Rolling Stone's NEW 100 Greatest Guitarists list
 

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/li...rists-20111123

I know that lists like these are typically shit. Especially Rolling Stone's lists. But this...this is just inexplicably bad.

For instance, how is it that James Hetfield is #88 on this list, but Kirk Hammett didn't even make it on to the list? I don't know if Hetfield was on the original list from a few years ago (the one that had Eddie Van Halen in the 70s or 80s), but I'm pretty sure Hammett was very close to Top 10 on that one. It says that he was part of the voting here, so you could make the argument that he was excluded for that reason. Until you realize that both Joe Perry and Tom Morello were also part of the voting and are each on the list. This is just mind-boggling, and I'm one that thinks Kirk Hammett is slightly overrated most of the time.

That's just one issue with this list. There are many others to be found.

you read rolling stone?

_|_ :D _|_

Actually no. Or at least I haven't for quite some time. Someone posted this on another messageboard earlier today. Apparently someone still reads Rolling Stone for some reason.

143

who the fuck is going to sit down and click through that piece of shit. if it were a plain text list, maybe.

yup. i'm sure page or hendrix is number one.

Lazy cocksuckers.

100 Lindsey Buckingham
99 Thurston Moore
98 Alex Lifeson
97 Steve Jones
96 Bruce Springsteen
95 Roger McGuinn
94 Peter Buck
93 Paul Simon
92 Dimebag Darrell
91 Dave Davies
90 Tom Verlaine
89 Bonnie Raitt
88 Carl Perkins
87 James Hetfield
86 J Mascic
85 Andy Summers
84 Joe Perry
83 Eddie Hazel
82 Ned Cline
81 Lou Reed
80 Buddy Holly
79 Mike Campbell
78 John Fahey
77 Willie Nelson
76 Robbie Krieger
75 Joni Mitchell
74 Dick Dale
73 Kurt Cobain
72 John Frusciante
71 Robert Johnson
70 Jack White
69 Richard Thompson
68 John McLaughlin
67 T Bone Walker
66 Leslie West
65 Slash
64 Duane Eddy
63 Johnny Winter
62 Robert Fripp
61 Dickey Betts
60 Ron Ashton
59 Robbie Robertson
58 Peter Green
57 Rory Gallagher
56 Albert Collins
55 John Lennon
54 Joe Walsh
53 Otis Rush
52 Clarence White
51 Johnny Marr
50 Ritchie Blackmore
49 Muddy Waters
48 Johnny Greenwood
47 Stephen Stills
46 Jerry Garcia
45 Link Wray
44 Mark Knopfler
43 Hubert Sumlin
42 Mike Bloomfield
41 Mick Ronson
40 Tom Morello
39 Steve Cropper
38 The Edge
37 Mick Taylor
36 Randy Rhoads
35 John Lee Hooker
34 Curtis Mayfield
33 Prince
32 Billy Gibbons
31 Ry Cooder
30 Elmore James
29 Scotty Moore
28 Johnny Ramone
27 Bo Diddley
26 Brian May
25 Tony Iommi
24 Angus Young
23 Buddy Guy
22 Frank Zappa
21 Chet Atkins
20 Carlos Santana
19 James Burton
18 Les Paul
17 Neil Young
16 Derek Trucks
15 Freddie King
14 David Gilmour
13 Albert King
12 Stevie Ray Vaughan
11 George Harrison
10 Pete Townsend
9 Duane Allman
8 Eddie Van Halen
7 Chuck Berry
6 B.B. King
5 Jeff Beck
4 Keith Richards
3 Jimmy Page
2 Eric Clapton
1 Jimi Hendrix

(I should've posted this list at the beginning. I'm a dolt.)

Actually I'd like to touch

no b0lly major thumbs down. fuck this list

this list is really bad, santana at 20, nothing but men, nothing but dinosaurs from 10 on. it's like Rolling Stone decided they were going to just be the champion of Dinosaurs and said to hell with everything else.

