Best Guitarist of All Time

1. John Frusciante - Red Hot Chili Peppers - not heard much RHCP (not a great fan) but dude's clearly pretty good - his work with The Mars Volta is genuinely impressive
2. Slash - Guns n' Roses - good flashy hard-rock guitarist, the occasional killer solo, quite perceptive
3. Matt Bellamy - Muse - has had some stellar moments, especially on Muse's 2nd and 3rd albums, but really isn't as good as his fans think. Better pianist than guitarist
4. Johnny Marr - The Smiths - obviously has a fine technique, and a very good grasp of subtlety and cadence. Tends to be a songwriter's dream rather than his own man, though - has never made me fall out of my seat (aside from on 'Good Morning Beautiful')
5. Tom Morello - Rage Against The Machine - baaaaaaaauuuuugh
6. Kirk Hammett - Metallica - sure Metallica are quite good - he can presumably play some mean guitar
7. Jonny Greenwood - Radiohead - good but not great - again, like Bellamy, best found behind a synth
8. Prince - godlike
9. Jack White - White Stripes - plays grunge and hard-rock equally well, and adds a neat personal stamp - not *amazing* though
10. Peter Buck - REM - cba

The White Stripes guitar work doesn't sound anything like grunge or 'hard rock' to me. I guess he gets a rap for aping Led Zeppelin, but it's not like he's playing AC/DC (which is the prototypical hard rock sound to me). He's much, uh, noisier than either of those much of the time.

squire was wanky later on, you can't call shoot you down and bye bye badman wanky, tis beautiful guitaring!
agree with the roses rhythm section, they were solid live, but half credit goes to squire for writing bass lines!

Cheers LJ, cant wait to see your top 10 best guitarists list!
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Can't believe Noel Gallagher missed out. And then there's Bonehead, and I think Liam plays guitar on one or two tracks too.

so i guess according to the BBC acoustic guitar doesnt count then.

i hate that list, but i hate most lists like this so

only 2 on there i agree with are Jack White and Prince (people totally sleep on JW by the way, hes one of the only recent guitar players to make me go completely O_O a good percentage of the time)

I should listen to The White Stripes more tbh - JW does some pretty odd things quite often (lol Icky Thump)

yeah watching JW play live is pretty remarkable - he jumps from simple pop hooks to noise to fleet-fingered blues riffing with amazing dexterity

I dont play guitar so have no idea how good guitarists are technically, so it's good sometimes to see who people rate highly that aren't the usual vai,satriani,van halen etc (metal guitarists just only ever seem to rate metal guitarists and ignore everything else "oh but he's a jazz guitarist/drummer etc")
Of course this list, is as someone said above, just people voting for the guitarist in their fave band.

Another vote for Jack White being great. I love Lindsay Buckingham too, but I guess he must be too 70s for this list.

possible ignored peeps:

Leo Kottke
Rodrigo y Gabriela (really just pick one - my choice is Gabriella tho)

xpost Buckingham is a great choice as well

i'm sure i am alone in thinking this, and it's more for a vibe and feeling than technique per se, but i'll mention rodrigo y gabriela. he's amazingly quick and nimble, especially given how he attacks the notes, and her rhythm playing (with all that precussive knocking) is breathtaking.

ugh. . . wow, timing.

and yeah, i'd say buckingham, too.

re: Satriani/Vai/Van Halen. that's just genre prejudices in the way. I don't expect JW to whip out any jazz chords or black metal scales but that's beside point. no genre is "more difficult" than any other, they all have rules. it's what you do with those rules that's interesting. I don't rate Satriani or Vai really because their material sucks, it's as simple as that. Its not a question of how many notes per second you can play or whatever, it's not a race...

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(also "all time" /= the last 30 years, does it? unless I'm missing something)

jj do you still work in a guitar centre? if so, who are the biggest influences for your customers? I guess Clapton for the oldies but who for everyone else?

oh hahahaha no no no i dont work in a guitar center, i own my own guitar store

clapton is def slipping, let me think about who i hear a lot about and ill get back to you

re: Satriani/Vai/Van Halen. that's just genre prejudices in the way. I don't expect JW to whip out any jazz chords or black metal scales but that's beside point. no genre is "more difficult" than any other, they all have rules. it's what you do with those rules that's interesting.

of course it works both ways, many will look down on metal just as the metal dudes look down on everything else.

ahh ok, I didn't know that, it's just that one time you mentioned working in some guitar centre (think it was the monster cables thread)

Rick Bishop
Tom Verlaine (yes, even today)

Really drawing a blank on who else I could put in my list. Jeff Buckley would be there. Bernard Butler and Nick McCabe too probably. Otherwise the metal dudes can have the rest I guess.

