“He was completely ignored by the guitar press of that time period”: Vernon Reid on the guitarist he believes is massively underrated – even though he kept “the Hendrix voice” alive

Vernon Reid has long been a champion of Ernie Isley, the genre-bending guitar player best known for his work with The Isley Brothers.

Last year, Reid even went as far as to tell Guitar World that Isley is the “near direct tonal descendant of Jimi Hendrix”. Now, in a new interview with Billy Corgan on his Magnificent Others podcast, Reid doubles down on his admiration of Isley and why the Strat wielder deserves more attention.

“Ernie was completely shut out in the ’70s,” he asserts. “He kept the Hendrix voice alive on hit records, not rock critic records, but commercial hit records, and he was completely shut out.

“He was completely ignored by the guitar press of that time period. Especially in his prime, when he was young, on fire, he was summarily ignored, and I remember that pissed me off.”

Corgan interjects and asks Reid whether he feels there was a sense of injustice going on with the way Isley was treated – especially when compared to his contemporaries. “The thing about it is, it's not that I didn't love Rory Gallagher,” the Living Colour guitarist replies. “I love him. I think he's incredible.

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“It's not that I didn't appreciate Jan Akkerman. Jan Akkerman is an influence on me, but Ernie Isley deserved to be featured, to have his own cover and his own story about how he literally saved The Isley Brothers.”

He continues, “He actually dragged them from the ’50s and ’60s into their later career, because That Lady [an Isley Brothers classic] is a re-record. Ghat was originally a song of theirs that was part of the bossa nova craze in the ’60s. And it was Ernie Isley that insisted that they re-record it as the funk rock masterpiece that it is.”

In last year's Guitar World interview, Reid went on to name the wild space fuzz solo on the 1973 rework of That Lady as one of his all-time favorite guitar solos from the ’70s – and insisted that Isley's “continued non-acknowledgment as a near direct tonal descendant of Jimi Hendrix continues to this day.”