Opinions on the 50 Greatest Guitarists (Part II)

Caught In That Sensual Music

Read Part I here.

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25. Yngwie Malmsteen

If modern guitar playing has degenerated to the point where young men compete to play more notes per second, then Malmsteen is partly to blame. When he started his career, he was faster than anyone else. Listeners would be wrong, however, to think that’s all there is to his playing: his note choice is inspired by classical music as much as it is by rock and metal. His most important quality remains his incredible control of bending, vibrato, and high levels of distortion. Few guitarists have this skill, even if they do have the speed. Although Malmsteen is known as a solo artist, he started his career in the band Alcatrazz, and his solo on their track “Jet to Jet” is a great starting point. If you like it, move on to his first solo album Rising Force. If you don’t, move on to our next guitarist.

24. John Petrucci

Another player known for his incredible speed and technique, John Petrucci is one of the main songwriters for the progressive metal band Dream Theater. Everyone talks about his lead playing, and a whole generation of guitarists (including me) developed their chops learning his solos and watching his instructional video Rock Discipline, two words which are no longer an oxymoron. Less often noted, but no less remarkable, is his rhythm playing. (I love his clean tone.) With his fellow band members, Petrucci expanded the possibilities of metal music, and today’s young ambitious guitarists (Tim Henson, Tosin Abasi, Misha Mansoor) are indebted to his playing.

Start with “Innocence Faded” and “Another Day” and then the album Images and Words.

23. Prince

It seems a bit limiting to call him a guitarist because he was brilliant on every instrument he touched. Prince, though, is maybe the prime example of what we think of as a guitarist: he had skill and he had style. Somehow, he was attractive whether he was dressed like a stripper or like an aristocratic fop in purple and lace. Extremely photogenic, he managed to make himself look like an idiot by writing “slave” on his cheek during a dispute with his record label. He was a multi-millionaire.

A mural of Prince in suburban Sydney (photo by the author).

But there’s no question about his status as a guitarist; he was classy no matter what he played. One standout moment is his solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at a memorial concert for George Harrison. Watch the video to the end for a trick only Prince is capable of.

22. Synyster Gates

Mr Gates is the guitarist for the band Avenged Sevenfold, the second band I ever saw live. (The first was The Wiggles.) Of all the “metalcore” guitarists who emerged in the early 2000s, Synyster Gates is the best. He has great technique and a fantastic sense of melody, which you can hear in his solo on “Seize the Day”.

21. Carlos Santana

Santana once claimed his music can make a woman’s nipples go hard, which makes me wonder where exactly he puts his fingers when he’s playing. Unfortunately, I don’t know much of his output apart from some famous tracks like “Black Magic Woman” and “Smooth”.

20. Angus Young

Since Angus Young wears a school uniform on stage and his solos are relatively simple, you’d be forgiven for thinking that his playing is elementary. But you’d be wrong. It isn’t easy to add so much excitement and energy to a song without hijacking it. It also isn’t easy to pick only one song to recommend, but if you’ve really never heard any AC/DC, start with “You Shook Me All Night Long”.

19. Dimebag Darrell

Many people knock his tone (not enough midrange) but no one knocks his playing. As a teenager in Texas, he was asked not to enter guitar competitions because he always won them. He’s known mostly for his work in the band Pantera, which started as a glam-metal band but then became an ultra-macho group whose sound is partially captured by one of their album titles: A Vulgar Display of Power.

There’s nothing slovenly about Dimebag’s playing, though. His tight rhythm playing and natural sense of groove helped him write some of the most recognisable and emblematic riffs in metal, my favourites being those in “Mouth for War”. His lead playing could be quite tasteful and melodic, too, as shown on tracks such as “The Sleep” and “Floods”.

