Steve Vai

(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Steve Vai, a student of Joe Satriani and former guitarist for Frank Zappa, made his solo debut in 1984 with Flex-Able (Urania, 1984).

Vai is certainly capable of assembling a power trio (with the divine Stuart Hamm on bass) and playing hard rock straight through, as he demonstrates in The Attitude Song, but he seems to enjoy more contaminating the genre with unusual experiments (a jazz fanfare in Viv Woman) and, above all, composing gags in the sub-rock operetta style created in the 1960s by Frank Zappa (like Little Green Men), complete with silly backing vocals and circus-like keyboards, and adding for good measure his inventive guitar dub effects in the most unpredictable (often amelodic) timbres and sequences. Vai is a master both in instrumental arrangement—evident in the symphonic sketch of Salamanders In The Sun—and in vocal arrangement, with the album’s humor peaking in the delightful 1950s-style staging of The Boy/Girl Song, a duet blending a “teen idol” refrain with a “girl-group” refrain over a rhythm and blues accompaniment. Perhaps less successful is Junkie, which is meant to be a summa of all these methods, steeped in pathos and melodrama ā la Jim Steinman.

After the mini-album Flex-Able Leftovers—true to its title—several years passed before the virtuoso guitarist (in demand by Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake) attempted to record another solo work. Passion And Warfare (Food For Thought, 1990), with Vai now at the peak of his fame, was a major disappointment: despite renewed contributions from Hamm on bass, his solos (like Erotic Nightmares and For the Love of God) are formulaic, grandiose, and overflowing with clichés. Its sole purpose seemed to be selling millions of copies, aided by tracks like Liberty and I Would Love To.

Similarly, Sex And Religion (Relativity, 1993) showcases his undeniable skills as a guitarist (Down Deep Into The Pain), arranger (State Of Grace), and entertainer (Still My Bleeding Heart), but it confirms his shortcomings as a composer.