I enjoyed this video of one guy playing the same tune in the style of 10 different well-known guitarists, but at every change I was thinking Jimi Hendrix has got to be next. And he wasn’t.
And hey, Jerry Garcia!
The guitarist has promised to do another one with some of the people he omitted from this one.
Nobody can nail Jimi. No one should even try. That’s the message I’m going to assume. It makes me feel better about it anyway.
Grrr. Not all guitars are electrified. Just for once I’m breaking my own rule and embedding, ’cause damnit!
There was also no Jimmy Page, no David Gilmour, no Eric Clapton, no Jeff Beck, no Stevie Ray Vaughan…
To be honest, I’m rather unimpressed with his selection of styles to emulate, with the exception of Slash (I really don’t like Guns N’ Roses because of Axl Rose, but unfortunately, that’s also where Slash did some of his best guitar work). Hell… he could’ve done Jimi Hendrix where he did Kurt Cobain. And for the record, I say that as someone who loves Nirvana… but Hendrix would’ve fit better than Kurt, here.
But he was obviously aiming for 80’s mainstream guitarists, and not the superior-in-every-way late 60’s and 70’s guitarists.
Cute, but seem more like he’s transposing the other people’s songs over the base tune rather than playing it ‘in the style of’. Which doesn’t seem as clever to me. But I dunno.
Daz, not all guitars are metal-stringed either ;)
No Paco de Lucía either.
Also, Kurt Cobain was a lot of things, but iconic guitarrist, hmm highly debatable.
Can’t be having a black person being a famous guitarists.
If that seems cynical to you, it is. My benefit of doubt has been suffering from a drought
Cynical, no …. breathtakingly stupid more like.
Chris Spedding did it better back in ’78:
procrastinatorordinaire
Right, because racism doesn’t exist and the cuture industry is a pure meritocracy.
Giliell, @9 – because Jimi Hendrix is pretty much universally acknowledged as the most famous guitarist of all time. Sure, he had to come to the UK to achieve recognition initially, but he did achieve it, and then some. He’s the freaking archetype. Everybody knows his name.
Dunc
Yes, which makes it more fucking glaring obvious that somebody made the choice NOT to fucking include him. Does that make sense to you or do we all have to start with the basics again?
Also, I’ll bet the Brian May bit wasn’t done using a sixpence as a plectrum.
^^ I meant to cite Giliel. Clearly I suck at Internet
I’m just glad he didn’t faux Jerry.
Buddy Guy used to do this back in the days of the Checkerboard Lounge. His book was that he taught all these guitarists how to play, he probably had a point because Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and their ilk used to hang out there when they were in Chicago. And he did Jimi.
Well, yeah, but I’m not buying your assumption that the only possible reason for that choice is racism. Jimi almost certainly had the most unique and difficult-to-reproduce playing style of any guitarist ever.
The guitarists this guy is attempting to emulate are all within roughly the same musical vernacular. Notice that he also didn’t include Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Frank Zappa… All of whom are vastly more famous than pretty much all of the people he did include. Could it be that he’s just sticking with the style he knows how to play?
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @ #6
If it helps, Slash isn’t white. His mother was African-American. Granted the section for him was a bit disappointing – there’s quite a lot more to his playing than that riff.
Dunc
My assumption isn’t that it’s the only possible reason. But it’s really funny how many people not only get a different reason (which is totally legitimat. As I said, I was being cynical) but all assume that as long as there IS a possible alternative, will act as if “racism” is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence
There’s also the fact that Jimi was as much about the sound as the playing, and this guy’s playing everything with the same sound (very much an 80s / 90s rock / hair-metal sound), which is light-years away from Jimi’s sound. It would be a fucking atrocity.
No, it’s a perfectly ordinary claim, so it requires perfectly ordinary evidence. Got anything? Anything at all? Even the tiniest little scrap of circumstantial suggestion?
Look, you wanna talk about racism in the entertainment industry, I’m all for it. Jimi’s a great starting off point, what with the whole way he had to come to the UK to achieve any kind of recognition. Hell, all those (now) famous old blues guys who were completely ignored until they were “discovered” by a bunch of middle-class English private schoolboys in the 60s…
Dunc
I think the evidence for racism in the form of subtle prejudices and biases is widely established. You don’t have to steal your mother’s bedsheets to do something racist or have your decisions influenced by racism. Do you have any shred of evidence for any of the alternative explenations?
Certainly. But that doesn’t necessarily make racism the go-to explanation for the observation that this particular musician has not chosen to include one specific musician in his set of 10 to emulate in this video.
You mean the various stylistic explanations proposed in this thread? Yes: the relatively close stylistic grouping of the selection of musicians he’s chosen to emulate, the type of guitar he’s playing, the type of effects he’s using, his playing style, and the fact that he actually has included one non-white guitarist in his lineup.
Most guitarists (particularly electric guitarists) worship Jimi as a god. I see no reason to assume that this guy is any different.
