JOE SATRIANI BIOGRAPHY

JOE SATRIANI
Biography

Joe Satriani, born on 15 July 1956 in Westbury, New York, is an American rock guitarist, composer and producer. The solo career he began in the mid-1980s made commercial sense of an album with no singing on it, which very few players have managed; he has sold more than ten million records and has been nominated for fifteen Grammy Awards. He is as well known for having taught: among his former students are Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett of Metallica and Alex Skolnick of Testament.

The day he picked up a guitar: Long Island, 1956 to 1978

Satriani was born into an Italian-American family; his paternal grandparents came from Piacenza and Bobbio, his maternal grandparents from Bari. He has told the story of why he started playing many times. He was fourteen, and the news he heard was that Jimi Hendrix had died - his official biography dates the day to 18 September 1970. He was at American football practice at the time, and he told his coach on the spot that he was quitting to become a guitarist.

He graduated from Carle Place High School, and in 1974 studied music with the jazz guitarist Billy Bauer and the reclusive jazz pianist Lennie Tristano. Tristano was technically demanding and his influence stayed in Satriani's playing. It was in this period that he began teaching, and his most notable pupil at the time was another Long Island native who went to the same Carle Place High School: Steve Vai. That was 1973, when Vai was thirteen and Satriani seventeen. While he taught, he was himself studying music at Five Towns College.

In 1978 he moved to Berkeley, California, to make a living in music, and soon resumed teaching there. His students included Kirk Hammett of Metallica, David Bryson of Counting Crows, Kevin Cadogan of Third Eye Blind, Larry LaLonde of Primus and Possessed, Alex Skolnick of Testament, Rick Hunolt, formerly of Exodus, Phil Kettner of Laaz Rockit and Charlie Hunter.

From a self-funded debut to Surfing With The Alien, 1979 to 1989

At the end of the 1970s Satriani formed a San Francisco band called Squares with his brother-in-law Neil Sheehan. He was later invited to join the Greg Kihn Band, who were on the downside of their career - and that invitation rescued him. He had run up credit-card debt recording his first album, Not of This Earth, in 1986, and the money from the Kihn band paid it off. The same year he sang backing vocals on the debut album by Crowded House.

The turn came with the second album, Surfing with the Alien, in 1987. It produced radio hits and charted higher than any all-instrumental release had in years, reaching number 29 on the Billboard 200. That success led Mick Jagger to recruit him as lead guitarist for his first solo tour in 1988. In 1987 Satriani also produced The Eyes of Horror, an EP by the death metal band Possessed.

Flying in a Blue Dream, in 1989, carries eighteen tracks, more than any other album of his; it is the first on which he sings, and the first on which he plays harmonica and a banjo-style guitar. His father died while it was being recorded, and the record is often said to carry that.

The Extremist, Deep Purple and G3, 1992 to 2000

The Extremist, in 1992, reached number 22 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Gold, his biggest commercial success. Summer Song spread quickly after Sony used it in advertising for the Discman and the Walkman.

Late in 1993 he joined Deep Purple. Ritchie Blackmore had left after the final European date, and the band's Japanese tour was two weeks away. The concerts went well and the band asked Satriani to stay permanently, but he had just signed a multi-album solo deal with Sony and declined; Steve Morse took the seat.

In 1996 he founded G3, a touring format in which three guitar-led acts each play their own set and then jam together at the end. The first line-up was Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. G3 has continued periodically ever since, with Satriani its only permanent member; the guitarists who have played it include Yngwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robert Fripp, Andy Timmons, Uli Jon Roth, Michael Schenker, Adrian Legg, Paul Gilbert, Steve Morse and Steve Lukather.

Crystal Planet in 1998 was his first album for Epic, and Engines of Creation in 2000 took a long step into electronic music.

Chickenfoot and the years after, 2002 to 2022

Strange Beautiful Music followed in 2002 and Is There Love in Space? in 2004; in May 2005 he toured India for the first time, playing Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. Super Colossal came in 2006, and that year he became an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a non-profit that provides free instruments and instruction to children in under-served American public schools; like Vai, he sits on its board as an honorary member.

In May 2008 Satriani revealed that he was joining Chickenfoot, with Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, both formerly of Van Halen, and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Their debut album came out on 5 June 2009 and Chickenfoot III on 27 September 2011; Satriani has a co-writing credit on every song of the debut.

Unstoppable Momentum in 2013, Shockwave Supernova in 2015, What Happens Next in 2018 and Shapeshifting in 2020 followed, and with The Elephants of Mars in 2022 he moved to earMUSIC - his first album away from Epic and its parent Sony since the self-titled record of 1995. In 2014 a box set of remastered studio albums, The Complete Studio Recordings, appeared alongside his memoir Strange Beautiful Music.

SatchVai: a collaboration fifty years in coming, 2024 onward

Early in 2024 Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson took the original G3 line-up out on a limited Reunion tour. Satriani and Vai then carried on as a double bill under the name SATCHVAI, and on 29 March 2024 they released The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1, the first thing the two had written and recorded together in more than fifty years of friendship. They toured Europe in 2025 as Surfing with the Hydra, with Animals as Leaders joining the 2026 North American leg, and their first studio album together, The Sea Of Emotion, has a release date of 6 November 2026.

Box sets include Original Album Classics (2008), Sony's five-CD box of five albums.

Playing and sound

Satriani is a technically accomplished player by any measure. He handles legato, two-handed and arpeggio tapping, volume swells, harmonics and extreme whammy bar effects, and in fast passages favours a legato built on hammer-ons and pull-offs that keeps the line smooth; he is equally at home with rapid alternate picking and sweep picking. His influences are Jimi Hendrix, the English rock guitarists Brian May, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore and Jeff Beck, and the jazz fusion player Allan Holdsworth.

He plays Ibanez JS Series guitars through a Marshall JVM410HJS, both designed for him as signature products. His titles lean on science fiction: Surfing with the Alien, Back to Shalla-Bal and The Power Cosmic 2000 refer to the Silver Surfer, Ice 9 to the weapon in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and Borg Sex to the Borg of Star Trek.

In Japan

His connection with Japan runs deep. Deep Purple's Japanese tour of December 1993 happened because he stood in, and part of those recordings has since been released. Under his own name he returned in February 2017 for the Surfing to Shockwave Japan Tour 2017, his first headline visit in fifteen years, playing Namba Hatch on the 7th and Nakano Sunplaza Hall on the 8th with Mike Keneally on guitar and keyboards, Bryan Beller on bass and Marco Minnemann on drums. In September 2024 he was the guitarist of Sammy Hagar's Best of All Worlds 2024 Tour in Nagoya (20 September), Osaka (22 September) and Tokyo (23 September). The LIVE section of this site lists the two 2017 concerts, the dates billed under his own name.

A note on sources

The facts here rest on the official biography at satriani.com, on the English Wikipedia entries for Satriani and for each album, on MusicBrainz release rows for dates, labels, catalogue numbers and running orders, on Spotify embed payloads for album identity, on YouTube's oEmbed for the uploader of every official video, and - for the 2017 Japanese concerts - on Sony Music's official artist page and on the press release of the promoter, M&I Company. The figure of fifteen Grammy nominations without a win is given by both the official biography and Wikipedia.