Back to the OP, I admire Steve Vai for all the same reasons other fans and players do, and I respect his achievements. But equal or close to Hendrix? I don’t think so.
Hendrix had the complete control to which you refer, and he was able to use that control to express just about any emotion, from raw and feral passion to simple and elegant joy. He had the complete game: rhythm, melody, harmony, songwriting and spontaneous invention, plus he often just played for the love of playing and exploring what his guitar could do and where his passion could take him.
Two more points.
It’s worth listening to the way the electric guitar was used before Hendrix arrived, and after. I doubt any other player of the instrument has ever done so much to re-define what it can do, how it can be used, and how impressive it can be. All the greats of today have their own claims in terms of delveloping new techiques and creating new sounds, but none have had the same ‘before and after’ legacy as Hendrix.
Secondly, and I apologise if this seems like a cheap point, you can walk down the street and ask people at random, and just about everyone knows who he was and most can name at least one of his songs. Try that with Steve Vai. He’s a god to guitar geeks and shredders, and he has his fan base of course, but the average man in the street has never heard of him.
Hendrix wasn’t just a great guitarist, he single-handedly launched the whole concept of what modern rock guitar would become. And he wasn’t all that highly skilled technically–he had contemporaries with more chops, particularly the jazz players. But it’s as though he had a cable from his brain direct to his amp, without the instrument getting in the way.
I can certainly accept that a player like Vai is technically excellent but what I’ve heard kinda leaves me a bit cold. I can admire the virtuosity in some ways but I’m not moved. But I haven’t heard a lot of his stuff.
Maybe not a million miles away but somewhere in between (in fact once dismissively described if I recall correctly by Patti Smith as a “clinical Hendrix” sound ) , my own Guitar Hero Bill Nelson - if ever I had one - a live version of one of his early Bebop Deluxe tracks - to me, there’s just something distinctively warm and appealing about his sound and I had the priviledge of seeing him live a few years back - and I otherwise never go to gigs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjiArdooBi4
Weller has a bit of an unorthodox style, often draping his thumb over the neck to form barre chords and stuff. I’m not sure if he’s still doing that as much (I think he was copping Wilko Johnson as much as Townshend in the early Jam days).
I’ve seen him live several times, and Steve Cradock does quite a bit of the lead work. But PW solos, as well, quite tastily, I might add. He was never much of a control guy, really, but he was absolutely one of the best technical guitarists of the punk/new wave scene. This of course, is like being Liliput’s finest basketball player.
Anyway, he’s no shredder, but very, very good and very experienced. He’s only 52, but has been putting out music for 33 years.
I’d kind of put Marr with Andy Summers; great player that you rarely hear get flashy.
Well, I can’t really disagree with any of this. Hendrix was far more popular. Part of that was a function of whom he was and the era he played in where nobody had really heard anything like what he was playing up to that point. And obviously, the fact that he had songs that weren’t simply vehicles for guitar wankery and were also popular has catapulted him into unquestionably godlike status amongst all other players in rock and roll.
I don’t view Vai the same as I do guys like Malmsteen. Yeah, Vai can and does play fast, but he’s perfectly capable of wrenching emotional output from his axe, unlike Yngwie, whom I view as mostly a one trick pony with 128th notes springing out of that scalloped fretboard in predictable patterns of various harmonic minor scale runs.
The reason I made the assertion is because of all the wacky things Vai does with his guitar (much like Hendrix), the liberal use of tremolo, the liberal use of feedback and the fact that Vai in my mind is basically the modern equivalent. He’s a spacey, out there guy (I mean, he played with Zappa!), been a pocket player for Whitesnake and DLR and has built up quite an impressive following.
I’m not trying to really compare them per se, but I think that Vai is the closest thing to Hendrix that we have right now.
I don’t know…I think Vai has that same brain to amp connection that Hendrix had.
And he’s not as popular as Hendrix was, but he’s most certainly been a very influential player to legions of others.
No offense to anyone here, but watching those Vai and Johnson clips reminds me just how much I hate both of them. There’s just something so…dead…about them, and it’s not just the “pale zombie” look they have going. Ick.
**FGIE **- I hear you and for what you are trying to articulate with your Vai = modern Jimi, I am not going to push back too hard.
If someone asked me “who is a modern Jimi Hendrix?” I guess I would be more inclined to say someone like** Tom Morello **of Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, Street Sweeper Social Club, The Nightwatchman, etc.
