The thing about the "guitar hero" phenomenon of the 1980's. Let me relay a perspective from someone who plays guitar and who was there:
It was a phenomenon fueled purely by MTV and the record companies. And, nothing is different from today in the following regard: all the heroes were current musicians. The teens I was surrounded with were largely ignorant of even the immediately previous generation of rock and roll.
Rock listening teenagers in the 80's weren't listening to Clapton. Most wouldn't have known who the heck is Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple or what have you; that had been a hundred years ago (i.e. some ten).
Most of the guitar heroes were only some 5 to 15 years older than the teenaged worshippers. They constantly changed. One year you'd go to music stores, and every kid walking in there would pick up a guitar and be doing some Van Halen thing. A few years later, every kid wanted to be Slash from Guns and Roses. Later still, Metallica made a bit of a comeback and you'd hear nothing but Enter Sandman covers.
Another thing to know is that there was a lot of criticism of the whole phenomenon while it was happening, even from the musicians themselves.
The following is an absolute must read to anyone interested in this topic. A 1987 Guitar Player magazine interview with Frank Zappa, titled "The 80's Guitar Clone".
http://www.afka.net/Articles/1987-01_Guitar_Player.htm
I remember this well, because I read it in print when it came out and it made an impression. I respected Zappa. I was one of the fairly rare teens of the generation who actually knew who Zappa is. My dad got me into Zappa. Because of Zappa, I knew who Stevie Vai was before he was a houshold name among guitar players.
Quotes:
Well, the one thing that seems to be more prevalent today is imitation. I think that the amount of copycat players in the marketplace today is significantly higher than it's ever been before. You see very few truly original guitarists and a whole bunch of people who wish they were Eddie Van Halen.
Q: [In the same way that Olympic records are always being broken, guitar playing seems to be getting faster and faster.]
Not only is it getting faster, but the solos themselves are becoming gymnastic routines – basically 8- and maybe 16-bar gymnastic routines that are stuck in the middle of songs about fairly common topics. The whole concept of extended improvisations that are compositions in progress is something that is pretty much gone from the pop music scene. That's one of the major losses for the '80s, I think. That's what I was addressing in the old article, talking about the process by which the kid sitting at home listens to a tape, and although he couldn't read it off the piece of paper, learns it by rote like a parrot, and winds up playing faster and faster and faster. I think that's really what's taking place.