There is not much that Steve Vai can’t play on the electric guitar. Few have done more to extend what is possible on the instrument, and yet, even the greats sometimes struggle with another great’s playing. Even Vai gets flummoxed.
Speaking to Guitar World, Vai has admitted that there is one riff that King Crimson’s Robert Fripp wrote that just boggles his mind, so much so that he had to find a workaround when performing it live with Crimson alumni Tony Levin and Adrian Belew on their recent BEAT Tour.
“A lot of the guitar parts were totally within my ability, but there were a couple that I just couldn’t navigate,” said Vai. “One of them was Frame By Frame. It’s a simple riff; it’s only four notes, but it’s this cross-picking riff that’s fast and relentless. He just doesn’t let up.
“I didn’t have the confidence that I could do it perfectly every night. It was done by a 35-year-old Fripp at the top of his game. And 64-year-old Steve Vai doesn’t really work that technique very well!”
There are all kinds of licks that we could file under unplayable. But if we have learned anything from the history of guitar is that nothing is unplayable. It just takes time. Today’s unplayable is tomorrow’s rite of passage, a staging post in our musical development. Vai has contributed more than his fair share of unplayable moments – nailing For The Love Of God would be many players’ idea of their musical Everest. For him, Fripp’s “holistic” approach to guitar was what attracted him to the BEAT Tour in the first place. Vai wanted the challenge, and that’s what he got.
But what was he to do about Frame By Frame, one of the tricksier tracks from King Crimson’s 1982 studio album Discipline? Vai’s first thought, to double-pick it, ultimately wasn’t what he was looking for. Luckily, he had some help from the man who wrote it. Fripp might not be taking part in the BEAT Tour, but he is fully in support of it, even giving it its name, and he had some tactical advice for Vai to help him get Frame By Frame under his fingers.
“I navigated it by double-picking it. I wasn’t happy with that,” said Vai. “But two days after the first show I got an email from Robert, who’d watched a video. He said, ‘Why don’t you hammer Frame By Frame? Grab the initial notes and then improvise on it. Then go to the next chord and do that.’
“That was something I’d thought about doing initially, but it would take it far away from the original part. But when it came from Robert as a suggestion, I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s my wheelhouse.’ I did it that night at the show, and it worked beautifully. It’s unique to me – yet it was birthed by Robert and Adrian, you know?”
There is a nice irony in Vai’s story. He tells Guitar World that it was when he was on tour his old friend (and former teacher) Joe Satriani when he first started preparing in earnest for the BEAT Tour. He took the music with him, all transcribed, and would work on it backstage, and Satriani could surely relate, having taken on Sammy Hagar’s Best Of All Worlds tour, with Satch having to play Eddie Van Halen’s parts night after night, and nail the tone. He even had a custom amplifier designed by 3rd Power for the gig.
Vai and Satriani will take their Satch/Vai Tour to the UK and Europe in 2025, kicking off at the Barbican in York, England, on 13 June. Vai promises a “powerful celebration” of the electric guitar.
“He is my favourite guitarist to jam with, and now we have another opportunity to take it to the stage,” he said. “I feel as though we are both at the top of our game, and the show will be a powerful celebration of the coolest instrument in the world, the electric guitar!”
See SATCHVAI Band for full dates and ticket details, and stand by for more original music from the pair in 2025. In the meantime, you can always pick up the G3: 25th Anniversary Reunion Tour album, which is out on 31 January through earMUSIC, and collects all three live sets from the original G3 lineup, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson, and the three of them jamming together.
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