to think, “Hey, it sounds like
you guys want to make this an
accessible piece of music.” And
I’m bumming out about it.
Later Chad took my acoustic
guitar back to the hotel room.
He shows up the next morning with a new part to the song
and Sammy hears it and says,
“I could sing a chorus over
that.” So we insert it into the
arrangement, and after awhile
I’m going, “They’re right, this is
actually sounding pretty good.”
And so we built up the track
until the end of the day. Then
over the next couple of weeks
as we’re doing the overdubs,
I started to realize that the
melody Sammy’s singing doesn’t
actually go with the chords that
Chad wrote for the chorus part.
Sammy’s vocals without guitars
and bass, and figure out melodically what he thought he was
singing over harmonically. Once
I realized what he was singing
over in his mind, I had to go
find those chords.
Did the reharmonized version
throw him off?
Satriani: No, it fit because
I think when we did the last
tracking together everyone was
just worried about their parts,
they really weren’t thinking
about what Sammy was singing, they figured he’d change
his vocals. But I know Sammy
and when Sammy gets on a
trajectory he’s not going to
change his vocals. He’s going
to look at me and say, “Joe,
change those chords.”
“Come Closer” showcases a
moodier side of the band.
Anthony: That’s a song where
Sammy already had the vocals
and lyrics first.
Satriani: One morning I just
went over to my piano and
put the cup of coffee on
one end and the iPhone on
the other side and I very
quietly sang a moody… it
was sort of like, if you can
imagine, Radiohead doing
an R&B song. It was kind of
drifty, especially in my croaky
voice. I quickly emailed it
to Sammy to see if this was
something he could get into
because this was me putting
him in a lower register.
Was that one originally writ-
ten on the piano in A% minor
(as it sounds) or A minor but
then played tuned down?
Satriani: It was written in
A minor. I’m not too good
with A% minor [laughs]. I play
just enough piano to get a
song across.
Joe, in your “Come Closer”
solo, you play this long arpeggiated sequence then in the
last two measures you break
away from it so it doesn’t
sound predictable.
Satriani: Right, I had to let
loose. To tell you the truth,
when we were rehearsing, it
had a loaded bluesy solo in the
beginning, and I just started
thinking that it sounded too
much like a power ballad where
the guitar player steps up and
he’s blowing a solo on the
