:rolleyes: I must respectfully disagree.
Having played rock guitar for 39 years, I have to say that you are talking completely and totally out of your ass. You have no basis upon which to make that assertion, so quit it. It exposes you as a moron.
I thought it was Townshend too but, regardless, do remember recognizing that a couple of guitar gods saw Hendrix and the level of his abilities over anything they knew they’d ever aspite to was enough to leave them awestruck.
I’ve been playing seriously for over a quarter of a century and I can’t replicate his technique. It took me forever to learn the intro to “Little Wing” without fumbling through it like a beginner, and I’m good (at least I used to be before my damn arthritus came along).
I can play faster than Hendrix did, but playing fast is not that big a deal and was not a technical goal that guitarists of Hendrix’s era were particularly interested in pursuing. Clapton, Beck and Page never had blinding speed either. Clapton’s vibrato, Beck’s tone or Page’s infectuous riffing are still worth more than some lickety-split harmonic minor scale. Speed is essentially just a learned skill. Anyone who practices a lot can acquire it (and I have no doubt that Jimi would have been more than capable of acquiring all the essential shred techniques of modern rock guitar if he had lived long enough. He probably would have loved Van Halen). To me it’s more about depth of expression, emotion and compositional skills, but even just limiting it to technique, trying duplicating “The Star Spangled Banner,” or “Machine Gun” or “1983” (or practically anything else from Electric Ladyland).
A lot of what Hendrix did technically went beyond conventional musicality. he created soundscapes. Much of what he did was onomotopaeic – the sounds of guns, bombs, the wind, water, car horns, human voices, space ships, the list goes on – and he combined that with a carefully nuanced dynamic choreogrpahy which gave the illusion that the listener was moving in space through those musical landscapes. Distant sounds become closer, then recede again. Other sounds appear to zoom in at the listener out of nowhere, entire sonic “backgrounds” are created which give an almost uncanny illusion of 3 dimensional place and motion.[sup][/sup]That takes chops, man, not just as a musician but as a composer, as an engineer and as a producer. Hendrix’s genius went beyond just his physical abilities as an instrumentalist. He was a complete composer.
[sup][/sup]Granted, these illusions are greatly and enhanced and perhaps most appreciated when the listener’s mood is augmented by certain chemicals.
Pete Townshend will tell you that Jimi Hendrix was the greatest, most innovative rock guitarist ever. But Hendrix also went and checked out Townshend in 1966 and incorporated that Dadaist stuff Townshend was doing into his act.
But what Townshend was only suggesting, Hendrix brought out full force.
I’ve read a few different versions of the first time Clapton saw Hendrix, but the basics seem to be that Chas Chandler had brought Jimi to a club where Cream was playing in London and Jimi had brashly asked if he could sit in for a set. Clapton had agreed, not thinking much of it and themn Jimi launched into a double time rendition of “Killing Floor” which knocked them all out. He included some of his usual stage tricks of playing with his teeth, behind his back, etc., as well as using all his distortion, feedback and whammy bar skills.
According to the legend, Clapton was so shaken that he was unable to light his own cigarette when he left the stage. He went to Chandler and asked, “Is he always that fucking good?”
Disagreement is fine, but calling someone a ‘moron’ outside the Pit isn’t. Please do not do this again.
I’ve listened to a lot of his live recordings, and Jimi was a pretty sloppy player for a professional. I know that live performances never sound like the studio stuff, but compared to most guitarists, even those from the same time period, Jimi made a lot of mistakes. I’m not disputing that he was soulful, innovative, or a great composer. I’m saying that technically, he was pretty average skill-wise. Most of his music was pretty easy to play, and he didn’t get it right a lot of the time. Improvisation can only be taken so far as an excuse for not playing in the right key, failing to hit your pinch harmonics, muffling notes that are supposed to ring, and getting out of time in the fast parts. I’ve played guitar for 18 years myself, though not very seriously for the last 14 years or so. I could play most of the Hendrix covers in my repertoire “studio perfect” after only about a year of playing.
