Friday, March 15, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
"Joe Satriani," Joe Satriani says, is so named because the new album has no real theme, save for Satriani himself.
For this recording, the rock-guitar god's seventh, he relinquished production control (to Glyn Johns) for the first time and accepted the advice to just plug in and play.
"It was liberating in a lot of ways," says Satriani, in a phone interview from his home in San Francisco. "I didn't have to think about the catering, the cartage, the tape machine, the people's salaries or the studio time. I didn't have to think about anything except the creative process."
Johns, who has engineered sessions by the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, and produced the Eagles, Steve Miller, Eric Clapton and the Clash, came aboard after Satriani had started work on the album.
"I felt like I had a great album, but I also knew I had a problem getting it out," he says. "I had a feeling that if I didn't ask for help, this might dry up and go away."
Satriani stopped the project at the end of March 1995 (after working intermittently for six months in the studio) and told his management to find him a producer.
"One guy mentioned Glyn Johns and I said, 'Man, if you can get him I would record it anywhere.' (Johns) responded very quickly and we hit it off. He had some really radical plans for me. The main thing was he threw me out of the control room.
"He said, 'Stand in front of the amp and play the song.' For a guy who used to spend five months teasing together albums, it was a brand new thing for me. Glyn told me, 'I want your soul, your blood, your sweat, your tears. I want that to come out of the speakers. I'm not going to put anything between you and the listener,'" says Satriani, referring to his own penchant for the guitar gadgetry and studio enhancements that mark his other albums.
Johns, Satriani says, wanted him to expose his soul.
"I said, 'How do we do that?' He said, 'Just shut up and play.'"
And play Satriani does -- although once again without his core touring band of drummer Jonathan Mover and bassist Stu Hamm.
Asked if they give him grief for excluding them from his recording work, Satriani says, "That's putting it mildly."
He explains: "I think we as a band have broken up as many times as we've toured. We start out touring with the best of intentions and have months of great touring, but by the end we're gonna kill each other. We have a deep love for each other and respect for each other.
"At the same time, we like different things. Jonathan's got a new band called Einstein. If you listen to that and my and Stu's last album, it's pretty obvious these are three guys going in pretty different directions. It makes for a very exciting live band. Then we got Jeff...."
He was referring to Jeff Campitelli, who heretofore has played percussion on most of Satriani's albums. This time he's joined the tour as a jack-of-all-trades on rhythm guitar, drums and keyboards where needed. Satriani says Campitelli is the antithesis of himself on guitar and Mover on drums, in that his primary interest is finding and maintaining the rhythmic pulse.
"He likes to sit in the pocket and groove. He's different from the rest of us. My primary job is to go absolutely crazy in front of an audience, and that, quite by accident, is what I enjoy doing. The others (Mover and Hamm) like to join in, and someone has to hold it together."
It's the first time Satriani has ever utilized another guitarist, save for Andy Fairweather Low on "Joe Satriani."
In addition to Low, Johns paired Satriani with drummer Manu Katche and bassist Nathan East on what may be his most eclectic album. He moves from lush exoticism ("Moroccan Sunset") to roaring bebop ("Killer Bee Bop") to Mississippi crossroads ("Slow Down Blues") on successive tracks, and the rest of the album is chock full of surprises -- not the least of which is a rare Satriani vocal ("Look My Way").
"Ask me why I did it and I don't have an answer," he says.
The song has a distorted sound, as if Satriani were sitting in some shanty -- a la Robert Johnson -- and singing into a tape recorder. Actually, he was singing into a modern microphone plugged into a "flea market amplifier" made of cardboard.
"Joe Satriani" also contains its namesake's favorite song, "Cool No. 9," a groove-heavy tune with funk and jazz inflections.
"When I wrote it, I remember calling it 'Cool No. 9.' When I hear it, I think there was a good reason for calling it that. I think it is the coolest song I've ever written. Every time I hear it, it rolls right out. It's not overbearing or repetitious.
"Jeff plays that rhythm part, and he just nails it. And Stu and Jon kick it up a couple of notches for the live show. It's funny. Stu and Jon, having not played on the albums, when they listen to the stuff I've done they either get a new idea to add to it or they can't stand it. Either way, it creates a tension that adds to the live show and it makes things more aggressive."
Satriani had planned to call the album "Crystal Planet," the name of a song that didn't make the record.
"I thought it would be a cool name for the album," says Satriani, who has dreamed up such cool album titles as "Surfing With the Alien" and "Flying in a Blue Dream."
"I did some photo sessions and there's a shot of me holding what looks like a red glob of planet. It's actually a bowling ball with red lighting on it. After a while, I realized that thinking the album should have a title was holding me back."
Satriani says he wrote some of his best songs when he liberated himself from that constraint.
"I was truly free to write what was in my head (and not worry about threading together a related collection of songs). I ran it by my management and my record company (Relativity) and they said, 'It doesn't matter if the album has a title, as long as it's a good album.'"
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