“Like a child’s melody”: the song Joe Satriani wanted to be remembered for
While many would argue that rock music is at its best when there are words attached to a song, there are clearly enough fans in the world who can’t seem to get enough of the instrumental work of Joe Satriani.
Proving that lyrics aren’t always the most integral vehicle for conveying feeling and emotion in rock compositions, the American guitarist has long been cited by some of the genre’s most formidable figures as one of the greatest players to grace the earth. It’s through a powerful connection that Satriani seems to have forged with his instrument that he’s been able to demonstrate this incredible talent, and despite the lack of narrative storytelling in his work, it’s evident that his songs are still able to take you on a journey through sound.
While there are plenty of arguments against the work of guitarists like Satriani for being far too self-indulgent and too inherently focused on showcasing technicality rather than the ability to craft songs, this hasn’t deterred millions from hailing him as a guitar god, and this is ultimately what has made him the best-selling artist of all time when it comes to instrumental rock music.
Despite the fact that his songs aren’t exactly radio-friendly commercial hits in waiting, those who consider themselves die-hard fans of Satriani’s will all have a personal favourite work that they can revisit time and time again to marvel at.
Having been recruited by esteemed artists such as Mick Jagger and Deep Purple to perform live with them, Satriani is perhaps at his best when given the space to let loose on stage, and it happens to be one of the live performances that he himself believes to be the greatest achievement of his career, which he’d love to be remembered for.
In 2001, Satriani released the album Live in San Francisco, which compiled recordings of two performances at The Fillmore in December of the previous year into an almost two-and-a-half-hour display of his virtuosity. Alongside this, Satriani opted to release the live performance as a DVD, and claimed during an interview with Guitar World that the opening cut, ‘Time’, accompanied by the footage of the show, that he’d love to be remembered for this performance above everything else he’s done.
“If we can assume that they have DVD players in the future, then I would pick ‘Time’ from the Live in San Francisco DVD,” he argued. “For better or worse, it captures what we actually do night after night around the world.”
He continued, talking about how the structure of the song plays with both simple and complex ideas simultaneously, and exemplifies what his approach to artistry has always been like. “The song is interesting to me, compositionally, because the verse is almost like a child’s melody played over the simplest riff,” he added. “Then the second part of the song jumps into all of this complex harmony and a whole bunch of key changes. The solo section recreates the same scheme, and eventually the song changes meter. The song provides a wild journey of how to construct an interesting instrumental.”
While he also acknowledged that he doesn’t like to watch himself back, he noted that this has become the preferred medium for people to watch concert footage from shows that they weren’t able to attend, or as a means of reflecting on an experience that they cherish dearly. With that in mind, for his fans to be able to witness him displaying his wizardry in such sublime fashion is what he’d want to be remembered for in history as the greatest example of what he was capable of producing.
