FollowPicture if you will, an impressionable young teen. Not a boy not yet a man. 
Struggling with life’s massive enigmas; love. Homework. Acne.
High school was pants. Girls were too scary to even talk to and I had finally got a reasonably decent budget guitar called an ‘Axe’ ( I say decent as prior to that I was playing a lump of wood that my dad made from an old acoustic, a tape recorder microphone (as a pickup) and a red and black body). Yes it was made from a fireplace, Brian May would’ve been proud (and very amused).
I had pretty much exhausted my dads record collection learning some fleetwood mac and all the Hank Marvin discography (I know. But we’ve all gotta start somewhere right) and a bass playing friend of mine said he’d heard a guy called Satriani was a pretty good guitarist and suggested a trip into town to hunt for Some tapes. We found two cassettes, ‘Surfing With The Alien’ and the one I grabbed, ‘Flying…’ Initially I thought the cover was more cool and on closer inspection of the track names a decision was made. Surely everyone needs a song called ‘The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing’ in their life?
Well anyway that swung it for me and We scurried home ready to feast our ears.
As a first taste of proper technical guitar instrumental music it was a perfect choice, I didn’t even care that the singing on the album was weaker than an east London lager. I was blown away by the sheer brilliance, the tunes that had no words still followed the ‘rules’, intro, verse, verse, bridge, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus, outro. The melodies are so strong, the riffs so bold, the solos so melodic yet technically brilliant. Flying’ has a great collection of fast rock tunes, ‘Mystical Potato Head’, ‘One Big Rush’, ‘Back To Shalla Bal’ (apparently Surfing’s part 2) , gorgeous, flawless ballads ‘I Believe’, ‘Flying’, and my personal highlight ‘The Forgotten Part II’ which to this day remains my favourite Satriani song.
Yes there’s some questionable vocal tracks ‘I Just Wanna Ride’ and ‘Can’t Slow Down’, the weirdness of ‘The Feeling’ (banjo ahoy) and ‘Strange’ and ‘The Phone Call’ but these are forgiven as we have the cheesy but classic ‘Big Bad Moon’ and the hopeful ‘I Believe’. Throw in a few oddies displaying his two-handed tapping skills ‘Day At The Beach’, and ‘The Forgotten Part I’ (which reminds me of the old Panorama theme) top it off with a Brian May-esque regal sounding ‘into The Light’ (a tribute to his father who died at the time Satriani was writing the album) and there you have it.
Yeah it’s not perfect, but to a spotty teen it was the opening of a door into a new kind of music genre, and the perfect excuse to lock myself in my bedroom each night and focus on a kind of learning curve I enjoyed.
I’ve owned the album in various formats over the years, it was the first tape I played in my little blue fiesta (nicknamed ‘blue dream’) when I had passed my test and went out driving on my own for the first time. It’s that special to me.
There are other guitarists that please my ears, but for me Joe is the master. And Flying in A Blue Dream will always have a place in my heart.
Years on it doesn’t get as regular an airing as it should, it comes in handy when I have a long drive home (but makes me go a bit too fast), when it does though it always takes me back to my days of youth when life was simple.
Thank you, Joe Satriani for being my first step into a larger world.