Courtesy Larry DiMarzio

Whoever cast Steve Vai as the The Devil's guitarist for that 1986 Ralph Macchio movie "Crossroads" was really smart.

Vai wields exactly the kind of otherworldly chops and gunslinger confidence being Beelzebub's personal guitar player would surely require.

Although Vai has also been cast in some of rock's most desirable real-life roles during his career - including wingman for legends ranging from David Lee Roth to Frank Zappa - he's the kind of iconoclast who could never be musically typecast. Emerging during an era crowded with guitar hot-shots, Vai's prismatic virtuosity and sonic wanderlust made him unique and marquee. His playing can evoke a rhapsody, wild animal or surrealistic painting. Or just some molten rock 'n' roll.

On Nov. 2, Vai will perform with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, at Birmingham's Alys Stephens Center's Jemison Concert Hall, address 1200 10th Ave. S. Tickets are $25 - $45 and available via alysstephens.org.

On a recent afternoon, Vai, a Long Island, N.Y. native, current California resident and multiple Grammy winner, checks in for a phone interview from his Encino, Calif. studio Harmony Hut. Below are edited excerpts from our conversation.

Don't Edit

Steve, what turns you on musically the most about playing with an orchestra? And what's the most "rock & roll" thing about playing guitar with an orchestra?

[Laughs] When you're sitting there with a piece of manuscript paper and you have control over every little move and every sound a hundred musicians will make and you understand the language and how to get your inner ideas out onto paper for them, it makes every moment like Christmas morning, you know what I mean? So, I really like doing that. I've done that my whole life.

The arduous task then of bringing it into world, taking the time and writing it down, and then getting the music perfect, that takes a lot of work. And then making sure there's no mistakes, and getting it to rehearsal and getting it to sound right. This is all work.

But in each step there's little highlights, and that's when all of a sudden the orchestra's playing all the right notes and it sounds great, and the next thing you know I'm adjusting my sound, tweaking and tweaking, and then all of a sudden I'm playing these melodies along with a hundred people or 80 or however big the orchestra is and it's just a miraculous feeling.

And the rock & roll aspect of it is in the connection that you feel with the music in the moment, because that's similar to when I'm on a stage with Generation Axe (Vai's guitarist supergroup also featuring the likes of Zakk Wylde, Yngwie Malmsteen and Nuno Bettencourt), when I'm onstage with an orchestra.

Don't Edit

I was watching a YouTube clip from a few years back of you onstage at Rock Rio with an orchestra. That's got to be powerful when it all comes together on the night of a performance.

Nothing like it, my friend. Yeah, nothing like it. And although the recording that you probably saw from that Rock in Rio show didn't really sound great, because I've seen it, at the time on that stage with 80,000 people in the audience, playing with that orchestra, that was a peak experience.

Don't Edit

Do you get more satisfaction, right now in 2018, from playing a complex, fast run on the guitar or from playing one, big fat note?

You know, it's all good. The thing I've noticed about the evolution of my playing is what I enjoy most is when something come out of me that not even I was expecting, and sometimes it's a long fast passage and sometimes it's just one note.

Don't Edit

Matt Wake | mwake@al.com

I just finished mixing "Bad Horsie," which is a song that I performed on the Generation Axe record and there's some stuff on the solo section that's so quirky and "Vai," so to speak, I listen to that and go, "Where did that come from? Why did I do that? How did it happen? My God that's so weird and beautiful." That's what I really love most.

And sometimes it's in a fast passage, sometimes it's in one note, just landing on a particular note, and sometimes it's a weird thing I do when I grab the whammy-bar. And sometimes there's epic fails involved too. [Laughs] But you go with it.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Speaking of quirky what's something you learned from Frank Zappa from your time with him that you take with you to this very day, that you apply to music?

What's funny is I was so young and impressionable at the time I didn't realize what was happening, and there's always things, new things I discover about my time with Frank that have aided me in my contemporary times.

But the biggest takeaway for me with Frank was independence. Independence in the way that you think in your career endeavors. Freedom for the use of your imagination. Fluidity in your business practices and fairness and also anything at any time can happen and go with it.

Don't Edit

File/Warner Brothers

People were really eager to hear that first David Lee Roth solo LP "Eat 'Em and Smile record," which you played so brilliantly on, when it was released in 1986. Did everyone involved in making the album have a sense it was going to be well-received as it was? Dave was coming from Van Halen, such a beloved, powerful band.

Well, I can't speak on their behalf. I know there was an expectation basically because Van Halen and David Lee Roth were like steamrollers, and anything that Dave did separate from Van Halen was going to have a lot of eyes and ears on it.

But when we were in the basement (at Roth's house) doing it, you can't think about those things because you just don't know. If I was to sit there, and sure these thoughts came to my mind, but I didn't dwell on them, like "How are people going to compare me to Edward? How am I going to create something that's in line with the quality that people were expecting from Dave Roth from his Van Halen days?" All these things. "Are the tickets going to sell? Is the record going to sell?" They can be considerations but if you allow them to dominate you're f---ed. [Laughs]

Don't Edit

So, I really put all expectations aside and focused on enthusiasm in the creative moment. For instance, when I was recording something like, I don't know, "Big Trouble" and the idea I had for the solo, of doing it and hearing and having in the track was more exciting and compelling to me than what are people going to think about this and is it on par with everything. I just know when something felt really good, so that's what I looked for.

