Buddy Guy was a hero to the electric guitar players of the British blues boom. When he first arrived in England with his trio in the mid-1960s, his high-energy style, built around amp overdrive, feedback and a potent mix of raw emotion and technical skill, made a lasting impression.
But while the blues guitar legend helped inspire a generation of British players, he felt they took his approach to extremes — particularly when it came to volume.
Guy even had to warn Jimi Hendrix about what awaited him in the clubs where those guitarists played. And Hendrix, as Guy points out, was hardly known for keeping things quiet.
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“You’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud,” Guy says of Hendrix in the December 2025 issue of Guitar World. “When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound.”
The British players, however, had a different idea of how loud the blues should be.
“When the British guys started playing, they had stacks of Marshalls! After I got to know Jimi, I’d go see him and [warn him], ‘Before you go in there, you ain’t gonna hear nothing.’ That type of sound just took over.
“That clean sound went away because, with the amplifiers, it was a dogfight. And then all the special effects came in, and Jimi, I think he was one of the greatest that ever took advantage of the special effects, because a lot of people used them after him.”
Despite their different approaches to the blues, Hendrix was a huge admirer of Guy, even going to see him perform in 1967. The two eventually met in New York, where Guy initially mistook Hendrix’s signature stage moves for his own.
“I got invited to play in New York City. I was putting on the ‘Buddy Guy show,’ with my guitar behind my back and throwing it around,” he told Guitar Player of their first meeting. “And somebody said to me, ‘Look out, man, that’s Jimi Hendrix over there!’ — ’cause those were Jimi’s moves.
“But I said, ‘So what? Who the hell is that?’
“Eventually, Jimi came over to me and introduced himself. He said, ‘I just canceled a gig, ’cause I wanted to see you.’ And that’s how we became friends.”
Still, Guy wasn’t interested in following Hendrix down the road of elaborate effects and increasingly adventurous guitar sounds. He preferred to stick with the blues players who had shaped his own musical upbringing.
“I was into Arthur Crudup, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and all the old blues guys,” Guy told GP on a separate occasion. “I wasn’t into all the special effects. I liked what Hendrix was doing when I heard it. But I decided to let him have that. I figured my time would come.”
Eric Clapton was another guitarist captivated by Guy’s playing. In fact, Clapton has said that seeing Guy’s power trio perform in London inspired him to leave John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and form Cream.
In related news, Guy has discussed the one thing every guitarist needs to play the blues and reflected on his slightly unusual relationship with his son.
“He didn’t know who I was until he could turn 21 and get into the blues clubs,” Guy has revealed. “He said, ‘Dad, I didn’t know you could play like that!’”
