Rolling Stone top 100 Guitarists - Howe/Van Halen

"I think people think he is the world's best guitar player simply because there has been 40 years of hype about him!"

Yes, hype/promotion is key!

#'s are required to objectively measure anything. Hype/promotion is the key to exposure and obtaining #'s.

The music industry has always understood this principle well.

Popularity assures some level of ability and influence on others usually but level of popularity does not correlate to level of quality. Artistic quality is a very subjective thing to measure as we all know. Still, there are many who are influential beyond their level of mass popularity. That usually is an indicator that something special may be going on there.

Clapton is good but certainly not better than many others to me.

Clapton. Badge. Brilliant.

My true Stevie Ray Vaughn story.

My first visit to Austin, TX was in 1983. A huge group of us were walking down 6th street about 6pm which is really early to be out on a Saturday night, it was a typical beautiful November (or late October) night and a bunch of people were already starting to congregate outside some random bar.

We walked over to see what was so interesting that early (2 for 1 drinks maybe?) and some dude is sitting on the stage by himself playing the guitar. So we squeeze in and basically steal a table, place maybe seated 70 people legally, and order some drinks. I had no idea who this guy was, and he's just jamming by himself, both with his acoustic and electric guitars as people are setting up equipment for a band. People start pouring into the bar at this point and Austin PD closes off the bar and the sidewalk right outside the bar. They come in an BS with the guy playing the guitar so they obviously know him.

Well the guy was Stevie Ray Vauhgn, and the bar was owned by some buddy of his, and his band just wanted to play that night so the called him and asked if it was OK. To this day I have never seen anyone play the guitar like that. He sat up there for about 45 minutes playing by himself, his brother came up and jammed with him a little but mostly he just seemed to be praticing.

So they got off the stage at about 7, hung out at the bar eating BBQ (County Line I am sure, very good if you are in Austin), and BS-ing (while we got very drunk) then the took the stage again about 9 pm with the full band and played until midnight.

Easily in my top 3 entertainment experiences ever. They were just great, and he was abolutely amazing. I never saw Jimmy Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Chuck Barry or Jeff Beck. But I have seen Pete Townsend (great,well the band was great), BB King (great), Eric Clapton (see above), EVH (great), Steve Howe (great), Keith Richard, Lindsey Buckingham, Kirk Hammet, ..... I've seen a lot of guys live I guess. But no one ever just blew me away like SRV did. Maybe it's because I didn't know who he was before I heard him play, but man what an amazing talent.

people have rioted and died for lesser things than disrespecting david gilmour thus...

What, no George Gobel? B-O-G-U-S