G3: Joe Satriani: 'There Is Nothing Stopping G3'

ince its inception in 1996, the six-string touring fest known as G3 has proven to be a winner for its founders Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. Over the years, the G3 line-up with Satriani at its core has featured an ever rotating roster of fretboard wizards from Yngwie Malmsteen and Eric

Recently the G3 juggernaut made its way down to Australia for a series of sold out shows. While in Melbourne, Joe Matera caught up with Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and John Petrucci. In part one of a three part G3 Ultimate-Guitar exclusive, Joe Matera speaks to Joe Satriani about the success of G3, Satch’s recent album Super Colossal and his new modus operandi in recording guitars.

Ultimate-Guitar: G3 celebrates 10 years this year and it’s proven to be a successful venture for you, where do you see G3 heading towards in the future?

Joe Satriani: There is no stopping it. I mean, it will be redefined and redefined and I think the key to it is that new life will be breathed into it with the changing participants. And I can see an acoustic one too, I can see a blues one, I can see a thrash one and a fusion one. I can see all different avenues and I can even see a blending of like we’ve done before. Like Steve and I went out with Robert Fripp once and we went out with an acoustic player named Adrian Legg. So we’ve done pretty unusual ones too. And I did one in South America a few weeks ago with John Petrucci and Eric Johnson and though it was a very unusual pairing, it was very complimentary. We played in front of audiences that were three times the size of what we’re doing in Australia. So the changing nature of it is very attractive to the guitar player audience out there. I think just in concept, the whole G3 concept is something that is just getting started really.