18. B.B. King

It’s impossible to sound like B.B. King. You can play his songs with his guitar through his amp, and you still wouldn’t sound like him. Guitarists often say that “tone is in the hands” — an idea which reduces some of the mystification surrounding gear but increases the mystery of why some players sound the way they do. When you listen to B.B. King, mystery turns to wonder. He loved listening to Frank Sinatra, and he matched the singer’s control of vibrato, attack, and dynamics on guitar. Born on a cotton plantation, he became King of the Blues, and his albums Live at the Regal and Live in Cook County Jail are essential listening.

17. Mark Knopfler

Dire Straits now have a reputation for being a “dad rock” band, but they must have sounded fresh when they first appeared. Compared to most of the cock-rock bands that dominated the 1980s, Dire Straits created an innovative sound by being refined and restrained. Known for his fingerstyle clean tone, Mark Knopfler was a big part of that sound. His playing is clearly influenced by country music (an underappreciated style among guitarists) and he showed that it doesn’t have to sound corny. Everyone knows the hits from Dire Straits, but don’t forget about Knopfler’s solo career: Shangri-La is a good album to explore.  

16. Randy Rhoads

Legend has it that Randy Rhoads was warming up when Ozzy Osbourne hired him. Mr Osbourne might have been unwise to hire Randy Rhoads before the audition, but he would have been clinically insane not the hire him after it. With a solid basis in classical music and theory (his mother was a professional pianist), Rhoads introduced note choices and techniques that had (at that point) been rarely used in rock and metal except by Ritchie Blackmore. While on tour with Osbourne, Rhoads would seek local classical guitar teachers for lessons, and considered quitting the band to study the instrument at university. It’s hard to believe anyone could teach him anything.

Aged 25, he was killed aboard a private aircraft that clipped a tourbus, sending the plane straight into a garage and Rhoads straight to immortality. His output is small (he only recorded two albums with Ozzy Osbourne and two with his first band, Quiet Riot) but his influence is huge. Students of metal guitar should study everything he did, but the casual listener will find Rhoads’s best playing on the Ozzy Osbourne tracks “Mr. Crowley” and “Revelation (Mother Earth)”.

15. Gary Moore

He was in Thin Lizzy and a jazz fusion band (Colosseum II), and he had a guitar tone with enough distortion to please Metallica, but don’t let any of that fool you — Gary Moore was a blues player. He generated huge sustain on beautiful bent notes and had great control over his tone and volume.

Moore could wrench your soul and leave you weeping into your whisky, and seems to be a favourite among the YouTube crowd.

This version of “Still Got The Blues” has about 85 million views:

This live version of “Parisienne Walkways” has more than 63 million views:

This version of “Still Got The Blues” has a paltry 10 million views:

But also listen to this beautiful live version of “The Loner”.

14. Tony Iommi

It’s apt that heavy metal was invented in an industrial town by a man who worked in a sheet metal factory. Born in Birmingham, Tony Iommi lost the tips of a couple of his fingers on his last day of work. Told he’d never play again, Iommi took comfort and inspiration from the pioneering jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, whose hand was badly burned in a fire. Like Reinhardt, he had to adapt. He fashioned new fingertips from some homemade thimbles and changed his playing style to accommodate them. Thus, heavy metal was born. It wasn’t only the accident that created the new sound, though. Black Sabbath’s most influential song, “Black Sabbath,” (on the album Black Sabbath) is based on a tritone interval — apparently it was inspired by Gustav Holst’s “Mars, The Bringer of War”. (No, the tritone was never banned during the Middle Ages. Listen to Guillaume de Machaut’s “Amours me fait desirer” — what’s that haunting interval at the start? It’s a tritone.) No metal collection is complete without Black Sabbath’s first five albums. Beginners should start with the songs “War Pigs” and “Snowblind”.

13. Joe Satriani

The godfather of “shred” guitar, Satch showed everyone that it’s alright to know musical modes with unspellable Greek names. Music theory nerds can rock — the anti-intellectual idea that knowing your craft destroys your feel is bogus. Satriani is proof that it doesn’t. His influence is massive: he taught two other players on this list (Kirk Hammett and Steve Vai) and inspired a whole generation of guitarists to become much more serious about their practice. Unfortunately, many of them copied his technique without copying his taste and his ability to boogie. For good evidence of these, listen to his tracks “Always With Me, Always With You” and “Satch Boogie”.

