“This is a guy who worked for Frank Zappa. Frank said to him, ‘Whatever you do, don’t learn how to read music.’ He's all-creative –he's a miracle, really”: Steve Vai on BEAT, being a virtuoso in his 60s – and the Fripp riff he just couldn’t master

Steve Vai.

After kicking off 2024 beside old G3 pals Eric Johnson and Joe Satriani, Steve Vai hopped on tour with Satch for the aptly titled SatchVai tour. Then, alhough he's avoided supergroups for most of his career, he joined Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, and Danny Carey in BEAT to celebrate King Crimson’s well-loved guitar-synthy '80s era.

He knew of Belew, and shared Zappa-related lineage with him, but they’d never worked together. “I watch him every night,” Vai tells Guitar World. “Nobody is like anybody else – but there’s nobody even in the same playground as Adrian.”