So, I have tons of scientific evidence, you have post hoc ergo propter hoc. I’m giving up. Apparently there’s a little known part of Occam’s Razor that says: Whenever one of the possible explenations is bigotry, no matter how likely , ignore it.
I’d lay money on his reason for not doing Hendrix being the same reason I don’t do Sonny Terry. The notes are easy to learn by rote, but the over-all sound is damned hard to achieve—and a near-miss sounds bloody awful.
Seriously, I’ve never met a guitarist yet who didn’t praise Jimi Hendrix to the high heavens.
If you see a pianist playing a selection of sonatas, do you assume that the reason he’s not playing Scott fucking Joplin is racism? Or do you at least consider the possibility that ragtime just wouldn’t fit with the rest of the set?
If he’d chosen 10 white blues guitarists, you’d have a point.
So yeah, I guess he’s acknowledged it already.
Giliell, I understand that you are passionate about racism, and you are certainly right to be. However, your accusations are ridiculous. What’s your point? This talented musician did not include a black musician in his video, so he has to be a racist. Right?
Wrong. He did.
Tom Morello is of african descent from his father who was kenyan, fought against the british army during the Mau Mau uprising, and was the ambassador for Kenya to the UN.
Slash is african american from his mother.
While not black, Santana is quite Mexican. Not your standard whiter than white dude.
We could also add that Steve Vai and Joe Satriani are both descendants of Italian immigrants. Not perfect Wasps.
Accusing this musician of racism for not including Jimi Hendrix is “breathtakingly stupid” as procrastinatorordinaire put it.
I agree with the overall points you made before, that there’s little or nothing to support a race theory sort of criticism of this … arrangement. (Parts of it are sort of a medley, but I guess on a larger scale it’s basically a variation form…. “the work in question,” whatever you call it.)
But do you think the answer to this is supposed to be “obviously no”? For starters, there is a fuckload of racism (and sexism) behind the fact that non-white and non-male musicians aren’t represented well throughout the history of European music, classical or folk or liturgical or whatever it may be.
You apparently alluded to Tom Morello before, as an example of a non-white person who was included in it (unbeknownst to Gileil probably, since Jimi may be the only black guitarist she knows or that is the only salient feature known by her about him or his music). Anyway… to go with your analogy, there are black people who did (and still do) write sonatas. They aren’t all busy playing ragtime or blues. Likewise, there are black people, besides Morello obviously, who do or did play in a “style” or “genre” (to stick with these pointless terms for the sake of argument) that would be reasonably consistent with the rest of the work.
Despite that, of course the dude in the video can play whatever he wants, imitating the music of whichever fucking people he wants, even if it doesn’t include any of my favorite “characters” from the music world. (Considering them real, fully-fleshed-out human beings is apparently too generous, so I’ll stick with “characters.” We should definitely make sure to confuse the people themselves with the kinds of noises they have been known to make. But really, Jimi wasn’t a god and now he’s dead. He’s in the ground someplace, that’s where.)
I liked it better that he mostly played actual known solos with key and tempo changes to fit Get Lucky. And I have to agree that while it would have been cool to see a Jimi version, I’m not sure it would work well with the music.
Where’s the bass version? I’d love to hear Jack Bruce or Wilton Felder style playing in Get Lucky. I’d include Carol Kaye, but the only thing distinctive about her style is that she can do almost everything and already has.
I miss Jerry.
He should have put on an unbuttoned shirt and done Yngqie Malmsteen.
Francisco, a bass version would be great. There are too many great bassists in the past 40 or so years with a variety of individual styles and sounds. Can’t beat the ridiculous charades of Bootsy, or the extremely tight lines of Bakithi Kumalo. Then there’s Geddy Lee. Bass is so diverse.
Indeed. Greg Allman is coming to our town in a month – the ads are billing him as “America’s greatest living blues guitarist.”
I think Buddy Guy (for one) would quibble with that.
Only three guitarists are from before 1980 and only one from before 1975. So in addition to #3 we have (and apologies for everyone I have omitted) Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Hank Marvin, Pete Townshend, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Steve Howe and Ritchie Blackmore.
And nobody here of course knows the first guitar wizard, originally from Indonesia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOZl7gXj_io
Yup, 1960. Good luck imitating that backed by a Daft Punk song. Also check Rollin’ Rock, especially if you correctly think that Jimi Hendrix is special.
I really can’t think of any Alex Leifson solo that would work either. Maybe the total shred from Analog Kid or the weird chords and long sustains of Secret Touch.
mnb0 #33:
Lifelong rockabilly fan, and I’ve never come across that before. Awesomeness! Thank you.
Taking a bass tangent… Willie Dixon.
mnb0, that was awesome. Thanks for that.
If we’re going to talk about guitar wizards, you can’t really leave out the classic Delta Blues artists: Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, Memphis Minnie, John Lee Hooker, Bukkah White, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and so on (going on a journey to discover the roots of Led Zeppelin, my all-time favorite band, really pays off).
