Joe Satriani: “When Jimi Hendrix Played the Blues”

In a 1989 Interview, Satch Revealed His Deepest Inspiration

If it weren’t for Jimi Hendrix, Joe Satriani may never have become a guitarist. Hearing Jimi, Joe explained early in his career, was a life-changing event: “I was just completely floored. The first time I ever heard him on the radio, it was like a psychedelic event. I was just a little kid, but it seemed like the whole room was spinning. Before that there were all these really smoking jazz guys, but very few of them touched me. Wes Montgomery, to me, was perfect. First time I ever heard him, I needed no convincing, no introduction. And Hendrix sounded the exact same way – so natural and off the wall and anti-technique that I loved it.” On the day Jimi died – September 18, 1970 – Joe quit the football team and abandoned his drums for guitar.

By the late 1980s, Joe Satriani had ascended to the highest echelon of rock guitar. The January 1989 issue of Guitar Player magazine announced that he’d just won the triple crown in the annual Readers Poll, for Best Overall Guitarist, Best New Talent, and Best Guitar Album for Surfing With the Alien. On February 3, 1989, Joe called me to express his thanks for the awards. While he was on the line, I mentioned that I was working on a cover story about Jimi Hendrix’s blues masterpiece, “Red House.” This instantly caught Joe’s attention and led to some fascinating insights.

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I’ve been investigating Jimi Hendrix’s approach to playing blues.

Wow. It’s funny you should mention that – right now I’m listening to “1983 – A Merman I Should Turn to Be.” I’ve been listening to Electric Ladyland all morning. I’ve got a CD of it, and it’s really nice. I let the thing roll and roll. God.

What do you think of Jimi as a blues player?

For me, for my soul, he was the deepest blues player. He played the saddest stuff and he played the funniest. He played the most outside stuff, but it was really from the gut. He strayed from the traditional blues playing, yet he always seemed to incorporate the moans and the cries into a phrasing that was completely blues. So it never threw me off when I listened to it. “Red House” is a monument to blues. It’s beyond a recording or a song. Because it’s a silly song – blues songs are mostly silly or crying-in-your-beer kind of songs.

The lyrics, you mean.

Yeah. But at the same time, he makes it heavy. And the guitar work! I mean, he plays blues throughout the entire song. It’s not like some guy who waits for the solo. The whole piece is an orchestration of blues from delicate to bombastic. It’s unbelievable. I love it. The original recording in the States here, from the Smash Hits record, is just unbelievable – I love it. I’ve worn out many a Hendrix record and tape listening to that song just over and over again. It’s one of my favorites to play. It’s great. Of course, the live versions were always different. It’s like his litmus paper about how he was feeling about blues at the time.