Don't Edit

When we were doing something like "Shy Boy" I just felt like OK, "You be Vai because that's your safest best. If you try to be something else, it will be recognized by the fans because they can smell that stuff a mile away and you won't enjoy it because you won't be you."

So, some people have no choice but to be themselves. But some people feel the need to conform and it can work to a point, but eventually if you conform you're doing things that don't resonate with your true creativity and in the end, it never really works for you, no matter how much money it made. There's something missing.

An example of that is, for me personally, when I look at my solo work which is very different than any of the bands I've been with, I'm very satisfied with everything about it. Of course, there's things I would do better just from experience, but my audience is based on people that are attracted to that unique thing I do. Most people it just goes over their head. I'm a little tiny contributor in a vast field but it doesn't matter because for somebody that hears it that it resonates with and somehow fulfilling. And it's fulfilling for me.

Don't Edit

You've been one of few guitarists able to pull off the Eddie Van Halen-style two-hand tapping guitar technique without seeming like caricature of Ed. Why does the tapping thing work for some guitarists but not for others?

All of the inspiration that I've received from other people is nice, but what are you going to do with it? So, like the first time I heard that tapping stuff was on a Frank Zappa record "Inca Roads" where he was doing it with a pick, and I must have been, I don't know 15, so then that opened up a perspective to me about tapping and immediately ... It's like when I saw somebody with a whammy bar I didn't think, "Wow, I can do what they're doing," I thought, "What can I do with that?" When I heard Edward tap for the first time, I think I was about 17 or 18 years old and that opened up another whole perspective of what I can do. Not that it's better or worse. It's just different.

I've never played "Eruption" because, first of all, I have no desire and it's already been done really beautifully. [Laughs] I love the idea of the way tapping can create melodies and intervals and try to integrate it into my playing in an organic way so that it doesn't always sound like, "Hey OK, now it's time to tap."

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

What's your most vivid memory from filming that scene in the movie "Crossroads" where you're the Devil's guitar play?

Working with Arlen Roth (who taught the film's star Ralph Macchio guitar for the film) on the set, because we had this little comical relief that just kept rearing its head, so throughout that whole event that looked kind of intense there was this really great underlining comedy that was going on with Arlen Roth that I chuckle about even when I think about it today.

Don't Edit

Of your early solo records which do you listen to the most, (1984 debut solo LP) "Flex-Able" or (1990's) "Passion & Warfare"?

I don't really listen to either of them very much. Occasionally I'll get a hankering to hear something and I'll go to both of those records but I'll go to "Passion & Warfare" more.

Don't Edit

Is there a famous gig that you turned down?

Well, there were opportunities to work with people that I couldn't fit into the schedule that I had to turn down.

Like?

Mick Jagger. Bowie. Robert Palmer. PiL, Johnny Lydon. Robert Plant.

Don't Edit

What are some of the compositions you'll be playing with Alabama Symphony Orchestra?

So a part of me is very compositionally contemporary and almost avant garde-ish, so there's a piece they're going to be playing called "There's Something Dead In Here" (from the "Flex-Able" album) and it's very dense and I wouldn't say it's atonal because although it's very contemporary sounding, I'm aware of every note and every chord and the intention behind them. So, that's a piece that's performed without me though. That's an orchestra and rock band. And then we do "Kill The Guy With The Ball" which is a powerful orchestration and "The God Eaters." I very rarely get to play "Call It Sleep," but this conductor wants to play that song, Carlos (Izcaray, of ASO), so I'm very happy about that. But standing on a stage and playing "Lotus Feet" that's just a complete peak moment for me.

Don't Edit

But one of the cool things we're doing at this concert that I've only done a few times before is performing the entire "Fire Garden Suite" including "Bangkok" and that's like an almost 13-minute piece of music that's on the "Fire Garden" album that's goes to a lot of different melodic places and it changes and it really needed an orchestration and so I did that a few years ago, and we'll be performing the entire "Fire Garden Suite."

Going from the complexity and bigness of the orchestra to something simpler, what's the first rock song you mastered from start to finish when you were a kid just starting to play guitar?

[Laughs] Uh, "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull ... I think. It was either that or like "Proud Mary" or something.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Was the "Slip of the Tongue" era version of (arena-metal band) Whitesnake you were in louder than the David Lee Roth band you were in?

No. Nothing was louder than the Roth band I was in.

Don't Edit

More on music

Why is Nine Inch Nails' ex-drummer teaching college in Alabama?

15 recent rock bands to know besides Greta Van Fleet

45 years later Buckingham Nicks album still casts spell

The story behind Jason Isbell's new live album

That time Prince crashed an Alabama cover band's gig