The same article popped up on the Larrivée guitar forum, and I finally had a chance to read the article.

Oh good grief, what a click-bait title they gave it. This time, reading it made me angry with how many incorrect assumptions the author makes.

Here's what I wrote about the assumptions he made which I find to be fundamentally flawed: ( I might have gone a little hard on him for his Rush comment)

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Assumption 1 not backed up by facts: Guitar solo heros - since there aren't as many now as the music styles drove in the 70's and 80's = death of electric guitar.

Wrong. Author is right that the guitar solo is no longer a standard feature in pop music;

However, name one Beatles killer guitar solo or the Beatle's guitar hero worship song. The Beatles had great riffs, but very little in the way of blistering solos. The Beatles were hugely responsible for the surge in guitar sales at the time. Epiphone was sure glad for the Beatles. The lack of pop-culture worship of soloist wizardry does not equal a death of the electric guitar. Here's the actual reality; there are thousands of guitar wizards across the planet today that only YouTube users know about. Guitar solo wizardry has become somewhat of a commodity. Long ago, that wasn't the case. There are under 10 year old kids that can play anything that the guitar heros of olde were know for - they didn't invent it, but they can play it. Pick any killer solo, with the words '10 year old' on a Youtube search, and you are almost assured some kid has a video posted of him or her blazing through an Eddie Van Halen solo and doing an insanely good job of it. You'll also find all the tablature and notation you need, the signal chain, etc. We used to have to pay for all of that in sheet music, magazines, etc. Ability to record a video of a kid doing a burning solo - that's in your pocket.

Assumption 2: Financial trouble at Gibson, Guitar Center, Fender = slow death of the electric guitar. Again wrong. Bad business decisions, among other things, drive Gibson's problems. Not a lack of interest in guitars. Gibson and Fender both (Gibson more guilty of this) have such a fear of moving away from their 4 core models and marketing them. If it isn't a Strat or LP, or Tele, or SG - then it's not worthy of investment; just figure out ways to make them cheaper overseas. Gibson and Fender both equipped the world's low cost country's abilities to make decent quality instruments for next to no money; which that is what enabled the millions to afford cheap guitars not branded Fender or Gibson.

Assumption 3: Gruhn's sales down = slow death of the electric guitar. Again wrong. I've been to Gruhn Guitars new location in Nashville. One of those Mecca experiences like shopping at Elderly Instruments in East Lansing, MI. Elderly has some affordable stuff, Gruhn does not. By affordable, I mean something that a kid can buy and learn on. I loved being at Gruhn, but that was as a 40+ year old man. They have a great selection of expensive instruments. They cater to the professional musician at his store, and he can afford to do that being in Nashville with all the pros and the wannabe pros. If it wasn't for Gruhn, I wouldn't know about the 8 string baritone that Taylor has on the market and on my 'to purchase someday' list.

Assumption 4: Kids learning 30-50 year old songs at Schools of Rock instead of newer songs = death of electric guitar. There are loads more resources for learning older songs than brand new ones. Lot's more lessons, lots more YouTube videos on how to play the older songs, etc. You learned classical music before modern keyboard music if you took lessons, that's just the way that it is.

Not an assumption, but shows the author's lack of understanding of Rush and perhaps his past-pop-culture only view of guitar in general: "Rush’s prog-metal is not for beginners, with its time shifts and reggae twist."

It's clear that the author has listened to exactly one Rush song in his lifetime: "Spirit of the Radio", and he heard it at his visit to a School of Rock. Name another Rush song that has a 'reggae twist'. Would you EVER characterize Rush, in a single sentence opportunity, as stating it has a 'reggae twist'? Did he mistakenly mix up Rush with The Police? There's hardly more than 20 seconds total of reggae in that 5+ minute long song, and quite possibly the only famous 20 seconds of anything reggae in all of Rush's decades long discography. For that matter, 'metal'?

There is no death of electric guitar - I would guess it's more popular than ever, it's just not controlled by a select few companies; same as music in general. Same as GM, Ford and Chrysler learning the hard lessons of having to compete with global competition.

Album Oriented Rock is not as popular since the early 80's; AOR lends itself to longer songs and therefore room for a guitar solo - well, that's probably not coming back. But neither are video arcades, shopping malls, the Big 3 dominance of the auto industry, etc. But do people still play video games, buy stuff, drive cars? Absolutely, more than ever. The types of things that are in these categories has spread out with less dominant character, but by no means are any of them going away. This is what happens with more and more individual choice.

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