(Credits: Far Out / Estate of Jimi Hendrix / Public Domain)
Wed 8 April 2026 19:15, UK
November 25th, 1966, a young guitarist from Seattle took to the stage, white Stratocaster in hand and a smile on his face. Long story short, Jimi Hendrix had no idea how much he was about to change the world.
Hendrix had already been making waves in America, but these were mere ripples compared to what he did in the UK, as it was his move to London which really aided his rise to fame. There was no escaping his talent, as he played for bands such as The Isley Brothers in the US, but whenever he tried to establish himself as a solo artist, the critique was always the same: nobody knew how to market him.
The man was animalistic in his approach to the six-string; he wasn’t just technically proficient, but he was one of the most chaotic performers on the planet. Audiences everywhere were captivated by the way that he played, but in a world driven by record sales, this style of playing wasn’t necessarily going to sell albums.
Linda Keith, Keith Richards’ girlfriend at the time, was a huge fan of Hendrix before he went to the UK, and had seen him perform on plenty of occasions. After experiencing the magnitude of a Jimi Hendrix gig, she couldn’t believe that nobody had picked up the guitarist yet, and wanted to try to help him land a record deal.
“I couldn’t believe nobody had picked up on him before, because he’d obviously been around,” she said. “Jimi was astonishing, the moods he could bring to music, his charisma, his skill and stage presence.”
When she learned that The Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, was going to watch Hendrix play, she decided to help him out by lending him one of her boyfriend’s top-of-the-line guitars. “I must admit the circumstances were less [than] savoury,” she said, “I never actually told Keith that I had taken the guitar because he was away on tour. Jimi used that guitar for [the auditions] and there on in. I doubt Keith ever knew it was missing.”
Despite having a great guitar to play, it didn’t help, as Oldham opted not to work with Hendrix. Sure, he could play the guitar, but despite that encapsulating live show, Oldham didn’t think anybody was going to buy his records, and so opted to leave the Seattle-born guitar player. It was looking like no one would ever be interested in working with Hendrix, that is, until The Animals’ bassist, Chas Chandler, heard him play.
Credit: Alamy
Chandler is probably the only person who could have signed Jimi Hendrix, as it took another musician who was transitioning into the managerial side of the music industry to recognise that while Hendrix’s songs might not have been the most radio-friendly, catchy numbers, there was no doubt about his potential or how special he was. The two of them spoke, and the former convinced him to fly to London, where, at the height of innovative rock music, he would be able to play to audiences that would no doubt be obsessed with his style, and Hendrix agreed. After borrowing $40 from a friend to pay for plane tickets, he was on his way, crossing the ocean, wide-eyed and ready to cement himself as the greatest guitar player of all time, and he really was the greatest guitarist in the world.
Give fans of rock music a pub to sit in, a pint to drink and a topic to discuss, chances are it will take less than ten minutes before they’re debating who the greatest guitarist is, and while there are a number of names which usually come up during these discussions, including the likes of Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Slash, Ritchie Blackmore, and Angus Young, all excellent choices, none of them holds a candle to Hendrix, and they would be the first to tell you that.
Before Jimi Hendrix played his first solo gig in London on November 25th, he took part in an impromptu performance with Eric Clapton and Cream. “He asked if he could play a couple of numbers,” recalled Eric Clapton, “I said, ‘Of course’, but I had a funny feeling about him”.
At the time, Eric Clapton was one of the most exciting guitarists on the scene. Having already played in The Yardbirds and starting to put together the initial foundation of prog rock with Cream, he wasn’t the kind of artist people just jammed with on a whim. If it had been anybody else that night, Clapton would have played them off the stage, but not Hendrix. After they jammed a few songs together, Clapton knew he had seen the future, as the new bar for guitar greats was raised to the height of Hendrix.
“He played just about every style you could think of, and not in a flashy way,” said Clapton, “I mean he did a few of his tricks, like playing with his teeth and behind his back, but it wasn’t in an upstaging sense at all, and that was it…”
“He walked off, and my life was never the same again”.
Eric Clapton
He continued, “It was funny, in those days, anybody could get up with anybody if you were convincing enough that you could play. He got up and blew everyone’s mind. I just thought, ‘Ahh, someone that plays the stuff I love in the flesh, on stage with me’. I was actually privileged to be [on stage with him]… It’s something that no one is ever going to beat; that incident, that night, it’s historic in my mind but only a few people are alive that would remember it.”
