Guitarist
Index

The Jimi Hendrix Experience · 1963–1970

The player who turned amplifier noise into a musical language.

Van Halen · 1972–2020

The virtuoso who rewrote the vocabulary of rock guitar.

Led Zeppelin · 1962–present

Session-hardened producer who built rock guitar as an architecture, not a solo.

The Yardbirds / Jeff Beck Group / solo · 1965–2023

The restless technician who kept reinventing what an electric guitar could be.

Solo · 1949–2015

The single-note singer whose vibrato became the blues standard.

Black Sabbath · 1966–present

The inventor of heavy metal guitar, built out of an industrial accident.

Cream / Derek and the Dominos / solo · 1963–present

The player who translated Chicago blues into British rock volume.

Pink Floyd · 1967–present

The master of the long note — space, sustain and perfect note choice.

Double Trouble · 1975–1990

The Texas force of nature who dragged the blues back into the mainstream.

Solo · 1953–2017

The man who invented the rock guitar riff as a hook.

Queen · 1968–present

One homemade guitar, a sixpence, and the most orchestral guitar sound in rock.

Quintette du Hot Club de France · 1928–1953

Two working fingers, an acoustic archtop, and the birth of European jazz guitar.

Santana · 1966–present

Endless sustain, Latin rhythm, and one of the most identifiable single notes in music.

The Allman Brothers Band · 1965–1971

The slide player who made a glass bottle sing like a voice.

Metallica · 1981–present

The most disciplined downpicking right hand in the history of heavy music.

Deep Purple / Rainbow · 1962–present

Classical menace and baroque runs welded to the heaviest rock of the early '70s.

Dire Straits / solo · 1977–present

Fingerstyle electric playing so clean it became its own genre.

Solo / David Lee Roth / Frank Zappa · 1979–present

Technique in service of the strangest, most vocal guitar imagination in rock.

Solo / The Revolution · 1978–2016

The most underrated great guitarist of the modern era, hidden behind everything else he could do.

Solo · 1953–1992

Upside-down, left-handed, and the source of nearly every great blues bend.

The Who · 1962–present

The greatest rhythm guitarist in rock, playing lead parts by refusing to.

Ozzy Osbourne / Quiet Riot · 1975–1982

Classical discipline dropped into heavy metal, in barely three years of recordings.

Pantera / Damageplan · 1981–2004

Groove metal's architect — razor-tight riffs and squealing, unhinged leads.

Solo · 1948–1968

Octaves, a bare thumb, and the warmest jazz guitar tone ever recorded.

Tedeschi Trucks Band / The Allman Brothers Band · 1990–present

The greatest slide guitarist alive, playing with no pick and no fear of silence.

AC/DC · 1973–present

Pure blues-rock aggression with the least complicated rig in stadium music.

Thin Lizzy / solo · 1969–2011

The most intense vibrato in blues-rock, backed by hard rock firepower.

Solo / Chickenfoot · 1978–present

Instrumental rock's greatest melodist, and the teacher behind half the genre.

Guns N' Roses · 1983–present

The last true rock guitar hero, and the most quotable lead melodies of the era.

Pat Metheny Group · 1974–present

Jazz guitar's great melodist and one of the warmest tones ever recorded.

Fleetwood Mac / John Mayall's Bluesbreakers · 1965–2020

The most restrained touch in British blues, and the most haunting tone.

Dream Theater · 1985–present

Progressive metal's benchmark technician, with a composer's grip on long forms.

Rush · 1968–present

The chord voicings and texture writing that made a three-piece sound orchestral.

The Aristocrats / Solo · 1993–present

The most complete technician alive, and the most stylistically fluent.

Rising Force / Alcatrazz · 1978–present

The man who fused Paganini with Marshall stacks and invented neoclassical shred.

Solo / UK / Soft Machine · 1969–2017

The most harmonically advanced guitarist rock ever produced, and the least imitable.

The Smiths / solo · 1982–present

Layered jangle and arpeggios that made a guitar band sound like an orchestra.

Extreme · 1985–present

Funk-rock rhythm mastery hiding one of the most complete techniques in rock.

The Mothers of Invention / solo · 1962–1993

A composer who happened to play some of the strangest, most rhythmic guitar solos ever recorded.

U2 · 1976–present

Rhythmic delay as a compositional instrument — minimalism that filled stadiums.

Animals as Leaders · 2007–present

Extended-range guitar reinvented as a percussion and harmony instrument at once.

Taste / solo · 1965–1995

The hardest-working blues-rock guitarist Ireland ever produced.

Solo · 1989–present

The most successful modern blues-rock guitarist, and the most obsessive tone historian.

The Allman Brothers Band · 1963–2024

The melodic half of Southern rock's greatest two-guitar partnership.

Ozzy Osbourne / Black Label Society · 1987–present

Southern-fried metal with the most aggressive pinch harmonics in the business.

King Crimson · 1967–present

Rigorous, mathematical guitar playing and a lifetime of refusing to repeat himself.

Solo / John Mayer Trio / Dead & Company · 1998–present

A pop songwriter with a serious blues player's hands and one of the best clean tones going.

Metallica · 1980–present

Thrash's most recognisable lead voice — wah, minor pentatonics and horror-movie melody.

Gov't Mule / The Allman Brothers Band · 1980–present

Southern rock's most reliable heavyweight, equally at home on slide and in a jam.

Polyphia · 2010–present

Instrumental guitar rebuilt for the streaming generation — trap rhythm, nylon strings, absurd technique.