The one guitarist David Gilmour and Jimmy Page agree was a level above
It isn’t often that multiple musicians can all agree on the same thing. The music industry, after all, is rife with ego battles and enduring arguments, of which both David Gilmour and Jimmy Page have certainly had their fair share.
Nevertheless, when it comes to guitarists, there is one man both of those rock and roll icons could agree upon.
‘The greatest guitarist of all time’ is among the most hotly contested titles within the realm of rock and roll, and one which both Page and Gilmour certainly have some claim towards. After all, Page not only paved the way for the entire landscape of hard rock and metal through the many legendary riffs of Led Zeppelin, but he also lent his infallible skills to countless pop and rock smashes during his years as a session musician back in the 1960s.
Meanwhile, Gilmour’s recruitment into Pink Floyd towards the back end of the 1960s saw them expand their sonic repertoire tenfold, playing a key role in the craft of iconic albums, of which The Dark Side of the Moon is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Across the musical landscape, there is scarcely a guitarist out there who has not yearned to evoke the talents of either Gilmour or Page at one point or another, and if you look around at the prevailing rock guitarists of today, their influence is still never too far away. Even still, neither of them can compete with the all-encompassing genius or lasting legacy of one Jimi Hendrix.
Blowing the collective mind of London’s rock scene upon his introduction back in the 1960s, the psychedelic master was unlike anything that had ever been heard before – and, despite numerous imitators, has ever been heard since. Naturally, both Gilmour and Page were instant disciples of the American axeman and, after Hendrix tragically passed away in 1970, the Led Zeppelin guitarist declared, “We’ve lost the best guitarist any of us ever had, and that was Hendrix.”
“It is just kind of a shame that I never really had a chance to talk with him or hear him,” Page continued, in a 1975 chat with Rolling Stone. “I heard his records, naturally, but it would’ve been a thrill to see how he worked things out onstage. That’s quite another ballgame, as you know.” With his exhaustive schedule attempting to establish the voice of Led Zeppelin, Page never got the chance to witness Hendrix in the flesh, unlike David Gilmour.
The Pink Floyd guitarist heaped praise onto his psychedelic comrade during a 2006 appearance on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks of My Years, recalling, “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 and started playing.” He added, “Myself and the whole place were with their jaws hanging open.”
“I went the next day to the record shops, and I said ‘You’ve got anything by this guy Jimi Hendrix?’ and they said ‘Well, we’ve got a James Hendrix’. He hadn’t yet done anything,” Gilmour continued, in perhaps the coolest example of ‘I liked them before they were big’ in rock and roll history.
There is, of course, no doubting Hendrix’s credentials as among the greatest guitarists to ever walk the earth – his discography speaks for itself in that sense – but the fact that he is still so beloved by his fellow guitarists, particularly those are legendary in their own right as Page and Gilmour, speaks volumes about his unparalleled ability.
