The greatest album of all time, according to Steve Vai
Virtuoso legend he may be, but Steve Vai is much more than that one solitary tag suggests. While he is undoubtedly one of the most technically gifted guitarists the world has ever seen, the realm of searing technique and complex patterns only accounts for a small aspect of his scope.
Offering a great deal of insight into the context from which he emerges is that Vai started his path to stardom as the transcriptionist for Frank Zappa. A visionary musician who can be dubbed a virtuoso guitarist in his own right, Zappa’s challenging fusion of rock, avant-garde and jazz pushed the instrument into new realms, putting a distinctly cerebral twist on the form when the zeitgeist was still locked in a fascination with classic rock bombast and posturing.
At just 18, this opportunity opened Vai’s eyes to the broad scope of popular music and the many possibilities a guitar could offer outside of playing the guitar to find God-like status and massage the delicate ego beneath the glitz and glamour. Clearly sensing something great within the young player, Zappa hired Vai as part of his band, who he played with from 1980 to 1983 when he eventually decided to embark upon a solo career. This would see him take the lessons learned from Zappa and his other influences and package them into a scintillating blend of hard rock, metal and prog without ever forgoing his natural musicality.
Although he is closely associated with metal due to his solo efforts and recording career with the likes of Alcatrazz, Alice Cooper, David Lee Roth, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, and even Motörhead, Vai has stepped out of this realm and into other seemingly far removed ones. Away from metal, he’s worked with John Lydon’s post-punk pioneers, Public Image Ltd, Jacob Collier, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jackson and Mike Stern, offering nouse while also earning more strings for his already extensive bow.
Metal, pop, rock, jazz, and more; Vai has tried his hands at more environments than most notable guitarists, with this prolific and quite daring nature going far beyond the exploits of other associated virtuosos. You wouldn’t catch former Alcatrazz member Yngwie Malmsteen—who Vai replaced—playing anything other than neoclassical metal.
Vai has never been one to downplay the effect Zappa had on his life. Although the demanding ‘Cosmik Debris’ songwriter made the budding guitarist suffer a year-long anxiety attack, what he taught him was invaluable moving forward and offered a new perspective on the craft of songwriting. He’d long been a fan of guitar pioneers such as Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and Ritchie Blackmore, as well as jazz fusion guitarists like Allan Holdsworth, but his stint with Zappa saw him look beyond purely the fretboard.
This fascination with the craft of songwriting means that Vai’s pick for the greatest album of all time does not fit in the metal or virtuoso categories. His choice for the best album ever comes from gravel-voiced songwriting maestro Tom Waits, 1992’s Bone Machine. However, scratching beneath the maudlin nature of the Californian’s best-known moments, the experimental angle of Bone Machine and his other masterworks, such as Swordfishtrombones, qualify him as someone that Steve Vai would be a big fan of. He’s another artist who has continually pushed his work into new, untapped realms.
Vai made his love of Bone Machine clear when listing it as the greatest album of all time for Classic Rock in 2022, and lauded its atmosphere and deeply raw form of expression. Unsurprisingly, he also added a Zappa record as an afterthought.
He said: “Bone Machine by Tom Waits [1992]. I can’t even explain it. It’s as raw and honest an expression of an artist as I’ve ever heard. Tom has this way of capturing atmospheres. With the lyrics, the sound of the tracks, the way he’s singing it… it all works together in an organic way that paints a picture, unlike anything in pop music. Another one was Frank Zappa’s Overnite Sensation.”
Clearly, Steve Vai is not just the shredding virtuoso most know him as. There’s much more beneath those sports shades and Ibanez guitar. He’s even a fan of Elton John.