Respectfully, it sounds like you’re a not very serious musician and you don’t really know what you’re talking about. What Hendrix songs did you learn? “Purple Haze?” “Hey Joe?” “Foxy Lady?” The easy stuff? Did you ever try to play something like “Castles Made of Sand” or “Rainy Day Dream Away?” Can you play 'The Star Spangled Banner" complete with all the effects?
Frankly, I just don’t believe you.
What’s your original stuff like?
Not as original as Hendrix was. 
Most of my better original stuff sounded like late-80s Metallica, with some having a pretty Soundgarden-ish sound. Speaking of Soundgarden, Kim Thayil is another example of a not-very-technical guitarist who was still greatly innovative. I read an interview with him once where he said something like “I’m better than 95% of the guitarists out there, but since the top 5% is where all the professional musicians are, I’m worse than most pros”.
There’s nothing technically difficult in the Woodstock performance of TSSB, though getting the exact same feeback effects would be pretty damn difficult, I’d guess - of course, it would be difficult for Hendrix as well, that kind of stuff is hard to reproduce perfectly.
Yes, most of the Hendrix stuff I played was what you call “The Easy Stuff” (or what I consider “The stuff that the average metalhead knows”). The thing is, Hendrix messed up a lot in live performances of his “Easy Stuff” as well, a lot more than I did. A lot of that could have been the drugs, though.
Why?
I’ve known tons of guys who can do it without much problem*. I’ve never bothered to learn any Hendrix stuff (except of course Purple Haze, everyone knows that, like Smoke on the Water) mainly because I don’t care all that much for his stuff. That and the fact that I have always been a crappy mimic**.
Was Jimi a good player? Yep. Influential? Hell yes. Sloppy at times? Yep. Best ever? Nope. There are too many good and influential players out there to call any one player the best.
Slee
*Back when I was playing bars I’d meet guys in other bands who could nail Hendrix stuff all the time. There were a lot of them and also a lot of guys who could nail Eddie Van Halen stuff. The best was probably a guy named Craig Small in a band called 9.0. He was very good at Hendrix stuff. He was also one hell of a player.
**Way back when I first started playing, 27 years ago, I learned a bunch of covers. I could always play the tunes but it always sounded like me doing a cover. I never figured out how to mimic other players well. These days I just write though occasionally I’ll hear something that I want to learn. It still sounds like me covering whatever song I happen to learn.
Yes there is. You obviously don’t have a lot of knowledge of the instrument.
OK, tell me what part is technically difficult.
Yes, but they aren’t able to do it within their first year of playing which is what Resiistance said he could do.
If you don’t have time for much else other than practice and you play with other good musicians, it’s possible to get very good at guitar in only a year. I got almost all of my technical skills down pat in my first year, after that my style evolved and I got better at improvising and learned more music theory, but if I went back to the 17 year old version of myself, I could have taught him pretty much anything I ever learned to play, and young me would probably play it a lot better.
And you still haven’t told me what part of TSSB is hard. I’ve been looking over the tablature and I don’t see anything a decent guitarist would have problems IMITATING. Creating is a different story.
I think Diogenes is equating “Good” with “Difficult”. The Van Halen example reminded me of something I read when I first started playing guitar, that if you couldn’t play “Eruption” after one year, you need to give up. That seemed crazy to me, but I could play Eruption well before I had been playing a year, it’s not hard at all once you know the technique. It’s a good, innovative guitar song, but there’s nothing in it that a competent guitarist would say “Man, I just can’t play that part no matter how hard I practice” to.
Most people who say Jimi was no great shakes started playing 10 or 15 or (!) 20 years after Jimi changed the world. Techniques he pulled out of thin air are now basic training for a young rock guitarist. They think because they can do more with a device the size of a pack of cigarettes than they hear him doing that he was a piker. Ah, the arrogance of youth. He had a Stratocaster, a one-button fuzzbox, a Dunlop Cry-Baby wah pedal, and a flanger. That, and his fingers, his soul.
I have more to say, but I’ve things to do right now.
I agree wholeheartedly. I never said Jimi Hendrix wasn’t a great guitarist, just that, by today’s standards, he wasn’t technically skilled. Since nobody was playing like he was back then, doing what he did was special. He wasn’t a great guitarist because of an ability to do stuff that other guitarists couldn’t - he was great because of an ability to do stuff that other guitarists HADN’T.