The guitarist Dave Grohl and Brian May both said was better than Jimi Hendrix
There’s seemingly a mass cultural agreement that Jimi Hendrix is, as a fact, the best guitar player in history, and that’s how he’s categorised, despite only living 27 short years of his life and only having the chance to show what he could do on three albums.
Only with a relatively small amount of material, the populous decided he is the best, but Dave Grohl and Brian May disagree, which feels like a bold thing. Daring to speak out against the masses is weighty and fearful, as no one cares to upset the legacy of a lost legend, but the iconisation of Hendrix does bear some questioning.
Who knows where the guitarist might have gone had he lived longer? Maybe he would have continued to soar, or maybe he would have quickly hit his limit and fallen, causing the quality of his work to come crashing down in a way that might have completely undone his reputation.
We certainly will never know, for what Hendrix has is the protection of youth, dying so young and dying when he was undeniably at the top of his game, having just electrified Woodstock and released the opus record, Electric Ladyland. He went out in a blaze of greatness, meaning that he’s been granted the ability to live forever in that greatness in everybody’s minds; he’s been given the label of the best simply because he was the best when he died, and it feels wrong to steal a medal from someone long lost.
However, if it were up to Grohl and May, they’d pin the badge onto someone else, someone living and with a long and broad career behind them, proving their power again and again and again, rather than being trapped in amber.
In Grohl’s eyes, the flames of Hendrix’s blowout distract from the true great. “In 1968 and ’69, there was some freaky shit going on, but Zeppelin were the freakiest. I consider Jimmy Page freakier than Jimi Hendrix,” he claimed, putting the Led Zeppelin player ahead of Hendrix. He categorises them in two different lanes, adding, “Hendrix was a genius on fire, whereas Page was a genius possessed. Zeppelin concerts and albums were like exorcisms for them”.
In his eyes, Hendrix had fight and flames, but Page has it down to his absolute core as if he’s a vessel taken over by music. “People had their asses blown out by Hendrix, and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, but Page took it to a whole new level, and he did it in such a beautifully human and imperfect way,” he said, pouring out the praise for his hero as he noted, “Page doesn’t just use his guitar as an instrument. For him, it’s like some sort of emotional translator.”
Brian May would agree, and that’s a lofty co-sign coming from another one of history’s finest players. “I don’t think anyone has epitomised riff writing better than Jimmy Page; he’s one of the great brains of rock music,” May said as, to him, the Zeppelin player is a true blueprint and a real pioneer.
To both of them, Page beats out Hendrix any day with his skill, passion and tireless experimentation, while for Page himself, it all comes down to an unending curiosity and a natural flow state that seems to take over him when he plays, stating, “I’ve never mastered the guitar. Either I was playing it, or it was playing me; it depends how you look at it”.
