The band that Steve Vai wanted to play at his funeral
The music world tends to look a lot different through the eyes of Steve Vai.
He was never after hits in the traditional sense, and while there were plenty of other virtuosos who could make music that sounded like it was from another planet, no one since Frank Zappa had taken the instrument into such weird realms as he did. Vai might show no signs of slowing down when it comes to guitar innovation, but he does have more than a few ideas for what he wants to see him into the afterlife.
Then again, there are already plenty of songs in his arsenal that could have made for the perfect soundtrack at his funeral. ‘For the Love of God’ might already have the biblical connotation in the title, but when listening to the actual backing track, it does have that kind of regal soundscape that would feel fantastic if it were blaring out of a church. But Vai wasn’t squarely focused on instrumental music.
He was always on the lookout for the kind of people who could make strange sounds on their instruments, and that meant taking cues from everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Eddie Van Halen. While Hendrix was more of an idol to artists like Joe Satriani, you can tell that Vai was at least intrigued by the impact that Eddie left on the world of hard rock guitar. But if he was going to play that kind of music, he wasn’t about to be a carbon copy of Eddie, either.
That might have been why David Lee Roth hired him to be a member of his solo band, but looking through his discography, nothing that Vai ever played on was that style of playing. He was going to be an innovator in his own way, but even in the modern age, when guitar virtuosos are virtually unheard of, Vai did have a little hope when hearing a band like Ghost break into the mainstream.
There’s only so far that Papa Emeritus can hope to go on the charts with the Satanic angle, but it’s not like he doesn’t have the tune to back it up. Regardless of what creed you follow, ‘Square Hammer’ is one of the best rock and roll songs of the modern age, and even if their track record has taken a few dents in recent years, the idea of combining liturgical instruments with heavy metal is a pretty inspired choice in an age where Greta Van Fleet is the biggest band in the world.
But beyond being a fan, Vai felt that Ghost would be the perfect band for his funeral, saying, “We’re a really close family, and sometimes we discover records and the songs go into a different realm. They become ‘special to the family’. Over the last year, we’ve adopted the band Ghost. Tobias, there’s another guy who’s really connected. So if you come to my funeral you might hear a Ghost record.”
And why not? After all, the band is clearly having a little bit of fun with the tongue-in-cheek aspect of their Satanic imagery, so trying their hand at making tunes for a funeral almost feels too right. Tobias Forge might need to ease it back on the songs about the underworld, but given how beautiful the organ sounds on some of their early records, there’s nothing stopping them from making a straight-up gospel record if they wanted to.
So while Vai hopefully has plenty of long years ahead of him, bringing in Ghost to see him into the afterlife is about more than having great music. This would be the kind of viking funeral that any other rock and roll band would have been proud to play for, and if it actually comes to pass, it only goes to further prove that Vai never played by the traditional rules of rock and roll whenever he played.
