I saw a conversation at another guitar site and it was the usual "so and so is the best", so and so sucks, and "Sammy Sixstring rules" type thing. My guitar hero can beat up your guitar hero.
Why do people do this? How can there be "the best" at something as broad and varied as the guitar?
Guitarists do not need to be ranked, there is no best no greatest, no number one.
Each guitarist has something special to offer
and, to paraphrase the person I was reading who was making some sense on the matter, by comparing guitarists (or any musician) we by default close ourselves off to what the other has to offer. This isn't a sport. Each person can win. We too often want to cheer our one favorite player on that we put blinders on that prohibit us from seeing all the really cool stuff that is out there that we will miss by saying "Bobby Rocker is the best." If you really believe that then there is no reason to listen to anything else anymore. Just get that one record and wear it out. That'd be pretty sad. We'd miss out on Vernon Reid. Buckethead. etc.
The most halarious case of this I've seen in a while is on the bucketboard and someone asked who the "top 5 shredders were" so they all paraded out the same old names we always hear but then you had someone say Angus Young!
Shredders? Really? Point is this: we confuse our personal favs and biases for objective reality. And even something as objective as speed, probably the only thing that can be measured, is no proof at all.
empirical reality can't change anyone's mind.
I still hear the same things over and over: Yngwie is the fastest, or PG is the fastest, or ..... you know the rest. In reality, there are players out there that just smoke all the well-known players when it comes down to just that. And I mean leave them in the dust. Of course I'm not saying that speed is all that important but it is something that can be measured. The same things are said for any other dimension of guitar: Lane has the best phrasing! Really? By what criteria? Jimi was the most soulful ( I share this bias) but it is only an opinion and not a fact.
I think they are all great and I'm glad we have all of them. Otherwise the world would be pretty boring.
Shred Like Hell my friends
http://ShredLikeHell.com
