Fortunate enough to start his career under the supervision of
Frank Zappa and Joe Satriani, guitar wizzard Steve Vai found himself playing
in bands as David Lee Roth's solo group and David Coverdale's Whitesnake.
Soon after he released a solo project, the "Passion and Warfare" (1990)
album and first instrumental album for many years to enter Billboard's
Top40 and reach gold status. Since then, Steve Vai concentrated on his solo
career. "Sex and Religion" (Summer 1993) was his first attempt for a vocal
band, while his recent "Alien Love Secrets" EP is a clear return to
instrumental and complex guitar takes.

Is he a pop-star, a sex-symbol, a spiritual freak or simply a
talented and multi-directed musician? I found Steve at his Hollywood Hills
place, he's charming and relaxed, willing to answer all of my questions and
give a flavor of his vision.

AV: Hi there, long time since we spoke to each other!

SV: Yes indeed, it's been a long time! It was in Europe, wasn't it?

AV: No, it was not. It was at Chicago, October 1993, after your show
in Park West (an amazing -about a thousand capacity- club with superb
acoustics and an overwhelming Steve Vai 'Sex & Religion' show).
SV: Oh yeah!
AV: Yeap, remember this cute Japanese girl that came all across
the Pacific to attend the show and meet you? She was crying so bad...she
couldn't believe that she met you...she was shocked! You guys left together
with you trying to pretend ... human! (Vai laughs). You still live in
Hollywood, aren't you?

SV: Yes, I still live in Hollywood, that's true.

AV: How do you cope with it?
SV: Hmmm...well, you know, I find a lot of charming things with Hollywood.
I live up in the hills, so it's kind of nice to live there. I like the
weather, hmmm, there's a lot of great places to go, if you go out of it
but there're some things I don't like about it, floods and riots,
earthquakes and fires. It's not a great place to raise kids, so I'm
actually looking forward to move but I'm so busy right now that I don't
have the time to do it.

AV: Move to another state?

SV: Well no, I'd like to live within Souther Cal but in a nicer district.

AV: What about San Fransisco? You used to live there.
SV: I don't like the weather up there, it's rainy. I like to go out,
exercise a lot and ride a motorcycle. It's hard to do it up there.

AV: You said you're very busy. What are you currently working on?

SV: Right now I'm working on a film, a short film, which is a 35min video of
the performance of all songs of 'Alien Love Secrets' as a trio. We shot it
in one day but gives the ability to my fans to see me playing.

AV: Is it a commercial purpose video for airlplay use?

SV: No it is not, MTV does not play my stuff.

AV: To the extent of my memory, 'Passion and Warfare' received a lot of
airplay through MTV.

SV: Yes, at that time, but 1990 was a different time. In 1995 there's no
room on MTV for a guitar virtuoso, I will send them stuff from the new
video but I won't blame them if they don't play it. The question is, why pay
big money for video clips that MTV and other channels won't play?

Very soon the conversation moved to Internet. Steve Vai, who has
access to Internet but is still a beginner, showed big interest when I
started to explain to him about Metaverse, Cybercasting and Internet in
general. The conversation delightfully unfolded to issues I did not expect I'd
debate.

SV: I wish I had the opportunity to have a bigger capacity line in my home!
I spend a lot of time on Internet but working through a phone line makes
things very slow.
AV: Solution to that is to bring an Ethernet line in your home!
SV: I guess that would be expensive! The whole Internet thing is
expanding on a fantastic rate, isn't it?

AV: It's frightening when you realize where the world is heading into. What
would be the difference of drugs and virtual reality when both will be
radical means of escapism from reality?
SV: This is true but ultimately, I believe, the human being is striving for
an excellence higher than anyhthing that can be possibly manufactured by
electronics. Moreover, the whole electronics thing is also a personality
trade. If the person has that, he will also emerge himself into that
whether it's a video game or ... mathematics, whatever. I have two kids,
one of them started on video games when he was two and a half. He is six
now, and he is absolutely astounded by all those video games. He has his
own computer, he plays chess and all other games. My other son, he is
totally uninterested in all that stuff. He's a more out-to-the-world type
of character. What I want to say is that it's also a personality thing.

