Brazilian football legend Pele dies age 82 leaving football world in mourning. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/breaking-pele-dead-world-cup-26303344
Vivienne Westwood. The founding member of punk and new wave fashion. She still cast's a strong spell to this day. My kids who are 16 and 17 and their friends looked up to VW. They know more about her fashion, and music that accompanied it than those back in the day. Now she officially becomes legend.
Journalist Barbara Walters will not ring in the new year. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/30/entertainment/barbara-walters-death/index.html
Pope Emeritus Benedict has gone to his reward. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/31/former-pope-benedict-xvi-dies-aged-95
Songwriter Ian Tyson has passed on. With his then-wife Sylvia, he had a number of hits in the 1960s, and influenced other Canadian songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell. Ian and Sylvia' harmonies were near perfect. And Ian's song "Four Strong Winds" is a classic and a regular part of my jam group's repertoire. I often describe it as the saddest song I know.
I just read Jeff Beck died of meningitis. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/21005166/jeff-beck-dead-meningitis/
I just saw this elsewhere. He was one of the best. Adding that to us losing Eddie last year, Slash, Satriani, Buckethead, and Jimmy Page better watch their backs. The title for best living guitar player might be short-lived.
I’m not sure I’d put Slash in that category. I don’t deny he’s good, there are just too many others I’d list ahead of him.
I hear you. But he gets a LOT of points for being iconic and for writing really, really, really memorable riffs. I'm curious as to who you would put in front of him... please share.
Hell yeah. I wouldn't argue with either. I kind of slot them into the same category as Slash. Very catchy and iconic. Gilmore mastered the art of playing not-fast, which for a guitar player, is kind of unheard of. He plays so slowly and with so much intonation that he's nearly impossible to copy. And he was a savant in the studio. Very similar to Eddie in that regard. It's not a knock on Gilmore, but he gets a little lost inside the whole Pink Floyd thing where it gets hard to separate the instrumentation from the totality. And funnily enough, I actually wrote a paper in college comparing Pink Floyd with Guns n Roses. Particularly the similarities between the Waters/Gilmore dynamic and Axl/Slash. And I really hate to say it, but Gilmore gets mad demerits for his vocals when he took over from Roger Waters. He's not inherently atrocious, but him trying to emulate Waters style is one of the most epic fails in music history in my opinion. Knopfler plays everything with his fingers. He's not the only one--John Densmore from the Doors was the same--but that has such a weird aesthetic effect when playing overdriven rock. Very similar to playing janky folk on an acoustic with a pick. His riffs are dipshit simple, but if you play them with a pick they just don't sound right. I kind of gave up playing him. Although I could play all the notes, it just didn't sound right. And I suck playing with my fingers, so that was that.
And yet he was so much better with Pink Floyd than on his own. His solo stuff is weak sauce in comparison, though a few songs sound pretty decent. He lacked any kind of edginess or real power, but that was abundant in the Floyd. Agreed. But his voice made a great accompaniment or counterpoint to Waters' when they were both in the band.
You are forgetting John Fogerty in your lists. How much more iconic can you get than being sued for copyright infringement of your own songs?
So we’re limiting this to just live guitar payers, as in alive, not just live one stage?( because studio magic plays a big role) That kinda put it in a where-do-I-start quandary. Eric Johnson, Justin Johnson(no relation), Bonnie Raitt, Steve Vai, Eric Clapton, Chena Roxx, Jennifer Batton, Pat Methany, John Butler, Pat Travers, Todd Rundgrin, Carlos Santana, Guthrie Govan, Orianthi….The list could go on and on. In terms of sheer musicianship and technique, I’d rank them above Slash. I think he made a mark with Guns and Roses because he was the one who showed a real musical talent. Without Slash, GNR might have qualified as one of those bands some bored A&R rep threw together to show the higher up execs how hard he was working to sign new talent.
Yeah, a lot of people you can talk about. Ritchie Blackmore and the much-underrated Rik Emmet as well.
