The fact that Steve Vai does not approach the electric guitar like any other guitar player owes as much to his philosophy as it does to the techniques he has developed over the years, and so when Jacob Collier comes out in a recent interview to say that the biggest thing he has learned from his friendship and collaborations with Vai is not necessarily to do with how he addresses the strings, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.
Collier, who is on the crest of his own creative wave right now having dropped all kinds of virtuosity and imagination on his fifth album, Djesse Vol 4, revealed that what he learnt from being in the room with Vai was bigger than technique, admitting in a recent interview with Kerrang! that it is the Steve Vai philosophy that is the most profound lesson he took from it.
