After reading that list of the Rolling Stone Top 100 Guitarists I felt the need to chime in. Not that there's a problem with the list or anything.
Well...ok, there is a problem. There's a problem with any list that attempts to rank players as if one is 'better' than another. Does it really matter how 'skillful' a player is if they don't do anything interesting with that talent? For example, take Keith Richards and Joe Satriani. Sure Joe can play monstrous scales, the notes splattering all over the floor like rock dandruff... but I'd rather listen to Keith do that 'Keith-riff', those ragged rhythms, those knotty and off-kilter guitar solos. There's some 'meat' in his playing. Nobody sounds like Richards. His is a singular voice...and it sticks with me.
So that's what the players to follow have in common. A unique sound. Most of them are from the rock world, with a few moderately 'out-there' jazz players. A list of favorite jazz players is a topic for another day. The order is just how they popped into my head. Oh ya, and there's only ten of them. Here goes...
Marc Ribot
Hear just a few notes from Ribot's Rootless Cosmopolitans and you might think, "hey, maybe somebody should tell that guy to tune his guitar". While Ribot is often associated with the downtown New York scene, the man in fact really gets around. He's played: jazz in his own ensembles, deconstructed guitar etudes for John Zorn, Cuban music (and how can you not like a group called "Los Cubanos Postizos" ...the prosthetic Cubans?), rock with Tom Waits and Elvis Costello (to name a couple).
What's unique about Marc Ribot's sound is his combination of angular melodic lines and humor. Sometimes I hear him playing and a picture forms in my head: a tall, lanky guy wearing baggy pants playing a mutant Telecaster: it's ten feet long and has strings hanging down to the ground.
Leo Kottke
As a guitar player I'll often watch guys at shows and envy at their technique. The clean lines, the speed, the acceleration.
With Leo Kottke I just sit there and wonder just what the heck he's doing. There seems to be no connection between what his fingers are doing and the sound that's coming out.
That's OK though, because the tunes he spins out of that collection of walking basslines, contrary motions and other fingerpicking gems are truly memorable. (Honorable mention must be given here to the late, great John Fahey, who gave Leo his first big chance).
Guy Van Duser
On his solo records as well as one part of the duo of Van Duser & Novick, Guy Van Duser has been making spectacular fingerstyle guitar music for years. I became aware of him back in college when a friend played his solo version of "Stars and Stripes Forever" (from American Fingerstyle Guitar). If you see him live he will sometimes play a just plain wrong version of "Caravan" ...during which he will explain how he learned to play the guitar by learning licks from Chet Atkins records... and how Chet used an echo chamber to double up the bass parts, a fact that Van Duser learned long after he figured out how to double up the bass parts using his thumb. He then goes on to play "Caravan" with simultaneous walking bassline and melody. It's just not right.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Rodney Welch
Isn't Lindley also the guy who does the howling backing vocal on Zevon's "Wild Age"?
2 - Tom Johnson
I would have to add to just about any list that didn't have him Michael Hedges. That guy did things . . . I have no idea how he did the things he did. What a shocking loss his death was.
I'd also offer up Steve Howe, but his solo material just doesn't measure up to his work with Yes. He does, however, elicit the same feelings in me that Bill Frisell does - a kind of "what's next" excitement in everything he plays. Like Frisell, he knows the power of playing very close to out of control, where his fret work is on the very edge of being completely incoherent, yet reigns it in just enough to maintain some sense of melody. Frisell is the master of this, but Howe was first . . .
3 - Eric Olsen
Very cool Mark, a lot I agree with and some new guys I didn't really know (guy, and I haven't paid that much attention to Ribot). And man, put "Substitute" and "Can't Explain" (guess that's Page along on the BIG RIFF) together and nothing can piss me off. Really, all of Meaty Beaty is timeless mod rock and the group's peak.
Glad to see Bruce, too, he kicks the llama's ass on "Darkness"
4 - JR
That's not Steve Van Zandt playing guitar on "Darkness..."?
5 - Jim Carruthers
I have to agree this is a righteious list. I was surprized how many of the guitbox arteests I listed in a previous article made the RS list.
But I'm ashamed I didn't mention Marc Ribot.
And Rolling Stone, Robert Quine has done more than the Voidoids. One of the guitarists I didn't list was Lou Reed. But Reed is more important for hiriing better guitarists like Mike Rathke.
6 - Eric Olsen
JR, Steve isn't on "Darkness" - it's all Bruce.
7 - JR
He's listed in the liner notes, both as production assistant and on guitar. I'm not up on Springsteen lore, what's the story here?
8 - Eric Olsen
Sorry, Steve did come in on the production end and ended up playing some guitar, but Bruce played all the leads. He is listed as "lead guitar" - his electric lead style is not unlike Neil Young, furiously hard picking wringing the guitar neck like a doomed chicken, making vicious, almost unnatural noise.
