Neil Young - Guitarist
onhwy614, 03-22-2018 7:58pm Don’t take those Rolling Stone rankings seriously. Neil Young is a fine musician, but he’s only a great guitarist in the sense that Mick Jagger or James Brown are great vocalists.Exactly. I play guitar. #17 is laughable. #100 would have been laughable. Maybe top 100 in songwriting, but probably not top 10,000 in guitar playing. |
bdp24The answer is "yes". If you're not technically accomplished, you can't be fully creative or artistic. Technique is a toolbox. The more tools you have, the more stuff you can create. But just because you have a lot of tools doesn't mean you will use them to create art. That can be done with fewer tools. But your art will be limited. B.B. King was an artist with a very limited toolbox. Steve Vai is an artist with a massive toolbox and knows how to use it. I don't think there's any doubt 95 out of 100 guitarists would rather have Steve Vai's skills even if they don't play his type of music. Therefore, Vai is the better "guitarist". Vai could duplicate what B.B. King or Neil Young play. B.B. King and Neil Young cannot duplicate what Vai plays. You might be surprised to learn (or not, after all it does consist of people) that the guitar world is as rife with myth as the audio world. Such as "tone is in the fingers". No, it isn't. Tone is in the technique and the equipment. There's no magic to it. You learn the technique, you learn the tone. Even intermediate players can learn Neil Young's tone. In the end, ranking players is subjective by how much you value technique versus your (subjective) view of art, and therefore pretty much meaningless. For me, that ratio comes out at Buckethead, who is a stunning technician and a prolific artist. But when I'm in the mood to change that ratio to make art my primary listening experience I might switch to SRV. |
