David Gilmour > Jimi Hendrix

I thought there was a fair amount of departure shown on Gilmour's last solo album - stuff like "This Heaven", "Smile", or "Red Sky At Night" are branching out, at least in some way.

^ Interpretation of others' music is also open to question - there are very few examples of Gilmour playing other peoples' music, (other than Barrett's in the Floyd early days and no one can deny he improved on all of those pieces), let alone interpretation (his interpretation of Bizet's Je Crois Entendre Encore was pretty fair and not something I could imagine Hendrix doing) - neither Glimour or Floyd were into "covers" as such. He was in Bryan Ferry's backing band at Live Aid and at an open-air concert at Petworth House, but playing Phil Manz's guitar parts doesn't count as interpretation.

Dean wrote: ^ Interpretation of others' music is also open to question - there are very few examples of Gilmour playing other peoples' music, (other than Barrett's in the Floyd early days and no one can deny he improved on all of those pieces), let alone interpretation (his interpretation of Bizet's Je Crois Entendre Encore was pretty fair and not something I could imagine Hendrix doing) - neither Glimour or Floyd were into "covers" as such. He was in Bryan Ferry's backing band at Live Aid and at an open-air concert at Petworth House, but playing Phil Manz's guitar parts doesn't count as interpretation.   The well known examples of Hendrix interpreting others' music are All Along The Watch Tower and Johnnie B Goode - the first is a classic, but far from great, and the second is plain dreadful to my ears. Oh, and Star Spangled Banner - not so much an interpretation as a political comment on the Vietnam War.

Excellent point too.
I love Jimi's All Along The Watch Tower too (it's practically cliche to say you like it, but hey, it worked, and it's a fine piece of music), but indeed, I have a Hendrix CD lying around with a rendition of Johnny B Goode, and that was not to my liking (I think it was a live version of it). It just sounded kinda half assed really and not totally genuine and done for the sake of doing a cover version.
I'm not a big fan of the original song, mind you, but at least it's listenable unlike the turd that is the Hendrix rendition I have heard.


Edited by Petrovsk Mizinski - April 11 2009 at 08:46

Gilmour and Hendrix are both great guitarists but I listen to Gilmour much more often than Hendrix.

Tony R wrote: I love these stories about Hendrix playing out of tune as if he was some hack who just messed about, got some interesting sounds and was very lucky. The guy earned a living as a session musician for many years and was certainly in demand in the mid 60's. If he couldnt really play then he wouldnt have lasted 5 minutes! Then there's the stories about all the top guitarists standing open-mouthed in awe when they saw him in concert, including Eric Clapton, they would hardly give props to someone who played out of tune. Hendrix was the Picasso of the electric guitar and his style transcended blues or pop or even psychedelia. He is unique and if he'd survived I'm damn sure he'd have been a giant of the jazz-fusion scene, as some have mentioned. Gilmour?  Wonderful guitarist and the right man for Pink Floyd when they needed to move to the next level, but better than Hendrix? He'd be the first to laugh at this I reckon.

Really, I don't think anyone is accusing Hendrix of ALWAYS having poor intonation and/or being sloppy with other areas of guitar technique, because he wasn't always obviously.
The point is more, in order to have what is considered good technique, you need to be consistent all the time.
Consistency of good technique is what makes people like Allan Holdsworth or Chopin the viruosos they were/are. For someone like Holdsworth, a bad playing day would be a few minor mistakes and even then you almost wouldn't notice the mistakes anyway unless you were a guitarist like myself.
Hendrix was lacking in consistency.
He had great nights from what I hear, where he was on the ball and played tight, but other times he wasn't quite on the boat and his playing was all over the place
David Gilmour, on the other hand, has a reputation for his precise, controlled playing.

crimhead wrote: Easy Money wrote: ^ I'm no Chuck Berry fan, but nobody plays his songs right except that ugly guy in the Stones. Berry actually uses real nice inventive sparse RnB chords, while your typical local bar band tramples all over that. We all know that Chuck stole that sound from Marty McFly when he went back in time to play at his mom and dad's prom to get them together. Doesn't anybody remember Back to the Future?

actually Hendrix was a stickler for being in tune (no small trick with the way he played, BTW), much of his stuff would've sounded completely wrong had he been out

 

"he played sloppy" is like saying Charles Bukowski had a rough writing style..it misses the point, doesn't it?  Besides, Hendrix didn't play sloppy, at least no more than Keith Emerson flubbed notes left and right and Robert Plant's voice failed on a regular basis

Atavachron wrote: actually Hendrix was a stickler for being in tune (no small trick with the way he played, BTW), much of his stuff would've sounded completely wrong had he been out

Again, no one is accusing him of always being out of tune, but come on, there are enough live performances of him that are proof enough he was off as a result of his playing or because his guitar couldn't keep.
Fact is, he didn't have the high quality locking tremolo systems that we have been taking for granted since the 80s that ensure guys like Satch of Vai never go out of tune from their intense whammy bar usage, or even locking tuners and stuff like that.
As a reference point, I had a 2 point non locking system on my recent 6 string I used to play, and this was a high end guitar mind you. Top of the line American made locking tuners, 2 point knife edge tremolo, very very well made and also the design of the headstock and tuners eliminated string trees which further aid tuning stability, and no matter how much set up time I put into the thing, no matter how much pencil graphite I put into the saddles, within about half an hour of serious whammy bar abuse I would have to retune at least one of the strings.
Now imagine you have a vintage 6 screw trem like the one Hendrix, (which is inherently less stable than a 2 point knife edge modern tremolo like the one I have)  with no locking tuners. There is only so much it can take before every string is going to to bind in the nut and/or bridge saddles. Hendrix had more than his fair share of tuning stability problems because of the inherent weaknesses in the tremolo design.
Spend as much time setting up and maintaining a 6 screw trem as you like, but it's not fail proof and there is a point where it just doesn't hold in tune anymore.
EVH himself used 6 screw trems before he went to locking systems, and even then, he had to spend ages working on getting the set up as absolutely perfect as possible to make sure it stayed in tune, because you have to remember at the time the Van Halen debut was released, there was no such thing as being able to buy a Floyd Rose and putting it into your guitar. In the end, he switched to Floyd Rose systems because 6 screws vintage designs couldn't keep up with the abuse he gave it.

Of course, Gilmour uses the same trem (since there was only one opion available at the time, unlike today where Fender offer 6 screw, 2 point knife edge and Floyd Rose locking systems), but it seems clear to me he abused the tremolo a lot less and hence, didn't run into the same tuning stability problems Hendrix did.

As a non-guitarist, I have to keep the scope of discussion limited to my personal enjoyment. Well...Hendrix is kickass, bigtime, but for some reason I have always associated him with riffs...like Purple Haze or Voodoo Child, didn't ever dig his solos particularly, they were great but they didn't blow me away.  Gilmour at his best is sublime and leaves an everlasting impression.  I listen to at least one Steve Hackett track either solo or with Genesis one way or the other at least once every week but I haven't heard AC DC in more than a year.  I know what my answer is though I love both Gilmour and Hendrix (or both Hackett and Young for that matter).