Gone too soon, saw him live many times.

http://freddieeverett.com/

This thread could have just stopped with the ops original post. Prince, hands down. And that specific performance especially. All the rest are totally fine, so please enjoy them. Except Clapton.

Devin Townsend.

Stellar guitarist, but his skills are on another planet in other areas as well, which lends me to see him at the top overall.

Doesn’t matter. With or without. He’s a killer guitar player.

Steve Vai is always doing something interesting. Even one-handed! (Playing after he had surgery.)

LTG : )

Alvin Lee

Terry Kath

you are right on it.Highly overlooked.

Les Claypool

John Entwistle is conversation worthy for bass players…definitely influential. Les Claypool is no slouch either.

Best really is tough to say overall. I think you have to give a style and perhaps someone who is best in a style. I think most influential ties into it…Les Paul was an AMAZING player and he pushed for so many innovations that made possible the likes of Hendrix and EVH.

There are just many talented musicians…Prince falls in that category. He could play numerous instruments well…he is an under rated guitarist but far from the best.

Roy Clark was a BAD ASS for sure. Let’s see Hetfield copy Roy Clark…I am sure many have tried and only a few can do it.
Jimmy Page is probably one of the best studio musicians and song/riff writer and arranger. But his paying is very sloppy so he is not even close to being the best guitarist. Same with Keith Richards…excellent song/riff writer.

So you have technical experts such as Satriani and Malmsteem…just incredible and precise at everything they do.

Then you have innovators….Hendrix, EVH, Jeff Beck. They have done things and created sounds and style with a guitar others had never done before.

Riff Masters….the backbone of any song. Tony Iommi is probably the best period for rock/metal. Hard to argue that one. Tons of guitarists to list here. Randy Rhoads definitely falls into this category and certainly has influenced plenty of others as well.

It’s a great conversation but too many to list/discuss.

My favorite 3 right now are John 5, Buckethead and Lindsey Buckingham. I can't put a youtube playlist on for those guys at work, because I'd end up watching them play all day.
Likewise, I'd pay money to watch Les Claypool noodle around on the bass in his living room. He lives nearby and I keep hoping to run into him.

During a talk show interview Mike Douglas asked Jimi Hendrix "What's it like to be the best rock guitarist in the world?" Jimi responded "I don't know, you'll have to ask Rory Gallagher."

You have good taste man... Morse is a master (and plays different styles) and he can compose unlike most guitar wankers that cant write to save their lives.

I don't like him in Deep Purple all that much but his solo music and Dregs stuff is killer.

John Mayer?? Just kidding.

he sucks unless you count ripping off SRV licks for a living as being great.

I’ll go with the man in my Avatar - David Gilmour. The Master of emotion, tone, and phrasing.

Hopefully this guy will get more attention since there is a documentary coming out about him. Even guitar player magazine called him the greatest unknown player at one point.

He died in the 90s unfortunately.

If you have never heard him play... you are welcome. This is pretty mellow from him, he can melt faces also.

Jimmy Page & Eric Clapton

My all time favorites in no order:

Michael schenker, vai, satriani, Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, evh, randy rhoads, Uli roth, Alex skolnick, tony macalpine, yngwie, petrucci

Marcin

Frank Marino

This thread is filled with great, great guitarists. I like them all very much.

But it’s Hendrix.

Knopfler is in that same 'instantly recognizable' category along with EVH, Jimi and Gilmour

The difference is when Foghat would record an old blues song, they would credit the original artist.

All my 1st pressing Zep vinyl says Page/Plant for ever song. It took years for all the lawsuits to fix that.

Near the end, they started recording albums of mostly their own material. Those are the discs everyone likes the least, lol

Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler are all at the top of my list. My guilty pleasure guitar player is Angus Young. Nobody is as entertaining for me to watch as him. Watch the official Riff Raff video from youtube and tell me that doesn't get your heart pumping.

What about Chuck Schuldiner? I saw Death back in the '90's, one of the most intense guitarists I've ever seen, he was playing so fast with this ho hum look on his face, never seen anyone come close to shredding like that. Brain cancer is a bitch.

Brian Setzer has yet to be mentioned unless I missed it. Another sleeper that can wail with the best of them.

So many good ones mentioned and plenty more that haven’t. Just impossible for me to say one is the best.

Les Paul & Mary Ford Show: World Is Waiting For The Sunrise

As one being of the right age to have heard and loved LZ1, looking back I clearly remember how awed I was at the sheer coolness of those songs. As a young dumb kid I had zero knowledge about where they came from, or didn’t even think about it. Just assumed that wow these guys write greats songs.

Now I like going back and listening to the original blues songs themselves, which of course is very easy these days with the internet. Those songs are all fantastic also, and more than plainly enough the original source (although then there’s the further-back history of who THOSE guys may have “borrowed” the song from themselves, and that history is so old it will probably never be known). But, you have to give LZ and Page credit, they took those songs and expanded on them and made them into something new that was really good. Geez, all they had to do was give credit (and their share) and things would have been fine.

