He’s philosophical about music, to say the least. Focus in on the things that were really enjoyable. When you think about it that way, it makes you unhappy, so all you have to do is change your perspective on it. But at one point, it was a particular perspective I had. And I’m not saying that was necessarily the case with me. “The memory has energy in it, and it’s got a sting - even though you were a rock star making millions of dollars. “Any event that happens to you in your past has many angles of perspective to it,” Vai said. He is still good friends with Roth and his bandmates from that era, but Vai clearly looks back at the late ’80s as a period of material excess. It is well-known in Vai circles that he loved the process of making Roth’s debut, 1986’s Eat ’Em and Smile, but generally disliked the rock-star nature of the tour to promote its followup, 1988’s Skyscraper. It appears the snapshot in his head prior to the Passion and Warfare era troubled him at one point. “Whenever you do something creatively, it’s like a little snapshot of who you were at that time,” Vai said of the album. The recording, Vai’s first following his split with Roth, is considered his best, if not the most well-known of his eight albums. In July, he began what is expected to be a prolonged stretch of concerts to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his landmark solo album, Passion and Warfare. Vai has been looking in the rearview mirror a lot lately. There was nothing out of place.’ Even the stuff that might have been very challenging, there was value in the challenge.” “I look at it and think: ‘Everything happened exactly the way it should. “When I the way my career has unfolded, I’m astonished,” Vai, 56, said recently. The New York native has done plenty in the time since, from co-founding the Favored Nations record label to further developing his line of guitars for Ibanez.īut those early days when his face was a fixture on MTV definitely left an imprint on the three-time Grammy Award winner. Vai eventually reached peak popularity in 1985 when he joined the solo band of Van Halen singer David Lee Roth, whose five-year tenure with Vai produced two multi-platinum Top 10 albums and several No.
The wunderkind, then still in his early 20s, later changed gears and played the Devil’s guitar-wielding sidekick in the Ralph Macchio movie Crossroads. Vai first came to the attention of music fans at the turn of that decade as the guitarist for Frank Zappa. Tickets: $62.50-$73.50 at or by phone at 25įor all his achievements as a performer, bandleader, guitar designer and record-label owner, the root of what makes Steve Vai who he is today can be traced back to three key events during the 1980s. Where: Port Theatre, 125 Front St., Nanaimo What: Steve Vai: Passion and Warfare 25th Anniversary Tour