I would like to be able to site cool players like Ribot but my formative years learning guitar were my teens where I was not really listening to much "out there" music. So:
Jimmy Page - Huge influence, maybe even more his acoustic work than the electric in some ways since it led (get it?) me to alternate tunings and things. Plus I spent so much time learning Zep songs it can't help but creep in there.
SRV - Probably my biggest influence over all. Even though he is a pretty standard pentatonic player, the way he hits his strings so hard, the way he shakes the strings and uses his thumb, the way he filled up so much space, and his overall phrasing were huge for me.
Robin Trower - Mostly phrasing. I would put on Bridge of sighs or victims of the fury and play over them for hours.
Randy Rhoads - Because his style is so different from the other influences and I really liked his phrasing. Much more classical influence but he put so much emotion into his playing.
Hendrix - Mostly the partial chord rhythm stuff he does better than just about anyone.
Later on and more recently it's been people like Danny Gatton, Larry Carlton, Jerry Garcia, Stephen Malkmus. So many. These are the people I spend time really listening too and trying to figure out what they are doing.
|