I always like to think there are three dimensions to the whole music thing... one is playing skills, the other is music theory understanding and application - and the third one is what I see as "being an artist" and this third side can certainly greatly make up for a lack in the former two. All the chops and theory don't mean that much if you do not end up at that magical point where you are clearly communicating and expressing something and it all SOMEHOW magically comes together.
There have been moving and expressive and influential songs written on nothing but two or three (or none) chords but SOMETHING made it all come together and transcend the simple theory and chops at hand, by far.
Adam Jones IS a great example for that.
I am kinda torn on the obscenity Metallica has become but I am with uncle mo, the continuing success alone is nothing to sneeze at regardless of what you think of them individually. At the end of the day, EVERYTHING you are being fed IS a product one way or another. (I know, tool said it) Everything. There are no "saints" in this business, if there ever were. The most "humble" and "honest" multi-platinum guy was just as much made to look like that, more or less depending on each case, but he was managed and produced none the less. Some bands get squeezed too hard into the product corner or were nothing more to begin with, few bands manage to balance "selling" with pure creativity and creating a unique voice and something actually new. Opeth and Tool are great examples for that reason. They manage to deliver and stay unique and do all that over decades. That is pretty frakking special and unique, again regardless whether you like their music or not. That's personal taste. I am talking actual merits.
And there are a couple of metric fucktons of bands you never even got to hear despite the fact they might have been ten times better and "fresher" than what is out there. There are a lot of steps before you even get your songs heard and every minion-with-an-opinion along the way can put you on the shelf for whatever reason.
More often than not, it can be better and healthier to just enjoy the art and focus on what it is doing FOR YOU and what you can get out of it and not look at the artist too much... frakk if I ever have to listen to Hanneman speak again but hailsatan can he write songs! Don't get me started on MJK because that might take way too long and I am saying this as someone who has been looking at this fella from all sorts of angles for a long time.
Hetfield obviously manages to pull it off, he has a good voice and everyone in LaLa-Land knows that's where the money is. On top of that, he can write powerful average-joe songs and deliver riffs that go along with it. And he found people willing to pay for it. Good for him. He got something there.
Kirk, well Kirk wanted to fill his now blue-liquid flying-v with his urine and I think this kinda sums it up somehow. However, there is an important lesson even Kirk can show you. The average audience sees and hears you playing many notes fast, they love it, almost regardless of how unfitting and shitty it might be; for whatever reason "fast" works pretty damn well and you can either choose to use that knowledge or if you choose to play less notes, you better work hard to make each note count since you don't have the (cheesy, cheap but sadly functional) double-hand-tapping bonus going for you.
Also, some of the best players out there, you probably never even heard of them and all they do is give lessons and barely manage to scrape by all their life, maybe for no other reason than being shy and introvert and hating to "sell" themselves or just for being in the wrong place. People like to think very "meritocratic", if you got insane chops you will make the big bucks and things are going to happen for you. Not true, might be sad and disillusioning to realize that but it's just not true, in almost no industry. Most of the time you need a certain package to get places, one outstanding skill alone often isn't enough and you can get stuck along the way for a ton of reasons.
You got to look at things and differentiate more. Just to hate moo-tallica's obscene butts is too simple, too naive.
But let's forget about meh-tallica and let's flip that TABLE up there because still no new Tool album and they robbed me on some artsy-fartsy limited edition CD!!!
And man do I rabble way too much!
He just fits in perfectly and adds something, ALL four of them do and it wouldn't work the same without any one of them or with other players.
