Devin Townsend has elaborated on a notorious anecdote from his early career, explaining why he defecated in Steve Vai’s guitar case as a wordless act of protest during his brief stint as Vai’s lead vocalist.
Talking to the Heavy Stories podcast (transcribed by Louder), Townsend — now widely known for his eclectic solo catalog and his work with Strapping Young Lad and the Devin Townsend Project — described how singing Vai’s lyrics on the 1993 album Sex & Religion and the subsequent arena tour supporting Aerosmith felt fundamentally at odds with his own creative instincts
“With Steve, I was only 19 or 20 when I met him, so that petulant part of my personality was in full bloom. When I got there, he was like, ‘I want you to sing these lyrics: sing this song, which is about my wife giving birth, and this song, which is about my experience with this.’ And I remember just being like, ‘Man, I can’t!’ He’s like, ‘No, really give it on that line! This is the line where you really gotta reach for the heavens!’ — and I’m just like, ‘But it doesn’t mean anything to me.’”
He described the act of fouling Vai’s case as the only outlet available to him in that moment: “When you can’t articulate your discontent in a way that is able to be understood in a sit-down environment, I guess you’re left with only the sh*tting option.”
Looking back on the period with some measure of perspective, Townsend offered: “I was too young to articulate it in any rational way. At that point, it was the culmination of a lot of circumstances — arrogance, fame, confusion, and relationships. All that stuff. I can forgive myself in hindsight for the ways I reacted at the time because I didn’t know what to do. I was lost — and I responded to it by creating Strapping.”
Townsend joined Vai’s band through Relativity Records, who had just signed his short-lived solo project Noisescapes, and admitted in a 1993 Guitar World interview that he took the role simply “because it was there.” Despite the turbulence of that early association, the two have maintained an amicable relationship: Vai appeared on Townsend’s 2019 album Empath and on The Moth, Townsend’s multimedia symphonic metal opera released in May 2026 after nearly a decade of development.
Check out our recent interview with Townsend here.
