It took me several years to begin to understand Jimi’s body of work. Like some of you, I thought he had moments of sloppiness, I thought he seemed to lose the beat, and I thought he simply went crazy at times for no apparent reason. Later on, I developed a fondness for blues and jazz. Those slurs and drag-time singing didn’t start with him. The more I heard Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins, the more I understood Jimi. He had played with Sam & Dave and with the Isley Brothers. He got that behind-the-back and playing-with-his-teeth showboating from Buddy Guy. Jimi rolled all that into his new wizardry.
Every musician is guided by the past, but the great ones take it all to a new place. Check out the music before Hendrix, and see if you find anybody who sounded like that. Ten years later, everybody did. The great musician, whether technically perfect or not, pours his soul into yours. Do you feel what Jimi’s fingers were singing? I sure do.
I don’t think we can ever figure out who the greatest guitar player in rock was, or is, or will be. There are many great ones, and there will be more. Hendrix is not even my favorite.
I was talking about what wuld be considered difficut for a 1st year player. The tab is kind of a misleading guide for that piece, by the way. It’s not the notes that are hard but stuff like the whammy and feedback control. Have you ever tried to execute it? It’s not impossible for a skilled player (and that was never what I meant anyway), but it’s definitely more technically advanced than what some kid with his first guitar and some Metallica riffs under his belt would be able to do as you implied. There’s little that Hendrix did technically that I can’t do, but I couldn’t do it all after one or even five years of playing. It’s not beginners’ stuff.
I think you are mischaracterizing my playing by saying I was “some kid with his first guitar and some Metallica riffs under his belt”. I played a lot (I practiced for several hours every day), with some long time players who were patient teachers, and in my first year I was playing some pretty advanced stuff, much more technically difficult than most Hendrix songs. I practiced guitar solos until I knew I was hitting every note exactly how it was on the album, and I was playing lead guitar for a band that did mostly Metallica covers in 1990. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but I’m sure there’s other guitarists who can confirm that it’s entirely possible for a dedicated player to play stuff that’s pretty difficult after a year of intense practice.
I don’t know why you keep going back to TSSB, or why you have such problems with it. It’s not difficult in the least. Can I make it sound exactly like Jimi Hendrix did? No, and neither could Jimi. A song that’s so reliant on feedback effects is going to sound different every time you play it. Can I do all the motions involved? Of course.
If there was a more exciting, more influential, more inventive, more creative, more rockin’soulful guitarist than Jimi Hendrix in the history of rock, I don’t know who that would be.
So, yes, in my opinion Jimi Hendrix is all around the best candidate for Greatest Rock Guitarist.
There’s hitting the notes, and then there’s playing the notes. Jimi made that guitar sing. His phrasing and attack was impeccable. It was musical. It was new and exciting and soulful. You can teach any idiot to play notes on a page, but to give it that nuance, that expression…that takes much more than one year of copying somebody’s recordings.
Look at classical music, for instance. For most pieces, it’s always exactly the same notes. I can probably teach a quick learner how to play a Chopin Nocturne within a year. Can I teach them to understand the piece? Can I teach them to play it exactly like Rubenstein played it? I don’t think so. There’s so much more going on than just hitting the right notes.
OK, now we’re descending into some kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo. Yes, different artists have different styles, and there’s a lot of subtleties to everybody’s playing that would be impossible to reproduce. I was never saying that I could sound exactly like Jimi Hendrix. I said I could play his songs. I have people ragging on me because I can’t do something that Jimi Hendrix couldn’t do himself, which is play a song so it sounds exactly the same every time. Show me two recordings of Jimi Hendrix playing TSSB that sound exactly alike.
It is possible to imitate a song so it sounds the same to the untrained ear, and yes, nobody is good enough that someone would be confused as to whether they were hearing Jimi Hendrix or a cover band. What I’m arguing with is people saying that Jimi Hendrix was doing some kind of magical stuff that nobody who was only playing one year could imitate, and it’s not true. If I spent a few days working on it and listening to the recording, and if I had the same gear and settings and accoustics, there’s no reason why I couldn’t come extremely close to playing what he did, there’s nothing in it that would require decades of guitar playing to do.
The same thing could be said of Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was known for never playing the same song once.
That doesn’t mean they can’t do it, it means that they won’t do it. You play the same song every night and you are going to change it up, if for no other reason then to maintain your sanity.
I’m not arguing that Jimi wasn’t freakin’ awesome, but to call him the greatest rock guitar player in the world is just untrue. I’ll admit that he was likely the most innovative and certainly one of the most influential, but I can pick ten off the top of my head that were better players.
Look - the fact that this post is here and we are all so passionately engaged illustrates the only point that matters: Jimi Hendrix is synonymous with “Greatest Rock Guitarist.” He is the generally-accepted standard - if anyone is going to discuss an alternate nominee, it must be relative to him. You may not like him, and you may resent the need to do so, but to engage the majority of rock guitar players and listeners, it must be done. Who knows - this can evolve and change over time, but for right now - it’s understood.
In a subjective discussion, there is never a “factually correct” answer - the best you can do is pinpoint landmarks, such as a generally-accepted Gold Standard for the Best: Babe Ruth. Michael Jordan. Wayne Gretsky. Leonardo. Picasso. Mozart. Beethoven. The Beatles.
And Jimi Hendrix.
Can we be done now?
PS: oh, and pulykamell, as always you say the most correctest stuff…
IMHO opinion aside, townshend was there, knew the man, played with or in competition with him, so I’d say that makes Pete’s a much more informed opinion than many of those on this board.
Plus The Who was evidently an established act that Hendrix wasn’t too thrilled about following, judging from the interview. So even if Pete wasn’t a guitar god, his band was intimidating enough to not want to try to follow on stage. Hard act to follow? Jimi must have thought so.
ETA, in hindsight, however, Jimi’s subsequent performance is a rock legend. I can’t say I remember much about the set The Who layed down just prior.
Well, he (Townshend) said they were going on first, that was that, and then Hendrix jumped on a chair, wowed them, and said if he was going to have to follow The Who, he was pulling out the stops. I took it to mean that The Who considered themselves the one calling the shots, and Hendrix indicated that they might have set themselves up for a upstaging.
Pete’s can’t hold a candle to the great lead guitarists…that was John’s job. Pete’s job was to ram those power chords out and generally sound like a jet airplane. The fingernails of his right hand don’t survive too many shows without getting ripped off. He still plays with a passion that is amazing to behold.
As much as technical virtuosity, passion is what makes a great guitarst.
I don’t know if they’re on the list, but I’d like to add a few names:
David Gilmour
Mike Campbell
Peter Frampton (don’t laugh–check out Fingerprints)
Bill Nelson
Robert Fripp
John Goodsall