AV: I agree, but there should be a balance, "we're humans but we're still
animals" (a phrase Vai used in 'Passion and Warfare'). We "need" such a
balance! You find me positive with indulgence but I always believed in
the existence of this limit.
SV: Sometimes this balance is achieved through overindulgence. Until you're
overindulging something and realise through direct perception that it was
damaging to you and wrong, you learn balance. I don't critize people who
are overindulging on anything because they are going to learn their lesson.
It's a terrible reality but sometimes you have to destroy yourself to learn.

The next topic was music. I tried to get as much as I could for his
near past, the period between 'Sex & Religion' and now. During that time,
Steve Vai's name was involved with Ozzy Osbourne's following to the multi
platinum seller "No More Tears". Ozzy and Steve were last seen together at
a GWAR concert at Hollywood Palladium!

SV: Oh...yeah, Ozzy was looking for some songs for his record, and they
called me up and we got together. I had a really good time working with
him, he is a unique personality. We wrote a whole bunch of material and I
think they're going to use a little bit on the new record, hmmm... no I'm
not playing on it (ed: when he realised that this was my next question),
Ozzy has Zakk, and Zakk is a fabulous guitar player (ed: News want Zakk
leaving Ozzy and joining Guns'n Roses who he currently writes stuff with).
Me coming playing one or two songs is defeating what Ozzy
is all about. So they may play a few songs that we wrote, and they have a
shelf of material they might record sometime, you really can't tell.

AV: Do you plan to release some of the stuff you did together under your
name?
SV: I'd like to, but that gets a lot more political. Moreover, when Ozzy
sings something, it's totally Ozzy, it's him. It's hard for me to put it
under my name.

AV: I see! What's after that?
SV: Well...after that, then I decided I'd better get a record out because I
was sitting around, I mean I spent a lot of time with Ozzy, close to four
months, so I've released 'Alien Love Secrets', as an EP, something to be
out there. It may also give guitar players something to get a kick out.

AV: How would you compare your instrumental efforts that far?
SV: For each project I do, I try to get a vision of the entire project as
a whole and create an atmosphere for that project. "Flex-able" (1984) was
created on a certain kind of equipment with a certain type of frame of mind,
you know, towards the music and the overall production.

AV: You were very young during that time.
SV: Oh yeah, I was 20 or 21 when I was doing it with an 8-track. With
"Passion & Warfare" I wanted to make a bigger sounding record with lot more
production and orchestration. It's more my composition work than a guitar
player. It was a very dense and complex album. "Sex & Religion" was like
an attempt for a band. Hmm...with "Alien Love Secrets" I wanted to do really
my first guitar solo album. It's very straight ahead, right in your face,
no overdubs. I wanted a more organic personal approach for this album.

AV: Since you brought into discussion "Sex & Religion", will you keep
working with the same guys for a future vocal-project?
SV: No, I never expected it to happen.
AV: Really? You had left me under the impression that this was not a
one-album thing.

SV: No, and I will tell you why. Those guys are really wonderful musicians,
but they have their own personality. When I try to have a band together
I'm too much of a control freak. I want things to be done too much of a
certain way. I gave them some freedom, but the freedom musicians of this
calibre need, I wasn't able to give. Therefore, blame it on me, this project
will not come together again.

AV: Are there any plans to work with well known bands (Steve Vai played
with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake in mid and late 80s)?
SV: Well, I was hoping that nothing came along, I wanted to work on my own
stuff and give priority to myself.

AV: What do your future plans look like?
SV: The future plan is that Steve Vai is first and foremost a musician. Not
a pop-star really. I have no intentions on going out on the road with a big
rock band, I don't see why this would happen.

AV: Increasing the balance of your bank account, I suppose.
SV: I don't need my bank account balance increased!

AV: Here you got a very good reason!
SV: It is, and I have been very fortunate in the past that I had the
opportunity to play with big bands and make descent money, but I also
enjoyed it. Everybody has his price, of course. If I really enjoyed it
then I'd do it. All of those criteria have to fall into place though. If
I needed the money I'd do it, even if I didn't enjoy it. Now I'm very
fortunate, I don't need to do it. I'm not gonna lie to you, why should I?

