We asked the guitar legend Joe Satriani what was the most important musical moment for him and he had two to share:
There were two that were very important. The first would be when I was a very little kid, I’m guessing 5 years old, I was with my family vacationing up in Vermont and my older sisters were going to a local dance. We were dropping them off and my parents let me walk in the door of this hall where they were having this dance. I remember I heard what turned out to be this band doing “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones and it literally changed my life. I swear the DNA in my body suddenly turned around and upside down and rearranged itself in that one moment. I just never forgot about that. That turned me into a drummer. At age 9 for a good 3 years I was a drummer, taking lessons.
But right around the time I was easing up on that, I heard a Hendrix song coming through the radio one day and it was ‘The Wind Cries Mary” and that was another moment where I really felt my brain and my body somehow change. It was a total unexplainable cathartic moment for a little kid to go through. I was a little bit older, I must have been 11 or something like that. I just remember thinking, this is something that I’ve been waiting for my whole life.
