ALTERED STATES
“YOU CAN’T MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU. WHEN YOU ACCEPT THAT, THERE’S SOMETHING FREEING ABOUT IT”
THERE’S A GREAT piece of advice I once got from Glyn Johns,” Joe Satriani tells Guitar Player, recalling a conversation with the legendary British producer who helmed Satch’s 1995 self-titled album. “He said to me: ‘It’s not your job to decide what people will like or not like — it’s your job to play the guitar. So go play your bloody guitar!’”
Satriani laughs at the bluntness of the directive. But, he adds, “It was just a really great, cutting-through-the bullsh*t statement. He was saying, ‘Make yourself happy. Play what you want to play!’”
17th, studio effort, (Legacy Recordings). True to its title, the album shows the virtuoso guitarist playing what he wants to play, no matter what stylistic realms that freedom might lead him to. Which means the churning, dark-toned fusion-rock of the opening title cut can crash head on into the hooky riffs and poppy melodies of “Big Distortion,” and the spacey atmospherics and Jeff Beck–like guitar vocalisms of “All for Love” can butt up against the time-warping genre mash-up “Ali Farka, Dick Dale, an Alien and Me,” a song that, incidentally, sounds more or less like the conceit laid out
