“I started to feel a little guilty that I had this instrument, but I didn’t do anything really musical with it.”

Steve Vai said that his iconic three-necked, heart-shaped guitar was created primarily for a music video, recalling how feeling “guilty” about not putting it to proper use provided a stepping stone in his multi-neck guitar journey.It’s impossible to pinpoint one specific creator of the V-shaped multi-neck guitar concept, as even Michael Angelo Batio, nowadays primarily associated with the instrument, said that both he and Steve Vai were independently thinking about doing the same thing around the same time.However, Steve got to capitalize on the trend first, as the heart-shaped guitar debuted in the music video for David Lee Roth’s “Just Like Paradise” (released as a single in December of ’87), mere days after Batio reportedly showed Vai the blueprint for his invention, according to the former Nitro & current Manowar guitarist.Speaking about his own journey to the V-shaped triple-neck and beyond in a new interview on the “SOAL Night Live — The Musical Talk Show”, Steve said (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):”My fascination with multi-neck guitars started with Jimmy Page, obviously. When I was 14, I saved up and bought this double-neck, my first one, but through the years, my fascination grew, and I was fortunate enough to have a company like Ibanez. They are so supportive; we’re gonna be coming up on 40 years, and they are very happy to manifest my oddball mental meanderings.””I started to design various triple-necks. One of them was the big heart guitar.”

“Just Like Paradise” became one of the most successful singles in David Lee Roth’s solo career, ushering in a new trend in the world of the late ’80s shred-dominated world of electric guitar.

And while Steve notes that the guitar began its life primarily as a prop for the video, the virtuoso notes how he eventually decided to incorporate it into his live shows:

“It started [with Steve] thinking, ‘Okay, this is David Lee Roth, I want to do something over the top’, so I thought, ‘Yeah, big, giant heart-shaped guitar with necks sticking all out”, totally campy [and] ridiculous. We used it as a prop for the video, but then I felt a little guilty, because I can’t do this [mimics tapping two guitar necks simultaneously] — Michael Angelo [Batio] can do it; I don’t know how he does that stuff, but I was faking it.”

“I started to feel a little guilty that I had this instrument, but I didn’t do anything really musical with it. So, I started to put the screws to it around ‘The Ultra Zone’ [1999], and that’s when I recorded the song ‘Fever Dream.’ There’s a couple of live clips of me performing it with that heart guitar, and there you can see I’m doing a lot of this [mimics moving hands from fretboard to fretboard].”

“In my mind, like anybody that’s entering a creative mindspace, I always had this interest in doing something worthwhile with these multi-neck instruments, and we even developed some more after that.”

The birth of The Hydra

In case you’ve been following what Steve’s been up to in recent years, you’ll know about the Hydra, the latest iteration from Steve’s multi-neck series, which comes with two half-fretless necks (12-string and 4-string), one 7-string neck, 13 sympathetic harp strings, and even an ethernet 4-way output (in addition to more esoteric features such as the “Dragonizer” and the “Climax Regulator”).

Speaking about his newest custom multi-neck baby from Ibanez, Steve said:

“I would say the idea came about 7 or 8 years ago, and it was just one of those ‘downloads’ that you get. And if I was to [translate it into words], I’d say this, ‘You’re gonna design an instrument that can carry an entire piece of music.’ This is my goal for multi-neck… and in my mind’s eye, I could immediately see how I’d have to navigate it; I didn’t know what the song was gonna be, but I knew I could create a piece of music so that it would sound [like that].”

Indeed, Steve did create a piece of music dedicated to the guitar, titled “Teeth of the Hydra”. If you want to see the impossible guitar in action, you can do so below.

Recently, Steve Vai sat down with Justin Beckner for a new edition of Ultimate Guitar’s “On the Record” podcast. During the episode, Steve discussed his work with Joe Satriani, Korn popularizing 7-string guitars, and more. You can check it out below.