100 Greatest Guitarists: David Fricke’s Picks

Soundgarden didn't set out to destroy metal — just take it
back to basics. Thayil updated the forbidding sludge and
tweaked-out solos of prime Zep. His fondness for the drop-D tuning,
in which the low E string is loosened a whole step for maximum
heaviosity, still resonates throughout hard rock.

Ginn reshaped blues-based rock in the crucible of punk. From Black
Flag's 1978 debut EP, Nervous Breakdown, to their 1986
demise, Ginn steered the band from blue-collar punk to
molasses-thick metal, anticipating the rise of Seattle grunge.

Back in 1968, before heavy metal had a name, Stephens was shredding
eardrums with the psychedelic-blues trio Blue Cheer. The group
bragged of being the loudest in the world, and Stephens' molten
solos epitomize Sixties rock at its most untethered and abandoned.

A pedal steel guitarist who made his name playing gospel,
Randolph's family band is one of the most intense live acts in all
of jamdom. His thirteen-string instrument has a chillingly clear
tone, and his solos are dotted with howling melodies and
perpetually cresting, lightning-fast explorations.

Young specializes in the sort of filthy solos that first made
people characterize the blues as the devil's music. His playing is
drenched in testosterone, booze and punk venom, but it's the blues
swing that keeps AC/DC's hard rock trend-proof.

In concert, Shields stood stone-still and played at such
unspeakable volume the overtones suggested instruments that weren't
there. His band was labeled "shoegazers" and his music "dream pop."
My Bloody Valentine's shape-shifting, surreal melodies and contrast
of delicate beauty with unbearable noise concocted an entirely new
language for the electric guitar.

Jimmy Page was obsessed with him, and Neil Young has called him his
favorite acoustic guitarist. Jansch's fusion of jazz, blues and
classical with traditional folk has made him a standout since his
1965 debut, and even latter-day groups such as Oasis and Pulp have
given him props.

In the MC5, Wayne Kramer and Smith funneled Sun Ra's sci-fi jazz through
twin howitzers. Together they staked out a vision for hard rock
that felt ecstatic, giddy, boundless.

In the MC5, Kramer and Fred Smith funneled Sun Ra's sci-fi jazz through
twin howitzers. Together they staked out a vision for hard rock
that felt ecstatic, giddy, boundless.

Krieger's strengths are flexibility and self-effacement. A broad
stylist whose influences extend to country, flamenco and raga, he
could also get as nasty as he needed to, but he understood that
instrumental interplay was what mattered.

Buxton was a gifted mimic whose ability to unlock the guitar
secrets of his Stones and Yardbirds 45s gave a Phoenix garage band
the breathing room to develop into Alice Cooper. His dirty,
elemental leads wrapped around Michael Bruce's meaty riffs to
create a legacy of exemplary hard rock.

At the time of his death, in 1985, it seemed nothing was out of
reach for Boon. The forty-three songs on the Minutemen's masterful
Double Nickels on the Dime ventured thrillingly into
free-jazz dissonance, up-tempo country, helter-skelter funk and
dense experimental rock.

Davies' guitar was the dynamo that drove the Kinks. Brash,
aggressive and entirely unforgettable, his chord progressions on
their early hits have become a rock & roll rite of passage for
any aspiring guitarist; "You Really Got Me" has alone launched
countless garage bands.

Lead guitarists gave rock its icons; rhythm players gave it soul.
The line runs from Eddie Cochran to Pete Townshend to Johnny
Ramone, a lineage in which Joan Jett should not be taken lightly.
In the early Runaways and the later Black-hearts, she played it
straight ahead: No frills, all heart, no fucking around.

Heavy, really heavy, starts here. While others were spinning solo stairways to the stars, the left-handed Iommi went in the opposite direction. Black Sabbath took rock's simplicity and simplified it even further. The occasional minor chord and a low, rumbling tone added to a guitar sound dripping menace and foreboding.

In 1980, Ozzy Osbourne hired the diminutive, classically trained
twenty-three-year-old Rhoads from Santa Monica, California, away
from Quiet Riot. His screeching, arpeggiated solos on "Crazy Train"
introduced the one true contemporaneous peer of Eddie Van Halen.
Were it not for his 1982 demise in a plane crash, his already
enormous influence on metal-guitar playing would have increased a
hundredfold.

He became a rockabilly star at nineteen, in 1957, and died at
twenty-one. In between, his itchy, aggressive strum of fat,
irresistible rhythm figures was a mighty weapon that could be
wielded to battle authority ("Summertime Blues"), rally the troops
("C'mon Everybody") or summon some lovin' ("Somethin' Else").
"Summertime Blues," Somethin' Else (1998)

The haunting, delicate clarity of Young's acoustic playing should
not be underestimated. But it's on electric that he has staked his
claim to ragged glory. A restless experimenter, he returns without
fail to simple melodies, bludgeoning chords and a savant's knack
for transforming the most obvious music into something revelatory.

