JESSE SHROCK catches up with one of the greatest guitarists alive, JOE SATRIANI.

To his fans, soulman-cum-virtuoso guitarist Joe Satriani would be known almost as much for his evocative, bizarre titles as for his skills as an instrumentalist; Raspberry Jam Delta V and The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing are just a couple of memorable examples. But Satriani’s latest album, Professor Satchafunkilus And The Musterion Of Rock, surely takes the cake. On first mention, it almost sounds like the first chapter in an alternative to the Indiana Jones franchise.

As I have learned from previous interviews, most of Satriani’s titles have some kind of underlying inspiration or back-story. It seems this Professor Satchafunkilus character is an alter ego of Satriani himself – one who holds sway over this album more than any other.

“You know, I grew up playing a lot of funk and soul music,” Satriani reflects. “I was in a couple of funky bands, alternating between that and rock, when I was in high school. That’s always been a natural part of my musical roots. And if you look at my albums, there’s always funky songs on there like Cool #9 or Strange or something like that. There’s a good number of songs that are funk, r’n’b or hip-hop related that could make an album all on their own, I guess. So this album (contains) a few more in a series of pieces of music that come out of my alter-ego.”

In the album’s title track, Satriani’s son, ZZ, who guests on Saxophone, brings some of the funk. Is this the instrumental path that Satch jnr has decided to take, in spite of being blessed with an endless source of inspiration on the guitar?

“No, I think guitar is still his main instrument,” Satriani assures, “but he decided to learn how to play sax because he wanted to be part of his school jazz band. He was the one who suggested to me to use that kind of beat … We were listening to Mos Def, I think, and he was saying: ‘Well, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a guitar instrumental that had a beat like this?’ We both knew that it’s really hard to do that kind of music without words. I mean, the words are everything. And I thought: ‘well, the beat makes sense … but I’m not going to try to do a rap song with a guitar, where the guitar tries to imitate the rap. Maybe the thing would be, not to have a guitar solo, but to make it an ensemble piece, where there are twelve guitars that just play these melodies together in such syncopation. So that it becomes a work of art on its own, without any kind of guitar solo.’ I just had a great time putting it all together … I was able to just go crazy overdubbing, and playing in a way that I hadn’t played on any record before. I just loved it.”

Well, that covers the album’s funk and r’n’b overtones, but pray tell Professor Satchafunkilus, what is a ‘Musterion Of Rock’?

Satriani takes a deep breath (and, in my mind's eye, takes a long drag on his pipe). “This will take some explaining…” he says. “I got that word ‘musterion’ because I’d written a song called It’s A Mystery, and wasn’t really happy with the title. I did some research, and discovered that the original Greek word, ‘musterion’, actually had a very different meaning than the one we now recognise as ‘mystery’ in English. Thousands of years ago, ‘musterion’ was a word used to cast a negative light on people who would be false prophets, and try to get people to follow their new religion. The story goes that the apostle, St. Paul, when he was travelling through Greece, decided to use the word in the opposite way. He said that the only way to understand the old bible, and the New Testament that he was writing at the time, was to be touched by ‘The Musterion’... In other words, when you’ve received some sort of divine initiation, the secret gets revealed to you. But those writings got translated into English incorrectly, and for nearly 2000 years, those particular texts got misunderstood…”

“The whole story just made me think: ‘this is a good word. This is a very strong, contentious word…’” Satriani laughs. “Once I thought about it, it occurred to me that, for people who don’t get instrumental guitar rock, you could say that they haven’t received the ‘musterion’ and once they receive the ‘Musterion Of Rock’, then the secret of music is revealed to them...”

Satriani is arguably responsible for spreading this ‘musterion’ further than any other artist. His 1987 album Surfing With The Alien is quite likely the most successful purely instrumental rock album of all time – a status cemented by its recent 20th anniversary re-release. Generous commercial airplay, top ten singles… strange as it may seem, at the time these things weren't within a talented instrumentalist’s grasp. Why does Satriani think that Surfing, in particular, struck such a chord with a mainstream audience?

“I don’t know, but I’m so happy that it did,” he replies. “Careers are fickle, you know? Sometimes really talented artists get well known for the wrong song or the wrong album, one that they don’t particularly like, or that they move on from so dramatically. That particular record, I think, really expressed who I was in a lot of ways. (It said) that I was a sum total of all my influences – rock and blues and jazz and heavy metal and hip-hop and just about anything else put together. The album is really sort of quirky, (with) ten very different songs. And I guess it just had something about it that captured the imaginations of people when it came out. It’s really cool to be able to celebrate the 20th anniversary of something like that. I’m very fortunate.”

JOE SATRIANI plays The Tivoli, Thursday July 17. PROFESSOR SATCHIFUNKILUS AND THE MUSTERION OF ROCK is out now through Epic/SonyBMG.

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