To the critics, the meaning of all of this was clear: The rock guitar messiah of the ’90s had arrived. (Remarkably, it remained at that spot for seventy-seven weeks.) In the nineteenth annual readers poll of Guitar Player Magazine, he won the categories of best overall guitarist, best new talent, and best guitar album -the only guitarist other than Beck (in 1976) and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan (1983) to score a triple victory in the poll ’s history. Surfing shot to Number 29 on the charts, becoming the first rock guitar instrumental LP to enter the Top 40 since Jeff Beck ’s 1980 There and Back. In fact, by the end of the year Satriani had already cut some deep marks into the history of rock guitar. But with his second album, Surfing with the Alien, he rose from the multitudes to a place where Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, and other guitar greats once stood. For the past fifteen years he inhabited the crowded world of lesser-known rock guitarists, honing his virtuosity away from the celebrity limelight. In 1988, Joe Satriani blasted into public consciousness with an entrance that was as unexpected as it was grand.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |