Every guitarist has their one: the figure who inspired them the most at the beginning, and continues to inform their work until the end. While all hold numerous players close to their heart, if you ask any worth their salt, there is always one who pips the rest in significance.
For Queen legend Brian May, he truly believed blues-rock pioneer Eric Clapton was the absolute pinnacle of playing in the mid-late 1960s when he had already made a mark with The Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, and was instituting the psychedelic tidal wave with Cream following the release of their first single ‘Wrapping Paper’ in October 1966.
However, his outlook on the world of guitar playing changed on January 29th, 1967. The then-20 year old, along with the rest of London’s most in-the-know music lovers, ranging from fresh-faced fans like himself to the era’s greats such as all four Beatles, were on hand at London’s Saville Theatre to watch The Jimi Hendrix Experience in action. The group had not long since formed in London, but whispers were already circulating about the immense talent of their leader and namesake.
Everyone in attendance witnessed history that night, and all the prominent figures who were there have explained in the years that followed that Hendrix’s unique fusion of delicate blues with a hitherto unheard of heaviness made them return to the drawing board and improve the quality of their art moving forward. This newcomer had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and from then on until his tragic 1970 death, he was to be at the forefront of guitar playing, setting the scene for the likes of metal and alt rock.
Understandably, Hendrix’s playing opened May’s eyes to the possibilities that the guitar and the newfangled effects pedals offered, with the bombast of his performances on classics such as ‘Brighton Rock’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ evidently related to the late American’s style. For May, when he left The Saville Theatre that night, Clapton had been resoundingly deposed as the greatest axeman on the planet, and it’s a belief he holds to this day.
The performance confirmed to him that early Hendrix singles such as ‘Hey Joe’ were not feats of studio deception, rather moments of undisputed genius. Interestingly, as a budding guitarist this was as energising as it was demoralising, though, as he thought there was simply no way he could ever rise to the supreme heights of the Seattle maestro.
Speaking to Guitar Player in 1983, May compared Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck with Hendrix: “I thought after seeing those two, I’d seen it all. I had been playing all that time, and I could play that style. I was beginning to make the guitar sort of talk. I always wanted the guitar to play for people, to talk the same way a vocal did and have feeling in it. I didn’t want it to be an accompanying instrument. Then, when I saw Hendrix, I thought, ‘Oh, my god. This guy is doing everything that I was trying to do.’ He just made me feel like I couldn’t play.”
Reflecting on his first time hearing Hendrix, May added: “I heard him play on a single of ‘Hey Joe’, and on the flip side, there’s an amazing solo on ‘Stone Free’, where he’s talking to the guitar and it’s talking back to him. I thought, ‘Well, he can’t really be that good. He must have done that with studio technique’.”
