I've spent a good part of the day listening to Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival, and just got finished listening to Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits play Sultans of Swing and Romeo & Juliet.
Clapton plucks with a pick. Knopfler flicks with a finger (or five).
Who does which? Is one better? I think I'm starting to lean toward finger-picking, personally.
Is the pick necessary?[/QUOTE
Knopfler fingerpicks and Clapton uses a plectrum (pick).
Knopfler's style is called fingerpicking, it's used mostly in acoustic guitar music, ie classical, bluegrass, primitive, folk and a small jazz cadre once led by a deceased jazz legend named Joe Pass (one of my favorites.) The other well known practioner of fingerpicking in rock is Jorma Kaukonen who was co-founder of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. SRV would fingerpick at times.
One is not better than the other, it's personal taste. Classical guitar though must be played this way (fingerpicked.) With a pick you (obviously) can play harder longer, your attacks are also more intense. Classical guitarists practice very religiously in order not just to be proficient but to develop callouses in their picking fingers. Some of the stuff I play has passages that are fingerpicked while the rest I use a pick. You use your thumb (right-hand, my case) to pick low E ,A and D, then use your index, middle and ring fingers to pick strings G,B and high E. Your pinky is used as a rest. Also some country pickers use finger picks, but that's a different style.
