In that very moment, I had a full-on epiphany. He described his first experiences with music as, "at the age of five I walked up to piano, hit a note, and noticed that to the right the notes go higher and to the left the notes go lower. He is the fourth son of John and Theresa Vai. Steve Vai, a descendant of Italian immigrants, was born in Carle Place, New York on June 6, 1960.
He released his first solo album Flex-Able in 1984, while his most successful release, Passion and Warfare (1990), was described as "the richest and best hard rock guitar-virtuoso album of the '80s". He also designed the first commercially produced seven-string guitar, the Ibanez Universe, which became popular among bands in various genres the 1990s, including nu metal, death metal, and progressive metal. The launch of the Ibanez JEM guitar developed and co-designed by Vai was described as the "exact moment the entire guitar landscape was reshaped". Vai has been described as a "highly individualistic player" and part of a generation of "heavy rock and metal virtuosi who came to the fore in the 1980s". Additionally, Vai has toured with live-only acts G3, Zappa Plays Zappa, the Experience Hendrix tour, as well as headlining international tours. He has recorded and toured with Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, Whitesnake, as well as having recorded with artists such as Mary J. He embarked on a solo career in 1983 and has released eight solo albums to date. A three-time Grammy Award winner and fifteen-time nominee, Vai started his music career in 1978 at the age of 18 as a transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, and joined his band from 1980 to 1983. He was voted the "10th Greatest Guitarist" by Guitar World magazine, and has sold over 15 million records. The track is incredibly chilled out, almost like a lounge jazz tune as opposed to the high-flying guitar histrionics you’d expect from Vai, but it’s still got his unmistakeable imprints all over it, particularly in the extended jam section at the end.Steven Siro Vai ( / v aɪ/ born June 6, 1960) is an American guitarist, composer, singer, songwriter, and producer. Though Vai had a number of vocal contributors over the years (including perennial MS favorite Devin Townsend), I can’t ever recall hearing anything quite like this before and I’m having a difficult time tracking down who sings on this one. I’m not intimately familiar with Vai’s body of work so I can’t comment on the “missing link” element, but the track is certainly strange, and very different from the Steve Vai material that I - and likely you - are most familiar with. One listen to the song “Never Forever” backs up that claim. So what happened in between? Where’s the missing link? And if you listen to Passion and Warfare, it seems a completely different guy. If you’re familiar with Flex-Able, it’s a very strange record: I recorded it when I was 20. It’s music the I’ve either recorded or written in between Flex-Able and Passion and Warfare. I’m an extra CD with material that’s never been released. What does the lost album Modern Primitive sound like? According to Vai himself in an interview with, really fucking weird: (It’s actually been 26 years since the latter… but I guess that’s close enough in record label math). That’s all well and great for Vai collectors, but then there’s this: the reissue will come with an entire bonus album, Modern Primitive, containing previously unreleased tracks recorded between his 1984 debut, Flex-Able, and 1990, when Passion and Warfare came out. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Steve Vai’s landmark album Passion and Warfare, Sony will be releasing a special reissue version of the disc on June 24th.