A Quote by Steve Vai

I didn't have any aspirations of becoming famous or successful; in fact I was scared to death of all that. I remember somebody once said that if a rock musician goes on tour, he goes insane. I was very impressionable and I carried this useless weight of fear around with me about going on tour, all because of this thing somebody said.
I remember my father, when I said I was going down to Little Rock to work for Governor Clinton's run for president, he thought maybe somebody needed to check the medication cabinet. He thought somebody was playing around with it. He had never heard of him, he said. I said, 'Well, I think he's going to be the next President of the United States.'
My tour manager, I met him at Boot Barn. He was selling me a pair of boots... and he said, 'I moved to Nashville to be a tour manager, and I need work right now,' and I said, 'Man, I don't even have a tour manager. So you can tour-manage me.'
I'm right on the edge of getting another movie. It's between me and a famous person. The studio said they're thinking about going with somebody with a name. I said, 'That's great! Because I have one!'
When the Greatest Hits came out and we did that tour, I just felt I wanted to take a break, totally. Probably because, as well, I was so young when I got famous. I did album, tour, album, tour, album, tour, then I had a public nervous breakdown where I just lost tons of weight.
I'll tell you something. Once I was very fond of a poem by Emily Dickinson or somebody. I only remember one line of it, but it goes, 'The soul selects her own society.' I used to tell it to everybody. Once I quoted it to a friend of mine, and he said, 'Maybe, but the body gets thrown into bed with the goddamnedest people.
I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people. So I've always said 'yes' to the thing I'm most scared about. The fear of letting myself down - of saying 'no' to something that I was afraid of and then sitting in my room later going, 'I wish I'd had the guts to say this or that' - that galvanizes me more than anything.
I basically say I'm on tour all the time, because one tour goes into the next.
To be very honest, my reason for getting away from 'Pepsi Battle of the Bands' was because I was on tour. I wanted to be on tour, and the amount I was asking for, they said that they couldn't pay it.
This year's Hippiefest tour is truly a 'Classic Rock 'n Blues Tour' - a landmark, historic, musical celebration of which my band and I are proud to be a part. It's going to be a Guitar Guru Gala of Gargantuan proportions. For me personally, it will simply be the Greatest! So, see you at one of the dates on the tour. Believe me, this is not one you want to miss. All I can say is Get Ready To Rock'n'Roll!!!
Somebody close to me once said, 'Oh, no man will ever accept your children.' And I just thought it was the most horrifying thing someone has ever said to me in my entire life. I was determined to find somebody who would make that not true.
I've always been scared of somebody telling me what to do with my music. What if a great acting opportunity came up, and they were like, "No. You have to go tour and open up for this band," that I'm just not that crazy about? I made a decision a long time ago that I'm doing it because I love it, because it's fun. If I break even, that's a good thing.
At 3 o'clock in the morning on tour when you're sober is a lot less fun than 3 a.m. when you're drunk in a bar or in a nightclub. But having said that, 9 in the morning on tour sober is immeasurably better than 9 a.m. on tour when you're hung over and feeling like death.
If you bring somebody into the band you are going to be with them a lot whether it's in the studio, on the tour bus, or at dinner every night; you want somebody you enjoy being around. You don't want an annoying guy .
It's an honor to be able to tour with somebody I grew up listening to and somebody I look up to. When you're around somebody like E-40, all you can do is watch and learn, and soak up game.
Once you decide that you're going to have the death of Spock, then how does that affect the other people? Why is it there? I got a lot of stick from a lot of people from the very beginning about the idea of killing Spock. Somebody said, "You can't kill him." And I said, "Sure you can; the only question is whether you do it well."
I remember sitting on the back of the bus on the first day of the Social Experiment tour with my face in my hands. I emptied out my bank account, and before I did that tour, that was the number one thing I said I'd never do. I'll never empty out my savings.
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