Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix carried the blues through technology. He learned from rhythm and blues circuits, moved through Greenwich Village, broke in London, and almost immediately made the electric guitar sound less like a louder acoustic instrument than a complete weather system: feedback, wah-wah, fuzz, tremolo, stereo movement and controlled noise.

His songs and performances connect several nodes at once. He belongs to blues rock because the blues never leaves his phrasing; to psychedelic rock because the studio and stage become hallucinatory spaces; and to hard rock because his volume, distortion and physical command reshape what rock guitar can be.