Roger Waters gave Floyd conceptual weight and lyrical depth, but
Gilmour brought drama. His solos exuded a slow-burn stateliness
that could be soulful ("Comfortably Numb") or evoke sci-fi
dreamscapes ("Echoes") first glimpsed by the man he succeeded, acid
casualty Syd Barrett.

Trucks hit the road with his first band at age twelve. Now
twenty-four, he does double duty as guitarist with the Allman
Brothers Band and leader of the jazz-tinged Derek Trucks Band. He's
a fluid slide guitarist who moves easily between Southern rock,
reggae, gospel, jazz and African music.

With a guitar style that owed as much to free jazz as it did to
blues and rock, Quine was the perfect choice to complement Richard
Hell's intuitive street poetry in the New York punk band the
Voidoids. Quine went on to make vital contributions to Lou Reed's
solo masterpiece The Blue Mask and Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend.

In the few months he spent as lead guitarist for Gene Vincent's Blue Caps in 1956, Gallup introduced the stylistic swagger that every rock guitarist now takes for granted. His slashing, razor-blade-in-the-ducktail assaults pushed the instrument one big step away from country picking and down the mean streets that rock & roll guitar has traversed ever since. "Race With the Devil," The Screaming End: The Best of Gene Vincent (1997)

Robertson's songwriting laid the foundation for the Band's rustic
soul, but his terse, poignant guitar playing was the group's most
underrated weapon. The Canada-born Robertson and the rest of the
Band — then still called the Hawks — backed Bob Dylan
on his first electric tour, in 1966, during which Dylan proclaimed
him a "mathematical guitar genius."

Vestine's interplay with Alan Wilson's slide in Canned Heat sparked
hits including "On the Road Again" and "Going Up the Country."
"Sunflower," as he was called, was an early member of Zappa's
Mothers and played with free-jazzman Albert Ayler.

The Malian singer and guitarist is often compared to John Lee
Hooker, though that's too easy. He has clearly been influenced by
rural blues, but Toure is a technical marvel, and his delicately
plucked clusters and blindingly fast runs gather influences from
African hymns to folk songs.

In high school, Tool's Adam Jones played bass in a band with future
Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. In Tool, he
combines the tuned-down chug of death metal with ominous
atmospherics influenced by Rush and King Crimson. Rarely letting
loose with a conventional solo, Jones prefers riffing in 15/8 time.

In the early Seventies, Winter took the blues into hard-rock
territory with his overdrive takes on anthems such as "Johnny B.
Goode"and "Jumpin' Jack Flash." He produced a string of solid
albums for his hero Muddy Waters in the late Seventies. "It's a
living music," Winter has said. "For me, blues is a necessity."

Anastasio can play anything he hears. Phish's guitar anti-hero has
Pat Metheny's cinematic sense of pacing and Frank Zappa's impish
inclination toward noise. His epic solos balance technical
finger-work against screaming climaxes, and they're exciting even
when he's sloppy. Especially when he's sloppy.

The secret to Mitchell's daring guitar work is that she uses more
than fifty different tunings. Mitchell devised the alternate
tunings to compensate for a left hand weakened by childhood polio.
In time she used them as a tool to break free of standard
approaches to harmony and structure.

Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins learned the blues from Blind Lemon
Jefferson in the Twenties. He was a ferocious electric stylist in
the Fifties, though he's perhaps best known for his nimble acoustic
fingerpicking during the Sixties folk-blues revival. As
unpredictable as John Lee Hooker, he seemed to be making it up as
he went along, and often was.

The sound-obsessed Van Halen makes even simple lines sound like
towering chorales and pioneered all kinds of tricks, such as
fingers hammering the fretboard. Van Halen sought something
different from his rock peers: music that was defiantly arty, but
never so much so that it lost touch with devastating hooks.

During an era when everyone wanted to be a bluesman, Howe brought
jazz, country, flamenco, ragtime and psychedelia into the mix for
prog — rockers Yes. The ringing harmonics that open
"Roundabout" may be Howe's best-known moment but Close to the Edge
shows his range, from acoustic delicacy to high-octane riffs.

Miller was tightly tempered on the Pacific Northwest R&B bar
scene before joining the San Francisco ballroom band Moby Grape.
His playing was never self-indulgent, and his soloing was
propulsive, always aware of where the song was headed.

Wray is the man behind the most important D chord in history. You
can hear that chord in all its raunchy magnificence on the epochal
1958 instrumental "Rumble." By stabbing his amplifier's speaker
cone with a pencil, Wray created the overdriven rock-guitar sound
taken up by Townshend, Hendrix and others.