my personal "all time" list would be fairly conventional, I think: Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi, Eddie Hazel, Prince, definitely Hagerty (who's mentioned upthread somewhere - that guy is unbelievable and totally slept on), Joao Gilberto, Django Rinehart, Kevin Shields... I guess it would be a pretty long list actually haha

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i may have mentioned how guitar center dudes are by and large clueless and should not be trusted? ive been working in the same store since i was 14 (family business, y'all), so def not a guitar center survivor, thank god. xxxposts

Personal FAVOURITE (electric, Western-style) guitarists (because lol I'm not touching them acoustickers - many of whom are better than anyone I'll mention here) of the last 30 years:

1) Aaron With
2) Tim Smith
3) Grasshopper
4) Trey Spruance
5) Toby Driver
6) Mark Hollis
7) Kim Thayil
8) Chris Olley
9) Kavus Torabi
10) Brian Futter

Guitar Center is such a fucking joke. occasionally I have to buy something from there but god forbid I listen to any of the employees about anything. basically have had to figure things out for myself.

Fair enough. I didn't realise Squire wrote the basslines. That would explain why Mani isn't particularly impressive on Primal Scream records. Then again, he doesn't have a lot to work with!

I was being unfair to Johnny Marr. He certainly deserves to be on there. He's my favourite thing about the Smiths. It's a shame that the indie-pop guitarists who rip him off lack his range or ability to soak up diverse influences - the post-chorus run in Bigmouth Strikes Again shows an African influence, while the dramatic sighs of How Soon Is Now are incredible. And of course there's This Charming Man, which is just perfect.

Who else can we add? Jack Rose (RIP), Sir Richard Bishop, Howe Gelb, Mick Barr, Eugene Chadbourne, Trey Spruance...

no offense intended to guitar center employees, its just that no one with a modicum of knowledge/skill would work for the insanely low wages they pay, but this is all more suited for another thread, so i will shut up now.

xpost oh yuck lj, kim thayil, rlly? trey spruance is amazing tho

so is it like massively unfashionable to say that you still like Joe Satriani

jj, while you compile your customers influences, fancy moving this thread to ILM? I'm sure it would be of more interest over there? Im sure the original poster wont mind (if he's still here)

dan you like joe satriani?

PRESTO!

kim thayil, rlly?

Rlly. If I'd only heard 'Like Suicide' he'd be in.

d boon

I like Kim Thayil.

cheers jj

I used to think Satriani was more than technique, but not anymore. I wouldn't put Van Halen in with the rest of the weedle-weedle crew, because he's too self taught and idiosyncratic. Same as Buckingham, come to think of it, and not coincidentally both of them tend to stump (relatively speaking) my pretty hot shit guitar teacher (who can otherwise figure out everything from Fripp to Carlton to Thompson). He thinks Slash is slop-city, btw, and as much as he loves Prince points out the flashiest stuff he does is a lot of smoke and mirrors. He loves Prince's rhythm playing, though, on stuff like "Lady Cab Driver" and "Controversy."

Esp. for a UK list, Greenwood being MIA is nuts. That dude is so good he doesn't even need to play guitar anymore. Bellamy wishes his sci-fi Meatloaf rock was at that level.

Oh, and those who know would say Robert Quine.

god i hate soundgarden. coloring my reaction prob but srsly god i hate hate hate that fucking band

One of my fave guitarists hasn't been mentioned yet (since thread revival, he may have been mentioned upthread) Michael Karoli.

xps

hehe jj i love soundgarden

oh and dave navarro on the janes albums is godlike

have never heard of like half the guys on lj's list btw

given how much our tastes converge, it is probably the band we disagree on most! altho they're certainly not in my top-rank. or in the ranks immediately below.

SMC, some of them are British and a few of them are pretty obscure indie types who nonetheless wield a finer axe than most

Navarro's pre-reunion Jane's stuff is next level, but he's sorta buried that with the avalanche of shit that is the rest of his career so I can't place him on any "best of" of anything.

didn't even know Mark Hollis played guitar tbh haha

what the hell, I had a post on this thread that vanished

it basically said "I liked Joe Satriani in high school, which was the last time I really paid attention to guitar players"

30 years does not quite extend back to the heyday of Danny Fichelscher, sadly, but dude was awesome.

my list would probably be robert quine and... that's about it. robert quine.

don't mind john frusciante being on the list tho, he's a really great guitar player, very inventive and creative, always a lot going on with relatively simple elements, cool passing chords and a little extra harmonic flavor. not that i like his band very much, mind.

lol xp to SMC...The guitar is so central to the vision on those last 3 TT albums...cdnt rly have been anyone else, although dude was equally adept at keys obv

neither google nor wikipedia are helping me out on Aaron With. who he?