Seriously, why is Jimi Hendrix considered the GGOAT?

Less Paul wrote:

retard who obviously doesn't know Link Wray (or Pat Hare, for that matter). i wouldn't expect one of the most racist sites on the interet to understand

And of course nobody can discuss who the best guitarist is without angry rants about who people should have listened to.

It all boils down to whether people like what they hear, or not. You can't tell someone they hear shit wrong, and nobody can hear ALL the guitarists.

Apparently people even like autotuned singers nowadays. Except in their case they can't be GOAT singers because they're not singers at all.

You should make an effort to find things you enjoy on the internet, instead of things that make you mad.

He's the GOAT only among lower rank Vietnam Vets and their ilk. Beloved of the fat Harley Riding crowd. No doubt, he was a fantastic guitarist, but there are several others who were just as good...depends on personal taste.

Time will tell. How many Millenials are Hendrix freaks? I don't know, but the likes of Keith, Gilmour and Macca are already pretty much guaranteed mainstream popularity into the next couple of generations. Hendrix? Not sure he might just signify too much of the sick side of that era to be anything other than niche. I'm 62 btw.

John Petrucci is miles better and has never played one wrong note ever. Hendrix live was a shambles.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned that should was their were no quality recordings of his music compared to other groups during his time period.

That being said, I don't have a clue whether he was the best or not. I am not an expert on the subject like you guys are.

...this thread has not one single mention of FRANK ZAPPA, therefore it is bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HdvFojrA_Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3DwlboAOfs

This is such a nonsense question. There is no way to judge "best." There's subjective influence and whether you like the sound. Youtube has driven this point home years ago.

There is nothing so complex to play that someone else can't mimic it. So "technical skill" as some sort of metric makes no sense (not that you can even define it).

What Hendrix has going for him is being in the right place at the right time with the right sound. All contemporary guitarists site him as an influence.

oh please wrote:

This is such a nonsense question. There is no way to judge "best." There's subjective influence and whether you like the sound. Youtube has driven this point home years ago.

There is nothing so complex to play that someone else can't mimic it. So "technical skill" as some sort of metric makes no sense (not that you can even define it).

What Hendrix has going for him is being in the right place at the right time with the right sound. All contemporary guitarists site him as an influence.

This.

Jimi was legitimately great, but there's no GOAT. It comes down to personal taste.

There's probably some 6 year old on youtube who can shred better than Jimi, but that's irrelevant.

btw, just about guitarist who was alive when Jimi was around has their fans telling some story about how Jimi said they were the best or how they beat Jimi in a duel.

Well, I would say that a good way of judging an artist's worth is to listen to what his peers say.

Hendrix' peers - Clapton, Jeff Beck etc were in awe of his talent.

Today, there are guitarists who are technically superior to Jimi ( Steve Vai, for example) but no serious musician would say that Steve is "better" than Jimi.

Anyway, all this is purely academic as Django was clearly the GOAT.

500 high schoolers better than Hendrix? You're all idiots.

1. No one is claiming Hendrix was the greatest musician of all time, so who cares whether he played Mandolin or anything but guitar?

2. No one did it like Hendrix before he came along. You don't do what he did without having the technical chops. You can deconstruct the way a guitar is played, and rebuild it into what he created without having incredible amounts of skill.

You all probably go to Guitar Center and marvel at some douche bag playing sweeps on a 7 string.

For the record- the best guitar player of all time is Prince (which some of you will dismiss outright, proving you're not musicians or even musically inclined). But the argument for Hendrix has absolutely nothing to do with how well he knew his scales, or whatever stupid standard you've come up with.

*Can't deconstruct...., my typo

Clapton was asked if he or Jeff Beck was better. His answer, not absolutely verbatim: "Jeff could play some things I can't play, and I can play some things he can't play--but Jimi Hendrix could play hundreds of things that neither of us could."

Wwouldn't you take his word on that?

As has been said, later players can't be compared when they do (or expand on) things that Hendrix originated.

GGOAT = Greatest GOAT of All Time.

