Banditman wrote
It's easy to have a go at Hendrix, King, Clapton, Page et al while missing the point. For example: Jimi's not the best guitarist (by today's standards) and you can find fluffs and mistakes all over his recordings. BUT. He was in many ways a real innovator, and took electric playing to a whole new level.
Exactly! There are many great guitarists, but few innovators. It's relatively easy to take something someone has already done and build on it, make it faster, more complex, etc. But coming up with a different style/sound/approach in the first place is the really difficult bit - to break out of the rigid mould that is shaped by your influences. That's what I look for in players.
Link Wray did it before him. Eddie Van Halen and co did something similar again, they moved ideas into a new area.
I would also add McLaughlin, Vai, Holdsworth, Hedges and Malmsteen to that list. They were all paradigm shifts when they appeared. Wray wasn't as influential as he should have been - a huge shift in approach, but not many followed him. Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp also in less influential, but equally impressive shifts.
Sure, Vai is a showman - he learned that working with David Lee Roth, but so was Hendrix (who got it from working with Little Richard), and at the end of the day it's all about entertainment, and you can only take it so far before it gets boring... even to us guitar maniacs. There's a tie-in with Zappas "Giraffe filled with whipped cream" there somewhere.
Whether you like his style or not, Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine & Audioslave) is a similar innovator.
+1. + Bumblefoot and Mattias Eklundh. I've been meaning to check out Matt Bellamy too, but haven't got around to it yet, so I'm not sure if he is a true innovator, or just someone with a gimmick. Can't make my mind up about Mike Einziger from Incubus either...
What strikes me often is how so many modern players have stagnated creatively.
Happens between each major innovator. Everyone walking around saying "There's nothing new under the sun" and the like. Then up pops someone new who screws everyone's head on backwards. I've seen it a half dozen times in my short lifetime and hopefully I'll see it a half dozen more. The innovators tend to stagnate themselves (comparatively speaking - they'll continue to refine approach) - it's hard to do it once, let alone twice in a career.
what grates me most are smug, self-satisfied (so far up themselves they can see through their own throats) players who think we all want to hear them w@nking up and down the neck at mach 1 for 10 minute solos.
With technique comes much responsibility. The guys who have the technique naturally want to show it off, but the really good players actually take the time to figure out what works best for the music. The guitar pyrotechnic guys still have an audience though - it's just limited to the other guitar pyrotechnicians (or wannabes) - and that's a relatively small audience.
