(Without rereading the thread) would any of you Page fans care to post some YouTube (or whatever) links?
What are you looking for about Page?
I have a busy rest of the week, so I am not sure when I can get back - or which player is crowding my brain.
Thanks – what’s interesting is that I keep ending up in these classic rock guitar threads, though that’s not actually the main thing I listen to. Right now, for instance, the two discs in the CD player after the new Derek Trucks and Super Session are by Bembeya Jazz National, a Guinean band of the '60s and '70s.
Yep - besides DTB and SuperSession, I have Bonnie Prince Billy, The Bad Plus and The Tings Tings in my changer…it’s all good.
Can’t play the audio (at work) but give this -In My Time of Dying- a go. If it’s half as good as the How the West Was Won version then it might convince.
As for the list, the only two I listen to at all are Page and Hendrix. I can’t figure out a way to rate that list by skill but I would say that by some unmeasurable criteria Hendrix is in a different class from pretty much any other electric guitarist - Pete Townshend described him as a shaman, that there was something magical about seeing him play live. I’m prepared to take his word for that.
**SC **- that *How the West Was Won *version blows me away. I am finally at a place where I can play it on slide and it is so fun to play.
I am working on an angle for Hendrix -
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He’s certainly the Electric Robert Johnson (i.e., a guy who was a known entity with a decent track record with gigs, who disappeared, came back and was rediscovered in a huge new way, only to die young).
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He’s also the Jackie Robinson of rock - came on the scene fully-formed, bringing tricks and an aggressive style of play (e.g., stealing home; playing guitar with your teeth) that was expected and typical in their African-American settings (i.e., Negro Leagues; Chitlin’ Circuit blues clubs) but was “radical,” “unconventional” etc. in the big leagues and ultimately totally transformed their field.
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He’s the Michael Jordan of Lead Guitar - established THE Platonic Ideal of how to look, play, sound, etc.
There’s a few more like that…
Hendrix was the most innovative by a mile, and my favorite of all time, but I actually think SRV was more skillful. Jimi was often sloppy. it didn’t matter. That was part of his charm, and it was part of his process, but SRV was much more tight and precise.
I’d put SRV at the top of the list as most skillful, but Jimi was more innovative (and still a technical monster when he wanted to be).
Page, while technically even more sloppy than Hendrix, was exceptionally artful and interesting to listen to.
Clapton is technically the least flashy, but perhaps the most soulful, and his technique is subtly much more refined than it seems. He doesn’t play lickety split arpeggios, but his vibrato is masterful and hard to duplicate. I’ve tried.
Jeff Beck’s not on this list, but he’s similar in that he sounds simple, but somehow he gets this amazing tone where he hits these big fat notes that sound like they should be child’s play to duplicate, but are anything but.
I’ve actually never really listened to a lot of Duane Allman. I never really got into the Allman Brothers (though I’ve always liked what I’ve heard). My knowledge of Duane Allman actually comes more from an obsession I once had with Eric Clapton’s Layla album than from the Allman Bros. I think that’s one of the greatest guitar albums ever recorded, and Allman is a huge reason why. I think his playing on that album is soulful, tasteful and melodically interesting (not just bluesy), but I’ve never heard enough of him to make a truly informed evaluation.
I think slide guitar is almost a different instrument anyway.
I can agree with that. I think of Hendrix as being sort of like Jackson Pollock. The notes splash all over the place, and that’s the point. He could be sloppy live, but that was how he worked.
You could do worse than get obsessed with that album. You hear a lot of Duane’s best playing there. What it lacks is the year-plus of improvement he made afterward, but more importantly it doesn’t have the jazzy stuff you might hear in a song like In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.
In some ways it is. In addition to its other demands it places physical limitations on your playing. But I think it’s a mistake to evaluate Duane as a slide guitarist only. He almost never played both slide and straight lead on the same song, so he’s practically a different player on songs like You Don’t Love Me, Whipping Post, Elizabeth Reed, Hot 'Lanta or Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad? Same goes for Derek. They’re both known for their slide playing, but I think they are both at least as good without the slide.
I have never been much of a fan, so I’m wondering what I might be missing.
Okay - cool. Can you give me and other Page-fan Dopers (Page Heads? Page-oids? Pagers? Nah.) something to react to? I (and other Dopers - right? this is *not *Harmony Central ;)) promise not to snark on your evaluation - what have you heard from him and what makes you currently go meh?
I’ve never got the Page thing. I’ve always suspected that he was the lead guitar in a famous group that played guitar based music, so everyone assumes he was good, but…
I have never heard him play anything particularly skillful on any studio album, and whenever I’ve seen him live he’s been somewhere between competent and just plain bad. Sloppy, barely trying (at least apparently), unmelodic, more interested in putting on a show called “I’m Jimmy Page” than playing music.
I probably have only seen him after his prime. Don’t get me wrong, I love Zep and have every respect for all the talents he brought to them, I just don’t get the Guitar God thing when it comes to him.
What should I listen to?
Well - I can’t spout verbiage at this time because of some meetings coming up, but an easy place to start would be the lead guitar break at the end of the spacey section of Whole Lotta Love. Hereis a YouTube link to some random dude doing a credible job of it, just to remind you - but go back and listen to Jimmy / Zep.
In this thread, I spend a lot of time breaking down what I love about Jeff Beck’s lead guitar work. Well, Page’s solo has that “authoritative blues shouting” mojo down cold. It is one of those solos whose perfect phrasing takes an economical set of notes in the most cliche of blues scales and takes it to a whole 'nother level.
What do you think? Can you hear that masterful phrasing, or, because of Page’s influence, do you lump this in with all of the classic rock / white-boy-blues leads that came after this? That’s the biggest problem with Page - his shadow is SO vast, so wide and so freakin’ big that we are all immersed in it and don’t fully appreciate it - kinda like that other thread on Elvis that is going right now…
None of the above.
Now if you had put Michael Hedges on your list…