Guitar legend Joe Satriani spoke in an interview with Q103 and revealed his thoughts about Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett.
He compared teaching Steve Vai to play guitar and teaching Kirk Hammett. Here’s the statement:
“It was very different how I met them. Steve Vai was 12 years old and could not play guitar at all when I met him. He showed up on my front door with a guitar with no strings in one hand and a pack of strings in the other, and said, ‘Hey, you’re teaching my friend. Can you teach me how to play too?’ So that was my introduction to Steve.
Kirk was already a really good guitar player; he was already the lead guitarist in Exodus when I met him. And I already moved to Berkeley, CA by then. So he walked into the store where I was teaching looking for lessons, ’cause he knew that I was teaching a bunch of other thrash metal kids in the neighborhood there.
So working with Kirk was a lot easier, because he was already a pretty accomplished player, he was already an advanced player. And he was still in Exodus at the time, but then, very quickly, he got the gig with Metallica, so the lessons became extremely important, because he was working and making albums.
Exciting times, very exciting times. They were both fantastically dedicated musicians, as they are today.”
Click here to entire interview.