As a professional musician/producer/engineer for the past 25 years I can try and shed a little light on this and hopefully add something to the conversation.

Music isn't about can you play it, it's about can you write it. I don't care that a child can replicate a Van Halen guitar solo. So saying player x is faster or more accurate or whatever doesn't really mean much.

Music is something creative and it can't be quantified or graded much unlike a PR. There are many guitar players/songwriters etc whom I dislike but I understand the impact that they had on music. It would be silly to attribute his fame to him dying young etc. Hendrix was a phenomenon and was almost unanimously worshipped by his peers. That Terry Kath story only shows Hendrix's humility. Terry Kath was probably technically more proficient but there's nothing about him that excites me.

As someone has already said, it's pretty much impossible to understand him contextually because there are middle schoolers who can out shred him (and even more recent players) in terms of speed and accuracy. You can see this in sports. An NFL, NBA etc player from the 60s doesn't really compare to a modern player. However without those guys the evolution would not have been possible. Hendrix really was the first guy to do what he did. Does it seem spectacular now? Of course not. It's something that we take for granted because it's existed for our entire life.

What made him so great? First off, he was an excellent, top notch, best of the best rhythm player. He took what Curtis Mayfield was doing (learning it from Curtis) and brought it over to rock. Any of the "slop" that you heard in his lead playing was non existent in his rhythm playing. There was no one playing rhythm guitar like that in rock. As far as his soloing went, he loosely took what Albert King was doing and brought it into a new place. He was much like an improv jazz player in that he didn't really play the same thing often. He was always going for something new (much like jeff beck). Did he always succeed? No way but he wasn't afraid to try. Him being a showman and his willingness to try and do new stuff could lead to him sounding sloppy sometimes live. However, if you listen to the BOG record his playing is pretty spot on. I'm pretty sure that he stood pretty still that whole show(s) and just played. His guitar tone is almost universally thought of as one of the best examples of a rock guitar sound. Henrix was also an excellent bass player and played bass on many of his recordings. He also played harpsichord on Burning the Midnight Lamp (or whatever that song's called).

I'm not sure if I understood but someone mentioned his recordings not being of a high quality or something like that. Although I am personally not a fan of the non-guitar sounds on the records, they are regarded as excellent recordings. Eddie Kramer has had an almost 50 year career just because he was the guy who engineered Hendrix records (Zeppelin also). The outro on Bold as Love was groundbreaking sonically when the record was released. Again, it's taken for granted now but at the time it was a huge deal.

Shimmy Mack wrote:

...this thread has not one single mention of FRANK ZAPPA, therefore it is bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HdvFojrA_Yhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3DwlboAOfs

Frank is great yes but far more limited than Jimi, whom he loved of course. Zappa working on many different levels too- composer, conceptualist etc- and a couple years older-- if Jimi clukd have finished his 1970 recordings and gone on...

Props to Link Wray reference earlier, also Jeff Beck was vastly more imaginative than Clapton, who was only ever questing with Jack Bruce alongside to push.

Jimi's understanding and mastery of amplifiers is HUGE too, nobody had previously gone that far out with such boldness or control.

Zappa is not known as a great guitar player because it's not what he was. He was a composer. Incredible, revolutionary, once in a million years type of artist, but he wasn't out to prove his guitar chops.

enuf said wrote:

Today there are 500 high schoolers who are better guitarists than Hendrix was.

"Any decent high schooler can run sub-4:00."

Are You Experienced was released in 1967. Compare his work on that album to that of any of his contemporaries and maybe you'll begin to understand how groundbreaking it was.

In terms of high schoolers shredding better than Hendrix. Lots of high schoolers do math today at a level higher than Isaac Newton. "We stand on the shoulders of giants." Lots of kids can "play better" than Robert Johnson too.

Eddie Van Helen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_lwocmL9dQ&sns=em

Slash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbUC-UaAxE&sns=em#t=04m09s

The guy from Extreme rocks the F outta the guitar solo on Play With Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqEWQcyvdAg&sns=em#t=02m24s