A month later, Jimi Hendrix would play his first official solo gig in London, and in the year that followed, he would rise to the top and be considered one of the greatest guitarists in the world. While those names mentioned earlier are all worthy contenders for said mantle, they would all agree that the only person it could ever truly belong to was Hendrix. His approach to the guitar, his animalistic playing style, and the effortless way he improvised over scales and could make them either hellish or angelic in nature was unlike anyone who had come before and anyone who has come since.
(Credits: Far Out / Chris Hakkens)
Let’s consider some of the guitarists who are commonly included in the greatest of all time debate and see what they thought about Hendrix. For instance, when Jimmy Page was talking about his favourite guitarists, he said the debate seemed slightly frivolous. “We’ve lost the best guitarist any of us ever had,” he said, “And that was Hendrix”, while also admitting that he would never listen to Hendrix’s music when writing because he knew he would find himself too influenced by it.
Jeff Beck was at one of those early Hendrix gigs, and the moment the Seattle guitarist took to the stage, he knew he was witnessing the evolution of the instrument he loved, recalling, “He came on, and I went, ‘Oh, my God’. He had the military outfit on and hair that stuck out all over the place. They kicked off with [Bob Dylan’s] ‘Like a Rollin’ Stone’, and I thought, ‘Well, I used to be a guitarist’.”
AC/DC have always been praised as a band who use simplistic chord sequences but shapes them in a way so that they sound unique, blues-infused and heavy as hell. Those riffs also provide the perfect backdrop for Angus Young to solo over, as he goes crazy with those flippant fingers, playing face-melting solos all over the world. Young admits that a lot of his soloing technique comes from Jimi Hendrix, as he was inspired by him from a young age, and wasn’t just obsessed with what he played, but how he played it.
“And around when I was about 13/14, that’s when Jimi Hendrix appeared on the horizon,” he said, “And when I first heard the song ‘Purple Haze’, I was totally enthralled. ‘How’s he doing that?’ I was just so impressed with it. When along came Hendrix, you kind of went, ‘Woah! This is another level on guitar’. So I was very much a fan of that.”
Genres like the blues aren’t just made up of technically proficient guitarists, but also musicians who can play notes in a way that nobody else can. Given Hendrix’s style was an evolved version of the blues, he carried this ethos with him, as even if the solo he was riding over was pretty simple in nature, there is nobody out there who could play it in the same way he could. Steve Vai spoke about this side of Hendrix, saying you can learn how to play songs like ‘Little Wing’ all you like, but you’ll never make it sound like Hendrix did.
(Credits: Far Out / Klaus Hellmerich)
“Although learning to play a Jimi Hendrix song for most contemporary guitarists may not pose a tremendous challenge, playing them just like Jimi has never quite been achieved,” he said, “His touch on the instrument, sense of groove, choice of notes and overall ability to control audio chaos in innovative ways was remarkable.”
OK, last one. While Hendrix was capable of playing the guitar better than anybody else and tapping into a style that felt both accessible and alien, he also carried himself incredibly well. Being a rockstar doesn’t just mean playing, but it also means looking good while doing it. Slash admitted that out of every musician on the planet, scratch that, person, nobody has ever looked as cool while playing as Hendrix did.
“I remember when I was a kid, probably about 13 or 14 years old, there was a Hendrix movie that used to play at weekends along with The Song Remains The Same,” the Guns N’ Roses guitarist recalled, “There’s definitely a fascination with Hendrix’s persona, his demeanour, which seemed very, very cool. I don’t think you could get too much cooler than Jimi Hendrix.”
That was a lot of names, but the point remains, it’s hard to have a genuine debate on who the best guitarist to ever live was, when every other musician who is usually brought up in such a debate all look towards the same man: Jimi Hendrix. It’s also worth noting that he was only ever a mainstream guitarist for about four years, and so the fact that people still talk about him, and the fact that he’s still considered one of the best, decades after his death and after only being in the public eye for a short time, further evidences his dominance over the guitar.
The beauty of music is the subjectivity of it, and so we can never definitively say who the best guitarist ever is; however, it’s a little bit like those toothpaste adverts you see on TV. If nine out of ten guitarists recommend Jimi Hendrix, then it’s probably Jimi Hendrix, right?
