les Paul and just be able to play Blues riffs and they love it, so it's always there for everybody - the guitar.
"As long as you don't start complicating it in your own mind with believing that you have to be great, that it has to be your career and if it's not you're a failure - this is all tormenting mind sh*t. The only thing you need to do is enjoy it right now. Everything else is useless."
Steve Vai's new album 'Inviolate' is out now and tickets for his show at O2 Academy Bristol are still on sale here.
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