Are guitarists as willing to stick to their guns today in terms of originality?
As time passes, it’s getting harder and harder to be original. Much like any form of music that’s been around, rock and roll, when it was new, was open territory. Now, a lot has been covered. Every once in a while something does happen — nu metal was different — but there’s a lot of “Oh, that band sounds like …” There’s always a “sounds like” attached these days. It’s OK; not everybody can reinvent rock and roll. So the best thing you can do is to play what you love, and if you have something different, how you pick or whatever, that’s all cool. I think we’ll eventually have another guitar hero. Will he be less original than Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen? Likely. But someone will come out. Who was the last guitar hero? Who was the last guy to get his own Les Paul model? There are great players out there. The frontier of the guitar hero is getting harder and harder. I look forward to meeting that guy who has something new, a new approach. I had a guy come through for one session and he h
