Originally Posted by jr.

There's no one out there that wasn't influenced by someone. The reason people pick up an instrument is because they saw someone else playing one and thought it would be cool to do that as well.

They emulate that which they admire. A little bit of this guy. Some of that one. A few licks from this guitarist that they thought sounded cool enough to figure it out. All those ingredients add up, and, hopefully, a musician is innovative enough to smelt it down into his/her own sound.

One example: Eddie Van Halen. All those greats from the 60's and early 70's inspired him. He played ,played, played, got all their licks down. Then, he was innovative enough to come up with something that was completely EVH, and no one else. Unfortunately, he hasn't varied much from that in almost 30 years.

But that's beside the point. The point is, he took a lot of parts, and came up with his own sum total. When you hear him, there's no mistaking who it is. Not original in it's broken down parts, but original in the end result.

Just my opinion.