Who's your guitar daddy now?

My best guitar daddy experience live recently was seeing Dick Dale live in a very intimate venue and being right up front.

Despite his age qualifying as a guitar great grandaddy even, he was energized, spontaneous and seemed geneuinely happy to be there, even staying to chat with fans afterwards while sitting on stage. Needless to say , he smoked throughout the night on guitar, even breaking out into other genres besides his trademark "surf guitar" style. The best guitar concert ever for me. Worth 10X the $18 cost of admission.

Tvad, Clapton's commercial success is a two edged sword. The positives are obvious, but the downside has him trapped as a mid-60 year old man having to play what he played when he was in his 20s. Forty years of playing "Crossroads" and "Badge" has got to take it's toll. And if he tries something different, then his fans will probably abandon him. Think Miles Davis. Some purist never forgave him from going beyond the Shorter/Hancock quintet. He said he just couldn't play "My Funny Valentine" anymore. It was too emotional for him. You grow old and you evolve, but your fans always want something from and idealized past.

Eddie Van Halen once confessed that he couldn't currently play many of the guitar parts from the first few Van Halen albums. At the time he had a family and other interests and just wasn't playing guitar 10 to 12 hours everyday. It doesn't matter who you are, but nobody stays at their peak.

My guitar Daddy has always been Frank Zappa. But my step Daddy is John Abercrombie.