Being one of the most influential electric guitar virtuosos of all time, Joe Satriani reflected on being a teacher to the biggest thrash metal guitarists of the 1980s.
The awesome thing about Joe is that he also gave lessons to such a wide variety of guitar players. Apart from Metallica’s — and then Exodus’ — Kirk Hammett, the list also includes Testament’s Alex Skolnick, Larry Lalonde of Primus, and a few metal bands, Exodus’ Rick Hunolt, and many others.
As you can see, he was pretty much there for the young thrash metal pioneers. So, while recently appearing in an interview on the Talking Shred podcast, he was asked if he can be classified as “the godfather of thrash.”
However, his answer wasn’t all that simple. “I often think that a teacher has a responsibility not to influence the player,” he explained. So what does a teacher do? It’s all about giving students enough “tools,” so to speak, which would then help them create their own works of art. Satch continued (transcribed by Killer Guitar Rigs):
“Maybe I’m just talking about guitar teachers, but I noticed that — because they want direction, but at the same time, they’re very young and impressionable. You don’t want them to copy your style. You don’t want them to abandon what they naturally want to express.”
“Because they’ve got anger and frustration, they are happy, they’ve got all those things happening, and you don’t want to get in the way of how they’re going to express it. But you want to somehow teach them the language so that they understand what scale goes with that emotion. That’s kind of like what I did. And it was interesting.
And obviously, looking at it from today’s perspective, it’s definitely interesting to know what it was like to have these guys as your students. While discussing the matter, Satriani also recalled how Hammett once brought a demo tape to him and asked some music theory-related questions. He added:
“Like, Kirk would come in and say, ‘This is a rehearsal tape, we’re working on the song. What key is this in?’ And it was brand-new music! I mean, it was different from what other musicians had been doing for the last hundred years.”
Although Satch didn’t specify whether this was Exodus or Metallica. Either way, it was definitely exciting to witness metal history in the making. So with that in mind, Joe also explained how he actually helped Kirk express himself, rather than telling him what to do:
“And I’d say, ‘Well, I’m not going to tell you what to play. But here, I’ll tell you how to figure it out. And these are the choices. And then you just go do Kirk Hammett once you learn this stuff.’”
He used the same method with other players, adding:
“And that really worked, because then I could hear Larry [LaLonde] and Alex [Skolnick] and Rick [Hunolt] and they all just became themselves. But they all picked up that sort of language that was taught to me by my high school music theory teacher.”
But out of Joe’s impressive list of students, the one name that often stands out is Steve Vai. Just a little younger than Joe, Steve was an incredibly talented young musician who eventually ended up under Frank Zappa’s wing.
Speaking to Ultimate Guitar as part of their On the Record podcast last year, Satriani recalled how Vai took lessons along with a schoolmate. Pretty quickly, Satch realized that Vai was progressing much quicker. He recalled:
“After about three or four lessons, I took Steve aside and said, ‘Hey, you’re going so fast, and Frank is at another pace. I can’t really do the two of you at the same time. So we might want to think about figuring out how to do a private lesson.'”
“It really did work out because he was just on the fast track to greatness. I mean, it was just so obvious — he had the drive, the commitment, he had great ears, his fingers were huge, and he had a really good facility with them as well.”
“He was very well-coordinated with both hands and had a great sense of timing. All those things add up to just being a fantastic musician. So, teaching him was really a lot of fun.”
“He learned everything that I asked him to learn every week. It was amazing. I was so young. I’d only been playing a year, so he caught up with me pretty fast. He was one of those students that made me think, I’ve got to learn something new before that kid shows up.”
Photos: Joe Satriani/ Eduardo Peña Dolhun, Kreepin Deth (Kirk Hammett in Amsterdam 29 April 2023)
