When did he drop knowledge? If he at least had made some instructional video at some point. But he just left behind his music with everybody else wondering how to play it properly, and nobody really managed to do so.

Or indeed this:



If I'd been there when he played the first released version of 'Machine Gun' at the Fillmore I think my head might well have exploded.


Re: your comments about "as much soul as a corpse", I have to disagree about Satriani especially, and Vai on his good days. Those guys can play. I saw Vai at a Zappa Plays Zappa show at the Albert Hall in London a while ago and he even made The Black Page sound heartfelt. Not an easy thing to do!





Btw, almost 109? If you were around seven when you saw Hendrix at the Fillmore, you'd be closer to 45 by my count...

More of that self-mythologising, eh?

1. Indeed!

2. Vai when he was with or playing Zappa is one thing....the vast majority of the time he puts me to sleep.


3. http://www.radiomute.com/377731-post169.html

The knowledge that Hendrix dropped consisted mainly in opening everyone's ears to whole new worlds of possibility on the electric guitar.



Videos didn't exist in his lifetime. Neither, as far as I'm aware, did instructional videos for electric guitar. His existence might be one reason why so many instructional videos for guitar exist now. If there had been no Hendrix, and, say, Eric Clapton's playing was considered the absolute limit for what could be achieved on a guitar, the instrument might well have fallen completely out of public favour.

An exaggeration, perhaps, but it's possible.


I pretty much agree, but check out Pete Cosey from Miles Davis' electric band in the early 70s. He's the only guitarist I can think of who sounds like a vaguely plausible extension of Hendrix's style. Or there's Eddie Hazel of Parliament / Funkadelic who comes close at times too.

Dear god.

I just took a listen to a 30 sec sample of Winger's version.

Seriously, that was the most horrifying thing I have ever experienced.

The fact that this is allowed to happen in the first place and then continue to be available after the fact has to be some sort of crime against nature.

I think I'm going to have nightmares about this.

The only Hendrix cover I can recall that I enjoy at all was the Peppers' version of "Fire" on Mother's Milk -- they certainly nailed the frenzied energy of a Hendrix performance, and Frusciante's Hendrix impression is pretty damn good in my opinion.

Horrendous, isn't it?



You've got me trying to think of decent Hendrix covers now...

Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'Little Wing' is pretty good, but other than that, I'm stuck.

I liked Coroners version of purple haze but that was back in the late 80's when most of my listening was taken up with thrash or death metal bands. If I listened to it now I could quite easily think it was dated and crap.

Personally, I don't like SRV's 'Little Wing,' nor SRV for that matter.

Yavuz Çetin had a much prettier and far more heartfelt version of 'Little Wing.'





And I give you the great Mr Buddy Guy:




Check out Buddy's take on 'Red House.'

i'm pretty sure that was actually hillel slovak on the mother's milk version. they used to play it live quite a bit before he died. the cover is also on their 'abbey road' ep (before frusciante joined the band)