Joe Satriani

Yesterday, I was walking around Chicago. I was walking over one of the bridges. Something real funny happened. It was just one of those things that happens when you’re not thinking and you’re just looking around.
I was in the middle of the bridge, walking, and it was a cold, gray day. I saw this pole sticking over the bridge barrier to my left. It was sort of rising out of nowhere. I immediately had this musical interpretation of this thing, just appearing out of nowhere. In a second I knew what it was. A barge was passing underneath the bridge and it was carrying this crane and poles. But all I saw was the pole first, as if it were rising out of the sea, looking straight into the air. It just got me thinking right away about some sort of sound or guitar part that worked around the fantasy of some unusual object rising out of the water, maybe in a town like Chicago, just rising out and getting larger and larger as it looms over the city.