Don’t forget the sequel is coming up this november! HERE are some of the songs in the second iteration.
PS: if you own a PS2 and have not yet heard of guitar hero, do yourself a solid: go to 1up, gamespot or IGN and check out the reviews.That game is as much a classic as Pac Man was.
Lots of interesting posts - I happen to agree with posters who mention Haynes, Trucks, Jack White and John Frusciante. I would add Joe Bonnamassa and a few others.
The biggest issue is: how do you define a Guitar Hero? To me, it is NOT some bombastic shredder - that guy in the Youtube (Herman Li?) is a-freakin’-mazing, but is not my definition of a guitar hero.
A guitar hero to me is someone who kicks off a whole new wave of style and kids who want to be like them. George Harrison - while not nearly as good IMHO - was at least as big of a guitar hero as Clapton. So many kids started playing because of the Quiet Beatle.
Eddie Van Halen was an amazing guitar hero because his band’s songs were popular AND he was introducing an innovative approach to guitar.
To my mind, folks like Joan Jett, Kurt Cobain and Billie Joe Armstrong are huge guitar heros because of their influence - much more than Tony MacAlpine, Jason Friedman or other shredders who are infinitely better technically.
So the biggest issue is: are there players out there who are getting kids to want to play? To me, then answer is yes - lots of the names mentioned.
I look at Tom Morello, John Frusciante and Jack White as current, very popular players (or in popular bands) that kids want to emulate…
But compared to someone like Eddie Van Halen, those folks can barely play. They might be heroes, but guitar heroes?
I hear you - Loopydude - but that is the eternal challenge. Who is a bigger guitar hero - George Harrison or Robert Fripp? Fripp is a legendary player - mainly to prog-heads or other guitar players. George is a household name to this day and influenced millions.
I hear the OP asking a very similar question to the periodic “is rock dead?” or the more-recent “why does music today suck?” threads. The issue is, given rock’s basic life cycle, the emergence of hip-hop AND the paradigm-changing nature of web-based/digital music, are folks still playing guitar that gets your average teenybopper kid to want to play, just like Hendrix, Clapton and Van Halen did for us? To me it is less about wow- who can shred? it is more about who is a cross-over player with great songs that your average person knows - and who gets folks to want to play guitar?
Try Michael Hedges, Will Ackerman, Adam Werner and Kentaro Otsuka to start with.
Oh, I wholeheartedly agree with you, I just seem to think that his ability to play “Nintendo” influenced extreme speed metal with out of the box standard Ibanez guitars will be catching on big time and I expect with more exposure of the band DragonForce (yes, they’re as silly as the name, but the music really helps-think 80’s metal about dragons and warriors played at lightspeed) he’ll soon be gracing the Guitar Player Magazine and Guitar One reader polls as a top respected guitar slinger for years to come. Now is just the dawn of Herman Li’s Godhood.
The first time I saw that video I actually dropped my beer and went slack jawed in amazement which I’ve never actually done before. Someone who shreds like that will be surely spawning a new age of The Dude To Emulate While Playing At Guitar Center.
As usual, I will now post the obligatory:
Carlos Santana
reminder. Carlos has more soul than Clapton (no offense to Eric intended) and better chops (ditto). He is certainly god-like in my book.
A player is not a “guitar god” because of chops. Maybe a “guitar hero”–and we’ll get into GD territory soon, I’m sure–is.
Mr. Li sure has impressive…hair. 
[QUOTE=WordMan]
I hear you - Loopydude - but that is the eternal challenge. Who is a bigger guitar hero - George Harrison or Robert Fripp? Fripp is a legendary player - mainly to prog-heads or other guitar players. George is a household name to this day and influenced millions.
[QUOTE]
Well, obviously it depends on how you look at it but there is also the question of who guitarists actually think are guitar heros. While more people were surely inspired to play guitar by Harrison, more serious guitarists are probably influenced by Fripp (or other players) once they get a little more into the guitar. So while a ton of people were originally inspired to play the guitar by Harrison, I’d argue that the players who stuck with it and went on to do innovative and new things with the guitar were probably inspired to do so by someone like Fripp, Jeff Beck, Steve Vai, Al Dimeola, Van Halen, John Petrucci or some of the newer guys out there. There are some players whose influence is much large than their actual audience because, while the rest of the world might not know who they are, they influence a large number of guitarists. For example, I think that the insanely fast playing that a lot of players got into was inspired a great deal by Al Dimeola and Steve Morse, both blazingly fast players. I know that in the Prog-Rock world Morse is a huge influence though not many people outside of that world know who the hell he is even though they might like some the bands he influenced*.
So I guess it comes down to initial influence to start playing vs. the insipiration to do new, different things.
Slee
*I went to a Dream Theater concert wearing a Steve Morse hat. While in line I spoke with a bunch of people. One guy noticed that hat and we started talking about Morse. No one else we were talking to had ever heard of him even though John Petrucci cites Morse as a huge influence.
Personally, I say good riddance.
While I will always appreciate the technical virtuosity; I prefer to see it on YouTube and not in a well written, rounded out song. Most of the solos by Vai, Malmsteen, Satriani are technically impressive but they don’t offer much to me musically, YMMV.
While I love Santana, Hendrix, Page, Beck etc. I think their modern equivalences are in people like Jack White. I think the excesses of the guitar god era mean that even if musicians can play blazing hot solos they won’t; most people just don’t want to hear it (this has been my experience at least).