Quotes from Joe Satriani

Boy, if anyone wants to get visited from an alien, it's me. I'm dying, and I've been sending out that invitation to the universe ever since I was a kid. I don't believe in little green men. That's collective neurosis of society. So I don't believe that.

You always have to reset your volume for the venue you are in. Sometimes the tubes can have you scratching your head because they react differently at different volumes.

Business always requires personal relationships.

My first gig was at Carle Place High School, which is in Nassau County, Long Island, New York. I was 14, and I was invited to play with this band, and I was so excited, but I was really petrified.

I've always had creative freedom. Instrumental rock wasn't really a genre, but the success of 'Surfing With the Alien' legitimized my approach.

It really sucks when music is so perfect you just don't need to hear it anymore.

I was doing clubs when I was 16. I grew up in New York, so back then, you could do that.

All of the good things that surround art - you have to embrace the idea that it could be a complete disaster. I think that's what gives it its artistic sparkle is that it really could crash and burn at any moment because you're going out on a limb and being very personal.

I really dislike flavoured potato chips, and so I always insist on just potatoes and salt, y'know? But that's not weird.

I always think of the craziest idea first and then work backwards, because you never know: that person that you think would never return your call might be sitting at home with nothing to do.

We don't test out the songs live, and we don't play them for weeks on end in the studio. We have, like, one day to get two songs down. So what happens is, everybody's attention and energy gets ratcheted up. But it's good because it helps us focus.

I can't play piano well enough without making mistakes.

Anytime you go to see a band with a guitar player, there's always a fear of guitar overkill! That's a funny question. If you went to a Taylor Swift concert or a Jay-Z show, people would think, 'Oh, my God, I hope I don't get guitar overkill.' People come to our show for guitar, and there can never be enough.

I was a guitar player in a band that had two keyboard players, sometimes two other guitarists, a bass player, and a drummer, four or five singers, and percussion. We did a two-and-a-half hour show where the music spanned from the early Sixties to the present. Whereas the David Lee Roth thing was like, Now. Very big and intense.

Most of the time, I write songs with the arrangements all at once, in my head. There's the producer side of me that's always thinking sounds, like, 'Wouldn't this be a great sound if it existed to put in front of a song, to open it up, and then, when it did its thing, something else would happen?

Guitar players I find kind of boring - and that's not meant as a dig. I find myself boring.

I personally am into the minstrel technique - if I hear someone playing a lute or playing a crumhorn, it just moves me. I don't know why.

As the years go by, I realize how unique a style rock music is and how delicate you have to be with it sometimes; otherwise, you turn it into pop music or progressive rock or something else.

When you're a teacher, you realize that you have to clearly encapsulate some unrelated technical ideas that you take for granted and understand and put them into words so someone else will understand them.

That's how we all use music. We put in on when we need it, and it's extremely important in our lives. You put on a jacket when you're cold and you put on music when your soul is in need. And when millions of people chose your music, nothing gets more profound than that

No artist wants to stumble, certainly not in front of their audience, but sometimes that's what it takes

When I went into this, I knew that public life was going to be a very weird, fantastic and cruel sort of situation to be in. I think I'm ready for any lumps to come.

I'm definitely a fan of dance music. I guess we really call it 'dance' music because music seems to have become very functional. For years, people were trying to be everything. Now, musicians are becoming very specific.

Without so much as taking another step towards the field, I turned around, went back into the gym, and I told my coach, 'Jimi Hendrix just died, and I'm quitting the team to become a guitar player.'