“Steve Vai… I listen and I think, ‘How does he do that? That’s crazy!’”: Jacob Collier says what Steve Vai taught him on guitar was much bigger than technique

The fact that Steve Vai does not approach the electric guitar like any other guitar player owes as much to his philosophy as it does to the techniques he has developed over the years, and so when Jacob Collier comes out in a recent interview to say that the biggest thing he has learned from his friendship and collaborations with Vai is not necessarily to do with how he addresses the strings, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.

Collier, who is on the crest of his own creative wave right now having dropped all kinds of virtuosity and imagination on his fifth album, Djesse Vol 4, revealed that what he learnt from being in the room with Vai was bigger than technique, admitting in a recent interview with Kerrang! that it is the Steve Vai philosophy that is the most profound lesson he took from it. 

“He’s taught me a lot about the guitar,” says Collier. “but not so much from showing me stuff on the neck or talking about picking or something like that. It’s more about his approach to life that is quite resplendent and his philosophy for radically accepting a process and trusting the universe, which feels very big and glorious.”

This very much sounds like the Steve Vai we know and love. He didn’t name his groundbreaking Ibanez seven-string guitar the Universe for nothing. Whenever you speak to Vai, he will invariably credit the universe for bearing gifts, gifts in the form of ideas, avenues for musical exploration. 

Jacob Collier - Box Of Stars Pt.2 (Feat. Metropole Orkest, Suzie Collier, Steve Vai & VOCES8) - YouTube

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Or as Vai calls it, “low hanging fruit” – ideas that just fall out of the sky and present themselves, like that time when he was recovering from shoulder surgery, and had to play one-handed or not at all.

This, he told MusicRadar, was how wrote Knappsack, from 2022 studio album, Inviolate. Trusting the universe? That’s part of recognising when something is low-hanging fruit, like Knappsack.

Steve Vai - "Knappsack" - YouTube

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“Everything that I have done that has been worth its salt has always came with an innocent ease,” said Vai. “It was a recognition of the low-hanging fruit. So, when people saw Knappsack, where I am playing with one hand all over the place, ‘Oh my God! It’s crazy!’ Nah, it’s simple. The idea, I am sitting there, and I’m playing, and I only had one hand, and it was just low-hanging fruit. And the low-hanging fruit said, ‘You can write a song with one hand.’ So, I did.”

This low-hanging fruit is not just the preserve of Vai, a player whose reach on the instrument is beyond most mortals; this is something that is available to us all, and that was very much the sentiment that Collier was sharing with Kerrang! “There is no right or wrong,” he says. All of us can participate. 

Vai told us likewise; the talent is recognising how to pick the fruit that is uniquely speaking to you. 

“That low-hanging fruit exists in everybody when they look for it and those are the perfect creative ideas that the universe is feeding specifically for their own unique ability to exploit that idea,” said Vai. “Somebody else who is a sports figure is not going to get an idea to record a song with one hand, y’know! [Laughs]”

Collier welcomed Vai to the studio to track three songs for Djesse Vol 4: 100,000 Voices, She Put Sunshine and Box Of Stars Part 2. Last year, he shared footage from the studio in which Willow was screaming into the mic and Vai was laying down his guitar parts for 100,000 Voices. Collier was not afraid to offer his suggestions for Vai, saying it would be neat to contrast the more complex ascending scalar licks with some pentatonics on the way down.

But as he says to Kerrang!, Collier approaches his collaborations with special guests such as Vai, John Mayer and Coldplay’s Chris Martin as a fan first.

“Say Steve Vai for example – I listen and I think, ‘How does he do that? That’s crazy!’” says Collier. “And Steve is one of my dearest friends. He’s an amazing guy.”

Djesse Vol. 4 is out now via Decca. In other Collier news, the English multi-instrumentalist recently celebrated the release of his new Strandberg signature model, The Boden JC 5 Djesse, which features five-strings, tuned DAEAD – an instrument he describes as “a literal dream of mine”.