Licklibrary celebrate Joe Satrianis birthday

Thu, 23 Jul 2009

Yet another star of the guitar is celebrating his birthday this month, with Joseph 'Satch' Satriani hitting 53 last week.

Joe first decided to take up guitar soon after hearing about the death of Jimi Hendrix and in his early years especially he interspersed his music studies with teaching. Over time his most notable students included the likes of Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett and Marty Friedman.

He released his debut album Not Of This Earth in 1986, but it wasn't until the following year with the arrival of his 2nd album Surfing With The Alien, featuring the likes of Always With Me Always With You, Satch Boogie and Circles and all of these feature as Classic Track tutorials on LickLibrary.

Learn To Play Joe Satriani DVD

In 1992 The Extremist, Satch's 4th studio album, appeared on the horizon and to date has been his most commercially successful release, no doubt helped by the track 'Summer Song' which has been used on numerous TV and Radio commercials over the last 17 years.

The following year Joe briefly joined Deep Purple as a temporary replacement for Ritchie Blackmore during their Japanese tour, but declined an invitation to join full time having already signed a multi-album deal with Sony.

In 1996 he founded the legendary 'G3' power trio concert tour, which since its inception has featured a revolving door of a number of prestigious guitarists including the likes of Eric Johnson, Yngwie Malmsteen, Robert Fripp, Michael Schenker, Paul Gilbert, Andy Timmons, Uli John Roth, John Petrucci, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and last but not least Steve Vai.

Lately Satch has been involved with 'Chickenfoot', a hard rock project involving ex Van Halen members Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony on vocal and bass duties, along with Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. They have just released their first self titled album and are currently on tour, having just finished playing Europe with a string of US dates to follow in August & September. 

Happy Birthday Joe!