(Credits: Far Out / Heinrich Klaffs)
Fri 14 November 2025 20:15, UK
Rock and roll guitarists are ten a penny, but there isn’t a guitarist out there who never dreamed – in vain – of emulating the otherworldly skills of Jimi Hendrix.
With his psychedelic spirit and revolutionary riffs, few guitarists have ever come close to rivalling Hendrix, but there were certainly a handful of challengers to his throne back in the day.
Chas Chandler’s bass expertise might have gone underrated within the work of The Animals, but we do have the Geordie rocker to thank for the discovery of Jimi Hendrix. After all, it was Chandler who imported Hendrix over to London when the city was at its most swinging. Even still, it took mainstream audiences a little while to cotton on to the mind-bending riffs and psychedelic mastery of his output.
When they eventually did, though, Hendrix became a hero of London’s swinging sixties period, beloved by an entire generation of spaced-out hippies and amphetamine-fueled rockers. Most notably, though, the guitarist seemed to be worshipped by his fellow musicians, with everybody from Paul McCartney to Eric Clapton soaking up every ounce of his output with an unshakable sense of awe and amazement.
Clapton, in fact, was one of the very few guitarists who could have given Hendrix a run for his money back in the 1960s, even if the pair became close comrades over the course of Hendrix’s London years. With Cream, Clapton became a hero of psychedelic guitar, playing riffs and trailblazing techniques the likes of which the rock world had never seen before. Inevitably, then, it didn’t take long for people to start comparing the ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ guitarist with his ‘Voodoo Chile’ counterpart.
Among those drawing parallels and divisions between the two guitarists were their own bandmates. Jack Bruce, for instance, told Bass Player back in 2003, “Certainly I would say that Cream were a more interesting band, although obviously we didn’t have Jimi. But I would say that Eric was a better guitar player.”
That particular argument is one which has been waged on within the guitar world for decades, at this point, but Bruce did at least qualify that the two guitarists were completely different in their sensibilities. Obviously Jimi was Jimi,” he said. “And he could have played the Indian nose flute and it wouldn’t have mattered, because he was playing himself – I think he regarded the guitar as an extension of himself.”
On the other hand, according to the bassist, “In an instrumental sense, I would argue that Eric was at least as good as Jimi, probably better.”
Adding, “I think Cream had something quite magical as a band when we were playing live.” In fairness, it is hard to disagree with Cream’s legendary live shows being “quite magical”, but then again, it isn’t as though Hendrix was short of magic, either.
In the end, Clapton and Hendrix were two entirely different guitarists, even if they both adopted the mind-bending sounds of 1960s psychedelia. Whether one is better than the other is a pretty superfluous argument: both were utter revelations to the rock and roll world. That being said, there is no recording of Clapton that beats Jimi Hendrix at Fillmore East.
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