Steve Vai plans to release a hard rock album from the early-'90s that he recorded and then shelved.
Vai tells AI.com that he spent about two weeks on the album back in 1991. The record features vocals from Vai's longtime friend John 'Gash' Sombrotto and could finally see the light of day next year as the follow-up to Vai's 2022 album Inviolate.
"The next record I have coming out — and this is a shocker, for whoever's interested — but I recorded a record around 1991 and I spent about two weeks on it and it's this very straight-ahead rock," Vai explained. "It's music that I wrote that I wanted to listen to while riding my Harley Davidson with me and my friends."
Vai adds that Sombrotto "had never sung, but I heard something in his voice, and I put [him] in the studio, and you're just not gonna believe the way he sings."
The album is tentatively titled Vai/Gash.
The former Frank Zappa, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake guitarist, Vai says the long-forgotten LP represents an "alternative life" for him musically — something people might have been looking for if they only knew him from his work in the late-'80s.
"It's the record I think a lot of people were expecting I would make — and were hoping I might make — because it's even more straight ahead that Whitesnake or David Lee Roth. Just rockin'," he continued. "It's not metal but it is ... this pop-rock. I really like it, but it sat on the shelf for over 30 years. So that's the next thing coming out."