A real Guitar Hero from Sonoma

In an age of American idols, virtual Guitar Hero video games and national air-guitar championships, a competition involving real people playing real guitars seems almost passe.

“They actually called it Guitar Hero when they started it, but they changed it because of the game,” says Eric Barnett of Sonoma, one of 10 finalists from around the country competing in Saturday night’s Guitar Player’s Guitar Superstar Competition at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. “This is really more like ‘American Idol’ for guitar players.”

It’s hard to tell who the Simon Cowell will be, but the judges’ booth alone could form a wing of any rock ’n’ roll hall of fame: The Police guitarist Andy Summers, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Elliot Easton of The Cars.

“I’m gonna try not to look at them and just pretend they don’t exist,” Barnett says. “Satriani and Vai, those are two of the guys who I wouldn’t be doing this if they weren’t part of my musical lexicon. They’re why I’m doing this.”

By day, Barnett is chief technical officer of the San Francisco dot-com startup Xigi (pronounced “ziggy”). By night, he’s a devoted 39-year-old guitarist in the still largely unheard guitar-rock band, Points North.

Like his band, the competition is a flashback to the ’80s, when the guitar hero was the messiah of dude rock. Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen, Vai and Satriani had entire stadiums of fans bowing in air-guitar homage. By the mid ’90s, the explosion of hip-hop and a resurgence of punk and grunge blew guitar rock (no vocals + endless solos = no audience) off the radio dial.

Growing up in New Jersey, Barnett was on a fast track to becoming a concert violinist, picking up the instrument at the age of 5 and studying at Manhattan School of Music and at Juilliard summer programs. Then he heard the Rush album “Moving Pictures” at the age of 13. Strapping on a black-beauty Ibanez Les Paul knockoff guitar, he was ready to take on Van Halen, which eventually led to a pilgrimage to Los Angeles and the Guitar Institute of Technology where he studied with Mr. Big’s Paul Gilbert.

Originally balking at the Guitar Superstar throwdown, Barnett later changed his mind and sent off an original song, “The Source,” just before midnight the day of the deadline. An amalgam of styles, the “very personal” song starts off with a slow bluesy tone. His most obvious influence is Eric Johnson, the Austin guitarist known for his warm singing tones. As it picks up, you can hear a little Stevie Ray Vaughan and the building momentum and hooks of Satriani. It finally ends with a riff on Pachelbel’s Canon — a nod to Barnett’s classical roots.

After more than a year, his band Points North is still struggling to make a name for itself. They’ve played all over the Bay Area — the Last Day Saloon in Santa Rosa, Broadway Studios in San Francisco, Avalon in San Jose and Time Out in Concord. But for every gig booked, there’s a promoter scratching his head before double-checking: “You don’t have a singer?”

Onstage Saturday night, it’ll be just him and his guitar.

“I’m not gonna change who I am. I’m just gonna go out and be me,” he says. “I have high hopes and low expectations, so I’ll be OK with whatever happens. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to win.”