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Jimi hendrix wins poll for greatest rift

You'll never hear surf music again....................

The Jimi Hendrix classic Voodoo Child (Slight Return) has been voted the greatest guitar riff ever recorded.

Taken from the Electric Ladyland album, the 1968 recording came top of a poll of 5,000 musicians conducted by Music Radar.

Mike Goldsmith, editor of the website, said Hendrix remains the "undisputed heavyweight champion" of rock guitar.

Slash's melody from the Guns 'n' Roses hit Sweet Child O' Mine took second place in the poll, with Led Zeppelin's A Whole Lotta Love winning the bronze medal.

Deep Purple's 1972 smash Smoke on the Water and Derek and the Dominoes' Layla came in fourth and fifth respectively.

Mr Goldsmith noted that the only songs from the past decade to feature in the top 20 - Muse's Plug in Baby and The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army - each display Hendrix's "unique blend of experimental instincts and white-knuckle showmanship".

The poll follows a recent index of the greatest songs of the noughties conducted by the Times, which named Seven Nation Army as one of the ten best tracks this decade.
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Comments

  • this thread is going to be fun.
  • who was the rift with?
  • edited November 2009
    Voodoo Child was flat.

    (It was supposed to have been recorded in E and it's actually E flat).
  • I can name at least five hundred better riffs than that. At least.
  • go on then.....
  • [cite]Posted By: Henry Irving[/cite]this thread is going to be fun.

    You're just gutted that Led Zep never claimed top spot.
  • Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi.............In the Army Now ;)
  • They obviously never heard Elmore James "Dust My Broom" (even less, Robert Johnson "Crossroads")
  • Or anything by the Stones or the Beatles
  • edited November 2009
    [cite]Posted By: ads[/cite]go on then.....
    Slayer - South Of Heaven, Dead Skin Mask, Raining Blood (x2), Angel Of Death (x2), Divine Intervention, Spill The Blood, War Ensemble, Seasons In The Abyss (x2), Ghosts Of War
    Metallica - Master Of Puppets (x2), Blackened (x2), And Justice For All (x3), One (x2), Enter Sandman, Wherever I May Roam, Sad But True, Battery (x2), Disposable Heroes (x3), Leper Messiah, Orion (x2), Sanitarium, The Thing That Should Not Be, Creeping Death, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Fight Fire With Fire, Fade To Black, Dyer's Eve, Shortest Straw (x2), Harvester Of Sorrow (x2), Through the Never
    Iron Maiden - 2 Minutes To Midnight (x2), Aces High, Powerslave, Back In The Village, Somewhere In Time, The Trooper, Stranger In A Strange Land, Wasted Years, Infinite Dreams (x2), Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, Number Of The Beast (x2), Run To The Hills (x2), Phantom Of The Opera (x2), 22 Acacia Avenue, Wrathchild, Iron Maiden, Still Life, Deja Vu, Running Free, Drifter, Children Of The Damned

    That's seventy - and I've only chosen three artists, all metal bands. That's without even bothering to look at all the other metal bands, and the hundreds of other non-metal bands in my collection. Even taking into account the subjectivity of other people's musical tastes, Hendrix himself wrote dozens of better riffs than Voodoo Chile (All Along The Watchtower, Hey Joe, Purple Haze spring immediately to mind), so that list is patently bollocks.
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  • is muddy waters in there?
  • no AC-DC?
    Whole lotta Rosie and Back in Black are classics!
  • I prefer Purple Haze myself.
  • Henry, as a matter of interest, are you related to Purple Haze?
  • she's my sister
  • Can't Get No Satisfaction, Paint It Black, just two examples. Keef may be a drug-ruined sack of bones now but way back when he was a genius with a guitar.
  • Gimme Shelter...
    Eight miles high (live)
  • You've obviously never been lying in bed with my missus after she's eaten boiled onions, now that is a rift...
  • One of my favourites is Killing floor by Howling Wolf, I think it was Buddy Guy twanging the wires on that. The guitar sound was like being skewered. Went to see Jools Holland tonight, Dave Edmunds came on and did 4 or 5 numbers, and was superb. The version of Sabre Dance was faster than Usain Bolt in a Ferarri with go faster stripes.
  • [cite]Posted By: Big William[/cite]One of my favourites is Killing floor by Howling Wolf, I think it was Buddy Guy twanging the wires on that. The guitar sound was like being skewered. Went to see Jools Holland tonight, Dave Edmunds came on and did 4 or 5 numbers, and was superb. The version of Sabre Dance was faster than Usain Bolt in a Ferarri with go faster stripes.