AV: How do you characterize musicians?
SV: Let me put it to you like this. Some people are musicians and
pop-stars, and some people are just pop-stars. They're not really
musicians. They have all those people around them, giving them the music
and how it would sound, and they're fine entertainers and fine
performers. I don't blame them.

AV: How would you classify yourself?
SV: I'm cursed, I've been a musician for as long as I can remember, and
I will always consider myself as a person who does music, you know. I
like to compose music for various instruments and orchestrate it, I like
to write songs, I like to experiment with harmonization techniques, I like
diving into theory. I also like to sit with my guitar until something grungy
comes out of it. There's a whole lot of things that some people are very
expert at image and not much interested in reading music or anything. I
wouldn't consider myself among them.

AV: Are you a perfectionist?
SV: First of all you have to explain me what is perfect.

AV: God is perfect, I suppose...nature is perfect, what else?
SV: In this sense, yes, I am. But when it come to the comparison of making
music with what God realization means, then I am not.

AV: Do you still plan to work on the guitar-symphonic orchestra live
album you were talking to me about two years ago?
SV: Oh yeah, I remember now, another idea of a lifetime ago! To get ideas
and implementing them is a totally different story! But, to say the truth,
I'm still working on it, I've been giving it some time. I have six scores
completed and, actually, I did a concert twenty days ago with a sixty
piece orhestra in Seattle. It was a tribute to Frank Zappa. Their conductor
and me are still working on it, make a project where an orchestra will play
the work of a rock guitar player. It is an expensive and time consuming idea,
but I'm determined to do it someday, I can assure you about that.
AV: Frank Zappa was your mentor. His music, although difficult to access,
presence will be missed with his recent death. Is there anything you'd like
to comment on this?
SV: Frank was trully a musician. He had a complete control of music
vocabulary and was not for the average listener. The average listener, for
example, will never pick a Motzart concerto and listen to it, and groove to
it. The average listener likes the lyrics, because he has connected parts
of his life with them, or the beat. Music looks to them like a magic kind of
mors code.

AV: I will change the subject. How would you describe a regular Steve Vai
day?
SV: What my regular day is like?...hmmm...let's see, I wake up at about
5:30am to read, or medidate for 2 hours and get my kids up for school. Then I
sleep for a couple of hours. When I wake again, I exercise for an hour
and then work on the video till 11 at night, with a 2 hours break for dinner
and see my family. This is Monday through Friday, on the weekends I spend
more time with my family, go running, go out with my wife and kids and
do some work. When I meet a deadline, then everything goes out the window
and I work eighteen hours per day! I don't go out that often, I don't party
that much, I have a studio in my home and I stay there and work on music.

AV: Do you plan playing live?
SV: I will spend some time for shows but it will be for concerts in South
America, Russia, and Australia. There will be no tour yet. This will give
me a chance to move out of here for a while and travel. I plan to do heavy
touring after my album comes out sometime early next year.

For the last part of this interview, we spend some time talking
about his forthcoming release. Steve Vai does not hesitate to come back and
speak once again about himself, his philoshopy and attitude, and how he
would like to be perceived as a musician.

SV: "Alien Love Secrets" was a simple EP. I want to finish its video and
start working for an LP. It will be a completely different album and I
started recording it before I released "Alien Love Secrets". This album
has a certain focus. It has a lot of heavy music in it, but it's a lot
thicker, it's sort of orhestrated like "Passion & Warfare" and I hope to
put some vocals on it with ...sit dowm... myself being the vocalist!

AV: Aren't you afraid that you may saturate the market with all those
projects released in a little time being?

SV: Yeah, probably, but I want to be able to walk in a music store in five
years and walk to the Steve Vai bin and find a lot of stuff in there. I have
the ability and I want to do it. Moreover I waited so long in between my last
three albums, I don't want to wait anymore that long again.

AV: I'd say that you have this Frank Zappa inclination!

SV: You may say so. There's a certain audience that likes what I do, and
I thank them, God bless them, they can get entertainment out of it. The way
I make my music is very unlikely to become a pop-star, but who knows, it
might work like that, I don't want to answer and I put it at the hands of
fate. I just try to do, whatever I do, the best I can do, and I leave the
rest in the hands of fate.

AV: Many thanks for your time and this interview.

SV: Thank you very much and we'll keep contact through email!