Satchvai Band & Ned Evett

Mark Lear
Jun 20
7 min read

Updated: Jun 23

o2 Apollo, Manchester - Today is a special day. I’m only a few years into this gig photography malarkey, still very much working my way up the ladder – and it’s a very big ladder - learning loads as I go, sometimes getting it right and sometimes not. Challenging lighting conditions - if indeed there’s any at all - and a crop sensor camera don’t mix unless you crank up the ISO and then you’ve got noise nightmares to deal with. Still, you’ve got to persevere and sometimes you've got to bat above your station perhaps, and so I threw my lot in with all the boys and girls that have got oodles more experience than me, to see if I can get on the select list of those accepted for a night with guitar royalty. It was a tough ask as there’s only five gigs in the UK, and a list a mile long of 'togs that wanted it - but y’know what? - somehow, someway, the planets aligned, and I got accepted for Manchester !

Bloody ‘ell, I hear you say. How did that happen ? Well, I have no idea, and I don’t really care either. I got picked and that’s all I’m bothered about ! !

So, on a sunny day, with the temperatures hitting 30° in reality, as well as in my head, I’m off up the M6 to a venue that I first went to back in October 1985, for Level 42’s World Machine Tour - Mark King and his mesmerising bass playing, the kind of which everyone seems to be able to pull off nowadays, but forty years ago, it was new, unique and spellbinding to watch.

Tonight however, it’s the lead guitar boys that take centre stage with two absolute legends, finishing off said five-date tour of the UK. Joe Satriani and Steve Vai sharing a stage, playing their own stuff as well as each other’s, trading licks as if they’re going out of fashion, and all for the delight of an adoring public.

I arrived at the venue a good hour before the doors open, got ripped off for car parking by a couple of scrotes that offered ‘secure parking’ - or had the signage to offer it anyway - heaven knows what state my car will be in after the gig, and I find that the queues are already around both blocks. Fortunately, a kindly security guard told me that the togs should use the o2 priority queue, so I do, and I end up standing with two other togs and one Troy Redfern and his good lady, no less, who has a fascination with glass necked guitars ! But more on them later.

It’s virtually sold out tonight, 2,800 packed into a sweltering, seated venue for a lesson in what’s possible if you practice, practice, practice - oh, and if you have a shed load of talent to go with it too !

Ned Evett - There was no mention of a Support, but we have one, in the form of Ned Evett, best known for inventing and playing the fretless glass-necked guitar – the ones that so interest Troy Redfern. It’s at this point that I have to plead ignorance and confess that I have no idea whatsoever as to what a glass-neck does to the sound - maybe over the next half an hour it’ll become obvious.

He starts with a song about live music called ‘Good News Everybody’ with a solid glass fretless guitar that ways 25lbs, he tells us, but soon switches to a titanium bodied version for ‘Mars River Delta 2128’ with some neat picking involved that tells you that he hails from Tennessee.

Back to the solid glass affair for ‘Message for You’ which is taken from his new album ‘Strange Kind of Freedom’. He’s well received by a crowd that’s very discerning, you imagine, about guitar players judging by who they’ve come to see, and some would say he’s a brave man for taking on the gig in the first place, but Evett delivered and the appreciation that he got suggests it was worth the gamble as a new army of fans has been realised. On that basis alone, it's a job well done.

He finishes with ‘Rock Star That You Are’ and thirty minutes have gone before you know it.

Now, there’s a swift fifteen minutes to wait before the royalty arrives…

Satchvai Band - I could wax lyrical all night about these two guys, but anything I do say is bound to have been written before, so I’ll stick to what went on, on a hot summer’s night, in Manchester…

The two main men are not the only ones to grace the stage tonight… Pete Thorn is also on guitar, filling in wherever there is a space left, which won’t be much, I fear, Marco Mendoza is on bass and vocals, and Kenny Aronoff is on a gorgeous twelve piece kit with twin kicks that hasn’t got a badge in sight, but there’s more than a fair chance that it’ll be Tama, with Zildjian cymbals and Evans heads, all set on a 15” high riser.

