There's a thread in the KISSFAQ forum where someone asked if people can tell Ace Frehley from Tommy Thayer if they don't know who's playing. I wanted to ask a similar question here...
My experience in the internet tells me that there are a lot more people who act like they can tell the difference between this and that guy than people who actually can tell the difference. "He can play the same notes as Mr. X, but he could never duplicate his style and tone" is the kind of comment the internet seems to be full of. There seem to be an awful lot of "Smith isn't Felder" people who can't even tell Don from Glenn. (ICTYW and Already Gone)
So...we have Bernie, Glenn, Don, Joe and Steuart. Could you always tell who's playing if you didn't know?
Let's ignore the fact that you can often tell who plays what if you know who's in the left, right or middle channel etc. Let's just think about the lead bits.
Let's say that you hear a live version of some country song, for example, and you know Bernie and Don were both on the stage that night. Can you tell whether it's Bernie or Don playing the solo?
You hear a rock song and there's an improvised 20-second slide guitar solo. You know that Joe, Don and Glenn were all there. Can you tell who does the slide bit?
Let's say that Don is back in the Eagles and they record a new song stylistically similar to ICTYW. Can you tell whether it's Glenn or Don playing the solo?
I know there are people on this forum who probably could always tell the difference, but I'm not one of them even though I play guitar myself.
Are you/would you always be able to tell who's playing lead?