I agree an astonishingly talented man. But the best ever? I’m afraid I don’t agree on that. Too many names flying around my head at the moment to even begin a cohesive reply.
I’ll be back once Gary Moore, Joe Satriani, Dave Gilmore, Prince, Hendrix etc all have a barney and decide who I should present to you xx brb
Best white blues guitarist for me, you won’t be surprised to hear was Peter Green. I won’t try to justify it in writing, how could you.
I’ve posted this impromptu, concert filler (while Danny Kirwan replaces a broken string) several times before because it shows what a natural talent he was.
This clip has everything, light and shade, restraint and attack, emotion, technique.
I say was… which insn’t an intention to deminish the man he is today but to illustrate a true artist at the height of his powers.
I have had many favourites over the years but the one I keep going back to is Steve Howe. For his work with Yes alone he is a giant amongst plank spankers but he has also had a career with Asia as well as producing many solo albums. He started out with a psychodelic band called Toomorrow and they had a hit with My White Bicycle. When Keith Emerson broke up The Nice and was looking for a guitarist he asked Steve Howe to joing him in ELP. Steve Howe chose Yes instead and as they say, the rest is history. He wasnt the guitar hero of the day type player. His style wasnt so much the Blues as Jazz, Classical, Ragtime, Folk all mixed up. He rarely played the usual guitars of the 60s and 70s (Gibson Les Paul/Fender Statocaster etc) but prefered the hollow body guitars of Gibson and Gretch. He also used the peddle steel to greta effect on tracks like And You And I. He took the art of playing guitar to another level in Yes as can be evidenced on The Gates of Delerium, a 20 minute plus epic that blows you away with it power only to fade out with a beautiful and peace coda, the song Soon. Prog Rock isnt everyones cup of tea, but for a period in nthe early to mid 70s it pushed the boundaries of what was possible in rock/contempory music and left us with some modern classics. If you were putting together a best of Prog band, you would have to have Steve Howe and Robert Fripp on guitars. Steve gets my nod over Robert simply because he defines the sound of his band.
OK - let me introduce you to certainly the best current working guitarist and I think worth consideration as the best ever:
Guthrie Govan
Who? I hear the majority ask - well Wiki can save me a lot of typing here.
He is a master of any genre, has been at the top of his game for 25 years, a teacher, session man, band member, and the ‘virtuoso’s virtuoso’. Bit of a hippy but there you go.
He is currently touring with Hans Zimmer (and Johnny Marr!) playing orchestral music.
Guthrie Govan - the best guitarist you never heard of.
One of my favourite bands growing up were Rage Against the Machine. Was always listening to them at home and on the old Sony Walkman on the school bus.
Tom Morello’s sound/sound effects were the first time I can recall hearing something a bit ‘different’. It all sounded slightly experimental, though always provided a wow factor when listening.
There are so many possible choices for this accolade. Most of them, though, are very much lead guitarists. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but it does rather ignore the other side of electric guitar playing. And you can certainly make the case that the electric guitar is first and foremost an instrument for artisans, an accompanying instrument.
So, enough of the tricksy-wicksy lead stuff, twenty-minute solos and all that bollocks. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the late, great Johnny Ramone
It might sound easy, but try doing it. Then try doing it on stage for a couple of hours, non stop. That buzz saw sound is a lot harder to achieve than you might think. And, of course, it sounds fucking wonderful. You can keep your solos and twiddles.