Originally Posted by: jiujitsu_jesusPersonally, I don't think modern "greats" such as Vai, Petrucci, Van Halen and their vast army of imitators have a great deal going for them, aside from the fact that they can play scales ridiculously fast.

I don't think that's accurate at all, considering the times when they first appeared. Trust me when I say that lots of guitartists were getting sick of the 'same old' stuff back in the late 70's. Everybody and his grandmother was trying to sound either like Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page or even Tom Scholz of Boston. I'd even add Jeff Beck to the short list, but the guy didn't get a lot of radio airplay at all, it seemed. I grew up on what is now callled classic rock, name the act, I saw them. EVH blew into town, then rewrote and redefined what hard rock & metal was to become. Nobody could do what Eddie was doing at the time, and nobody else was really coming close. It was all new. Well into the eighties, EVH was arguably THE best guitarist on the planet because so many people were trying to copy his techniques.

Steve Vai took what EVH started and brought it to the next level. Remember...this guy played and learned from Zappa as his 2nd guitarist. By the mid 80's or so, SV was pulling on the whammy while doing a lefthand harmonic run.... everyone else was just doing dive bombs because they had the trem arm. Vai never got a lot of radio airplay either; Too many disc jocks were busy playing sappy ballads and crap off of MTV.