• Top 10 Guitarists of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 69 Comments
  Last Updated:: September 9, 2009

  Old-Wizard’s Top 10 Guitarists of all time will not be your traditional Top  Ten  Guitarists of all time list. There won’t be obvious choices on here. Just because a guitarist can wank to no end doesn’t mean anything to us here at Old-Wizard. We could go into a guitar shop, turn on a Marshall Stack, plug in any guitar, and sound like we’re good wankers. So fuck the Stevie Ray Vaughn’s and Eric Clapton’s with their boring ass blues wanking. This list isn’t for the old farts whose conception of good guitar playing is limited to the most banal modes of style. This list of the more adventurous at heart who don’t hear just plain technical musicianship, but aesthetically pleasing sounding styles and innovative work that influenced guitarist past their own records. Certainly their was a history of guitar after the Blues. This lists focus is on those great guitarists who did something else with the guitar.

  10.Will Sergeant

  Will Sergeant of Echo and The Bunny is an often overlooked guitarist.  One listen to their album “Ocean Rain” though and one will hear some of the most innovative and neurotic guitar playing of the 80’s. His classic delay used on their previous album’s was overwhelmed by spontaneous creativity on every single song off of Ocean Rain; more specifically the song “Thorn of Crowns”. It’s hear that Sergeant matches the Voltairian madness of Ian McCulloch’s vocals delivery to a song that exists somewhere in the sadistic reaches of and 18th century romantic comedy. Beyond the brilliance of his work on Ocean Rain is his work on subsequent singles like “The Cutter”and “Lips like Sugar”. He could play pop, spontaneous guitar madness; everything under the sun but his work always sounded distinctly his own. Break out Ocean Rain to hear what creative guitar playing sounds like.

  9. Noel Gallagher

  Hmmm…Noel Gallagher on the greatest guitarists of all time list?  Well, this is Old-Wizard’s list so we didn’t have a choice so we might as well start going into his great solos and ending it like that. First off, listen to the solo in “Live Forever“. Simple, but emotive and perfect in the context of the song. Listen to his massive amount of guitar overdubs in “D’Ya Know What I Mean”; That was certainly a new sound for the time regardless of how much someone would like to simply call it psychedelic. Listen to his hypnotic guitar lines in “Up in the Sky” and “Columbia” and one will find further evidence of a man who just had a sense for what a tune was and what a guitar needed to do to carry that tune. Alright, that’s it.

  8. Jonny Greenwood

  Since The Bends onwards, Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead has established himself as one of the greatest guitarists of his generation. Whether it’s in alt-rock modes like “Just” or the twiddling heard on “Paranoid Android“, Jonny Greenwood is always looking to expand the sound of the guitar, and when he couldn’t anymore he turned to the programming for his sounds. But between The Bends and Ok Computer, he exhausted all the emotion out of the guitar that there could possibly be. Beyond his actual playing is his striking sound that pierced the listeners ears especially during a solo. He moved across the fret board with a feeling of limitlessness not seen in most guitarists. His expansion of what the guitar can sound like puts him in high rank among the endless list of guitarists through the instruments history.

  7. Kevin Shields

  Kevin Shields, leader of shoegazing’s most coveted band My Bloody Valentine took the guitar and made it sound like something it never sounded like before. Forget the simple overdrive and sometimes guitar interplay of his “alternative-indie” contemporaries. He made the guitar sound like flowers and volcano explosions at the same time utilizing the whammy bar of a fender Jag more creatively than any guitarist before. It was with Kevin Shields that the obsession with guitar pedals became enormous for better or worse.  What many people didn’t understand though was that Shields got his sound from the way he played his guitar, the way he would exaggeratedly bend notes on entire bar chords with countless amounts of amps portraying the sounds. The sound of the guitar had never seen it’s most outward limits since Kevin Shields and no one has come close since.

  6. Jimmy Page

  There is no guitarists with as many recognizable riffs as Jimmy Page. No matter how queer it sounds, he is the “riff master”. It would be too obvious to name the obvious songs that one recognizes immediately by his playing. Beyond his penchant for creating memorable guitar riffs though was someone who commanded the guitar itself like a toy. Watch him during the early days in the DVD “How the West was Won”. Watch his playing during “Misty Mountain Hop“. He has total control over what he’s playing that answers every musical move by the rest of the band with an ease unseen by any guitarist before or after. He just knew what to do with the guitar at every second and created memorable lines in 80% of the songs in the band. He is THE hard rock guitarist of all time.

