Whitesnake guitarist Joel Hoekstra discussed Nirvana destroying his dreams of being a guitar hero in a new Breaking Absolutes interview.
“I got out of GIT and Nirvana hit, and that was like a nuclear bomb on any kind of, ‘Well, you’re gonna be a guitar hero kind of guy…’
“Not that I was even ready for that, I was only 19-20 years old at the time, pretty green, so that was the best thing that happened to me in a lot of ways. It set me off on a career of making a living with my guitar however I could to be valuable.
“So, whether that was teaching all those lessons that I did back then in my 20s – I was teaching 70 students a week back then – all kinds of gigs, playing with singer-songwriters, I did all kinds of things to get through those times.
“Man, playing in wedding bands, playing classical guitar at parties, and playing jazz guitar at parties – you name it.
“But what that did is it made a more well-rounded musician than say a lot of the guys who got a deal when they were 19 years old and were on MTV and then they were just them the rest of their life.
“I had to really grind the entire way, so it definitely made me more well-rounded and more able to play different styles and things like that.
“Now, you could make an argument that the guy who was 19 that god signed and stuck to his thing is more identifiable, and that might be the case, but it is what it is.
“I just like to say I’m not in need of feeling like my path is the better one. That’s just the path that I had to go. Trust me, I would have preferred the lots of money at 19 years old on MTV and everything, but in a lot of ways, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
