Jimi's demise came just when the entire music world was "flipping it's lid", big-time.
His successors noted and imitated the interesting things he did on guitar with string-bends, pulls, shakes, feedback, riffs and electronic effects to alter the blues in surreal ways.
However, Jimi's real art lay in the way his two-and-a-half minute "stream-of-consciousness" fusions of Pop, Rock, Techno, Jazz and traditional folk laid bare the human experience, mind, sub-conscious, soul, spirit (e.g. "Wind Cries Mary", "Room full of Mirrors", "Little Wing", "All Along the Watchtower" and so on and so forth).
Most music critics missed this, and tarred him and his successors alike with the same brush, labelling it all as "drug-fuelled gimmickry and showmanship"
IMHO, the works of progressive rockers like Pink Floyd ("Dark Side of the Moon") and Yes ("Close to the Edge") are more fitting tributes to Jimi's legacy than the virtuoso histrionics of the "guitar heroes" that emerged in his wake...
Jimi's demise came just when the entire music world was "flipping it's lid", big-time.
His successors noted and imitated the interesting things he did on guitar with string-bends, pulls, shakes, feedback, riffs and electronic effects to alter the blues in surreal ways.
However, Jimi's real art lay in the way his two-and-a-half minute "stream-of-consciousness" fusions of Pop, Rock, Techno, Jazz and traditional folk laid bare the human experience, mind, sub-conscious, soul, spirit (e.g. "Wind Cries Mary", "Room full of Mirrors", "Little Wing", "All Along the Watchtower" and so on and so forth).
Most music critics missed this, and tarred him and his successors alike with the same brush, labelling it all as "drug-fuelled gimmickry and showmanship"
IMHO, the works of progressive rockers like Pink Floyd ("Dark Side of the Moon") and Yes ("Close to the Edge") are more fitting tributes to Jimi's legacy than the virtuoso histrionics of the "guitar heroes" that emerged in his wake...