  5. John Squire

  John Squire of The Stone Roses may be more recognized by “GUITARISTS!” for his second album “The Second Coming” which perfectly updated Jimmy Page’s style into a 90’s alternative sound, but it was with their debut album that John Squire will always win his legacy. Every one song on The Stone Roses debut album was sprinkled with the shine of the best Byrdsesque guitar playing and sound. When he wasn’t sprinkling sunshine on the groove of these songs, he was going to subterranean Caribbean guitar styles that took this pop music into a completely different place never occupied by pop music before. Take a listen to “Bye Bye Badman”. Listen to his solo at 3:00 minutes in and think about the style he played in the entire song before.  Combining this Caribbean shuffle with guitar lines that literally sounded like a sunny day made for one of the most enjoyable guitar experiences put to record. Whatever Squire was being influenced by at the time, we were the beneficiaries

  4. Jimi Hendrix

  What Jimi Hendrix did with the guitar influenced so many guitarists afterwards. It would take an endless amount of time to list all of them. He not only influenced guitarists who concentrated on their musicianship, but all those other guitarists who wanted bend the living shit out of the guitar string, the other guitarists who wanted to make one note sustain for five minutes, the other guitarists who wanted to combined 10 delays with 20 reverbs to see what massive sound would come out of their Marshall Stack after all this work. Hendrix epitomized a figure who influenced the most disparate amount of guitarists of all time. Think about it. What other guitarist could both influence Eric Clapton and Kevin Shields? The legacy of Jimi Hendrix is without question. You know him, you hear him, you know what he does. It’s pretty simple actually.

  3. Johnny Marr

  The jangly guitar is owned by Johnny Marr. Listen to the entire Smiths catalogue and at every turn you will find Marr coming up with the most creative guitar lines that was perfectly complimented by Morrissey’s idiosyncratic lyrics. But this is what makes Johnny Marr such a great guitarist. It was never just guitar wankery. Every song had to be tuneful and melodic guitar lines. Everything popped out in Johnny Marrs pop playing. Listen to “This Charming Man” and “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” to get a glimpse at the quality that Johnny Marr put into his guitar work. Every note meant something. There was no chugging or power chords; it was all just melody that never got in the way of the vocalist. This sense for restraint and melody puts Johnny Marr as one of the greatest guitarist of all time.

  2. David Gilmour

  One feels like a charlatan putting David Gilmour as the 2nd greatest guitarist of all time because of not including Syd Barrett with his psychedelic musings that must have influenced Gilmour. But when one listens to Gilmour, one hears a guitarist more controlled while still retaining the intensity that Syd Barrett originally brought to songs like “Astronomy Domine.” One hears this equal control and intensity in Gilmour’s guitar playing on “Meddle“, especially “Echoes” which is listed on our greatest songs of all time list. It’s hard to argue the greatness of Gilmour during the solo of Echoes. He pulls something off that’s unspeakable from any guitarist before or after. It’s unfortunate that Gilmour turned into such an average musician ‘rehashing the classics’ in his old age when he was at one time operating at such a primal level in his guitar playing. It’s hard to think of a guitarist who just understood the instrument more naturally than Gilmour.

  1. Keith Richards

  Keith Richards certainly wasn’t the best technical guitarist of all time but we already said in the introduction that we could care less about that. What we do know about him is that he wrote the beginning guitar line to “Gimme Shelter.” What we know is that he wrote the riff to “Brown Sugar.” What we know is what he played in “Can’t you hear me knocking.” We know how he responded to all of McJagger’s vocal lines. What we know is that we listen to him and we hear someone playing the guitar in a way that evokes more soul than any guitarist before or after. He has an instinct for knowing when to make his playing sound haunting. He has an instinct to know when to make his playing sound more raw than any player in guitar history. 2 albums; Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. Listen to these albums, and you will hear a guitarist with the most instinctual sense for the guitar. He is the rock guitarist who matters most. The guitar was more than a guitar for Keith Richards. It became his body and something more.

