Top 10 Guitarists of All Time
- The Top1058
- Anne Watkins’s version
- Your version
×Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix is widely regarded as the greatest guitar player in history not just because he had considerable blues chops but also because of his wild creativity with his instrument. The man was capable of churning out sounds that no one had ever heard before, and his mastery over the electric guitar has still never been matched. Hendrix often got lumped in with the late 60s hippie movement, but he was really a thing unto himself, a freight train that tore through the music scene with unrelenting sonic power.
×B.B. King
King’s guitar playing was simply gorgeous, highly expressive and emotional while also being technically flawless. Coming out of the Memphis blues music scene, King’s playing had a uniquely soulful sound that was almost vocal in its shapes and intonations. While most music fans are now quite familiar with his style of blues guitar playing, King was utterly new in his time, and his work influenced virtually every rock and blues guitar player to come.
×Keith Richards
Richards has always been openly derisive of the type of pretentious virtuosity that many of his contemporaries used. Rather than showing off, Richards always played in service of the song, and The Rolling Stones’ music in general is remarkably short on fancy solos or long instrumental passages (with some notable exceptions, of course). But even though he doesn’t show off, the pure energy of his playing is what gives so many Stones songs their power.
×Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo
Although Moore and Ranaldo are both great guitarists on their own, the Sonic Youth duo really shine when feeding off of one another. Long instrumental passages in rock music have always been troublesome, but Moore and Ranaldo manage to make their jams and signature noise freakouts consistently interesting. It may not be the showoffy blues-style playing that’s usually associated with guitar greatness, but it’s better in a lot of ways—edgy, symphonic, and transcendent.
×Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd
Verlaine and Lloyd, the two main players in the late 70s New York band Television, are another duo that can’t be separated from one another. Like Moore and Ranaldo (whom they influenced), Verlaine and Lloyd were not traditional “lead” or “rhythm” guitarists but instead fed off of one another with balanced interplay. While both players are proficient on their own, given their chemistry it’s no wonder that neither guitarist went on to make great music after Television broke up.
×Jimmy Page
As a guitarist, Jimmy Page can do practically anything—blues, Beatles-style pop, folk rock, jazz, heavy metal, and so on. With his considerable talent, he could have made any kind of music, so it’s interesting that he left all the traditional forms behind and pioneered the signature Led Zeppelin sound that would prove so influential to all heavy metal and hard rock acts to come. Like all great guitar players, Page thought of his music in terms of songcraft and refrained from the type of self-indulgence that can kill a good song. With Zeppelin, he also grew into a formidable songwriter and producer.
×Slash
Guns N’ Roses were clearly more talented than their hair-band contemporaries, even though they didn’t always get credit for it. While Axl Rose was a big reason for their success, Slash gave the band a raw musicianship that Rose simply didn’t possess, and it’s hard to imagine that GNR ever would have gotten anywhere without him. On Appetite for Destruction alone Slash delivers five or six truly iconic guitar lines.
×George Harrison
The quiet Beatle’s legendary reticence came across in his guitar playing, which was always non-showy and highly melodic. He’s also an unrecognized innovator, creating an economical style that has proven to be influential throughout all the subsequent decades of rock and pop music. His unassuming style caused his contributions to be overshadowed by the natural force that was Lennon-McCartney, but one gets the sense that Harrison preferred it this way.
×Jonny Greenwood
Greenwood is more of a jack-of-all-musical-trades than a pure guitarist, but through his career with Radiohead he has produced some of the most memorable guitar parts of the last two decades, from the spastic solos of “Paranoid Android,” to the delicate arpeggios of “Tourist,” to the primitive percussive notes of “Optimistic.” He’s recently developed into a highly in-demand composer, but his work with Radiohead continues to break ground with each new album.
×Robert Johnson
Not much is known about Robert Johnson, and his brief life is shrouded in mystery and myth. Fortunately, however, we do have some of his recordings to document his incredible talent as a singer and musician. Of course, we all know the legend about how Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for incredible musical abilities, but personally, I just chalk his skills up to talent and practice. Still, there is something magical about the emotions he’s capable of drawing from his instrument.
