Steve Vai’s ‘Sex And Religion’ might have become popular, but back in the day, it received criticism.
In a 2022 interview, the guitar virtuoso discussed his fame and the shift to grunge back in the ’80s. Even though he decided to focus on his solo career, Vai remembered how even his solo music didn’t escape criticism from the grunge-dominated scene:
“I would bet anybody $1 that they cannot find more negative, vicious criticism written about a guitar player in a three-year period than [about] me. Because the fashionable thing at the time was to attack anybody that knew how to play an instrument. And I was that flashy guy, so I was a great object of attack – and boy was I attacked, especially with ‘Sex and Religion’ because it was a totally different kind of a record.”
Vai also explained how he dealt with the criticism he received:
“So how did I deal with that criticism? It was the best thing that ever happened to me because it was so hurtful to my ego – which was good – because it was like being crucified. And after being crucified, there was a rebirth – the crucifixion and the resurrection, as they say. I didn’t deal with it well. There was a lot of mental suffering on my part.”
Vai Helped Create Grunge
Vai said in an earlier interview that his flashy style and exaggerated stage performances in the ’80s represented everything grunge bands opposed in the following decade.
He revealed an understanding of where they were coming from:
“With David Lee Roth and Whitesnake, my job was to fit the ’80s style. The ’80s were a great time for rock guitar. We were all inspired by those amazing musicians of the ’70s like [Jimmy] Page, Brian May, Jeff Beck, and Ritchie Blackmore.”
However, the virtuoso thinks ‘the scene of guitar-playing in popular music changed overnight’ when grunge took over. And apparently, he played a big role in it too. He said:
“There was a period there in the ’90s for a guy like me — I was, like the poster boy for everything that was wrong about playing the guitar. In one decade, I couldn’t [not] open up a magazine and find extraordinarily wonderful things written about me, and in the next, I could not [not] open up a magazine and see the worst things being said. But things change again, and I just kept sticking to what I enjoyed doing. History doesn’t remember those times in between trends.”
See the interview below.