How many of you DON'T like Hendrix?

[blingdogg]

I absolutely love Jimi Hendrix. To me he was the coolest guitarist ever. I usually don't say there is a "best" guitarist, but I can't help say it with him. To me he's the exception. Out of everyone he's the one I like listening to the most, and I never get tired of hearing him. I can't say that about too many other artists. Jimi Hendrix is the reason why I play guitar and why I even listen to rock and any music with guitars in it (I only listened to rap, reggae and RnB before discovering Hendrix).

 

Hendrix, along with Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton (early, Gibson-era) are the only guitarists that I listen to where I find myself constantly rewinding the song to hear a cool lick he played, making me want to grab a guitar and try it out. That's the thing with Hendrix, it's like each time I listen to a song by him, I hear something new. Some new melodic run, lick, or interesting rhythm part that I missed before.

 

Hendrix had it all: excellent and technical rhythm-playing, epic solos, great song-writing and good singing. He was innovative with his use of the whammy bar, feedback, effects, and guitar-playing. Sure he didn't invent blues-rock, but he took the best elements from that, along with soul, RnB, pop, funk and jazz and fused it into something people still love to hear decades later.

 

I know Hendrix wasn't the most technically gifted guitarist, and that there's guitarists these days who play cleaner and technically better than him. Sure SRV, Mayer, Van Halen and others mentioned above are great guitarists. But still, there's no one I like to listen to more than him.

[TheBlueStrat]

Damn, you're a waste of carbon lifeform.

:cry:

[blingdogg]

there are very few players that you know who is playing in the first 5 notes david gilmoure, jimi, SRV, BB, and the list gets shorter... you may not dig his playing but i saw him live, before age started to take away his playing... the cat is one of the best blues showmen i have ever seen... i guess buddy will just have to brush the hate off... i really hate where this thread is going... so im out of it.. but i had to pipe up on this one... buddy fan!!

Yeah, I don't know how anyone can say Buddy Guy is overrated. He was one of the pioneers in electric blues and influenced so many guitarists. He's an outstanding player.

[100 watt]

I'm not into the bluesy junkie funky gypsie thing. Besides, I get a lot of Hendrix by listening to Ulrich Roth, in a different non-60s context. That suits me better. That they had the same girlfriend does start to creep me out though.

 

 

Yeah. That whore gave him Jimi's "Black Beauty" strat. What a shame.

 

But.. at least it's safe from Janie Hendrix's money making adventures. The black beauty wont be disected & {censored}ed with like the White "woodstock" stratocaster. Roth keeps it in a climate controled storage that know one knows the whereabouts. I respect him for that.

[RUExp?]

Hey guys, what going on in here?

[iblastoff]

And I would rather listen to Mayer's "Contiuum" over "Electric Ladyland" anyday of the week. Yeah, there I said it.

 

 

ouch. i don't really like hendrix but this is probably the most embarrassing thing i've read on the internet in a while. only celebrity girls like john mayer.

[Edward]

I like Hendrix, though I tend to prefer his earlier work as opposed to the later live work where he, IMO, lost a little of his gift for 'editing' himself and keeping it tight. But then I'm just not a 'jam band' kinda guy. What does make him a rarity among the "guitar player's guitar player" bunch of usual suspects is that I can enjoy his music for its own sake, and it doesn't have to be about the technicalities. I respect musicianship as much as the next person, but if I don't enjoy listening to the overall output, there's no point for me. YMMV, of course.

[Snappy Hat]

 

there are very few players that you know who is playing in the first 5 notes david gilmoure, jimi, SRV, BB, and the list gets shorter... you may not dig his playing but i saw him live, before age started to take away his playing... the cat is one of the best blues showmen i have ever seen... i guess buddy will just have to brush the hate off... i really hate where this thread is going... so im out of it.. but i had to pipe up on this one... buddy fan!!

 

Why leave its a conversation. My point was at first I was boggled that some people dont care for Hendrix who I like immensely and questioned

how could anyone not care for him , then I see Buddy Guys name and it invokes a strong dislike to me . Its my tastes and likes.

