Steve Vai has recalled the time he performed Brian May’s legendary Red Special electric guitar at simply 20 years outdated – however admitted he struggled to get a tune out of it.
In a brand new interview with Q1043 New York, Vai seemed again on his early years as an aspiring artist who’d simply moved to Los Angeles to make it large as a guitar participant. While there, he crossed paths with certainly one of his heroes.
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“He actually invited me to a Queen rehearsal,” Vai continues. “I was just this unknown kid, and there I was. And then there it was, the Red Special. I said, ‘Is that it?’ And he goes, ‘That’s it. You wanna play it?’”
May has been loyal to the electrical guitar he constructed along with his father all through his whole profession. So loyal, in truth, that last year’s Gibson SJ-200 was his first-ever signature guitar, after a series of Red Special releases by way of Brian May Guitars.
As such, it was made to his liking – nobody else’s. Vai figured that out fairly shortly. Some of the specs have been simply too far faraway from his personal private setup – significantly the neck.
“I just remember thinking, ‘I can’t play this thing.’ The neck is like a bat,” he goes on. “It’s got like, what, gauge 0.8 strings? But it was a miracle to actually have the guitar under my fingers, and he allowed that.”
Indeed, when showing off his custom-built Vai-ified Red Special guitar earlier this year, Vai stated the neck was “the size of a small tree,” and him making an attempt to play it was like “a giraffe on roller skates.”
May signed with Gibson in a surprise move in 2024, and whereas there’s been hypothesis {that a} Gibson-made Red Special is within the works, there’s sadly no signal of motion there but.
Elsewhere, May says he gave the Red Special one mod after taking inspiration from Jimi Hendrix, however he shortly regretted it.
