Guitar master Joe Satriani shared a story about a rather odd day he had a while back, featuring late great Les Paul and a brief surprise appearance by Zakk Wylde. Satch told Back Story:
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“If anybody had the pleasure of watching him [Les] perform at the Iridium [jazz club in NYC], they know that he had a very sharp sense of humor.
“When you went up to play with him, you were like the straight guy and you never were quite sure what was going to happen. He loved to pull out obscure songs to take somebody out of their comfort zone and expose them right to the audience. All in good fun, it all made for good shows.
“One particular night though, I’d shown up to play with him. And it had been a long day, I almost got thrown off the roof by Zakk Wylde… That’s just how the day began. We’d spent maybe, I don’t know, eight or nine hours together.
“So at the end of the night we’re on stage, we’re playing, and in typical Les fashion – he’s being very cordial and leading the show – he asked me about my guitar.
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“And I just happened to show up with this beautiful brand new ‘Surfing With the Alien’ guitar with the Silver Surfer on it. It was brand new, I hadn’t really scratched it up yet.
“So I innocently thought, ‘Oh, Les is really interested in what this guitar is!’ And just like a guitar nerd I said, ‘Thanks for asking Les! Look what I can do with this!’, and I made some crazy noise with the whammy bar.
“And he just looked at me and said, ‘Oh… that’s too bad.’ [Laughs] And I just shrunk. I became the world’s smallest guitar player. [Laughs] And then I laughed until I was crying. It was just too funny.”