“I remember my first lesson with Joe. I had a guitar and a set of strings. I’d never really played. I didn’t know how to tune or string it”: Steve Vai and Joe Satriani discuss the evolution of guitar playing, and what they taught each other

Joe Satriani (left) and Steve Vai perform onstage at the Limelight in Chicago, Illinois on June 27, 1987.

This interview with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai originally appeared in the April 1990 issue of Guitar World.

Before Steve Vai and Joe Satriani burst onto the scene, Carle Place, Long Island, qualified as the land that time – and everyone else – forgot. But as the boyhood home of the two monsters of “intelligent chops,” the suburban town stands at the center of the earth for countless guitarists.