The Kinks’ Dave Davies reveals Jimi Hendrix’s true personality
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David Gilmour names his all-time favourite Jimi Hendrix song
The debate of who was, or is, the greatest guitarist of all time usually shuffles through the familiar roster of Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler and David Gilmour before arriving at Jimi Hendrix in the top spot. This begs the question: What makes Hendrix a cut above the rest?
Like most of his neighbours in the top ten, Hendrix had a genetic predisposition for pitch recognition, one of the most important skills in music. This gift allowed the American to learn guitar without a rule book. Counterintuitively, some of the greatest guitarists of our time developed their lucrative skills thanks to the absence of hampering theory guides.
While theory is vital to learning an instrument, and songwriting especially, given a few basic chords and enough time to feel out every note and embellishment on a fretboard, as did young Hendrix, the theory will become ingrained. The beauty of this angle is that it’s less likely to bore and alienate the student. If a would-be virtuoso has enough passion to stick with it and a good ear for melody, they will get there and likely pick up some charming idiosyncrasies along the way.
With his unique style and lightning fingers, Hendrix managed to wow a generation of aspiring and established guitarists. Bowing at Hendrix’s feet during his tragically short tenure in the British rock scene were the likes of Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck.
In the mid-60s, a pre-fame Gilmour was also dazzled by the power of Hendrix’s virtuosity. While Gilmour learned his basic theory from a Pete Seeger guitar tutoring book in his teen years, he grew into the master of prog rock solos alongside Pink Floyd through listening carefully to his idols.
Gilmour’s early inspiration, as it was for most 1960s and ’70s rockstars, was rooted in the rhythm and blues acts of the 1950s.
In an interview with Guitar Classics in 1985, Gilmour was asked if he started out as a fan of the blues. “I was a blues fan, but I was an all-around music fan,” he answered. “For me, it was Leadbelly through B.B. King and later Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen and anyone you care to mention. Mark Knopfler has a lovely, refreshing guitar style. He brought back something that seemed to have gone astray in guitar playing.”
The interviewer then asked whether Gilmour tried to imitate other players during his illustrious career. “Of course, there were many,” he said. “I was trying to learn 12-string acoustic guitar like Leadbelly, at the same time I was trying to learn lead guitar like Hank Marvin and later Clapton. All of those different things had their moments and filtered through my learning process. These days I don’t listen to other people with the objective of trying to steal their licks, although I’ve got no objections to stealing them if that seems like a good idea. I’m sure that I’m still influenced by Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen as well.”
In an appearance on the BBC Radio 2 feature ‘Tracks of My Years’, Gilmour was challenged with picking out eight of his favourite tracks of all time. His selections included Lead Belly, The Beach Boys, The Beatles and his mentee Kate Bush.
In a nod to everyone’s favourite guitar hero, Gilmour also picked out Jimi Hendrix’s ‘The Wind Cries Mary’. Introducing the track, Gilmour described his first exposure to the American titan. “Jimi Hendrix, fantastic,” he said. “I went to a club in south Kensington in 1966 and this kid got on stage with Brian Auger and the Trinity and [held] the guitar the other way around [upside down] and started playing. Myself and the whole place was with their jaws hanging open.”
He added: “I went, next day, to the record shops and I said ‘You got anything by this guy Jimi Hendrix?’ and they said ‘Well, we’ve got a James Hendrix’. He hadn’t yet done anything, so I became rather an avid fan waiting for his first release. Also this is one of his beautiful ballads that I really love.”
