BY whatever metric you use, Steve Vai is one of the greatest guitar players ever to grace the stage.

The New York born musician, composer and singer-songwriter is known for his fast, sweeping, virtuoso style and has performed with a whose-who of the most iconic names in music, as well as recording a wealth of his own material.

To mark the 25th birthday of his second record Passion and Warfare, he is now re-releasing the album along with a host of other previously-unreleased songs on a ‘missing link’ bonus album titled Modern Primitive.

To celebrate, Vai is embarking on a world tour where he will play the remastered record in full for the first time ever.

Henry Holloway talks to the master guitar player about the new record, his ‘infinity shelf,’ his mentor Frank Zappa, and just how many guitars he owns.

The Guide: Half of the new release is Passion and Warfare, but the other half is unreleased tracks on Modern Primitive, how did you rediscover these songs?
Steve Vai: They were always haunting me. After I had finished my first solo record I continued recording, I put two bands together, and I had finished working for Frank Zappa, who said he had retired from touring. I wanted to get on with doing some of my music so I was collecting these tracks, and many of them were recorded with my band I had at the time, The Classified, over 30 years ago. I wrote some which we never got too. They sat on my infinity shelf with tonnes of other ideas. The most amazing thing to me was I always had this feeling that I wanted to go back and finish that music. I had moved on and was recording tracks for Passion and Warfare. I had changed quite a bit between Flex-able and Passion and Warfare. If you listen to those records you wonder how the same guy wrote both. So this material I unearthed is sort of the missing link between them.

You have previously said playing Passion and Warfare in its entirety on tour is something you have always wanted to do, why is that?
Every artist, if they are fortunate in their career, has one record which introduces them to the world. From there on you follow your own design, make music which has a flavour of your original but with twists and turns based on your ongoing life experience. So Passion and Warefare really was a special one in my catalogue as when it broke the audience responded. But it was always a source of fear for me to try and tackle the entire thing, it is a beast. It is not like ‘hey guys, lets get together and jam’. It has all these things going on and the band is only a four piece so what I have been having to do is experiment with video screens and have guests come on to the screens and jam with me. In one segment I have this clip of Frank, I have got Joe Satriani, and a whole bunch of other guys I am waiting on recordings from. 

You have obviously collaborated with so many people over the years, who would you say left the biggest impact on you?
Everybody I have worked with had an impact of sorts. It is the same with anybody. You can work with someone for years and years and then work with someone else and they can say something or do something which is just revolutionary for you. But if I have to point to one person who gave me the most musical mentoring so to speak, it was probably Frank Zappa.

You have performed on so many records, written songs for video games, designed a guitar which went into production, you have seen it all and done it all, so what is your dream project?
I am one of these guys who constantly thinks about projects going into the future. I would have a list of all these things I wanted to accomplish, like a hundred things at once. As time went on I realised each one of these things each take anywhere between a few months to a few years. There was the rude awakening that I am not going to get to do all this stuff, so I learned I had to prioritise. As far as big projects, my next is more a stripped-down trio guitar record.1 But I did have this extraordinarily ambitious project that involves travelling to different countries and composing music with their orchestras and recording them with cultural acts, filming them, and having them recreated with orchestras across the world. I also have aspirations totally aside from music to purchase a giant piece of land and build a retirement home and an orphanage, and basically a small city for these people to live in. I think that is going to be one of my final projects.

You are hailed by your peers as one of the greatest guitar players of all time: when you read this, or hear this, what sort of impact does it leave on you?
It has different effects at different times in my life. I have been a professional musician since I was 20, so I was always in a position when people were putting their ear on me. The dynamic sort of the changed; at the start people would think ‘you must be a great musician because you are with Frank Zappa,’ so I expected that and it was nice to be considered worth your salts. But then I joined David Roth’s band and I was a rock star. It comes with its challenges if you are not careful, any kind of drugs or sex, money or fame hits somebody. In the relatively narrow field of guitar playing at one point all eyes were on me. You then start creating an identity for yourself because anytime you open a magazine there is someone touting your praise, or you are on the cover of the magazine and you are winning all the awards and you have all this money. There is definitely an adjustment and the first thing for me was I started believing it all. I created this identity of being ‘the great one’. Money was not a challenge because I like money but I am not greedy. The drugs were not an issue because I just never did them, I didn’t like them or was afraid I would like them too much, and the sex thing was in control because I have been monogamous for well over 30 years. But the thing which got in the back door for me was the ego, and that was a great learning experience because as trends change and the nineties came around, and I pretty much became a poster boy for everything which was ‘wrong’ with music and playing the guitar. That was painful, but it was a great learning experience as it was a crucifixion of my ego. 

How many guitars do you actually own, and do you have a favourite of the bunch?
I have 263. My favourite is Evo, which is my white Jem. The Jem is an Ibanez guitar I designed close to thirty years ago and that is what a play. The reason I have so many guitars is not that I am a guitar collector, but it is because I receive so many guitars from people and companies. I do not accept then anymore because I have too many and they always come with an agenda. Also because of my work with Ibanez, I have to receive prototypes and once I get the prototypes they do not want them back, so I end up with all these guitars.

Doors 8pm, tickets from £24.50. 
Call 01273 709709.