They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but I’ve met Mr Satriani twice and can tell you that he’d be at the top of any list of “nicest guitarists.”

12. Jeff Beck

I didn’t realise how good Jeff Beck is until I had to learn one of his songs for an exam. It was frustrating. I could play the notes, but I couldn’t sound like him. The electric guitar isn’t known for being a sensitive instrument, but it is, especially in Jeff Beck’s hands.

He’s continually surprising. Earlier this year, he released an album with Johnny Depp. The first track, “Midnight Walker,” has some very nice playing. (I can’t tell what Depp is doing on the song.) A better starting point, though, is his album Blow by Blow, and don’t miss his Live At Ronnie Scott’s, featuring the incredible Aussie bassist Tal Wilkenfeld.

11. Steve Vai

Steve Vai started his career making transcriptions for Frank Zappa, who called him a “little Italian virtuoso.” Performing in Zappa’s band, he would show off by sight-reading scores that the audience brought in, proving his incredible dedication to his instrument. (It’s quite hard to sight-read on guitar — at least that’s what I keep telling myself.) He was the guitarist for David Lee Roth and later for Whitesnake, but you’ll find his best and most expansive work on his solo albums. He’s so good he can play anything: his speed and skill are legendary. The guitarist version of Ronnie O’Sullivan, Steve Vai can play better with one hand than most people can with two.

But this doesn’t highlight how musical and expressive his music is. (Use your technique as a tool, not a prison, he cautions young guitarists.) To really get a sense of his achievement, I think you should start with his slower songs, such as “For the Love of God,” “Tender Surrender,” and “Dyin’ Day”.

10. Ritchie Blackmore

He’d probably make the top ten if he did nothing but write the riff to “Smoke On The Water,” but he did that and whole lot more. His playing in Deep Purple was flashy and aggressive (my favourite track is “Highway Star”) and he said that in the early part of his career he “didn't give a damn about song construction” and “just wanted to make as much noise and play as fast and as loud as possible.”

It's a bit of a surprise, then, that in the mid ‘70s, Blackmore quit Deep Purple, started taking cello lessons, and formed a new band, Rainbow, that was influenced by baroque and classical music. It’s a good thing he did, though. The first three Rainbow albums (with the unbeatable singer Ronnie James Dio) are, in my view, just as intense as anything Blackmore did in Deep Purple but more ambitious and interesting. The song “Stargazer” is (I think) about a wizard and a mystical tower and remains one of the most exciting rock performances ever recorded.

9. Slash

After Cary Grant’s death, Slash became the coolest man on the planet. Like Grant, he was born in England but earned an important place in American popular culture, and thus the world. Don’t get distracted, though: there’s a magnificent musical mind beneath the top hat and luxurious hair. The Guns N’ Roses album Appetite for Destruction is one of the best debuts ever, and doubtless you know half the songs on it even if you don’t listen to rock. The riff to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was apparently an accident, but the solo is meticulously crafted — so too is the one on Velvet Revolver’s “Fall To Pieces,” which is just as good but not as famous.

8. Alex Lifeson

You’re probably wondering who he is and how he could possibly rank above Slash. Even in the guitar media, Lifeson is underappreciated, probably because he didn’t play many flashy solos. His main contributions to the prog rock band Rush were an incredible songwriting skill, odd-time signature riffs, and unusual chords. (Most rock guitarists play chords like E and A. Lifeson played chords like F#7add11.) This might give you the impression that Rush’s music is a puzzle, but they always had good songs and a great groove. I’m not going to recommend single tracks; I’m going to tell you that if you haven’t heard Rush’s best work your life remains unfulfilled. Start with the album Moving Pictures, and work backwards through Permanent Waves, Hemispheres, A Farewell to Kings, and 2112.

