Premier Guitar has posted an exclusive interview featuring Devin Townsend interviewing Steve Vai. The duo worked together on Vai's Sex & Religion album in 1993 and they discuss that record, along with how their careers as musicians have grown and changed over the years. An excerpt is available below.

Vai: "We both have very strong musical visions and aspirations for the kind of things we like to do. Back when I was starting to work on Sex and Religion, I was pretty focused on that vision—being the composer, the writer, and all that. I needed a great singer and when I heard Devin, I immediately thought, 'This guy is great.' He was very young at the time and still formulating his own independence as a musician. I mean, you were, like, a teenager."

Townsend: "Man, it’s that long ago? (Laughs) You’re officially old, by the way."

Vai: "I know. I know. (Laughs) During that process, I worked with a lot of different people but I always felt like when I do my solo work, I have a very rigid approach—“this is my vision and something I want to focus on”—and everybody’s contributions came at various levels. I need to be the Svengali, so to speak. Oddly enough there wasn’t a lot of creative collaborating, with regards to songwriting or production.

The few songs we did do where I said, “Okay, here’s a track. Let’s see how it goes,” were a Japanese bonus track called 'Just Cartilage' and a song Devin and I wrote together called 'Pig'. They were actually my favorite songs and it was interesting that they helped loosen up the rigid grip I had on the controls. But unfortunately everyone was subject to my neurotic demands. I didn’t realize at the time how talented and creative Devin was because he had to unfortunately work under a lot of my direction."

Townsend: "If I can play devil’s advocate for just a second, my god, dude, I was 19 years old and out of my league in so many conceivable ways that I think a concise musical vision was something that was far from my scope at that point. There’s something I wanted to say that I haven’t had the opportunity to say, and that’s when I was 16, I listened to the shit out of your records. I remember listening to you on Rockline and the whole works, man. I remember watching Crossroads in my parents’ bedroom and loved it. When I finally got together with you, it was such a public thing for me out of nowhere, and I think I was so desperate to have an identity that was separate from that, that my first reaction was to rebel against it all. To be like, 'Fuck it. I don’t want anything to do with it because I want to be me.' The one thing I had going for me was total belligerence. I probably still have it and it’s a lot less entertaining in my mid 40s than it maybe was in my early 20s. But in terms of the Svengali-type control of everything, god, if there’s anybody that can relate to that, it’s me. So I think what you did at the time was what was necessary for that vision. I would have done the exact same thing."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Steve Vai photo by Larry DiMarzio

Devin Townsend photo by InsideOut Music