The album David Gilmour and Steve Vai both hailed as a guitar masterpiece
There are a number of different ways to play the guitar, and one simply has to compare the works of Steve Vai and David Gilmour to see the truth.
On the one hand, you have someone like Steve Vai, who utilises multiple different guitar playing techniques in a bid to make instrumental tracks that feel like odysseys. Listen to a track like ‘Tender Surrender’ and you’ll hear Vai use complex chords, octaves, basic soloing and the tapping technique, quite popular in hard rock, dividing a song into different sections so it feels like a track really is progressing, taking you on a journey every single step of the way.
Alternatively, when you listen to someone like David Gilmour, you have a guitarist who can equally solo and play technically, but also has a deep understanding of how using various tones and effects can create layered atmospheres within music. It was this mastery over his instrument that helped Pink Floyd create such narrative-driven, elongated, and thematic concept albums, such that when people still listen to records such as The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, they hold them up as champions of the cinematic style psychedelic rock can achieve.
The uniqueness of the instrument is what makes it so beautiful, and is the reason guitar music is so popular, despite it being made for decades. However, that being said, even in this field as subjective, creative, and unique, there are some artists who remain universal in how much they’re appreciated, and one of them is the unparalleled Jimi Hendrix.
Both Vai and Gilmour are huge fans of Hendrix, and have hailed one of his albums in particular as being one of the greatest offerings within the guitar landscape. Electric Ladyland is one of those albums that anyone who is interested in the instrument listens to religiously, for it’s not just someone technically good but who sees their guitar as an extension of themselves and therefore, puts every aspect of their being into each and every note.
“I hadn’t picked up the instrument yet, so I didn’t know how ridiculously hard it was to do the things he was doing, but something did tell me that he was brutally innovative on the guitar,” said Vai when discussing how much Hendrix influenced him from an early age, “Mind you, he was pretty much my starting point, so it took me a while to realise how many boundaries he had broken. I just knew that every song, every passage, every sound he was making, it was like a big trip into the unknown, and I was more than happy to go for the ride.”
Gilmour specifically listed Electric Ladyland as one of his top five albums of all time, recalling what it was like seeing Hendrix play live for the first time, blowing away the entire room with his technical flair and theatrics, and all this was before the man had actually released anything, so Gilmour had to wait patiently for the album that he would eventually call one of his favourites.
“I went to a club in South Kensington in 1966,” said Gilmour, “This kid got on stage with Brian Auger and the Trinity. He started playing the guitar the other way around [upside down], and the whole place was in shock. The next day, I went to record shops asking if they had anything by Jimi Hendrix. He hadn’t recorded yet, so I just had to wait for his first release.”
In the face of musical subjectivity, there will always be differing opinions across all genres of who has had the most impact; however, when you discuss guitar playing, the influence of Jimi Hendrix remains indelible, no matter the playing preference.
