The guitarist Neil Young believed was as good as Jimi Hendrix: “So fluid”
$40. It would be interesting to put together all the insignificant sums of money that have helped change music; in the case of the guitar, it was $40. That’s how much it cost for Jimi Hendrix to get a flight from America to London. While he had some success in America, turning heads wherever he went and playing with The Isley Brothers, it wasn’t until he set foot in The Big Smoke that his career took off.
The moment he started performing in London, people everywhere recognised his talent. Not only was he an excellent guitar player, but he was also great to watch live, constantly pushing the boundaries of how you could improvise on stage, play the guitar theatrically, and generally wow your audience.
“I was embarrassed because I thought, ‘God, that should be me up there’,” said Jeff Beck, recounting the first time he saw Jimi Hendrix perform. Beck was already making serious waves in the guitar world, but when he saw Hendrix, he knew he was watching a different kind of musician. “I just hadn’t had the guts to come out and do it so flamboyantly, really. He just looked like an animal, played like an animal, and everybody went crazy.”
Even though Hendrix was only a mainstream artist for about four years, he has left a mark on music that nobody has yet been able to wipe away. It’s really impressive that he burned so brightly and so quickly, and he is still regarded as one of the best people ever to pick up a six-string over five decades later.
Neil Young was once asked why he thinks Hendrix is still regarded as one of the best and, in doing so, wasn’t shy about dishing out praise for the Seattle-born shredder. “He was excellent. He was one with his instrument,” said Young, “At that time, no one had pushed the electric guitar so far, and that goes for today, too. He was over everybody. Totally gone. So fluid, using the feedback to create such beautiful things. For a guitar fan like me, it was a revelation.”
Young also made an excellent point about how we praise certain guitarists. When we talk about the best guitarists to ever take to the stage, our minds are flooded with images of Jimi Hendrix and people like Jimi Hendrix. Jeff Beck is never far from the conversation; other common suggestions include Eddie Van Halen, Slash, and Jimmy Page; however, these all fall into one category of person: rock guitarist.
There are plenty of other styles of music besides just rock, yet rock seems to take over what we perceive to be good guitar music because of how in your face it is. The fact remains that other guitarists in other genres are equally talented but just display it differently. Young touched upon one of these, saying Bert Jansch could rival Jimi Hendrix in quality.
“As for acoustic guitar, Bert Jansch is on the same level as Jimi. That first record of his is epic,” he said, “It came from England, and I was especially taken by ‘The Needle of Death’, such a beautiful and angry song. That guy was so good… And years later, on On the Beach, I wrote the melody of ‘Ambulance Blues’ by styling the guitar part completely on ‘Needle of Death’.”
