Un extrait du film " crossroads". un duel guitaristique entre Steve Vai et notre acteur Ralph Maccionne doublé par Ry Cooder et Jo Satriani.
Il gagne en reconnaissance, joue de plus en plus devant un public sans cesse croissant. Il interprète même un rôle au cinéma dans le film Crossroad. Il est par la suite contacté pour remplacer Yngwie Malmsteen au sein du groupe Alcatrazz. Il enregistre avec ce groupe l'album Disturbing The Peace en 1985. À peine la tournée avec Alcatrazz achevée, il est enrolé par David Lee Roth, l'ex-chanteur de Van Halen. Il compose avec son groupe l'album Eat 'Em & Smile. C'est l'époque de la révélation. Il fait les couvertures de dizaines de magazines, la couverture médiatique est énorme
Le rock instrumental est un genre de rock mettant l'accent sur les instruments et n'ayant que peu de parties vocales, voire aucune.
Un premier morceau instrumental remarquable était "Honky Tonk" par Bill Doggett, en 1956, avec son rythme sexy et son saxophone-orgue en instrument principal.
Crossroads is a 1986 musical comedy-drama film starring Ralph Macchio, Joe Seneca and Jami Gertz, inspired by the legend of blues musician Robert Johnson.
Eugene Martone (Macchio) has a fascination for the blues while he studies classical guitar at the Juilliard School for Performing Arts in New York City. Researching blues and guitar music brings famed Robert Johnson's mythically creative acclaim to his attention; especially intriguing are the legends surrounding exactly how Johnson became so talented – most notably the one claiming he "sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads", as well as a famed "missing song" that was lost, supposedly evermore, to the world.
In his quest to find this song, he discovers old newspaper archive clippings revealing that Johnson's longtime friend, musician Willie "Blind Dog Fulton Smoke House" Brown, is alive and incarcerated in a nearby minimum security hospital. Eugene goes to see him. After Willie denies several times that he is that Willie Brown, he finally admits his identity after hearing Eugene play some blues (though Willie notes that Eugene "plays with no soul"). Willie then says he knows the missing Robert Johnson tune in question but refuses to give it to Eugene unless the boy breaks him out of the facility and gets him to Mississippi, where he has unfinished business to settle. Eugene agrees and they head south, but the boy soon realizes that Willie is constantly running minor scams such as claiming that he has more money than he actually has in order to cover their bus tickets. With no money, they end up “hoboing” from Memphis to rural Mississippi.