So it simply makes sense why people might not like Hendrix. What always gave me a bad dislike for Buddy Guy is that Hotlicks playing

the blues tutorial he did in the 80s. To me its painful to watch and hear. If I can find it I will post what I am talking about later.

Buddy Guy just seems to really struggle with the guitar.

Nothing wrong with struggling with the guitar , I struggle constantly. But then I'm not in the rock and roll hall of fame and touted

as great guitarist like Guy is. Thats the part I dont get. But the gist of it is it all comes down to one's likes and dislikes , doesnt make

your likes and dislikes wrong.

[Jarick]

The music doesn't hit me, move me, or speak to me as much as say Zeppelin or a lot of the stuff I grew up listening to (Nirvana, STP, Alice in Chains, etc). I respect him and enjoy it on the radio though.

[billybilly]

I like SRV but for me, Hendrix had a ton of soul compared to him.

[Mav64]

I don't hate him but I never really got him either. Won't turn him off if he comes on the radio but I don't own any of his recordings either. I'm more of a Jeff Beck guy...

[ashasha]

I was into Van Halen, Led Zep, and Ozzy pretty early on so Hey Joe wasn't exactly something that set my soul on fire. But a few years later as my tastes and interests expanded I started to listen to him more and to be honest compared to stuff that's got 50 frickin' tracks, overdubbed to all hell and edited to death he sounds a little ragged at times. But to me part of the charm is the fact that this was for the most part a 3 piece band in an old ass studio where things like flange and phase effects were basically invented by having no boundaries.

 

I think that there are only a handful of real innovators in modern rock based history and he's at the forefront. There are just a few guys that when they came onto the scene not only did everyone that bought their album {censored} their pants, but all of their peers as well. Hendrix and EVH are the two guys in my opinion that had everyone scratching their heads and influenced a whole slew of guys. Those were two huge turning points for the guitar.

 

With all that said there are a few moments in Hendrix's catalog where I kind of wonder if he couldn't have done something a bit less off the wall and made it more traditional for greater effect....but then again it wouldn't have been Hendrix.

 

You do have to compare him to all others based on the time he came from though. It would be like comparing a Hitchcock film to a Spielberg film and trying to pick which is better. Technology and the art itself has evolved and Hitchcock innovated a lot of the techniques that are instrumental to filmmaking today. Same with Hendrix; without him we would be musically poorer as a whole.

[MojoFilter]

For me Hendrix is OK. I get it. I know what he did. I understand the contribution. But I'm not sucking his dick like Mojo up there. I LOVE a lot of his music...like a lot of it...and think some of it is pretty boring. I think that complaints of him being sloppy are sometimes quite justified. I personally don't "pedestal" anyone. Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Beck, etc...they're all just people. yeah they wrote great music but whatever. Any time you get all star struck just picture who ever it is, taking a {censored}ing watery diarrhea crap on the {censored}ter....all doubled over with the sweats......cause I guarantee you ALL of them have at one time or another. I don't know about you, but for me it's pretty hard to get all misty eyed over musicians or actors when you realize they are no different than anyone else. They just happened to write great music. Like other people can build a great house, or some doctor that can perform open heart surgery.

Ooooh...all this talk about dick-sucking and watery diarrhea makes you sound sexy.

[Hulston Prickle]

Volunteer to be called an idiot or worse for an opinion? No thanks.

[bish0p34]

Never cared for him. Don't hate him, but he never did anything for me.

[HP Hovercraft]

I appreciate his contribution to music, but don't necessarily like his stuff.

[ashasha]

One thing that I forgot to mention that really tarnishes Hendrix's legacy with me was his drug use and weird circumstances surrounding his death. I suppose that it was really romanticized throughout the years and a huge part of the legacy, but as I've gotten older my tolerance for substance abuse has gotten smaller and even though it contributed to his legendary status it is really just an unnecessary and stupid way to live and ultimately led to his untimely death.

 

We got to avoid the disco albums and all the other crap that ruined careers, but at what cost to him?

