The 1970 guitar solo that proves Terry Kath was better than Jimi Hendrix
I once wrote a piece called “Jimi Hendrix was the best guitarist to ever live, and your favourite guitarist agrees”.
In this article, I essentially wrote a bio about Hendrix, his influence, and then collated comments from other guitarists and artists who are often called the best of all time and quoted them saying how Hendrix was better. It was a love letter to someone who I believe genuinely changed music for the better, and did so in a pretty short space of time as well.
People forget that Hendrix was only really a mainstream artist for about four years before he passed away, and yet he is still considered one of the greatest to pick up a six-string. The way he played, his way with words, and his animalistic approach to performing on stage were all a sight to behold, and something that artists at the time were pretty easily swept up in the moment they laid eyes on the Seattle-born shredder.
One of the first gigs he ever played when he moved to London was performing on stage with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, AKA Cream. You need to keep in mind that Cream were one of the most innovative and exciting bands on the planet at the time, and even they couldn’t believe what they were seeing when Jimi Hendrix pulled up.
“It was funny, in those days, anybody could get up with anybody if you were convincing enough that you could play. He got up and blew everyone’s mind. I just thought, ‘Ahh, someone that plays the stuff I love in the flesh, on stage with me’. I was actually privileged to be [on stage with him],” said Clapton, “It’s something that no one is ever going to beat; that incident, that night, it’s historic in my mind but only a few people are alive that would remember it.”
Of course, while the majority of guitarists are connected in their unrelenting devotion to Hendrix, the guitarist himself didn’t think that he was the best in the world; he was always very humble about his abilities. But he didn’t just shrug his shoulders and say, “Me? No!” He put forward nominations for musicians that he thought were better than him, and one name that came up a great deal was Chicago’s Terry Kath.
Kath isn’t usually a name that gets brought up in the “greatest of all time” debate, and this seems pretty unfair, given he’s one hell of a guitarist. As Lee Loughnane, the band’s trumpeter, once put it, Kath had the ability to “play a rhythm guitar part, a lead guitar part and sing a lead vocal simultaneously.”
The story goes that one day, after a gig, Chicago’s saxophone player Walt Parazaider was socialising with fans and contemporaries when Jimi Hendrix walked up to him to praise how good the band sounded. “Walt, the horns are like one set of lungs,” he supposedly said, before moving on to talk about the guitar work of Terry Kath, adding, “And your guitar player is better than me.”
Whether or not you agree or disagree with Hendrix’s assessment is entirely your call; however, if you want to listen to one of Kath’s best solos before making your decision, you should check out his 1970 offering at Tanglewood. It’s seven minutes of pure brilliance that highlight all of the exceptional abilities his band mates excitedly spoke about. It’s got rhythm, it’s got shredding, and the way he happily dances between the two is second to none. By the end of that solo, you’ll be sitting there, shaking slightly, in awe, ready to watch again, and with a small niggling feeling of, “damn, maybe Hendrix was right.”
