Best electric guitarists of all time

Electric guitarists have been the driving force behind some of the most iconic and groundbreaking music in history.

Contact us at letters time. Jimi Hendrix The greatest of all time? No one merged the blues, rock and psychedelia with as much ease or wielded a guitar with as much charisma. King He doesn't call his guitar Lucille to be cute. With King's emphasis on vibrato, she sounds like a real woman singing the blues. He's also among the most melodic of guitarists, using his solos to move a song along instead of stopping it cold.

Best electric guitarists of all time

When I saw that I could put words together with music, I remember it feeling like gates opening, this joy. As a guitarist, he drew from all of those sources, then improvised with a furious and genuine delight. He played so aggressively back then that he had to wear a wrist brace, but he quickly grew bored. In the Eighties, Living Colour served as a necessary reminder that Black musicians could rock as hard as anyone, fact that was especially salient when the band became MTV stars. It was coming from somewhere else. In the Nineties, Fahey switched to a spiky minimalism on electric guitar that made him a post-punk icon. As a guitarist, he was even more inventive, mastering country, jazz, and classical styles and perfecting the ability to play chords and melody simultaneously, thanks to his distinctive thumb-and-three-finger picking style. But his own instrumental-heavy solo albums are an endless bag of guitar tricks, mixing harmonics, arpeggios, and pure notes with a brilliantly clear tone. Townshend was one of the first players to find musical uses for amp feedback, and his emphasis on riffs and songwriting over solos though his leads are underrated made him the one Woodstock-era guitarist every punk loved. The North Carolinian, who once worked for the musical Seeger family, was left-handed but began learning on an instrument set up for a righty that she simply flipped over without re-stringing. I tried it the other way and I could hardly strum. Since starting his career on the British blues-rock scene during the s, Clapton had a unique gift for melody that made his solos just as catchy as the songs they adorned. He was always a diligent student of the blues, from Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters to Albert King and Otis Rush, and even cut an album of mostly pre-electric repertoire with Wynton Marsalis. Jerry Garcia was a folk and bluegrass obsessive who started playing guitar at

We also tended to give an edge to artists who channeled whatever gifts god gave them into great songs and game-changing albums, not just impressive playing.

Six categories and six polls later, we had some results. Read on for the lowdown on all players — you can use the handy navigation bar above to jump between categories. Arise, Sir Brian Harold May, the greatest guitarist of all time, the player most regal, and the one whose pathway to the summit began in the most unorthodox fashion, with a father-and-son woodcraft project converting a fireplace into one of the most inventive electric guitars ever made, the Red Special. This homespun mad scientist sensibility served May well. Just look at how he used the Deacy amp.

The Police were a new kind of power trio, and Andy Summers was the main reason. Summers played as sparely as possible, constructing clipped twitches or dubby washes of sound, leaving ample room for Sting and Stewart Copeland. Schooled in flamenco and jazz, Robby Krieger pushed beyond rock at a time when most players were still bound to the blues. I always felt like three players simultaneously. When the Bs played live, Ricky Wilson often seemed to exist happily in the background amidst the manic exuberance of lead singer Fred Schneider and the beehive hair and campy dance moves of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson. Wilson often used only four or five strings on his blue Mosrite guitar and odd tunings to get a strange, spartan sound. With his death in , the indie-rock scene lost an unassuming radical. Paul Simon, the great wordsmith, speaks as vividly through his guitar as his lyrics. He played with feel. A self-taught prodigy, he played a key role in engineering the transition from bolero campesino to the contemporary bachata that finally won its rightful place as a transcendent Afro-Caribbean genre in the Nineties.

Best electric guitarists of all time

Six categories and six polls later, we had some results. Read on for the lowdown on all players — you can use the handy navigation bar above to jump between categories. Arise, Sir Brian Harold May, the greatest guitarist of all time, the player most regal, and the one whose pathway to the summit began in the most unorthodox fashion, with a father-and-son woodcraft project converting a fireplace into one of the most inventive electric guitars ever made, the Red Special. This homespun mad scientist sensibility served May well. Just look at how he used the Deacy amp. As for his playing, it was sheer rock as theater, the fire to match the bombast, and the operatic splendor of a peerless band whose frontman must have been a dream to play alongside. He made full use of that freedom, with solos you could sing along to, melodies that stuck with you for days, and timeless riffs that will forever remain exhilarating as the first time we ever heard them. Jimi Hendrix was the supernova of creativity that the electric guitar had been waiting for. Would he be lost to TikTok?

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Using a variety of open tunings, often with only five strings on his guitar, never jumping all over the track if he can help it, Richards style sees him weave in and out of the song, out of rhythm and lead but always in its pocket, his tone analog and warm. But he started the ABB in with his little brother Gregg. Although now that he's been mentioned, I'll do the liberty of giving Gilmour a temporary spot at 3, until I get some kind of consensus on how the four should be ranked. Their list is okay, but it's what you'd expect from them: very commercially oriented. They sound like no other. Go to PMC. He was the biggest influence on the Smiths — Johnny Marr always called Rodgers his hero. Replacing Syd Barrett in Pink Floyd was no easy task. Log In. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors. Duane Allman. As a sexually fluid Black woman who propelled gospel music into the mainstream, Sister Rosetta Tharpe smashed any number of taboos. Now, I am not saying he wasn't a great guitar player - he was.

Contact us at letters time. Jimi Hendrix The greatest of all time?

Or at least pretty much all. Source: Guitar. And I got into the guy as well. He was a St. David Gilmour. RIP Terry Kath. By using delay as an instrument of its own, with U2 he found an entirely new way to orchestrate guitars. Social Links Navigation. No no no Noel Redding was not a great bass player. Summers played as sparely as possible, constructing clipped twitches or dubby washes of sound, leaving ample room for Sting and Stewart Copeland. Jimmy Page 3. Sub Culture. During the Covid lockdown, Marling shared her guitar insight with fans and followers, offering concise and informative tutorials on Instagram. He took off for Memphis in , where he became a radio DJ and developed his eclectic blues style, with gospel fire and jazz finesse. And then you have those solos, teetering on the edge, the suspense not killing you but leaving you having on every note to see if he can stick the landing.