Guitar Heroes ( Where have they gone? )

Some common questions I ask many of my young guitar students are; "who is your favourite guitar player?"or "can you name 5 guitarist who have had an influenced your playing?" or "what is the name of the guitar player(s) in your favourite band?" Most of the time the response I get is total silence or they might just blurt out a name like Eric Clapton or Santana even though they have no knowledge of any of their songs or description of their style.

In my youth, as a guitarist, I had 10 to 20 favourite players who I knew most everything about and who had a profound influence on my playing. These were the people who taught my how: to play, to work hard, to jump around on stage, to choose the right gear, to practice, to get good tone, to use different scales for different styles, to create, and with all that and more they inspired me to great things in music.

Fast forward to present times and besides a few Youtube 'guitar sensations', you have an industry of homogenous and faceless of musicians serving in a utility role of sounding like everyone else, who are trying desperately to figure out what the next "big trend"will be rather than being true inspirational artist
and taking up the guitar heroes mantle. It's like we are in the 'dark ages' of the electric guitar.

“I started out playing guitar because Jimi Hendrix was my hero, so my roots were really based on Jimi Hendrix and his style of playing.” ~ Joe Satriani