I was just searching around for guitar news and came across the Rolling Stone article (by Pete Townshend 1983) 'The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.' Obviously Pete knows his guitar, and players, especially having lived in, and experiencing first-hand some of the most developmental times in the evolution of guitar playing.

However, and I say this at the risk of being hunted down and strung up, I just never got Jimi Hendrix, Townshend's greatest player of all time, to the extent that most people seem to. Before you start thinking how stupid I must be, I will say that I do/did like the guy and his playing ability, but I was never awe-struck like most seem to be.

Hendrix was a fantastic player, there's no doubt, but I think there's been several (if not many) other players that I would put above him in both playing ability and performance. Jimmy Page comes to mind if you're thinking Rock guys. If you wanna get into other genres, which I guess isn't fair if we're comparing apples to apples, there are many, many guys (and girls (Liona Boyd)) that could play circles around Jimi Hendrix.

From the tone of Townshend's article I realize he was not only taking the final product (the music) into consideration when branding Hendrix 'The Greatest', but was figuring in his whole persona, which I'm sure lifted him up to God-like status, but when it's just about the music I'm sorry, but he just doesn't cut it.

In closing, if we were to consider actual technical ability on the instrument, players such as Segovia and Parkening, as well as many, many other players in jazz, classical and other genres, including rock are light years ahead of Hendrix, but that's just one man's opinion, and from what seems to be the popular opinion of Jimi Hendrix, an ignorant man's opinion at that.