Originally Posted by Electrophonic Tonic

What is messy about it? The squeaking and screams? Know those are mimicking sounds of airplanes, bombers and machine guns, right? Jimi's version is a protest song in front of Woodstock, not a faithful rendition to open the Super Bowl. And, I'm not sure how difficult it is on guitar, but the Star Spangled Banner is an incredibly demanding and complex song to sing properly. So the fact he could weave the original song with all of his embelishments in a fluid way is extraordinary to me.

And, who do you think is a really good guitarist compared to Jimi Hendrix?

Originally Posted by ZiggyStardust

*well I'm going to get a lot of flak for this but oh well*

2 Reasons Why Jimi Hendrix is overrated

1. His use of the whammy bar/Playing in general

watch a video of his performance of Hey Joe at Woodstock and compare it to his studio version. In my opinion I think he absolutely destroys the whammy bar in the song in a bad way. Nearly every lick starts and finishes with it, and because of the amount of distortion it sounds like he knows that he will make a mistake so he uses the whammy bar and distortion to hide it.
Also, his playing is incredibly sloppy. I know, things will sound different live, but Jesus does that guitar sound bad.



2. Creativity

Okay, so I’m going to admit that I like Foxy Lady and All along The Watchtower - they are pretty damn catchy. I’m not going to deny the fact the Jimi had some creative genius in him – it’s just the fact that he had to (mostly) rely on LSD and various other drugs to compose songs. I compare that to The Beatles’ Let It Be and Abbey Road albums – they had simply run out of ideas and turned to drugs to help find a new tune.
For all that Jimi is praised in his techniques; he doesn’t really expand outside his genre. A true musician explores all genres and styles. Jimi only delves into rock, blues and a bit of psychedelic, and that’s it.

Originally Posted by ZiggyStardust

And as for the greatest guitarist? Jimmy Page. Just listen to his ''Stairway To Heaven'' performance from 1973's The Song Remains The Same concert film.

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

The same Jimmy Page that recycled old blues riffs and claimed them as his own?

The same Jimmy Page that had an amazing musical arranger in his band in John Paul Jones and never utilised him whatsoever?

Keep him

Originally Posted by ZiggyStardust

Wait, so JPJ needed Page to show his talents? He did it himself. JPJ and Bonham themselves said they were a rhythm section, not a lead like Page.

Originally Posted by ZiggyStardust

His version of Star Spangled Banner lost the melody completely - there's no point doing a song if you can't actually hear the melody that's being played. The bombs and machine guns sound like machine guns, I'll give you that, but if he wanted to play a protest song he didn't need to add it into the country's anthem.
Normally he uses feedback in a good way, but in this case it just sounds messy and out of place. The buzz coats all the notes so half of them just sound like buzzes.

Originally Posted by ZiggyStardust

A further 3 reasons -

1. His rendition of The Star Spangled Banner is, in all fairness, a mess. It truly is. Now, if you or I made that then people would laugh at you and call you a bit funny, but because it's Hendrix then automatically people assume that it's brilliant.
It's like Smoke on The Water. Okay, so forget that fact that it's the first thing you can play on the guitar and it's by Deep Purple and mentions Frank Zappa, and listen to it again. It's a terrible song.