Poll: Most Overrated Guitar Player OAT

Most Overrated (skill or songwriter)

  • Jimmy Vaughan

    Votes: 12 8.9%

  • Eric Clapton

    Votes: 23 17.0%

  • BB King

    Votes: 12 8.9%

  • Slash

    Votes: 41 30.4%

  • write-in

    Votes: 19 14.1%

  • all these guys rock what are you thinking?

    Votes: 28 20.7%
  • Total voters
    135
Rory Gallager gets my vote.
I have one of his albums I bought when I was a teenager...because he was rated so highly as a guitar player.
The album IMO sucks.
I really don't care for his style at all and there is nothing on that album that was hard to learn.
I learned some of it but it was pretty boring so I quit listening to it.


There is always a moron that bashes Hendrix in these types of threads and greg came through on this one.

greg ...you would know a good guitar player if they bit you on the ass.:p
 
Jimmy/Jimi Hendrix/Hindrix.

The guy was a fair guitar player but did not deserve the "guitar god" status he has. While some of his stuff was pretty good, some of it sounded like they handed a guitar to a beginner.
 
All the guys in the poll rip.

I'm surprised more people voted for Slash than "all these guys rip."

Slash is an insanely good guitar player. Appetite for Destruction, along with Nirvana's Teen Spirit destroyed glam metal near the end of the eighties.

Appetite for Destruction was outstanding from beginning to end.
 
Shredders in general. Have they ever written a listenable song? No. Put them all in a pit with quicklime.
 
jimistone said:
greg ...you would know a good guitar player if they bit you on the ass.:p
Click to expand...

You mean he wouldn't know.... etc, etc. Otherwise the sentence doesn't make sense. Is that an extension of the "I could care less" phrase that doesn't make any sense either? :)
 
Bubba po said:
You mean he wouldn't know.... etc, etc. Otherwise the sentence doesn't make sense. Is that an extension of the "I could care less" phrase that doesn't make any sense either? :)
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure anyone would know if a guitar player bit them on the ass - good or not.
 
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After having read many of the posts in this thread and having voted myself, the all these guys rock option, I have come to a realization. Generally speaking, I know that this may not be true of all of you guys and gals out there, all the guitarists in the poll and richer and more commercially successful than the whole lot of us put together. That is not to say that there aren't a number of you that are as good or better guitarists than the ones on the poll because I am sure there are. I am not one of them but quite a few of you probably are. And have any of you noticed that there aren't any new/contemporary rock guitarists getting any recognition? All the guitar god accolades seem to be going to the country music guitarists these days. But hey, a good guitar player is a good guitar player whatever the genre.
 
Write in: Yngwie J. Malmsteen or any similar mega-shredder. I respect the skill of playing that fast and intense and can't do it myself, but the musicianship as a music player (unless solo) seems to take back seat to the music in band/song situations, and that imo is highly overrated.
 
Seeker of Rock said:
Write in: Yngwie J. Malmsteen or any similar mega-shredder. I respect the skill of playing that fast and intense and can't do it myself, but the musicianship as a music player (unless solo) seems to take back seat to the music in band/song situations, and that imo is highly overrated.
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 
The days of good country are gone, way gone. (of course, some of you may say that there never was any good country, and thats cool too.. all our personal preference) - Shredders bore me, look up a video on YouTube titled "Buckethead vs the Best" - pretty much sums it up. My personal favorite players (of the ones who are still alive) - Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Wariner, Brent Mason. There are several others, but these guys are top of the pile to me.
 
John Mayer, for sure. Also, I hate to say it, but Kurt Cobain. He sometimes gets included in great guitarist lists, but in the end his real talent was songwriting rather that virtuosic instrumental talent.
 
The reason Jimi, Jimmy, Eric, Rory, Stevie, Slash, The Edge, et al get the love, IMO, is the emotion that they were able to convey with their playing.
I think technical ability alone falls short of the mark (not to say that they don't have the chops, but that they also know how to get the "mood" across).
 
ibleedburgundy said:
Isn't that the whole point of music?
Click to expand...

It was at least the point of my post. :)

I was commenting in a roundabout way that I have more respect for a less technically skilled player that "gets it,"
than some of the super technical guitar virtuoso's that a lot of today's amateur guitar players like to drool over.

But referring to guitarists like the above as overrated is pretty ridiculous to me.

They get how the spaces between the notes are as important as the notes themselves,
and it shows, due to their also being highly skilled.

To say for instance, that Jimi H wasn't a great guitar player is pretty much bullshit, IMO.

It would be more accurate to say that in the end, he and his guitar became one,
which resulted in what appeared to be an effortless manifestation of his unique and varied style.
 
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