69 Comments

1. #1 The Author is Gay says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:34 pm

   This author is gay!
2. #2 Chris says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:15 pm

   Keith is a damn good guitarist, but technicality is dominated by metel, which is a music forum seemingly not known to Old Wizards…
3. #3 parker says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:37 pm

   Any top guitarist list without the name Derek Trucks on it loses credibility pretty quickly.
4. #4 The Author is Gay and a Moron says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

   This author is gay and a moron! Listen to any modern metal band and you’ll find yourself a great guitarist. Just because they were popular guitarists doesn’t make them the best; actually having the most skill at playing guitar will, though. Listen to any of the following and you’ll see what I mean:

   Kirk and James of Metallica (should have been in your list, by the way)

   Trivium

   All That Remains

   Shadows Fall

   Unearth
5. #5 Luskar says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

   If you want to take out the Blues guitarist, you have to take out Hendrix, Page and even Richards to.

   For a ‘out of the box’ list, those are way too commun.

   For a ‘no blues’ list, you should at least have John McLaughlin and Tom Morello.
6. #6 Matt says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:27 am

   Dude: Steven Wilson
7. #7 Cody says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 8:51 am

   i agree if you dont want blues guitarist take out page hendrix and especially richards. and if you let those three in you should have put angus young in there he isnt technical and plays with feeling and was also self taught he cant even read music. and he can play it all while spinning around on the ground
8. #8 Rodrigo says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 5:10 pm

   Whatt?????? No Joe Satriani or Eddie Van Halen.. you’re out of your mind!!!!
9. #9 The Rabbit says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 6:54 pm

   There they go! Every time someone starts talking about guitarists, a white man has gotta pull a Keith Richards out their ass! Thats their one! Thats their one! Keith Richards! Keith Richards! Let me tell you something once and for all! Keith Richards is good, but compared to Chuck Berry? Keith Richards ain’t shit!

   I mean, even Keith Richards admitted that he took every riff and lick from Chuck Berry!

   Normally I’d consider this a crappy list but the fact that Johnny Marr is recognized for his incredible talent and bastards like Yngwie Malmsteen are off is amazing as it is, good job Old-Wizard.
10. #10 George says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 8:30 pm

    Enough of the Yngwie Malmsteen should be here crap, yeah, he’s a technical genius, and can play with the best of them, but he’s never once found a proper songwriter to build his craft. Keith Richards may play 100 times slower than him, but Richards guitar songs are 10,000 times better than Malmsteen’s.
11. #11 Noah says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 3:55 am

    I must be blind, I mean I thought I read it right, no Duane Allman?!?!
12. #12 simoniff says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

    i agree with the person who noticed a lack of metal on this list, but again, zeromage is drawn to a very specific sort of music, as evidenced by almost every article on music that he writes here. oh well, its his damn website, his damn perogative. i do, however, completely agree with david gilmour, except that he should have been number one.
13. #13 ST says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 3:36 am

    Just off the top of my head what about these guys?????

    Yngwie Malmsteen – no offense to the ignoramuses that posted eariler, but he is probably the best ever – as of today.
    Chuck Berry
    Dominic Frasca
    Joe Satriani
    Django Reinhardt
    Les Paul
    John Petrucci
    Phil Keaggy
    Eddie Van Halen
14. #14 vule says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Jimi Hendrix is the first guitar in the world.
15. #15 Dear The Author is Gay and a Moron says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    hahahahahahahahahahaha…i can’t believe your chocie for good guitarists
16. #16 Zootoxin says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    I think the list is meant to higlight guitarists working as part of the band.

    Not being singular in context.

    Many of the metal guitarists are extremely gifted but will the stand the test of time?

    I think thats the idea anyway.

    I would have included Gary Moore and Slash though.
17. #17 Nora says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    Any such list without Duane Allman is meaningless. He was simply the best. Ever. Happy Birthday and Wailon, Skydog!
18. #18 babu says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 6:01 pm

    f..k oll!!! where is eddie van halen supeeeer!!!!!! eddie eddie eddie
19. #19 babu says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    eddie is best guitarist oll time