So purely for the record, you do accept that Hendrix was in fact a good guitarist?
Good? Yes.
That's not a high bar. Give yourself a decade and you'll be a good guitarist.
Great? Not even remotely.
Greatest? Not a chance.
Why not great? He clearly did some cool stuff, I'm not remotely qualified to determine what a great guitarist is, that said I would be curious to know how you think all the hype about Hendrix came to be if he isn't a great guitarist if I managed to craft that into a coherent question.
He's not great because he didn't have many technical skills. He's not great because he wasn't able to play complicated pieces. He's not great because he only knew a very limited subset of music.
I think the best two ways to sum it up are to point out that Hendrix songs all sound like Hendrix songs - because they had to. Hendrix was unable to play the same thing twice, because he lacked the ability to play better.
His live stuff sucks, more often than not.
I'd put him at the level of a 2 to 4 year guitar student.
He has other traits that make him an exciting addition to music. He has all sorts of great qualities. Just that those qualities are not being a great guitarist.
The things he's credited with innovating aren't actually his innovations. He wasn't the first to use feedback, wah pedal, distortion, blues riffs, or anything like that.
He knew maybe a half-dozen scales and used three of them.
He knew a dozen chord shapes - at most.
He knew how to bend, fuzz, and distort.
Frankly, I expect the hoodlum to be better than Hendrix - within a year and a half, at current progression rates.
I suspect the hype came from him being different.
He was a brilliant artist. He was a wonderful composer - though that's from a likability point and not from an understanding of music theory. He was still reasonably original. He was a great performer and an interesting person.
He also had the benefit of dying young, so people remember the good and not the horrible live shit that he did. Seriously, his live shit was horrible more often than it was good.
But, what can be taken from this is that Hendrix' greatest demonstration was that you can make good music without actually being a master guitarist. I like his music. I can take a Hendrix song and riff on it - for hours.
He was a great asset to music - just not the greatest guitarist. He didn't HAVE to be the greatest guitarist. His other areas of ability made up for this. He made good music, despite of his limitations.
That's something to be inspired by, and not hidden under the falsehood that he was a great guitarist.
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