Steve Vai was born on the 6th of June 1960 in New York, USA. He started his musical career at the small age of 13 creating his first band, RAYGE. This was when he was still at school. At this time he was being tutored by Satriani who he went on to play along side in the G3 gigs. Satriani influenced Vai’s style for the majority of his work and listening to his early albums it’s easily understandable. Vai also studied Jazz and classical styling of music and paid close attention to the structure and works of the artists in those fields. He studied at Berklee College of music in Boston Massachusetts. He then moved to LA in 1979. There Frank Zappa recruited him as his lead guitarist in his band, he was only 18 at this stage. By early 1984 he had created his own recording studio and had started to fuse jazz, rock and classical music into his style. These styles were the main influence behind his first solo project by the name of Flex-able. He had written such an extent of music that he released another album later called Flex-able leftovers. You could hear the Zappa in the music and Vai wasn’t afraid to go along with the random type of music.
When 1985 came around, Vai took Yngwie Malmsteens’s place in the band ‘Alcatrazz’. After he changed again and joined David Lee Roth, then after, Whitesnake. It wasn’t until 1990 that he received international recognition as a solo artist by releasing his seminal album Passion and Warfare. He placed classical, jazz, rock funk and neo-classical metal in a huge mixing pot of music and stirred it to perfection. The album contained great melodies but also showed off Vai’s unbelievable technique.
Now with the extra acclaim Vai proceeded in forming a self titled band where he released the album sex and Religion. His next solo album alien love secrets accentuated his style further by showing off what he could do with a whammy bar and other guitar effects. Vai has gone on to release fire garden, the G3 gig, the ultra zone, the 7th Song - Enchanting Guitar Melodies - Archives Vol. 1, alive in an ultra world and most recently, the elusive light and sound, vol. 1. All these recordings show off the master at work, live and studio.
Some people may class him as unlistenable as he has a very complicated style that takes a lot to understand. Guitarists probably can take more from his albums as they may understand better the effort to produce such guitar wonders.
Vai has recently Teamed up with Satriani and Malmsteen to do another G3 this time without Eric Johnson as he had other commitments.
Bio written by: uglow |
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