Jeff Beck vs Jimi Hendrix

[bluesbassman]

Cool little collection from two of the greats. One of the comments was: Jeff the Master vs Jimi the King. What say you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7T0lERDsIY

[NashVegas]

1. Jeff Beck

I got to see him when he toured with SRV. SRV was so cool. He had all kinds of gear and pyrotechnics. He could play behind his back.

And Jeff Beck blew him out of the room with 3 pedals.

[no name no slogan]

2. Beck = Master of the Universe, Jimi = CREATOR of the Universe

Jimi invented the electric guitar as we know it today. In his hands, it wasn't just a louder acoustic guitar, it was a whole new instrument with a whole new palate of sounds never imagined by anyone before.

Comparing anybody else to Hendrix isn't fair to the person being compared to Hendrix. Nobody did what he did. And nobody has done so since.

[Orrex]

3. That's a great analysis

Well done!

[sasquatch]

4. Agreed completely

[jobycom]

12. End of discussion, IMHO. nt

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. Apples & Oranges

Beck was / is a master of the guitar, but Hendrix was Hendrix.

In terms of songwriting, it's apples and oranges.

Beck knows his way around a guitar neck like few others...if any.

Hendrix reminds me of the sound that would have come out of Muddy Waters if he were on a wet back-country road and picked up a fallen, live high-tension wire with his bare hands.

Hendrix took a solid Bob Dylan song, "All Along The Watchtower," and OWNED IT.

Beck took a solid Stevie Wonder song, "Cause We've Ended As Lovers," and OWNED it.

But they owned those songs in completely different ways. Beck reinvented, while Hendrix stripped the song to its soul and blowtorched it.

:toast:

[bluesbassman]

6. Good analysis AV. Might I add that I view the contrast as..

Jimi being a visionary who saw the potential of the guitars sound through a filter nobody had looked through before, and Beck is a master craftsman who takes the concept and polishes it into perfection.:toast:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

7. Yes, I agree with that completely...

...it's almost as if Beck was handed a guitar and thought "I am going to become a master of this instrument," while Hendrix was handed one and thought "Hmmmmm...what's this?, and what can I do with it?"

For Beck, the guitar was an end in itself. For Hendrix, it was a means to an end.

There are more than a few Hendrix scholars who have mused over whether Jimi would still be playing a Strat, almost four decades after his death, or a guitar at all.

Let's remember Frank Zappa, who...primarily because of his illness, but also largely due to the fact that he needed it to accurately capture the music in his latter-day head...pretty much gave up the guitar entirely and spent his final days composing on the Synclavier.

Jimi might have been different. Had he lived, he might still be spanking the hell out of a Strat in 2009, just like Beck. We'll never know.

Obviously, in his Little Richard and Isley Brothers days and all of his pre-Experience days, he knew all about I-IV-V progressions. And in his Experience days and beyond, one of the most amazing things about the man was that he could write songs, in the classic sense. Those songs could break your heart in three minutes, like "Little Wing," or take you on a 15-minute trip "way down by the Methane Sea," in "Voodoo Chile." We all know that "Voodoo Chile" was Jimi's homage to Muddy...it was "Rolling Stone," "Still A Fool"...but he took songs that were already perfect, that needed nothing, and used them as a launching pad to a destination that no man had ever seen before.

Beck is a musician, and the guitar was his instrument, while Hendrix was a musician, and his guitar was some tangible "thing" made of wood and wires that he used to channel the music in his head and heart and soul directly into the ears of his audience.

:toast:

[Towlie]

8. I saw Jeff Beck live when he had some guy named Rod something singing for him.

[Mendocino]

9. I'll take Duane Allman

over either.

[Nevernose]

10. Hendrix had what my dad would've called "soul"

An almost indefinable quality, but you know it when you hear it.

My stepdad -- a skinny Jewish guy from Boston who was frequently the "token whitey" -- received his greatest compliment one night playing drums for Joe Williams, and Joe came up after the set and said, "You and me are the only ones on this stage got a right to be called black." Of course Jimi didn't play like that BECAUSE he was black, but he definitely had a more direct connection to American roots music.

[jobycom]

13. That's good. Beck plays guitar, Hendrix played something deeper, through his guitar.

[MrSlayer]

11. Michael Angelo Batio.

This guy is insane. You have to check this out. He plays with both hands on a double guitar and is as good as anyone with either. It's amazing.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM8-_ikFX6I&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FpMl44DEBI&feature=related

[bluesbassman]

15. Shoot, that's done with mirrors.

Kidding of course. The man does have some mad skills.:thumbsup: I have enough trouble keeping track of one neck! :crazy:

[Blue_In_AK]

14. That's a very, very tough choice.

Both phenomenal but different. You can't really compare them. I saw Jeff Beck in Phoenix in 2000...it was an amazing show.

[harmonicon]

16. what?!

Jeff Beck is a good guitarists, while Jimi Hendrix is one of the greatest musicians that's ever come out of western culture. To try to compare them is insane.