Innovated in terms of fusing styles of music and weird use of effects
Uses both innovations to anchor the creation of really cool songs that have been big hits
Plays a wide variety of styles - his work as the Nightwatchman is acoustic strummy stuff vs. his weird-o-shred style with Rage vs. commercial pop for Audioslave
is an icon amongst guitar geeks
Steve Vai, kinda like Stevie Ray, is more like a “Hendrix on Steroids” - Vai innovated in the creation of the shred SuperStrat guitar, but musically he has mostly figured out how to take stuff that other folks first discovered to the nth degree. Morello entered new spaces…
I can kind of agree in some respects about Morello, and I love RATM’s music, but I don’t find him as groundbreaking as Vai. Having just typed that, it sounds silly since everything in music is built off of a foundation someone else built, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that.
I was completely unclear, but I was referring to the music. I hate it. It’s completely bland and soulless (probably the most controversial term in music, granted) to me, even with all the fireworks. It’s like sandpaper to my ears. It feels like a lead weight when I hear it. It’s an almost physical aversion. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s awful, awful, awful.
Morello is FAR more groundbreaking vs. Vai. Think about it - what specific musical style or innovation has Vai done that was not done before? And yes, of course you are right about musicians taking from each other so there is always someone who came before, even with Hendrix - but Hendrix is what brough those innovations to cross-over glory. Vai pretty much invented the SuperStrat guitar (there’s a vid on youtube where he discusses what features he pushed for, like a reverse-pull whammy, an HSH pickup configuration, etc.). But when it comes to music, he didn’t invent any new styles as much as take the guitar in a number of styles and push it to 11. Very, very cool, but not particularly innovative.
Morello took stompbox weirdness to a whole 'nother level in mainstream metal. Sure there was folks like Adrien Belew who were effects nuts before him, but didn’t have the same crossover appeal. And the Edge uses effects in a completely different way, as does Andy Summers. And Morello didn’t only use effects in new ways, but the rap/rock combination with a heavy groove metal foundation was very new at the time. And don’t tell me it’s like Limp Bizkit or any of that crap - RAtM is one of the few legit bands to come out of that Nu Metal category that will actually be listened to in 10 - 15 years…
I can appreciate that. Everyone is different, people’s tastes are different, one man’s trash and all that rot…
At any rate, I have been listening to this guy for quite a long time now and I know that he can play with feel. As a fan of his playing I think its unfair to characterize him as completely devoid of emotion. For instance, I think Yngwie’s music sucks and his guitar playing is utterly clinical, but I still appreciate the sheer speed of the histrionics. But emotional its not, aside from a few brief passages on his Rising Force disc.
I also am old enough and have listened to enough other players to have a pretty solid appreciation of all styles of rock guitar. For instance, Edge from U2 and Andy Summers are two guys I really like and admire…and they are noted for their sparse and tasty styles.
Tony Iommi is another guitar player that I think was very influential and he wasn’t much of one for solos either. But I quite dig old Sabbath.
IDK…maybe I’m getting old and swept up in a bout of nostalgia for the anoinment of a Hendrix replacement…which is maybe an impossible exercise!
Yeah, in terms of innovation, while I’m not necessarily his biggest fan, I would have to say Tom Morello is the one guitarist I could think of that really brought a new musical vocabulary to the table, combining the sounds of punk and hip-hop on the guitar. His work with RATM was simply impeccable. But I’m not really a fan of anything he did after that. Still, he’d probably be the first person in the modern era I would think of immediately as pushing the limits of the guitar in the same way Hendrix did.
Vai’s a solid, great guitarist. His work is far more musical than somebody like Malsteen. But he still leaves me feeling a bit tepid overall. He’s kind of on the same level as Satriani for me. Great technician, decent musician, but just missing that bit of grit, dirt, and soul, that makes music sound alive.
Maybe, but the sheer variation of sounds, squeals, hot-rails-to-hell whammy bar drops, electronics manipulations and various other sundries that Vai has pioneered is pretty groundbreaking to me. Its obvious the guy has been practicing!
Maybe we’re getting a little apples and oranges here…Morello is part (or was) of a band…in the case of Vai, he IS the band.
At any rate, I don’t find a whole lot of variation in the sounds/tones that Morello plays. He’s good, no doubt, and I really liked RATM and some of Audioslave’s music (the solo to “Like A Stone” springs to mind) but at the end of the day, I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.
Don’t get me wrong. My tastes are extremely eclectic, even when it comes to guitar. I have spent about 25 years seriously, seriously absorbing music from just about every modern era and style, from Tin Pan Alley to Black Metal.
As I said, I can’t really explain it. There’s an almost palpable revulsion I feel toward most of those guys, including Malmsteen, Vai, Johnson, etc. I’ve never really understood it, to be honest. I mean, it’s just flashy guitar, right? God knows I listen to and LOVE a lot of flashy guitar players.
Oh, let’s see. Django Reinhardt, Johnny Marr, Chet Atkins (sometimes. Sometimes he strikes me as badly as the previously mentioned shredders do, but in a different way.), Joe Maphis, just quickly off the top of my head.
