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.

Thinkofthechildren

I don't think your drug argument is valid.

But, at the end of the day it doesn't if your an amazing musician, the bottomline is can you songwrite? He was descent. I guess.

Urban Hat€monger ?

He only recorded for just over 3 years, death kind of puts an end to people experimenting with music.

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Vertigo

Although not the biggest fan of Hendrix, overrated is a term you can throw at any artiste/band.

He was a massively influential guitarist, groundbreaking and for that he deserves the credit he receives.

Unknown Soldier

There was a member on here a few years ago that said exactly the above in an attempt to cause controversy, would that be you?

A lot of artists were using it around that time, I see no reason to use Jimi as a unique example here.

Why should he expand out of his genre? I don't see how that should detract from him at all. As Urban said, when you die after just three studio albums that really puts a lid on where the artist could've gone.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Screen13

In three/four years, he broke a lot of barriers, proved to be a great showman (most learned from his years as a backing musician), and also someone who helped advance production values in recording. If he would have lived, I could see him more into production techniques, maybe adding more to his Producer's history, and experimenting with music. On Electric Ladyland, there was a nice mix of styles all over which showed a opening up from what his first two albums offered.

When he passed away, he was in transition, already showed positive with Band of Gypsies. Who knows where that could have took him too. Maybe a Blues/Jazz fusion, perhaps. Still, as said before Death puts an end to things, and sadly he passed away when things were getting interesting and could have went either way, although his work clearly showed that no matter what one thinks of his music, he already did a lot to progress music quite a bit.

By the way, ...Watchtower was written by Bob Dylan.

I'm sure that when on stage, that Whammy Bar sound is certainly an addiction and a crowd winner. Jimi may have overused that sound live, but he at least used it well. Sometimes I can agree that it was used too much on stage, but I pin it down to crowd pleasing more than anything else.

Over-copied, perhaps. Over-worshiped, absolutely (usually for the wrong reasons, too!).

Still, I'd say that he's not over-rated.

Urban Hat€monger ?

It should be remembered that at Woodstock he was playing with a band he had never ever played live with and had no rehearsal time with them either.

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Freebase Dali

LSD only helps your song-making ability for around 5 or 6 hours. Then when you come down, you realize the song is total sh*t.

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P A N

i hate when this argument happens.

Necromancer

His 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival is Hendrix at his best, or my personal favorite anyway. He headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 just before dying.

His whammy bar and playing guitar in general at the Monterey Pop Festival has been well over 45 years ago.