Guitarist Steve Vai is due to appear as a special guest on VH1 Classic's That Metal Show on Saturday, November 7th at 11:00pm. Fans outside of USA will be available to view online soon after it airs at this location.

As previously reported, Peter Hodgson at IHeartGuitarBlog.com has posted an interview with Vai, in which he talks about his new DVD Where The Wild Things Are, commemorative releases of his Flex-Able and Passion & Warfare albums, the design of the Ibanez Jem guitar, a new Jem to be unveiled soon, the art of improvision, and whether he'd ever put together a supergroup like CHICKENFOOT.

The following is an excerpt:

Q: Let’s talk about the new DVD. That tour obviously didn’t come to Australia, so the DVD was the first thing I’ve seen of that line-up.

A: "First of all, I’m sorry I didn’t make it to Australia. It was a relatively short tour because I had just finished a project that had me working in the studio for over a year, which was the orchestra project I did with the Metropole Orchestra in Holland. So at the end of that I wanted to put a band together. Something different, something unique, hopefully something that no-one has ever done, and go out and do a short tour. I wanted to put the kind of band together that would give the music a different kind of dimension.

So I had a couple of different ideas. One of them was to have a rock band core with two additional percussionists. Another was to have a rock band core with a twelve-piece horn section, and another was to have two violins. So I chose the two violins this time because it made the most sense coming out of the orchestra project. The problem was finding the right players because my music, although it can be very compositional in nature, it’s fused with rock and roll sensibility, y’know, because I’m primarily a rock artist. So because the music can be very challenging and demanding I needed musicians that could read music. All the violin players I was auditioning were these metal violin shredders. They sounded terrible. They couldn’t really play well and they didn’t understand the dynamics and the nuance of the music. And all the classical players I auditioned who could read the music didn’t have any rock and roll sensibility, so when I turned my amps up their violin bows melted and they ran for the hills. So I was lucky than Ann Marie Calhoun and Alex DePurdue fell into my life because they are real stunners. They are unbelieveably talented, elite players with great discipline and respect, and wonderful people."

Read the full interview at iheartguitarblog.com.