During his latest interview with Face Culture, Joe Satriani opened up about one of his first guitar playings at a very young age, which he found very terrible. Also, the legendary guitarist revealed how he realized that he was terrible, which became an unforgettable and funny experience for him.
Joe Satriani tried playing different instruments such as drums and piano before becoming a well-known and successful guitar player. Interestingly, initially, Satriani didn’t have any dream about being a guitarist until he heard that Jimi Hendrix died on September 18, 1970. He was fourteen years old and learned it during football practice and told the coach that he quit because he devoted his life to being a musician like the late guitarist.
Hendrix’s early and unexpected death was a life-changing moment for Satriani, and since then, he started to learn to play guitar and practice in her sister’s room, who went to college. Satriani stated that his parents eventually thought he would get bored of this instrument and didn’t buy him an amplifier. Instead, he had a tape recorder and recorded the sound during his early practices.
The guitarist highlighted that generally, the beginners didn’t recall these awful performances while learning to play guitar as an experienced teacher of many iconic guitarists, Steve Vai, Larry LaLonde, Rick Hunolt, and Kirk Hammett. Satriani said he wasn’t lucky like the others because he listened to his performance; therefore, the musician could never forget that moment due to that infamous tape recorder.
Here’s what Satriani said:
“The memory is very vivid in my mind. I was allowed to practice electric guitar in one of my sister’s rooms because she had gone off to college. My parents didn’t want to buy me an amplifier because I’d been a drummer before, and they sort of thought, ‘Well, he may not pursue this very long, so we’re just gonna wait and see what happens.’ They gave me a tape recorder; instead, it was a big metal Wollensak tape recorder.
I had some tapes on there that I had to record to get the sound to come out of the tape recorder. The reason why I remember this is because I had to record myself just to hear the electric guitar come out. Then, I’d listened back to it, and I go, ‘Oh my God, I really suck, this is terrible.’ Generally, you play when you’re a beginner, and then the moment is gone. You never come face to face with how much of a beginner you are. However there, from the very start, I realized, ‘Oh, wow, this sounds terrible.’“
You check out the interview below.