I don’t think it was an intentionally evil act, they were just young and dumb and things were different back then. But they could have fessed up a lot quicker as time went by rather than continuing to deny it.

And they definitely stole Stairway to Heaven from that Spirit song. It’s kind of ironic that the LZ song which is considered by many to be THE greatest rock and roll song of all time was also lifted lol.

Boom! Exactly…you have to credit the original artist period. No shame in covering a song especially if it’s a better version which happens all the time. Not everyone can write great songs but some people can take an OK song and make it amazing…Zep was good at that. Modern rap/hip hop samples music all the time so no shame in doing it.

It was 100% intentional

Page would tour with a band, then 6 months latter list their songs as his own. These were not old blues songs, but songs written within the year.

-

Sometimes they would steal the lyrics from one contemporary band (like Moby Grape) and then the entire song and solo from another (like Albert King's As The Years Go Passing By) and clop them together.

Totally ruined their legacy.

Hell for Jimmy will be this song playing for eternity in his cell :

Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page - Come With Me

Pat Metheny.

Rock,blues
SRV,
Luck to have seen him 3 times

No one is as fluid as Yingwie

He is more efficient in his right hand technique than any other living guitarist

Far Beyond The Sun - Yngwie Malmsteen

although Yingwie will occasionally play the Blues or Classical Acoustic, no guitarist is more diversely talented than John 5

This video has his 40 pound "lava lamp" guitar in it, although NSFW

Crank It - Living With Ghosts - John 5 and The Creatures

Saw him in concert a few years back. When I got home I looked at my guitars and thought to myself, what the fuck is the point, I should just trash all of these and give up. Seriously. I could practice every minute of every day for the rest of my life and not be 1% as good as him. The variety of songs he played and the sheer skill and musicality was just insane.

Then again, it’s like that with any of these pros, especially when you see them live. I saw Jeff Beck at a small venue, and when it was over I thought WTF did I just hear? How can what I heard even be possible?

The internet brings to life things we may never have thought about, like Roy Clark and Glen Campbell.

How about this one where Roy Clark plays guitar, banjo and fiddle in one song. How ridiculously cool is this?

Or this one with Glen Campbell. Shredding before there was shredding. With the guitar on top of the head.

Man, I like every single one in this thread, I wish I was 1/10 as good as any of them.

Dylan Carlson

How about Tommy Tedesco? That dude probably is the greatest unknown guitar player of all time, maybe one of the greatest. There may be more songs with great guitar licks and playing by him that anyone else ever. I think a fair number of them were never attributed, just by-the-hour sessions where he went in and made up and played a guitar part for a song, like maybe a bunch of Beach Boys songs and the like.

Pure talentless crap

2567193234_9c7ea46033_z (resized).jpgil_fullxfull.1786062819_glyt (resized).jpg

The Crappiest guitarist by far:

1666852712_8f741175ce_z (resized).jpg

YbmPvou (resized).jpg

Geddy or Billy Sheehan for bass. Or John Myung from Dream Theater.

I think John Entwhistle is probably the best bass player. I like Bootsy Collins too. Teddy Lee is pretty amazing. I can’t ever acknowledge Les Claypool or Flea because I think their style sucks

A few big names to mention.

Zappa was brilliant. He could write and play great riffs, but his solos were always interesting and very skilled:

I don't love Jerry/The Dead's style once you get late in that band's history (and his playing was sluggish due to heroin depending on the year), but at his best the guy could absolutely bring it:

But John Fahey is my favorite guitarist. It's old time fingerpicking style from early 20th century roots music, but he brought a warm, personal, '60s style to it. Every time I hear him I'm frozen to the spot.

This guys says who is YM?

I like videos like this, the comments are more entertaining than Pinside. The one guy writes, very impressive but can he play Smoke on the Water?

Always love how a music thread can pull the greatest Pinsider of all time, Vid, out of his crypt. Of course, it's usually Vids greatest hits... Clapton sucks, Zep are ripoff kings, and The Monkees are better than The Beatles. I never appreciated anyone who I never agree with at all more than Vid.

Gary Moore

John McLaughlin

Eddie Hazel

Here's someone that probably none of you have ever heard of. His name is Stanley Jordan.

Here he is playing Stairway to Heaven in 2 digferent styles on 2 different guitars at the same time. Guy's unreal.

Still, when these type questions get asked, you have to take into context the pioneers. Guys who were doing things on their instruments that no one even thought to even try before, let alone do. The biggest giant in this area is Jimi. Almost everyone who came after him copied what he was doing or tried to expound upon it. That's how you know Jimi is the greatest. He invented things on the guitar that blew everyone away.

For what it's worth, when Jimi was asked if he was the greatest guitarist, he laughed and said, No. When asked who he considered to be the greatest, he said, Phil Keagy.

Off topic and for anyone wondering, and for the record, Buddy Rich is the greatest drummer ever.