Tender Surrender

One of his most popular songs, in our interview with Steve Vai, he told the story behind this guitar-based instrumental: "I was sitting and recording something in the middle of one of my records - I always keep some sort of a documenting device around. I felt this urge to just play and to get out of the way, and I hit the first chord and I sang the melody, and just fished for it. Once it's there, it's almost like low-hanging fruit. So then I had this cassette with me singing just the first verse melody and the chord changes, and I knew that it had some energy to it. There was a presence to it. So I just put it on the shelf, and it was yelling at me for about ten years. Finally when I listened back to it, I said, 'I know there's a beautiful song in there,' so I completed it, and then when it was done, I listened to it, and it told me its name."