I think we're trying to do something that is difficult to do. I can't tell you how many times I sit around with my friends, having fun, and say, "Oh, that song sucks..." or "That guy is the worst guitar player I've ever heard..." etc... but the truth is they're doing something I couldn't do. There's really simple songs that I hear and go, "That's brilliant." I couldn't have written them, and they're simple.
Clapton, not technically the best guitar player ever, but yeah he's pretty freakin' good. He has tone in his fingers like B.B. King or Buddy Guy. It's true that some of these guys have become larger than life and could never live up to the praise they receive, but lets put things in perspective: Maybe you don't like Clapton or Vai or Satriani or whoever, maybe you can even sit down and learn to play their supposedly complicated stuff, but they didn't sit down and learn to play it...they wrote it. There's something to be said for that.
I'm not saying some of these people aren't overrated, I'm just saying when you're even in that league it really doesn't matter. If you're in the Clapton, Vai, Satriani, Petrucci, whatever league, where your name is consistently mentioned in the same sentence with the words "best ever..." you're probably not shitty.
People say Shakespeare is overrated. I say, how can you overrate Shakespeare? Different ways of thinking about it I guess.
