Joe Satriani

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Joe "Satch" Satriani is an instrumental rock and Progressive Rock guitarist from Westbury, New York. He is an immensely influential man and the teacher of other guitar legends including Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett. He is the guitarist for Chickenfoot. He sued Coldplay for plagiarism of his 2004 song "If I Could Fly" for use in their 2008 Grammy winning "Viva La Vida." Note that he sued before Coldplay won the Grammy. The case was settled out of court.

In 1993, he was a temporary member of Deep Purple, after Ritchie Blackmore abruptly left in the middle of a tour. He declined an offer to join as a permanent member after the tour.

In 1996, Satriani started the first of many G3 tours, where he and two other guitarists(Vai usually one of them), would play individually and then together. Ever since the tour has featured: John Petrucci, Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Sheperd, Yngwie Malmsteen, Micheal Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Paul Gilbert, Adrian Legg, and Robert Fripp.

Satriani's style consists of high speed legato, two-handed tapping, and whammy bar harmonics, combined with a deep understanding of music theory that make him one of the most technically advanced guitarists.

His song "Satch Boogie" is considered to be the most challenging song for guitar available on Rock Band; believe it or not, Harmonix added no additional Fake Difficulty notes to the solo.

Over the course of his career, he's been nominated for 15 Grammys, but somehow has not won a single one. He almost holds the record for the most nominations without any wins. Fourteen were for Best Rock Instrumental Performance while the initial nomination was for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and the years and songs are as follows:

Discography:
  • Solo:
    • Not of This Earth (1986)
    • Surfing With The Alien (1987)
    • Flying In a Blue Dream (1989)
    • The Extremist (1992)
    • Time Machine (1993)
    • Joe Satriani (1995)
    • Crystal Planet (1998)
    • Engines of Creation (2000)
    • Strange Beautiful Music (2002)
    • Is There Love In Space (2004)
    • Super Colossal (2006)
    • Professor Satchafunkulus and the Musterion of Rock (2008)
    • Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards (2010)
  • Chickenfoot:
    • Chickenfoot (2009)
    • Chickenfoot III (2011)
Joe Satriani provides examples of the following tropes:
  • Audience Participation Song: Crowd Chant. It turns ridiculous when he begins doing some of his more outlandish tricks and the crowd has to try and keep up.
  • Badass Long Hair: In his younger days.
  • Bald of Awesome: In the present.
  • Epic Rocking: "Searching" clocks in at just over ten minutes.
  • Genre Shift: He's gone from an uptempo, hard rock sound to a slower, more melodic and progressive style. YMMV on whether his older or newer material sounds better.
  • Humiliation Conga: It's pretty reasonable to assume that after a long, long string of Award Snubs, Coldplay winning a grammy for a song that sounds very, very similar to one of his probably didn't put him in a particularly good mood.
  • Improv: One of the best improvisational guitarists in the world.
  • Instrumentals: Most of his material qualifies.
  • The Mentor: To quite a few people, most notably Steve Vai.
  • One of Us: Aside from being a big science fiction fan, Satriani has based a handful of songs on the Silver Surfer, most notably "Surfing With the Alien."
    • The Surfing With The Alien album actually used a panel of the Silver Surfer from a comic, which he didn't pay royalties for. Marvel tried to sue him, then dropped it later on.
      • Actually, he managed to get permission for the use of the character before the album was re-released in 1999.
    • He is also a big fan of Star Trek. His song "Crowd Chant" was going to be originally called "Party On The Enterprise" but couldn't get royalties for the Star Trek soundbites he used. He released without the bites and called it "Crowd Chant".
    • There's also Ice 9.
  • Progressive Rock: A large portion of his material qualifies.
  • Self-Titled Album: A case of it not being his debut, but rather being released in 1995, almost a decade after his debut.
    • Before the release of Not Of This Earth though, he released a self-made EP titled the "Joe Satriani EP", which was his start with instrumental music as a career.
  • Technician Versus Performer: The performer, although he's also skilled enough to blow most technicians out of the water when he wants to.
  • What Could Have Been: He very nearly officially joined Deep Purple, but contract conflicts prevented him from joining them apart from finishing up a tour after Ritchie Blackmore departed for good in the midst of it.
  • Word Salad Title: Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock.
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