Ah Via Musicom

Zoo Freaks, settle in and let this one wash over you. The Zoo Crew is spinning the title track from Eric Johnson’s 1990 album Ah Via Musicom, and if you’ve got your ears tuned in right now, you’re catching one of the most atmospheric openers in rock guitar history. That short instrumental sets a cosmic, otherworldly stage before the whole record explodes into pure six-string fire. Johnson co-wrote it with keyboardist Steve Barber, and the piece itself came together in a pretty wild way during the sessions. He was hunting for something to kick the record off, some crazy sound effect to grab you from the first note. What he landed on was a jam that had already been captured on tape midway through the recording. He flipped the tape over, started overdubbing on the reversed track so some of the guitar lines run backward while others stay forward, then flew in snippets from a short-wave radio—different frequencies and people talking on the air—to give the whole thing that swirling, spacey texture. It’s pure Hendrix-inspired controlled chaos, a yin-yang soundscape that feels like it was beamed in from somewhere else entirely, and it leads straight into the album’s big moment.

The album title itself carries a deeper vibe that Johnson has talked about in interviews over the years. Ah Via Musicom loosely translates to something like “through the communication of music” or a celebration by way of that connection. He saw music as a heart-bridge gateway, a festival of life that could bring people together across all the styles he loved—rock, blues, jazz, country, you name it. That short title track is the invitation, the gateway piece that opens the door. And once you’re through, the rest of the album delivers with songs that became radio staples and a Grammy winner in “Cliffs of Dover.” Johnson has said he killed himself making this record, punching in and punching in again to get every note perfect and in tune. He spent a year and a half on it, far longer than his previous album Tones, obsessing over tones and details until it felt comprehensively like him. He even did multiple full versions of the album before landing on the one that went out. That perfectionist streak paid off; the record went platinum and put his crystalline, violin-like guitar tone on the map for good.

To understand how Johnson arrived at that level of craft, you have to go back to Austin, Texas, where he was born in 1954 into a musical family. His parents encouraged piano lessons, and he started those at age five, already writing songs a few years later. The guitar bug bit hard around age eleven when his older brother’s friends were jamming on stuff that sounded like the Ventures. He taught himself by ear, soaking up the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Cream, and especially Jimi Hendrix when Are You Experienced hit. Wes Montgomery, Chet Atkins, Eric Clapton, and Mike Bloomfield all left deep marks too. By fifteen he was in his first professional band, Mariani, a psychedelic rock outfit that cut a limited demo which later became a collector’s item. After high school he briefly attended the University of Texas, traveled a bit, then returned to Austin and joined the fusion group Electromagnets in the mid-1970s. That band—Johnson on guitar, Kyle Brock on bass, Bill Maddox on drums, and Stephen Barber on keys—toured the South and built a cult following even without a major label deal. People who caught them live walked away stunned, and years later their recordings finally got wider release. The group called it quits in 1977, but the chemistry and the chops Johnson developed there stayed with him.

After Electromagnets, Johnson spent time teaching, doing sessions, and playing with other acts while refining his own material. He cut the Seven Worlds album in the late 1970s, though contractual issues kept it unreleased until much later. The underground reputation kept growing; other guitarists were already talking about this skinny Austin kid with mind-melting technique. Warner Bros. eventually signed him, and the 1986 debut Tones arrived with the track “Zap” earning a Grammy nomination and landing him on magazine covers. Feedback from that record was clear—listeners wanted more guitar—and Johnson took that to heart when he went into the studio for Ah Via Musicom. Working mostly in Austin rooms like Riverside Sound with engineer Richard Mullen, plus some time in Los Angeles, he shaped a record that balanced heavy instrumental guitar with strong songs and even a few vocals. The title track’s backward-and-forward guitar and radio fragments were part of that careful alchemy, designed to pull you in before the fireworks of the tracks that followed. He has looked back and said the album was an effort to push himself and make the best record he could at the time, and the results still resonate with anyone who loves pure tone and inventive playing.

That path from Austin kid learning by ear to the guitarist who made Ah Via Musicom is the classic story of someone who stayed true to the instrument while absorbing everything around him. The Electromagnets years gave him the fusion edge and the live fire, the early demos and sessions built the songwriting, and the long studio hours on Musicom let him chase the exact sounds he heard in his head. For Zoo Freaks spinning this one on THE ZOO, it’s a reminder of how a short atmospheric piece can set up an entire album’s journey. If you want to dig deeper into Johnson’s world, head over to his official website, where you can find the Ah Via Musicom album page and plenty more from his catalog. You can also follow along on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Fans have kept a solid resource going at EJFans.com, full of interviews, bios, and history that include this classic album. The music keeps communicating, just like the title promised all those years ago, and tracks like this one still light up the dial for anyone ready to listen.