9 - JR
I believe that's my cue to actually listen to the record...
10 - Jim Carruthers
Hey, I think I saw that chicken this week at at CNE!
11 - S.A. Smith
The Rolling Stone list unsurprisingly sucked in that faux controversial only Rolling Stone can do. I liked your observation about Bruce's playing on Darkness. When I was in high school, waaay back in the mid-80's, I had a friend who was a black sabbath/led zeppelin kind of guy and new of Bruce only as the commercial monster he became after Born in the USA. One lunch time I kidnapped him and we snuck off and I blasted a little Adam Raised a Cain and Candy's Room and set him straight. I broke in my 18th birthday present strat working out the solos on Darkness.
I was happy to see that Richard Thompson wasn't ignored. And I know I'll be ripped apart for saying this but, with all due respect to Hendrix, we all know that Keith Richards is rock-n-roll guitar.
12 - Marty Friedman
I think the Rolling Stone's Magazine is full of lies. First of all, how do they dare to put Kurt Cobain in the TOP 100 guitarist?? I mean, thats the BIGEEST LIE I'VE EVER HEARD! There should be Mary Friedman, so i say that the rolling stones magazine sucks!!! they ahve to be informed before they make such a wrong thing!
Thanks a lot!
13 - adamsj
Springsteen is a vastly underrated guitarist, as shown once again on Zevon's "Disorder in the House"--but don't forget Zevon's playing. He's the only guitarist on Life'll Kill You. That's him sounding just like Peter Buck on "Porcelain Monkey", and him doing all the neat picking.
I think about Belew's stellar work on Frank Zappa's Sheik Yerbouti. That's the only Zappa album (I think) with only two guitarists. Of course.
14 - Kenny Allday
Sure I agree that Jimi was great because nobody made those sounds back then come out of a guitar. But nowdays it seems that everyone is. Everything sounds the same in the mainstream. Honestly the list made me sick. Right when I saw Jack White of the white Stripes i almost fell over. That pathetic guy ovver someone like JOHN PETRUCCI!!!!! this is an outrage. and deaf person could tell that an amazing musician such as John Petrucci from Dream theater is 50 times the guitarist than half of the people on that list. I WANT TO KILL WHOEVER WROTE THAT LIST! ahhhhhhh
15 - Taloran
I've spent far too many hours over the last three decades listening to music and trying to determine which guitarist I considered the greatest - there are a whole bunch of 'em, guys who make your jaw drop listening to their licks the way Peter Forsberg does handling a hockey puck. How the heck did he do that??? Ah, what a wonderful argument Rolling Stone, in their infinite wisdom, has cooked up!
A few "How does he DO that?" moments:
Jorma Kaukonen's fingerpicking on Hesitation Blues, the first track of the first Hot Tuna album.
Page's fretwork on the live version of Dazed and Confused.
The first time hearing SRV's version of Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)
Jeff Beck's entire Blow By Blow album
John Butcher's At The Feet of the Master from Positively the Blues
Watermelon in Easter Hay, Joe's final imaginary guitar solo from Zappa's Joe's Garage
Then there's the ones that make your heart sing and your head spin, even if you actually understand what the guy's fingers are doing. A few:
Eric Johnson's Ah Via Musicom --> Cliffs of Dover
Santana's Samba Pa Ti and Europa
Hendrix's Captain Coconut and Peace in Mississippi
Kottke's Vaseline Machine Gun
Albatross by Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac
No doubt everyone reading this has songs that do similar things to them - I'd like to hear which ones they are so I can download them illegally and listen to them. (Just kidding, sorta.)
16 - The Theory
thank you for the Kottke mention... that guy is madly underrated.
17 - JR
So Mark, where's that list of jazz players?
18 - Mark Saleski
dat's a good question....i'll work on it.
19 - raymond mcgee
Glad also tha the world is waking up to Richard Thompson....and David Lindley.Now,surely,some mention for the extraordinarily skilful and adaptable Albert Lee?
20 - raymond mcgee
Addendum
Rory Gallagher???
21 - Eric Olsen
I knew Albert Lee for a time when he hung out in the South Bay in the '80s, great player, nice guy.
22 - upanddidit
I think that robert Johnson should be in the number one spot. That mans way of play blows my mind and no matter how many times i try i cant do it. Maybe he did sell his soul but it was worth it. He has inspiered so many artist and no one today really knows who he is
23 - Nick
WHERE IS YNGWIE MALMSTEEN
24 - zakkster
wheres zakk wylde
25 - pat o'brien
ok. lets face it. the edge from u2 is the greatest guitarist ever. i mean just listen to him and you will see what im talking aboot.