7. Brian May

Brian May probably has the most identifiable guitar tone on record: it sounds like a choir. He looks like Isaac Newton, and his playing is a kind of alchemy: bits of rock, metal, opera, baroque, blues, burlesque, and rockabilly mix to form the distinct guitar sounds you hear on Queen’s albums. Contributing to the unique sound is May’s guitar, which he built with his dad, but no one else using it would sound like Queen’s guitarist. His playing is always perfect for the song. I trust you know a lot of his work already, but, in my view, not enough praise is given to “The Prophet’s Song,” written by May.

6. Stevie Ray Vaughan

Who could make blues popular in the middle of the 1980s? Playing at unknown bars in Texas, Stevie Ray Vaughan was invited to New York by The Rolling Stones, who were looking for acts to sign on their record label. At the showcase, Mick Jagger enthusiastically yelled at Vaughan and his band to keep playing after their allotted time ran out. Vaughan’s performance was so exciting that, at the afterparty, Jagger literally wet himself and insisted that Vaughan be the opening act on a Rolling Stones tour.

Vaughan returned to Texas. Jagger didn’t sign him: he wanted someone with the potential to “sell a million albums,” and blues wasn’t commercial enough.

David Bowie wasn’t so myopic. He saw Vaughan play at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1982 and got the guitarist to play on his album Let’s Dance. Subsequently, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble signed to a major label and achieved mainstream success within months of their first release, Texas Flood, which went on to sell more than 2 million copies in the United States. As of this writing, the song “Pride and Joy” from that album has about 134 million streams on Spotify.

If your judgement is better than Jagger’s, you’ll listen to everything Stevie Ray Vaughan did.

5. Eric Clapton

Eddie Van Halen said that he “never had a guitar lesson in [his] life, except from listening to Eric Clapton records." Clapton was the first one to distort his guitar sound by making his amp as loud as possible. Landlords hated it, but everyone else loved it. (Listen to him explode out of the right speaker in “Double Crossing Time” by John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers.) After leaving Mayall, Clapton formed Cream, a band with so much energy it couldn’t last long without disintegrating, like an asteroid re-entering the atmosphere. His solos on “Crossroads” are, to my ears, still among the best blues/rock guitar parts ever played, and few moments can match the haunting bends he plays on The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

4. David Gilmour

Pink Floyd’s guitarist is the master of the long, melodic line. Like whisky, Gilmour’s playing is a slow, contemplative, fulfilling pleasure. Like whisky, his playing makes you pursue your lips in appreciation and say “ooooh, yeah, that’s nice.” Like whisky, the older stuff is generally better than the newer stuff. Everybody knows the solos on “Time” and “Comfortably Numb,” but only one man could write them. Gilmour doesn’t believe in an afterlife, but his playing on the legendary Pink Floyd records will outlive us all.

3. Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen was a magical guitarist, but he rarely used effects: the magic was in his hands. He was a great rhythm player and had precise control over his volume and tone — a tone known to guitarists as the “brown sound.” (Eddie Van Halen put it this way: it sounded organic, like a log, and logs are brown…) Many guitarists would pay a lot of money for that tone, but it was created by a guitar “slapped together” from spare parts and a Marshall hundred-watt amp on full blast. (The original guitar was buried with Dimebag Darrell.)

Van Halen were already selling out 3000-seat venues in California when they released their first album in 1978, which made them world-famous. Eddie Van Halen’s solo piece “Eruption” (the second track on the album) was the biggest guitar innovation post-Hendrix and pre-Nirvana. The huge tone attracted ears, but the main point of reverence was the tapping part in the second half of the piece, thought to have been played on keyboard because it was so smooth. Eddie Van Halen’s playing has been (and continues to be) copied to the point of embarrassment, but nothing can impugn his achievement.

