(Credits: Far Out / Sony Music Entertainment)
Mon 1 September 2025 16:00, UK
Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitar player there ever was and ever will be. Not sure you agree? Allow me to explain.
There are plenty of guitarists who enter the conversation when people begin discussing who the greatest guitarist of all time is, and all of those names are worthy of being part of the debate. Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Slash, BB King, and plenty more, where would we (and music) be without them? They have brought joy to the lives of so many with their individual playing styles, and all are fantastic musicians, but they don’t hold a candle to Hendrix.
You need to keep in mind that when we talk about Jimi Hendrix that he hasn’t had the decades to perform and cement his legacy in the same way that the other names mentioned above have. Jimi Hendrix was only a mainstream artist for around four years before he passed away, but that was all the time he needed to cement himself as one of the all time greats. There was a lot to enjoy about his music, the way he improvised freely over pentatonic scales, his impulsivity as a performer, and his animalistic nature meant he was a music genius and incredibly entertaining as well.
Jeff Beck was one of the biggest guitarists in London when Hendrix hopped on that plane and flew overseas, and he remembered the moment that he first saw the Seattle-born guitar hero pick up a six-string. “He went on, and I went, ‘Oh, my God’. He had the military outfit on and hair that stuck out all over the place,” he said, “They kicked off with [Bob Dylan’s] ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, and I thought, ‘Well, I used to be a guitarist’.”
Of course, while Hendrix was considered by many to be a game-changing musician, he was an incredibly humble man. He was never one to acknowledge his own greatness and would much rather just let his music do the talking. When Dick Cavett mentioned that people call him “One of the best guitar players in the world,” Hendrix responded plainly, saying that he was “The greatest sitting in this chair, maybe.”
He was much quicker to praise his fellow guitar players before he accepted praise himself. There were plenty of musicians he liked to talk about as being some of his favourites, and when people would call him the greatest, Hendrix would turn the attention towards one of his contemporaries. While this is very noble, it has also led to a common disagreement within music, surrounding one particular phrase that Hendrix was rumoured to say.
The phrase is “I don’t know, go ask…” Hendrix allegedly said this about the guitar player he considered the greatest in the world. However, who he was talking about is widely contested, so let’s settle this once and for all.
So, who did Jimi Hendrix consider the best guitarist?
“I don’t know, go ask…” The famous words that were uttered by Hendrix when he was discussing the greatest guitarist in the world, but who was he talking about?
Well, there are a number of rumours. He was a fan of the playing style of the likes of Billy Gibbons and Terry Kath, both of whom would be well-placed to be called one of the greatest guitarists in the world towards the back end of the ‘60s. It’s also very broadly covered that he was talking about Rory Gallagher. However, the real answer might disappoint a lot of people: Jimi Hendrix wasn’t talking about anyone.
Yes, while these words have been spread like wildfire and assigned to a number of different musicians, there is no evidence to suggest that Hendrix ever actually said them. This is one of those musical rumours which has circulated throughout the industry and continued to have life injected into it throughout the decades. Sorry to disappoint Hendrix fans, but it looks as though this famous line is nothing more than a myth.
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