    I have tickets and hope to go tomorrow night, just read the write up and was well pleased to see Dave Edmunds name there. I must admit to not noticing it when I booked the tickets, no Sam Brown though.............BOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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  • so what was the full list?
  • edited November 2009
    Had the pleasure/distinction of seeing Hendrix twice...(might even have been 3 times)...deffo once at Bromley Court Hotel(possibly twice?), one of his very first live gigs in The UK and once at Chislehurst Caves.
    Amazingly I, and just about everyone else there, didn't have a clue that we were listening to someone who would go on to become a world class super star.
    I feel almost ashamed to say that as a young teenager, who was very much into the Mod scene at that time, I admit I didn't appreciate what I was seeing and hearing that much...I was a commited Mod and as such was more of a Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band/Tamla Motown/Blue Beat/Ska/Soul/The Who(very varied though the bands were) afficionado....but I do remember thinking that Hendrix 'was' a great talent....I went to many gigs in those days as more of 'a Mod on the scene thing' than specificly to listen (with any great intent that is) to the music, which of course I now very much regret.One has to remember that a large percentage of the audience were 'speeding out of their nuts' and were very much into the Mod social side of the event. Such was the enormous amount of readily available live music that we took too much for granted one has to say....we were in a nutshell thoroughly spoilt. I of course learned to listen and appreciate music far more as an art form over the ensuing years.
    When one thinks of the artists I saw (Clapton and Elton John for example are two that readily spring to mind), who were just bit part members of various bands and weren't stars in their own right at that time I could kick myself....it 'was' the golden age' of 'live' British Rock Music with incredible live bands playing in the area almost every night of the week...you were spoiled for choice to be honest and even at that young age one could barely keep up with the music scene, so enormous and varied was it both in style and quality.
    90% of these live gigs were 5/- entry...i.e. 25p......and the average Disco(where we listened to Soul/Blue Beat/Ska/ Tamla Motown etc)...2/6 i.e. 12.5p!
    Oh what happy days...I've led the most amazing life(if I say so myself) but that was the era I shall cherish more than any other and indeed for ever and a day.
    Of course I'm also not forgetting those incredible times in The Covered End at The Valley during that era as well ....so so different from nowadays, indeed so different as to be worlds apart.
  • Not that I particularly like it these days, but I would have thought that Smoke on the Water was the distinctive winner.
  • Comfortably numb??
  • I'm surprised that Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King, Albert King amongst many other guitarists from the Blues side of the fence havent been mentioned.
  • Can't argue with Hendrix but there are so, so many. Leaving aside the righteous examples already suggested, a five minute flick through the i-pod revealed -

    Wild Night - Van Morrison
    Venus de Milo - Television
    Sweet Jane - Velvets
    Roadrunner - Modern Lovers
    Whole Lotta love - Zeppelin
    Atmosphere - Joy Division
    Baba O'Reilly - the Who
    Peaches - The Stranglers
    Dig Me out - Sleater Kinney
    bodies - the Pistols
    Alex Chilton - The Replacements
    Into the Sun - The Libertines

    The Ramones need their own top 20.

    I could go on.......
  • soundas brings back the memories...Cream at th BCH were good, especially Jack Bruce.
    Original Fleetwood mac...Albatros
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd - Freebird? Must get a mention somewhere surely.
  • sweet jane the velvets
  • Hendrix himself wrote dozens of better riffs than Voodoo Chile (All Along The Watchtower, Hey Joe, Purple Haze spring immediately to mind), so that list is patently bollocks........
    Come on Leroy, You should know that Watchtower was written by Dylan, who he himself has acknowledged was played better by Hendrix. And Hey Joe was written either by Tim Rose or Dino Valenti, depending on your view of copyright....

    Although I do not usually participate in who's is best, most popular etc , Jimi's music has not only stood the test of time, it has gone on to inspire thousands of musicians, with probably only Dylan as an equal IMO. Fan's may argue about the fastest, quickest, player,but i think most if not all guitarists, Clapton, Beck, Gallagher, Zappa, Page, etc etc, etc would want to dispue that Jimi not only changed the sound of guitar but popular music as it is today...... and that quote is from Pete Townsend. McCartney, Richards, and later day artist's such as Slash and Krevitz , even Buddy Guy acknowledges Jimi as unique and original. Star spangled banner, Machine Gun, and Voodoo Chile slight return stand up to any guitar music.

    Of course there are great guitar riffs, but as this poll was from fellow guitarists, I think that it has some validity. When you see Jimi playing at the Albert hall, and the pop festivals of Atlanta, Woodstock, Isle of Wight, and Monterey, frankly the guy had it down to a art form.... Try watching Hendrix on the Lulu show, we can all play the riff, with or without a 100 watt Marshall plexi amp, and if you can nominate an equal original guitarist please feel free to nominate them.....
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