Re: Rating guitarists
> I will probaly get slaughtered for this but Johnny Marr,
> Hendrix..it is all like rather comparing apples and eggs. They
> are all great guitarists in their own way.
Yeah, chalk and cheese, definitely... but there are ways to do it still. I'd say that rather than comparing one guitarist to another, it would be smarter (and more reliable/less biased) to look at it on different, relative levels. I'd personally look at the guitarist in terms of his/her context (era, peers, band), his/her contribution to music as art, and then technical skill. I'd also be sure not to overlook how respected he/she is by his/her fellow guitarists, because that at times can be a very good measure of his or her lasting influence. And I personally feel that the best judges are those who've a proper understanding of the job which is being appraised. As a journalist, too often one is simply a fan with a forum, and it's easy to forget just how crippled by ignorance one is.
> Well, here comes
> those rocks, my favorite ovrall guitarist is David Gilmour
> because he has been able to manage a great deal of style at the
> same time distancing himself from the famous band he plays for.
David Gilmour's good, but remember that he's basically a blues-based guitarist and that's what he does. Almost every guitarist that I know of is like that--they find their style and move around within that universe, but Johnny Marr is the only guitarist that I can think of who has an unmistakable identity, but still has an immensely broad range of styles crossing just about all genres except heavy metal. I think there's something to be said about a musician like that. I feel that his impact as a musician is still far from being fully realized.
> The funny thing is that i cannot picture many of these
> guitarists "jamming" together becase they are so
> different.
Also because some are dead. Just kidding. That was in bad taste, I know. The funny thing is, I can imagine Johnny playing with any guitarist in the world. If you really wanted to boil him down to just a single origin, I'd say that he's basically a shuffling blues/folk guitarist, and that type of guitar could fit into any music; it would just be further back or forward in the mix.