Steve Vai On His Audition for Frank Zappa's Band

good story telling

VAI!

zappa was bustin steves balls

What would Frank Zappa have to say about our current "American Idol" culture?

Maybe he already said it with the "Rubin and the Jets" album.

more of these stories please

Berklee Music School posted this... It is part of their recruitment program. There was probably an agreement that he would explain how he benefited from going there...and this was his story.

What's that mold on his chin? Lol.

haha he told this story at the apollo last year! great guitarist

Maybe you should get in touch with Vai and offer him some lessons, just a thought.

Cool to know how his interview went with the "Great One", but kind of lame on the Berklee School plug. I hope he got paid.

wow frank zappa thats one crazy cat my favorite song from him is cosmik debris

cool interview!

Man, Frank was just so insanely intelligent eh.....even gives trick questions to people auditioning for his band.......Being a huge jazz buff, in that time when men complained no one can play instruments anymore, the word on the street was "well there's a cat from Baltimore Frank Zappa who can play some guitar"......Mingus hired him.

Great interview with Steve and very insightful into the FZ audition process

I've never heard a Steve Vai interview before - cool!

he told this at his last toor

Er, you can bend the strings to achieve microtones.

well frank zappa look kinda fierce..lol

i could've played that not...NOT! VAI is in incredible guitarist and i believe he is from, if im not mistaken, Venus...

your dead right, most music is manufactured now, and creativeness is dead in the water.

a guy on my music degree is from berklee and he prefers doing a degree at surrey uni than doing one at berklee in boston. :-D. Vai is awesome though. don't compare, just accept that he is amazing

There both awesome k? both of them together is magic :)

or it could be some kind of quartertone, as to where the guitar can only play steps as small as semitones

i believe the second one starts off in 5/8 and some point towards the end it goes to 4/4 with some random time changes in between

Hard to believe someone so exceptionally talented became immensely well known by way of the master of technical ambiguity...that is, Frank Zappa. How random is that? "Blue Powder" in the middle of a Guitar Player magazine (on a plastic record) many moons ago is what did it for me.