[MuyLoCo444]

I think he was ok, definitely not the Paganini of guitar, but I respect him as being an innovator. I don't think I have one album of his I don't like, but I just don't play with the same style as he did.

[BlueSky1963]

One thing to keep in mind about Jimi. Are You Experienced? came out on May 12, 1967; Sgt. Pepper's on June 1, 1967. Think about that for a minute. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds going head to head with Purple Haze. Hendrix changed everything about the game over night.

[BlueSky1963]

And... Robert Johnson sounds like ass. There were a lot of better bluesmen that pre-dated him (Charley Patton, Blind Lemmon Jefferson & Blind Arthur Blake, just to name a few). The only reason everyone is so ga ga over him is because of Clapton.

[theAntihero]

I always find it funny that in this day and age where you can auto tune a dogs howl into pitch for a song that say a musician from the past is too pitchy. In fact i recently read that Aretha Franklin is too pitchy to be a good singer.

Hendrix was around over 40 years ago and now days we still have people like Mayer who try to emulate him. I dont like Mayer at all as i find him to be basically a paper thin, bland, pop musician.

Hendrix basically changed the way we hear and play guitar, so much so that people have now had 40 years to dissect every single thing he did, some of which was literally off the cuff, and try to emulate and best it.

Also its sort of funny that people seem to think that Hendrix had no technical skill and basically,somehow stumbled into the right thing time after time after time. This is the guy that heard a Beatles song then played it back to them onstage that same night.

[100 watt]

People will be arguing Jimi in another 40 years.


Someone mentioned SRV. No disrespect, but what does everyone see that was so great about his playing, or his tone. (The tone thing I REALLY dont understand. Any strat on the neck pick up, a decent cleanish sounding OD and about any tube amp will get you right in the ball park. It was clean & boring, and his licks all sounded like the typical "yuppie blues players" (Including the Stevie Ray Vaughnabe's) you hear in any bar with a "blues band" - IMHO

[honeyiscool]

all part of being the penultimate hipster

I hope you know that "penultimate" means second to last.

[BlueSky1963]

 

Someone mentioned SRV. No disrespect, but what does everyone see that was so great about his playing, or his tone. (The tone thing I REALLY dont understand. Any strat on the neck pick up, a decent cleanish sounding OD and about any tube amp will get you right in the ball park. It was clean & boring, and his licks all sounded like the typical "yuppie blues players" (Including the Stevie Ray Vaughnabe's) you hear in any bar with a "blues band" - IMHO

 

 

Yes, but he was incredibly unique in 1983. Everyone else was doing their damnedest to sound like Andy Summers! And nobody was paying any attention to Buddy Guy, Albert Collins or BB at that point. They'd all but been forgotten.

[blingdogg]

People will be arguing Jimi in another 40 years. Someone mentioned SRV. No disrespect, but what does everyone see that was so great about his playing, or his tone. (The tone thing I REALLY dont understand. Any strat on the neck pick up, a decent cleanish sounding OD and about any tube amp will get you right in the ball park. It was clean & boring, and his licks all sounded like the typical "yuppie blues players" (Including the Stevie Ray Vaughnabe's) you hear in any bar with a "blues band" - IMHO

I kinda agree with you here. On paper, SRV has nearly everything that I love: played a heavy blues-rock style, influenced by Hendrix (along with Albert King and others), played a Strat (I love Strats and Strat tone), he was a showman, etc... But I just can't get into his music that much. I do like his live DVDs though.

 

I admit his tone is very good (not spectacular IMHO, but certainly better than most, and better than the tone of many of my favorite guitarists), but that's not enough for me. I tried for a long time and I respect him, but I just can never be a fan of his. I'd listen to his stuff every once in a while, but that's it. Oh, and I absolutely HATE "Lenny". I also hate when people go on and on about how his covers of "Little Wing" and "Voodoo Child SR" are better than Hendrix's. Please.

 

I can see why some people like SRV, but he doesn't do much for me. And I'm sorry to some fans, I usually don't say things like this about guitarists, but Jimmy Vaughan is fairly overrated.