MusicRadar

Steve Vai performing in Almeria, Spain, 2008. © Francisco Bonilla /Reuters/Corbis

"I grew up in a house where my parents were listening to show tunes, and as a kid I liked listening to that kind of thing, too - whatever music was playing, I enjoyed it. But my sister was into all of the great rock music from the late '60 and early '70s, and I started sneaking into her room and listening to it on the headphones. She had the eight-track tape of Woodstock, and one day I went in and put that on… and it was the first time I heard Jimi Hendrix.

"It was like electric sugar, to borrow a phrase from Tom Waits. I was 12 years old or so, and I would lie there with the headphones on and listen to Jimi playing The Star Spangled Banner and Purple Haze over and over and over. I didn't know what he looked like; I didn't know a thing about him. I just knew that whatever he was doing, however he was making these sounds, it was incredible. I got so excited and I thought, Whenever this guy comes to town to play, I've got to see him. I had no idea that he had died.

"Eventually, I got a copy of Are You Experienced, which was an epiphany for me. The songs were accessible, they were beautiful, and there was something about Jimi that was ultra cool. Cool is something that has to come from deep within you. It's a confidence that you have. Jimi had enough confidence and cool for five people.

"When you're 12, as I was, and you're seeing something like this for the first time, the impact is indelible. You're not aware exactly of how things used to be; you don't have that frame of reference. To you, you're seeing how things are. Seeing Jimi, who was a lefty, and he had this magnetic expression on his face and this impossibly cool fashion sense... I was drawn right in.

"I would lie there with the headphones on and listen to Jimi playing The Star Spangled Banner and Purple Haze over and over and over" Steve Vai on his first exposure to Jimi Hendrix

"Plus, there's the guitar playing. I hadn't picked up the instrument yet, so I didn't know how ridiculously hard it was to do the things he was doing, but something did tell me that he was brutally innovative on the guitar. Mind you, he was pretty much my starting point, so it took me a while to realize how many boundaries he had broken. I just knew that every song, every passage, every sound he was making, it was like a big trip into the unknown, and I was more than happy to go for the ride.

"It was really eye-opening when I started taking guitar lessons from Joe Satriani, who had a stack of Jimi Hendrix records. In fact, Joe was the first person to tell me that Jimi had died. I was so disappointed, because I thought, I'll never get to see him play.

"Watching Joe play Jimi's songs on the guitar was an unbelievable experience. It was the first time I actually saw somebody play this amazing music right in front of me. Up till then, it was all alien to me; it existed on records and eight-track tapes. Watching Joe perform Hendrix on the guitar made me realize, 'I can do this, too.' And of course, Joe showed me all the chords and the voicings and how things were done. It was such a magical time.

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