It’s hard to say who’s my favorite guitarist of all time, because they all let me down at some point.
Mike McCready’s solo on Pearl Jam’s “Alive” is amazing, but he’s incredibly dull in concert
John Frusciante’s work on “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” and some of his solo albums is breathtaking, but he hasn’t played anything worthwhile for the last two or three Chili Peppers albums.
I quite like Dean DeLeo from Stone Temple Pilots/Talk Show/Army Of Anyone. Most of his work on “Purple” and especially “Tiny Music…” with that twangy Telecaster is pretty fucking great. In his best moments he’s a good songwriter too, in his worst he turned his band to the Grunge wannabe’s, they were often accused of being.
Mark Knopfler used to amaze me a few years back (especially on the songs “Tunnel Of Love” and “Private Investigation”), but he’s not very versatile and a bit of an Adult Contemporary-guitar player.
Mark Ribot’s style is very original, but who would want to listen to a whole album of it?
Slash is just unbelievably cool when he stands there with no shirt, a cigarette in his mouth, eyes covered under hair and playing like a God. For GN’R he was the perfect guitarist and couldn’t ever be replaced. In most other bands his style didn’t work so well and he revealed himself to not be very versatile, either (ever seen Velvet Revolver cover “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” or that band consisting of Lars Ulrich, Slash and Sebastian Bach doing “For Whom The Bell Tolls”? Awful!)
Jimi Hendrix is “objectively” the best rock guitarist, I’d say. He reinvented guitar playing. I love his clean sound, but I’m not to sure about his distorted doodling. Jimi obviously had the advantage of dying early, too, so I’m not sure if he wouldn’t have pulled a Clapton on us, had he gotten older.
Eric Clapton: undeniably one of the best guitarist, but boring as hell for decades now.
Dimebag Darrell: was he really THAT great? or is it the Jimi Hendrix syndrome?
Eddie Van Halen also reinvented guitar playing, but for the worse. He invented tapping, for Christ’s sake. To compare him to Hendrix is blasphemy!
At the end of the day, I like parts of all of the above’s work, but there’s not one guitarist who has never dissapointed me at some point. And the one guitar player is despise is Tom Morello. He’s a one trick pony if ever I saw one, but people keep giving him credit for being oh so original.