This is one hell of a line up.

At 20:45, the lights dim, and a huge cheer goes up. The five appear on stage out of nowhere and hit the ground running, with all guns blazing, straight from the off. Mendoza takes the vocals for one of the few times tonight as this is all about the guitar and every permeable trick that is in the play book with a good few more added to it, just for the sheer hell of it.

‘I Wanna Play My Guitar’ screams around the room and makes everyone sit up and pay attention – as if they weren’t already - and then raise their iPhones high in the air because that’s how you watch a gig these days apparently ! !

The pair of them trade riffs for ‘The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1’ too, before Satriani heads off stage and leaves Vai to take the reins for ‘Zeus in Chains’ and ‘Little Pretty’.

With time for a quick breather, Vai acknowledges the paying public, “It’s so nice to be here with you in Manchester” he says. “We’re gonna get Joe back on and in a bit of trouble”, which was true, as our man duly appears for a mash up of ‘Ice 9’ and ‘The Crying Machine’.

The switching around thing goes on for the whole gig as they trade places for the attention of an absolutely spellbound audience playing their own and each other’s songs, whilst the huge graphics board at the back of the stage goes into as much overdrive as the performance of the guitarists, showing memories of previous gigs interspersed with fantasy cartons relating to the song in question.

We finally get to the part where it’s time to slow things down for a moment as Vai arrives back from his sojourn and musically tells the story of a guy who got lost in the desert, all of his own making. The song is ‘Sahara’.

Throughout it all the three man back line of Thorn, Mendoza and Aronoff are as solid as ever - would you expect anything less, I ask, but nevertheless, they are. No one skips a beat. The roadies are also putting in a fair shift as the amount of guitar changes in between songs is also fast and furious.

One of Vai’s own tunes, performed by himself this time - such is the amount of switch play taking place - ‘Tender Surrender’ gets a huge amount of adulation at the start, as soon as the crowd hears the opening bars and especially at the end.

Then the lights properly dim and suddenly the stage blacks out completely. Total darkness, apart from the odd gear light here and there. A series of spotlights fly out from the back of the stage blinding the audience and slowly get lowered revealing Vai playing something that has to be seen to be believed. Three guitars mashed together, which needs a stand to hold it up such is its size and weight too, I guess.

‘Teeth of the Hydra’ in name and in reality, appears before our eyes as Vai crafts out riff after riff from the triple necked, twenty-three stringed serpent, a twelve-string on top, a seven in the middle, and a four-string bass, at the... base. Satriani appears just as they’re packing away said ‘Hydra’ and whines that the same thing happens every night and that he never gets to play it, so he placates himself with some blues in the form of ‘Satch Boogie’, soft, subtle and every note played with meaning initially - all on his lonesome. It doesn’t take long for the back three to kick in mind, for a blistering souped up version at the end, taking it to a whole new dimension.

‘If I Could Fly’ sees Satriani kick everything off with Thorn also taking centre stage, for some twin love accompaniment, but not to be outdone Vai appears part way through and the three trade riffs in a blaze of glory, which sends Manchester into an even greater frenzy of excitement.

‘Always With Me, Always With You’ finishes off the night with Manchester ecstatic at what it’s just witnessed. The cries for more are quite deafening. The lights don’t go up though, so you can smell that there’s an encore in the offing.

…and so there was ! !

The dark of the stage turns to light, and the five reappear for a trio of encores. ’Crowd Chant’ starts it all off, followed by a cover of Metallica’s ’Enter Sandman’ before the Steppenwolf classic ’Born to be Wild’ finishes everything off properly and just before the cheers and applause nearly ripped the roof off.

And there you have it, my friends. A night to be relished and savoured, the kind of which doesn’t happen that often and if this is your thing, one that you just had to be part of.

…until the next time !

Satchvai Band Setlist