11   Kirk Hammett
of Metallica

On any given night, at least half the parking lots in America have a car with the windows down, the speakers cranked and a couple of dudes sitting on the trunk playing air guitar to Kirk Hammett solos. Hammett is so steeped in metal history that he reportedly paid for his first guitar at fifteen with ten dollars and a copy of Kiss' Dressed to Kill. Metallica's dense thrash redefined hard rock more completely than any band since Led Zeppelin. Hammett's lead guitar is the emotional heart of the music, from acoustic angst ("Fade to Black") to badass flailing ("Master of Puppets"), and, in "One," the sound of a guitar tapping out a cry for help in Morse code, over and over, until the parking lot closes down.

Essential Recording: "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)," Master of Puppets (1986)

12   Kurt Cobain
of Nirvana

"Grunge" was always a lousy, limited way to describe the music Kurt Cobain made with Nirvana and, in particular, his discipline and ambition as a guitarist. His cannonballs of fuzz and feedback bonfires on 1991's Nevermind announced the death of 1980s stadium guitar rock. Cobain also reconciled his multiple obsessions — the Beatles, hardcore punk, the fatalist folk blues of Lead Belly — into a truly alternative rock that bloomed in the eccentric, gripping hooks and chord changes of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Come as You Are." Recorded six months before Cobain's suicide in 1994, MTV Unplugged in New York reveals, in exquisite acoustic terms, the craft and love of melody that illuminated his anguish.


Essential Recording: "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Nevermind (1991)