Steve Vai remembers stealing garden lights for his high school band
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Steve Vai on his “complete breakdown” when touring with Frank Zappa
Steve Vai has enjoyed a stellar career that has seen him rise to become one of the most lauded guitar players of all time. His very evident genius has opened many doors for him, and he has toured with the likes of David Lee Roth, Public Image Ltd, and Alice Cooper, reflecting the kind of company that a man of such musical aptitude keeps.
However, the most eminent musician he has collaborated with is the great Frank Zappa, and when he was still in his teens, Vai secured a job as the transcriptionist for the ‘Cosmic Debris’ singer, which then led to him joining Zappa’s band as a touring guitarist.
This job gave Vai an insight into the everyday life of one of the world’s most mystifying artists, and it quickly became clear that Zappa was so talented that he ranked amongst the very finest avant-garde composers of the 20th century. Despite his clear technical genius, though, Vai has quickly asserted that Zappa was a tough taskmaster and lacked the subtlety that some of the other orchestral greats have displayed.
Notably, Vai was only 18 when he started working with Zappa as his transcriptionist, but he impressed everyone, and two years later, he joined Zappa’s touring band aged 20 in 1980. His stint lasted until 1983, and across that busy three years, he was credited on seven of his albums.
However, it was such a multifaceted job that it proved to be a steep learning curve for him. In 2021 he told Guitar World: “I was so innocent and naïve”. The rollercoaster of working with Zappa and the band put such mental and physical strain on the young Vai that he experienced “a complete breakdown”.
Speaking on the Cassius Morris Show in 2021, Vai recalled the moment when his emotions got too much: “Things came to a head for me when I was touring with Frank Zappa, and I was in Montreal in 1980, and I just had a complete, sort of, breakdown, anxiety attack, that lasted a year and a half.”
He continued: “It was panic, it was all fear, there’s a fear that was in the background that just overcame me. And I didn’t know what it was. I wasn’t doing drugs — nothing. I harboured a fear of going insane when I was younger.”
Elsewhere in the discussion, Vai turned his attention to the difficulties of struggling with mental health and his status: “I love music, I love the idea of playing music and all, but I was under the impression that if you become famous, you would go insane”.
“It was something my aunt had said when I was a little boy. And when you’re young, and you hear stuff like that, you go, ‘Oh, okay, now I get it, I don’t ever wanna be famous.’”
However, Vai revealed that his lifelong struggles with mental health “drove me into finding the answers for myself,” through spirituality, which allowed him to put his demons to bed.