Re: Eric Clapton - there has been A LOT of discussion within the threads on him.
This is so dumb. There are sooooooo many "guitar gods" that I don't particularly like. That doesn't mean that they aren't guitar gods. "Guitar god" is something that masses of people think of you, not a set of things that you do to meet certain people's specific musical criteria and tastes. When you are a top-tier guitar god, pretty much everyone who has ever listened to rock or pop music in the past 60 years, and even people who haven't, knows who you are, and think you are good (whether it's "true" or not). It's more about holding a particular status in pop culture than what you actually play.
I see it like so:
Eric Clapton is definitely a big guitar god. Even people who can't name any of his bands from the '60's think that. There are not a lot of guitar gods that hold that level of god-dom in the eyes of the general public. B.B. King, Hendrix, Page, EVH, Slash, and maybe Keith Richards are pretty much it, off the top of my head.
Then there are ones that are still popularly known, but not by face or by name quite as universally. You're probably a little more into rock music specifically if you know these people. Pete Townshend is the perfect example. Angus Young. Jerry Garcia. Mark Knopfler and David Gilmour fall in here too. Maybe "The Edge" too, and maybe Brian May. Chuck Berry (though maybe not any more among the younger generations). They are people who played on hugely popular music among the general public, therefore their playing is well known and highly regarded, but whose names and faces and instruments the general public might not exactly know that well – only those who are a bit more into music. They often have to be referred to as, "the guitarist from [such and such band]" before any idiot on the street will know who you're talking about (but once you say it, they do know).
Then you move into the ones that the general public might not recognize it all, but big music fans and musicians will. They are regarded as gods by these people, even though the worship is a good step more cultish in nature. Peter Green falls in here (though he seems to be becoming more and more popularly known). Rory, Koss, Mick Taylor, Ray and Dave Davies, Alvin Lee, someone mentioned earlier. Ron Asheton, Wayne Kramer, Sonic Smith, James Williamson. Dick Dale, Link Wray, Lonnie Mack, Nokie Edwards. Charlie Christian, Django, Wes Montgomery, Grant Green. Freddie King, Albert King, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Johnson, Muddy, Lightnin', Robert Johnson. Scotty Moore, Hank Garland, Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Franny Beecher, Cliff Gallup. Robbie Krieger, Sam Andrews and Dave Gurley, Jorma, Stephen Stills. Frank Zappa. These people are regarded as gods by a healthy amount of people, but far fewer people than those mentioned above, and definitely people who are specifically into music. The people who love them are totally into them, and often think they are far more deserving of high guitar god status than those "above" them. And there's heavy metal here too. Pretty much everybody here is considered a guitar god – way too many people to think about trying to list.
Then there are the guitar gods that most people know only because they're on the covers of guitar magazines. They are often very technically skilled, but almost nobody has any damned idea what music they've ever played on, or if it was actually any good (but probably not). You know who they are. Vai, Satriani, Bonamassa, just to name the most obvious examples. I put a lot of the prog-rock guys here as well, even though they're probably somewhere in between here and the last category.
And the statement a few posts back that Peter Green made it through the 70's without releasing a bunch of crap is just hilarious to me. I'm surprised his body made it through the 70's at all, and his mind most certainly did not. And nobody in their right mind could say that he did not go downhill musically, even if you think that what he released post Fleetwood Mac was not "crap."
As for the statement that I have an obsession with calling people trolls, that is also B.S. It is something that I very, very rarely say. It has to be into response to a statement that is so ridiculous, yet stated with such plain conviction, there are no other explanations aside from sheer, mind-numbing ignorance or trolling. Since I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, I start by assuming the lesser evil of them: trolling. I said it to two people who made statements that were so blatantly wrong, I didn't know what else to think. And the second time I said it was a reference to and continuation of the first time.
At any rate, I don't claim, or come anywhere close to claiming that Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, or Peter Green are not guitar gods. They most certainly are. My point is that they are not '60's guitar gods who made it through the '70's without releasing crap, or at least going downhill...and, in fact, of them, only Clapton and Green are actually '60's guitar gods. Gilmour is clearly known as a '70's guitar god, even though he joined Pink Floyd in the late '60's, and Mark Knopfler is practically an '80's guitar god. Absolutely terrible, dead wrong examples to disprove my earlier point about '60's guitar gods going downhill in the '70's and beyond.
