best guitar player ... if we dare go here

Hendrix is the greatest of all time.

Greatest alive = Slash

There is no better player; some guys play faster, prettier, but Slash the current king. And BTW, whoever produced/mixed the two Velvet Revolver records ought to be hung with E strings by his nuts. Where is Slash on those records? Where? I defy you to find him.

 

the rest of these guys played one hell of a guitar, but that's all they did.

gilmour made (makes) a guitar speak. listen to the wall, it's like the lyrics never end. i can not say that consistently about any other guitarist in the history of music.

p.s. eddie belongs on the first-team list, with dg as mvp.

 

I love Keith Richards, but I think he's a great songwriter, not necessarily an overwhelming guitar player.

 

straight for the throat, but a correct maneuver (not my original list).

replace him please.

 

No one came close to writing as many great guitar riffs as Keith Richards. "Jumpin' Jack Flash", "Start Me Up", "Brown Sugar" and of course "Satisfaction"
He's staying on my list.

 

For me, Eddie Van Halen did things with a guitar that I had never heard before, and have rarely heard since.

In terms of solos, I'll throw a nod to Ace Frehley. Maybe just more of a personal preference on my part, but the way he was able to combine the notes with approriate spacing made for some really melodic solos, instead of the more normal 'how fast can my fingers go' types.

 

nice post.

 

This should do it, but be patient:

I like Buck's list.

I like what I like. Intellectually I know Hendrix was better than my favorite, Jorma Kaukonen, but what can I say? I like what I like. Now a lot of Jorma fans will point to his acoustic blues work the same way Springsteen snobs will say Nebraska was Bruce's best album. OK, fine. I've seen Jorma play entirely acoustic shows and had a good time. Acoustic Jorma is better than no Jorma. But there were about three years in the mid-1970s -- three albums encompassing what Jorma calls "the metal years" -- when Hot Tuna played four- to six-hour shows at maximum volume, heavy psychedelic music played through vintage tube amps. That's the Jorma that made me a fan as a teen-ager.

I went through a period of about three or four years in the 1990s when I pretty much stopped listening to rock and explored about seven decades of the blues. It was interesting because I could see that Clapton, for instance, was hugely influenced by Freddy King and that as far as playing and even singing, there isn't a whole lot of difference between Clapton and Otis Rush, except that Rush made some very bad business decisions. I began exploring the blues just in time to catch Luther Allison before his death. Now Allison had been a bit of a blues outcast for about 20 years. He had started having some success by playing shows at colleges during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but blues purists didn't like him because he employed too many rock gimmicks like wah-wah pedals. So Allison moved to Paris and pretty much played everywhere but the United States until Alligator Records signed him in the mid-1990s and he finally got the critical and popular acclaim he was due here. Detractors said his playing was over-the-top, and it was, but that's fine with me, I am not always in the mood for minimalism. He played with tremendous passion and it moved me.

Which is why I enjoy Springsteen's playing. It's vogue to say he isn't a good guitarist, but he plays with heart and it grabs me in a way that Page or Hendrix never did. I like what I like.

To agree with Buck again, I've been listening to Knopfler a lot lately. He can do it all, pretty much.

 

Three pages and no mention of B.B. King?

 

three pages and no mention of the man that likely inspired the majority of people mentioned so far...
Chuck Berry

 

a very underrated guitarist.. not best, but underrated..
just watch this from 2:10 until the end