Creativity Quote by Warren Zevon

Zevon isn’t just praising Jimi Hendrix; he’s smuggling him across a border that rock culture still pretends doesn’t exist. “Really, really loved him” reads like a confession, the kind you make when you know the room might roll its eyes at reverence. Then he tightens the claim: “as if he were one of the great classical composers.” That “as if” is doing double duty. It acknowledges the inherited hierarchy (Bach up top, electric guitar down below) while daring you to notice how flimsy it is. The pivot lands on the blunt correction: “And he was.” No qualifiers, no genre caveats, no “for a rock musician.” Just canon.

The intent is cultural reclassification. Zevon frames Hendrix not as a flashy virtuoso or a symbol of ’60s excess, but as a serious composer of sound: someone whose work reshaped harmony, texture, and emotional narrative with the same finality that “classical” names imply. The subtext is also autobiographical. Zevon, a songwriter who prized craft and sharp storytelling, is telling you what he values: ambition, invention, and a willingness to build new vocabularies rather than decorate old ones.

Context matters: Zevon came up when rock was busy lobbying for adulthood - critical respect, institutional recognition, the right to be studied instead of merely consumed. His line takes that argument out of the lecture hall and makes it personal. Loving Hendrix “like” a classical composer isn’t a metaphor; it’s an assertion that the canon was always too small.