I disagree, he was a poor classical guitarrist. He was a hard rock/metal guitarrist who incorporated some classical ideas (i.e. diatonic scales, arpeggios) into his playing. As a true fingerstlye classical guitarrist he was nothing special. Check out Dee, it's a nice song, but compare it to music played by somebody like Elliot Fisk, Chris Parkening, John Williams, and it sounds like the work of an amateur.
If what you mean is that his lead guitar ideas came more from classical music, well I'd still debate that (A lot of his pentatonic stuff sounds much more like it's coming from blues based rock than from bach) but I think there's a stronger argument. In that he used trills, played fast, and that he often played diatonic scales, his rock playing was influenced by classical music. Imho these are quite superficial, surface aspects that don't really make music classical, but many people look at things that way and I understand where they're coming from.
