Funk Soul Brother

THE VIRTUOSO TEAMS UP WITH CHAD SMITH AND GLENN HUGHES FOR WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, A NEW ALBUM OOZING WITH FUNKALICIOUS GROOVES AND SOULFUL STYLINGS.

- Joe Bosso

Ever since his recording career began in 1986, the guitar virtuoso has worked fanciful concepts throughout his albums— there was time travel and intergalactic space themes; there were Silver Surfers and gigantic rock robots; and even Satriani himself got caught up in the act, assuming various guises and alien personas, such as Professor Satchafunkilus and Shockwave Supernova. As the conceits piled up, the music became more elaborate, with an emphasis on extended arrangements and shifting time signatures. For Satriani, it was all becoming a bit too much.

“Eventually, you just have to summon the nerve to close one door and open another,” he says. “I think I knew it on the Shockwave Supernova album. It was a definitive coming together of artistic explorations that had lasted a couple of decades, but I did end it with the track ‘Goodbye Supernova.’ At first I didn’t think it was such a heavy statement; it was just a song that encapsulated the narrative of the album. But as we played it on tour every night, it was cathartic. I started to realize that I was breaking away from the past.”

He pauses, then adds thoughtfully, “I wanted to get my brain out of the cosmos and get back to being a guitar player with two feet on the ground. I wasn’t trying to reinvent myself as much as I was trying to return to something that I was—me.”