I think it’s safe to say that Rock guitar solos owe just about everything to the Delta Blues.
I like it when women get into the act, too. Has anyone here ever heard of Chantel McGregor? I am really proud of the fact that I recently got Jamie Kilstein in to her. Here’s her playing “Red House”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPtorCUL01Y
Go ahead. Drink it in. And part of her story is having the head of A&R of a major record label tell her that “women don’t play guitar like that” when she was 12.
What the actual fuck? I wrote a whole blog post on this whole thing about how lead guitar is yet another of those “guy things“.
On the same topic, Ava Mendoza is inspired by Jimi Hendrix, while cultivating her own unique and immensely awesome style. She’s another mind-blowing guitarist.
Careful… I’m addicted to guitar solos, so I could go forever on this topic.
Nate Hevens
You need you some Rosetta Tharpe.
I really do not know how I skipped over Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I even own Sister on Tour! Sorry about that.
This started as a mild disappointment for me, but mnb0 and Nate have rescued this thread with links to some awesome music I hadn’t heard of before. Also thanks to Daz for the Django and Rosetta Tharpe, they had been buried in my music folder for a while and needed to get some air again.
#18 Giliell
“My assumption isn’t that it’s the only possible reason. But it’s really funny how many people not only get a different reason (which is totally legitimat. As I said, I was being cynical) but all assume that as long as there IS a possible alternative, will act as if “racism” is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence”
The simpler explanation though is that the guitarist played some of his favourites within a similar-ish style – largely 80’s hard rock and similar – and he was squeezing them into a 3 minute funsies video. Subtle racism is another possible explanation which is not very extraordinary at all, but it still requires a bit more than ‘it’s a possibility’. I’m happy to give him the benefit of the doubt, unless proven otherwise.
As for his artist selection, even restricting things to 80’s metal… Y U NO YNGWIE MALMSTEEN??!
And no Tony Iommi, either!
Seriously guys? Can we just enjoy some tunes without analyzing everything to death?
Am I the only one who was bothered by the fact that it was just the backbeat from Get Lucky with samples from said famous guitarists own work being played over it.
I was expecting the actual song, with the existing chords and all, being played in the various distinct styles, not samples from Smells Like Teen Spirit, Sweet Child of Mine, or Bohemian Rhapsody being played over a technofunk backing.
karpad
Uh, that riff was from “A Kind of Magic”, not “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
I am not much of a music geek, but I do know some trivia about Jimi which might better explain why he wasn’t included. As noted by several other people, Jimi is widely hailed as having superpowers when it comes to playing the electric guitar. His sound is very unique due to the fact that he was left-handed, but learned to play on a right handed instrument. This forced him to play it backwards and upside-down. The only other famous guitarist I can name offhand who can even play a guitar backwards and upside down with their left hand is Stevie Ray Vaughan, who is also missing from this list, pretty amazing, and sadly dead. :(
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @24,
You have tons of scientific evidence for what exactly? That there were no black guitarists chosen for this particular list due to racism or bigotry? That is the contention you made that people are taking issue with.
Nobody here is denying that racism exists and nobody is ignoring it either. Asking if you actually have any reason to suspect that racism or bigotry had any effect in this particular instance is not the same as ignoring it.
Your cynicism is not a valid reason to assume that someone you know virtually nothing about is a racist or bigot. You are better than this.
He does Jimi here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QySNr_Qi9S0&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=AndreAntunes
For the record, Jimi was left-handed playing a right-handed guitar, but it was strung upside down. Under such a configuration you’re not playing upside down; the only difference is some reduced access to the upper frets due to the shape of the body (at least on asymmetrical double cutaway models like Jimi/Stevie’s strats). Stevie was a righty and usually played a right-handed guitar strung normally – nothing out of the ordinary. He did have a couple of left-handed guitars modified to be strung upside down so he could play them righty – like a mirror image Hendrix. Presumabley, this is purely a style choice, but I don’t know.
Neither of those guys played upside-down in any meaningful sense of the term. But some people do. The most famous example (and the only one that is springing to mind at the moment) is Albert King. King, btw, was a huge influence on Stevie and one of the first places to look if you are an SRV fan branching out into more blues music.
Incidentally, for people interested in such things, Guthrie Govan (another name worth knowing) has a really cool imitating-the-legends style medley that I think is much more convincing/entertaining. If you punch “Guthrie Govan mimics the greats” into YT it will come right up.
As a side note, Guthrie does do Jimi on the track mentioned above, but it’s undoubtedly the worst impression of the lot.
I remember a “Tonight Show” in which Johnny’s guests included Chet Atkins, who was on sooner, and toward the end of the show, Van Halen, as Chet took in the latter act from The Chair next to Johnny’s desk. Eddie started it up, of course, with some “Eruption” and (I think) they finished with “Pretty Woman.”
At the very end, before the show signed off, Johnny looked at Chet, indicating VH and says, “Can you do all that?”
Chet smiled and said, “Well, yeah, but why would I want to?”