STEVE VAI THE Guitar INTERVIEW

For a man who has seen his best-laid plans for two albums torn apart by forces beyond his control over the past 18 months, Steve Vai remains a remarkably positive and optimistic presence. When the pandemic first put paid to his plan to at last finish the third and final part of his 15-year Real Illusions project, the sexagenarian shred icon instead looked at what he could accomplish back at his home studio, and decided to indulge his long-held desire to make an acoustic record. Things were going swimmingly. He had 15 songs written and was working himself up to record a particularly intense strumming section when snap – the exertion tore three tendons in his right shoulder. The injury was severe enough to require a surgical repair, putting his picking arm in a sling – and another album on the shelf.

“I try to look at everything that happens as being in my best interest,” Vai tells us via Zoom from his home studio. “I didn’t know what I was gonna do. But plans change. I didn’t always do this. I used to complain and worry quite a bit but, over the years, you just realise that when you figure it out as you go, everything’s easy. Because what are you going to do, fight what is?”

Some might take their arm self-destructing as a sign that, after a 40-year career, it was time to take it easy. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth.

“I had my arm in this sling that was invented by the doctor that did the surgery. His name is Dr Knapp, so it’s called the Knappsack,” Vai chuckles. “Shortly after the surgery, I received this beautiful Onyx Black PIA [Vai’s latest Ibanez signature model]. I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Well, I got one hand, what can I do?’ Why can’t I do a song with one hand? Anybody with a legato technique can figure that out. When I released the song, called , I was so surprised at the response, it was a stunner. There was an opportunity where lemonade was made out of lemons.”