Steve Vai: Walking the Fine Line between Pagan and Christian

Guitar hero for the world, a personal hero for me. Teacher. Mentor. Idol. An extraordinary musician, who touched me with his unique human richness, and helped me this way to appreciate his art much more.

I’ve met him a lot of times, while working on the promotion of his albums and concerts in Hungary, but these meetings gave only side glances on the artist, instead of being a proper conversation with him. He was the King, and I was his local helping Hand, but I was content with this setup. More precisely, I was grateful to be there to be present. Grateful to Laszlo Szuts, who made it possible for me to join Sony Music in 1996, that made possible having been there for the company for 24 years.

Steve Vai’s art was in my field of vision from my teens, but the result of his work felt alien to me for years. Precisely until Alien Love Secret. I knew that he worked with Frank Zappa, but I was too young to comprehend their experiments. My friends introduced me to the David Lee Roth albums he was playing on, but I have not become an avid fan of Diamond Dave. On the other hand, the 1989 Whitesnake album titled Slip Of The Tongue was exciting because of his playing. I have heard the Passion & Warfare album, but only The Audience Is Listening made a lasting impression on me, maybe because of its video. Sex & Religion have not talked to me, but I developed a serious liking to the 1995 EP that followed it. ALS had not turned me into a fanatic, but I jumped in the promotion of the Fire Garden album as a marketing coordinator for Sony Music with great enthusiasm and maximal respect.

I wrote the album review of Fire Garden for the monthly Sony Music newsletter, and I talked about the album with great conviction to the record store representatives during the showcases we organized in Budapest and around the country. It is astonishing to reflect on the drastic changes the music industry went through since then. Today live business dominates the economy, and recording income is only a nice to have thing for the artists. Back then, a lot of artists reached Hungary first as part of the promotion of their albums, and local promoters dared to invite them for concerts only years later based on the learnings of the previous promotional efforts, and album sales data we generated.

An album related promotional tour gave the first opportunity for me to meet him in person. My task was to pick up he and his wife at the airport and escort them to their hotel. I drove to Ferihegy with my first car, a small, three-door Fiat Punto with no airconditioning. When they arrived I asked them if I would rent an elegant taxi for them or – still do not know where the idea came – they would like to go with me in my tiny car. He immediately opted for the latter. His simplicity, purity was very impressive. The trip from the airport to the hotel is an unforgettable memory of mine. I get to know an amazingly interested gentleman who enriched my life with a series of unique experiences.

His smallest gestures made a deep impression on me. Without comprehending its meaning, even feeling a bit confused, when he put together his palms and slightly bowed towards the other person he met, I was fascinated by the elegance and grace of his moves. Now I know that he expressed his respect for the other, signaled that he sees the divine quality of the other human being.

His mindful actions were more influential than any direct teaching. I remember once walking to the Buda Castle District to a restaurant for dinner. When we passed by a gypsy violinist sitting at the wall of the Fisherman’s Bastion, he stopped and listened intently to the player. Later on, he shared his insight with us on gypsy music and the man’s mastery of the instrument. He understands such depths of music that I cannot dream of at that time. Even now, I mainly feel, rather than comprehend the concepts he is thinking in. It was a similarily memorable experience hearing him during a fan club meet&greet held before his first Budapest concert. He elaborated on his relationship with guitars, on the connection between our body’s frequency and the frequency of various instruments.

On top of being an extraordinary musician and a supreme human being, his business ethic is unparalleled. An interview in Billboard magazine, where he discussed the concept of his own record label built on a 50-50 profit-share idea, basically changed my life. It was drastically different from the structure I have learned at majors. His endeavor to be fair to the extremes in business also inspired me a lot, and when I started my own publishing/management company called Keytracks, I definitely wanted to implement his concepts into our daily practices.

At the time of our first meeting Sony Music Hungary was a quite new entity, so we do not have any information on his Hungarian fanbase, so every promotional effort generated valuable feedback for the future marketing of his albums and concerts. These efforts created some classic rock moments for a lot of people, including us. One of my favorite stories is related to his signing session at the first official Hungarian Ibanez dealer called Oroszlánbarlang. Such a huge crowd gathered there from nowhere, that Tibor Toth, the guitarist of a local arena-filling rock band named Hooligans, who asked for a signature on his calf, had time to visit his tattooist and get back to the instrument shop to show Steve his new design.

Then came the first Budapest concert of Steve Vai. Despite following his career as a fan, a journalist, then working for his record label with sincere dedication, there were only a few songs that lived in my head. I had not comprehend the language of his compositions then, like I do now. I was not able to recall song titles, even if I did my best to prepare for his concert, but there was no such thing as setlistfm.com to be able to check the setlist of the last gig of the actual tour. There was no Spotify to put together a playlist for preparation. Lyrics and background information was not there at the tip of our fingers on the internet. So, I was standing there, in the main hall of the now-demolished Petőfi Csarnok. In the dark hangar, I was flooded by complex composition without a break. I admired the virtuosity of the players, but I was utterly lost. Then came a song that evoked a feeling I have never felt before, something I have never experienced since then. I felt the presence of God, even I’m still feeling uncomfortable using the word itself. Later on, I have found out that that song is called For The Love Of God.

Then and there I understood Steve Vai, the worldless language, he speaks with his guitar.

And I understand myself better since then as well.

Walking the fine line between pagan and Christian.

(Artwork: Csaba Mester)