Top 10 Guitarists of All Time
- The Top1058
- Jonathan Leggett’s version
- Your version
×Johnny Marr
Rockabilly, choppy post-punk, lissom Byrdsian jangle: The Smiths’ guitarist can turn his hand to anything. But it’s the feminine quality of his playing that does it for me. And its precisely that which means that he's worth a million of those priapic cock rockers and noodlers that normally top these kind of lists.
×Kevin Shields
‘Like heavy metal for wet indie boys’ was how one ex-girlfriend of mine described Kevin Shields’ brutal, but gossamer-delicate combo MBV. She’s not wrong, you know. Invented post-rock too. But don’t hold that against him.
×Richey Edwards
Could barely play, in truth. So much so that during early live shows his amp was turned right down. That matters not a jot. He was the sensitive, snarling spirit of the straight-outta-Blackwood incarnation of the band. And its mouth, trousers and ideological wing as well.
×Joey Santiago
Sure, with his refs to art house cinema and Japanese serial killers and primal howl, Black Francis is a huge part of the Pixies' engaging oddness. And Kim Deal’s bass parts (CF: Gigantic) are their sexy, prowling pulse. But they’d still have been half the band without Joseph Alberto Santiago’s thrilling surfy axe-work.
×Jason Pierce
Some years ago I was at a Spring Hell Jack free jazz show at which Spiritualized’s drug evangelist was filling in on guitar. During an especially out there, quiet juncture when the swell of noise had subsided, one of the throng shouted out “Jason, we love you!”. The audience reacted with snooty tuts and sniffiness. More fool they. I love him too. And so should you.
×Vini Reilly
Reilly’s minimal guitar work with the Durutti Column takes Arthur Russell’s classical and jazz inflections and souses them in Manchester melancholy. It’s all very lovely, indeed.
×Thurston Moore
I can take or leave (mostly leave, to be honest) Moore’s experiments at the fringes of rock’s outer limits. But he’s worth a place here for the mid-period Sonic Youth guitar sound that imbues the poppy likes of Sugar Cane with a sense of tension and release that made the recycled 1970s riffola of their peers seem totally risible.
×Graham Coxon
The eternally bleary-eyed Blur axe abuser’s woozy riffs on the band’s early records make you feel pleasingly drunk even when you’ve not had a tipple for days. In his tweedy jackets and brogues, he’s also one of the pop’s best dressed men.
×Bernard Butler
Just for the way his clumsy movements contrasted with his sinuous, confident playing. And there’s no way Suede’s descent into self-parody would’ve been allowed to happen if he’d stayed on board.
×John Squire
Infused riffs pilfered from the Big Star and Byrds songbooks with such vigour that they felt completely new. Nice line in Pollockesque cover art, too.