2. Jimmy Page

Jimmy Page started as a session player in London where he recorded, among other things, the guitar part for Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual”. (There’s some debate about this, but Page has it listed with his other sessions on his website.) But the project Page started in 1968, Led Zeppelin, was unusual: a band that played old blues songs but also had songs with twelve-string guitars and lyrics inspired by Lord of the Rings; a band of superstars that refused to release singles in the UK or do interviews anywhere; a band that in eight months (January – August 1969) recorded Led Zeppelin II while completing three tours of the US and four of Europe.

People, this was no ordinary rock band.

Although every member was a master of his instrument, Page was the driving force, acting as the main songwriter and producer. As a guitarist, his skill and legacy are immeasurable; many on this list (Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Zakk Wylde, Slash, Brian May, Dave Mustaine, Alex Lifeson, Kirk Hammett, Tom Morello) have publicly mentioned Page as an influence. I trust you’ve committed Led Zeppelin’s studio albums to memory, but don’t forget the live album How The West Was Won.

1. Jimi Hendrix

Who else? People who know nothing about basketball know about Michael Jordan, people who know nothing about golf know about Tiger Woods, and people who know nothing about guitar know about Jimi Hendrix. His impact on guitar playing is equivalent to Liszt’s on piano.

Born in Seattle, Hendrix made his name in London, where he lived in the same building that Handel stayed in. Connected to music history, Hendrix would also change it. Famously, onstage in London he outplayed Eric Clapton. Shortly after, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released their debut album, Are You Experienced?, which was so influential and inventive the musicologist Reuben Jackson later compared it to James Joyce’s Ulysses. (The difference being that no one has to pretend to enjoy Are You Experienced?.)

Anyway, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what made him so great. Every guitarist of every genre is influenced by Hendrix, even if they don’t know it.

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Final Thoughts:

I’m sure you have a few favourites who were omitted, which is inevitable with lists like this one. But this list does have a few revealing biases. Did you notice that the list has:

• Only one jazz guitarist (John McLaughlin)

• No country guitarists

• No classical guitarists

• No flamenco guitarists

• No acoustic guitarists

• No session guitarists

• No guitarists primarily known for songwriting?

The guitar media focus on flamboyant guitarists within rock and metal, which explains why there are no women on the list: those genres are countries for young men.

That’s not to say that women can’t play rock (because they can) or that they can’t enjoy it (because they do) but that rock’s defining qualities — aggression, recklessness, brashness, loudness, chest-thumping confidence, a fascination with toys and technology — are more commonly found in men, especially young men. (Most of these qualities are now found in hip-hop, another male-dominated genre.) Here’s how David Hepworth puts it in his great book Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of Rock Stars. The rock guitarist was the newer version of the cowboy:

Groups weren’t just efficient performing units, liberating you from the need to enlist the help of proper backing musicians; they were also gangs, and they were particularly attractive to the kind of boys who never would have got involved with a gang. Being in a rock band and being in a gang had features in common: both were founded on oaths of loyalty — oaths that were bound in time to be broken; the lion’s share of the power resided in one charismatic individual, even though the others would stoutly deny this was the case; and all the members secretly believed they would be better off without the others. The mantle of leader of the gang tended to fall on the guitarist. When it came to guitarists, the kinship with the lone gunslinger setting out down the dusty main street to do battle with an adversary in a black hat was openly acknowledged. The dreams that had germinated in the dark in front of Western movies were blossoming into a whole new dream world with rock and roll. The transformation of Robert Zimmerman, a storekeeper’s son from Minnesota, into Bob Dylan, poet-visionary to the world, was accomplished via a short spell during which he was known as Bob Dillon, a name he borrowed from the sheriff in TV’s Gunsmoke… Rock and roll offered a new outlet for the adventure fantasies of boys and their obsession with kit. Even the guitar of folk troubadour Woody Guthrie bore the legend “this machine kills fascists.” This was a claim few were likely to make for the saxophone.

Notice that the women who instantiate the rock star archetype — Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse — are singers, not guitarists.

As their early deaths reveal, rock music shuns old age. You cannot age gracefully if you want to continue being a rock star. You’ll either become a corpse, or an embarrassment, or both.

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