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Joined:
January 2006
Posts: 1486
Location: Michigan | Dont any of you people read the tabloids??
Kennedy is alive and living on the 13 floor of a hospital in Texas
AND
Jim Morrison is over in England or somewhere in Europe living as a Sheep Farmer or something like that.That is the real scoop.GWB |
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Joined:
August 2007
Posts: 14
Location: Hannover | Originally posted by Tupperware:
Originally posted by frank p aus h:
Hendrix changed the world of guitar,
How? I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just curious what your reference point is. I agree, he definately did some very unique things.
he did to music what bebop did to jazz, opening harmonical frontiers, or what impressionism or rather expressionism did to painture, allowing emotional expression to overcome formal rules, and he used the guitar as the brush to fullfill it. Maybe he was not the only one doing it, but I can't remember someone who did it earlier. |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 10
Location: DC Metro | I don't think it's possible to say who the "best" really is at anything and at any point in time. I really enjoy listening to both of their stuff from the '60s, but overall think that Jimi was by far the more innovative and masterful player. Personal opinion only, not right nor wrong. Both helped move guitar playing to another level in a major way. |
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Joined:
March 2006
Posts: 482
Location: enid, ok | No Roy Buchanan or Alvin Lee? C'mon guys...And, at least Glen Campbell played an ovation. He played a lot of them. I remember as a kid seeing some music awards show. At one point, George Benson and Glen Campbell traded licks on some jazz-like tune, Glen on a 12-string solidbody. After that, I really respected him as a player.
Ovation LTD, Carvin 135T, customized Ibanez 1620 Prestige, Fernandes Revolver Pro |
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Joined:
August 2007
Posts: 4
Location: Grand Rapids, MI | I'd say the all-around best player in the '60s was Mike Bloomfield. But there really was no best guitar player. Every one had their strong and weak points. Hendrix probably played more than all the other guys put together, and played better rhythm than anybody else. The problem was, he usually didn't want to. He could do more things with a guitar than anybody else when he wanted to. He probably did nothing but play jams and play hookey to play guitar when he was a kid, did nothing but jam in the army, and even afterward. In fact you can see that what he really does with his records (except for Are You Experienced?) is duplicate a jam session with his buddies--explaining why he preferred Billy Cox on bass, for example, over Noel Redding. Ironically, though he had more raw ability, he couldn't seem to figure out how to put it to good use (and after 1968, was too stoned to care). Hendrix had quite a bit more speed than Clapton. Clapton could not play rhythm like Hendrix could (and still can't), and Clapton doesn't have the fiery speed that he had when he chose to use it (usually not)-- and Clapton never did. But Clapton in his early days was close. Clapton had enough speed to do what he needed to do when he needed to do it, and that was good enough. Listen to the Bluesbreakers album or the live stuff from Goodbye adnd you'll se what I'm talking about. Hendrix really could not play melody, which is not the same thing as saying he wasn't melodic (he was). Clapton's playing had a sense of melody, a sense of development, a sense of dynamics, that Hendrix never had. You got the sense that Clapton could play one song for an hour and be satisfying, because three minutes from now the movement would be completely different (that ended when Cream broke up). You never got that out of Hendrix. With Hendrix, you get basically the same progression developed with a fair bit of dynamics up to a maximum of about 7 minutes. And then to do something different, Hendrix has to do a different song. He could absolutely incredible things in that amount of time, but he could be bad, mediocre, really good, fantastic, and mind-blowing all in the span of 20 minutes-and there seemed to be absolutely no reason for the difference. His performance at Woodstock is a great example of this. So for long overall listen-ability, the balance swings over to Clapton. Clapton was at least consistent in those days--all of his performances from that period--at least the live ones--are good, some absolutely great, with a pretty consistent quality. He could be totally apathetic in the studio. On the Wheels of Fire studio tracks he basically just checked in and rested on his laurels. Hendrix was just the opposite. He was more likely to be excited in the studio or club and apathetic onstage. On the live Experience tour of the US in 1968, you can feel that Hendrix just wants to get off the stage--he's bored. And his recordings--Are You Experienced? and Electric Ladyland are great, but Axis is awful, and the stuff he was working on before he died--well, in his pre-acid days, Jimi would never have put out. It's actually pretty bad. Bloomfield had a style that was completely different from both Clapton and Hendrix--so there was quite an abundance of different styles and sounds in the '60s from today, when everyone is a Stevie Ray Vaughan-abee. Bloomfield's best work is the first side of Supersession, the first Electric Flag album, Dylan's Highway 61, and two tracks on the first Butterfield album. On East-West he seems mainly interested in the two main jams. But he could be just as erratic as Hendrix. The live versions of East-West are so bad they should have never been put out. After Super Session he just checked out. There were great moments after that, but that was the problem--they were just moments. Sure there was WDIA, but practically nothing else. For sheer tone and speed and blues feel, Bloomfield was Clapton's equal and Clapton knew it--even if Bloomfield didn't, and Bloomfield's tone was completely different from Clapton's. Bloomfield represented a direction rock guitarist really didn't explore much until the arrival of Santana.
So each of them had something the other guy lacked--and that's just as true of guitarists today.
And as far as plain speed goes, not one of them could compete with Alvin Lee of Ten years After, who's largely forgotten today--perhaps for good reason. He really didn't have any sense of tone, dynamics, development, rhythm playing, weird sounds, or anything, that the others had. He really just had speed.
And the best guitarist from those days who's still around? Easily Jeff Beck--who in many ways is a lot better now than he was then. |
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Joined:
August 2007
Posts: 4
Location: Grand Rapids, MI | I meant to say, "the first Butterfield album, and two tracks on East-West," not "two tracks on the first Butterfield album." |
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Joined:
August 2007
Posts: 14
Location: Hannover | Originally posted by Ninurta:
And the best guitarist from those days who's still around? Easily Jeff Beck--who in many ways is a lot better now than he was then. ...yes, listened to some material recently that produced a (re-)new(-de) Beck-Fan. |
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Joined:
December 2004
Posts: 2150
Location: Orlando, FL | Jeff beck has always been one of my favorites. His music keeps evolving but his style always comes through. IMHO nobody uses the whammy bar better. |
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BEST LEAD GUITAR PLAYER OF THE 60S HENDRIX OR CLAPTON???
