10 Live Covers Of Hard Rock Songs You Need To Hear
7. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) - Stevie Ray Vaughan
Jimi Hendrix was the catalyst that sent guitar playing into the stratosphere. There were great rock guitarists before him, with Peter Green, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton all hailed as guitar virtuosos; Clapton famously being imbued with the divine label of 'God' by his fans. When Hendrix came, God was forsaken.
When Jimi Hendrix died in 1970 the world lost its guitar messiah. Waiting in the wings, however, was a young Stevie Ray Vaughan. By the 1980s, critics, contemporaries and fans were all calling Vaughan the next Hendrix and a reincarnation of the master of psychedelic rock. Vaughan famously responded to this comparison by stating "There's only one Jimi Hendrix". Nevertheless, there was no question where Stevie Ray's style and technique had come from.
Vaughan recorded and performed a number of Hendrix covers, but this particular live version of Voodoo Child channelled the wild enigmatic spirit of Hendrix while displaying Vaughan's own mastery of the guitar.
Like his idol, Vaughan died tragically young, but unlike Hendrix his death was not the result of substance abuse. Vaughan had kicked his own addiction in 1986, only to die tragically in a helicopter crash four years later.