Absolutely no Carrie Brownstein, who made the last list, Kurt Cobain and Jack White are better guitarists than Thurston Moore, J. Mascis, Dick Dale and Tom Verlaine? Eat shit, Rolling Stone, seriously.

I love how Lou Reed and James Hetfield are on this list.

like, how do you put BB KIng and John Lee Hooker on this list with a straight face. I mean obviously it's supposed to be rock musicians but they put blues guys on it like it matters. I mean what about all the classical fucking gutarists you goddamn creeps

CARRIE FUCKING BROWNSTEIN DEMANDS VENGEANCE

RS just cranks out these lists every couple of months to boost sales. total bullshit and predictably full of dinosaurs as trots said.

isle's high alternative top guitarist list for the nu millenium (in no order, because fuck that):

wes borland
matt bellamy
jack white
jonny greenwood
gary lucas
jeff buckley
som wardner
kaki king
kelli rudick
st. vincent
robin guthrie
johnny marr
carrie brownstein (i guess, since trots won't shut up about it)
duke erikson
steve marker
beck
robert smith
the guy from deerhoof... john something
josh homme
prince
nick zinner
frank zappa
whoever used to write the prodigy's guitar parts
slipknot guys
staind guys
korn guys, probably
omar rodriguez
black rebel motorcycle club
jonny buckland (yes, from coldplay. fuck you)
guitarist from rolo tomassi
primus
god is an astronaut
noodle (gorillaz)
graham coxon
bloc party
dave mcpherson (inme)

honorable mention: joanna newsom (not a guitarist but there isn't a "100 greatest harpists" list and she deserves credit for consistently kicking ass with a stringed instrument. here at Isle Publications, we think outside the box).

and many many more.

Matt Bellamy what the fuck? how can anyone still think this band is good

Isle your idea of "high alternative" is inexplicably tainted with total bullshit all over it

ok, tell me exactly why you think matt bellamy is a bad guitarist/musician. listen to literally any guitar riff he has written - plug in baby, hysteria, stockholm syndrome, muscle museum, knights of cydonia - and explain to me how they don't completely kick ass and are far more creative than what virtually any other known rock guitarist in the world is doing right now. if your reply has anything to do with tired (and musically illiterate) claims that bellamy rips off rage or radiohead, then you have no place in this discussion.

he is also a godly piano player- see interlude of 'butterflies and hurricanes'.


ed: the only thing that sucks about muse are the majority of the lyrics, and matt's once-heard-never-unheard sharp intake of breathe just before every time he sings.

neil young, george harrison, johnny ramone, kurt cobain, joni mitchell, willie nelson, buddy holly, lou reed, peter buck, paul simon, steve jones, etc.

this people are not even in the top 100.000.000 guitarists

how the fuck do we have one guy trying to convince us that Matt Bellamy is a notable musician, and this other idiot telling us that Neil Young, Paul Simon, George Harrison, and Peter Buck aren't worth mentioning?

you guys have shit tastes

not a bad guitarist, just completely unremarkable. You also can't just void the argument that he is very, very derivative. That's just the truth.

Anthony Kiedes not being on there is a pretty big travesty.

i love young, simon and harrison but they are not top 100 guitarists. are you kidding me?

These three are all obvious contenders for a top 100 list unless you only care about speed and technicality.

Neil Young is one of the most distinctive and influential players in any genre



Paul Simon is, again, easily one of the most recognizable and widely emulated guitarists

also Nils Lofgren, never mentioned on any list of top guitarists, maybe the most underrated player in rock music

yes i care about techicality and speed

the most annoying breed of guitar people are the ones who think ability to play fast and accurately makes the best player

actually that is the only positive thing about this list... it steers away from boring, mindless speed guitarists and so called virtuosos like malmsteen (sp? who gives a fuck) and satriani and bullshit like that

this is not a best songwriter list. top 100 guitarist ... kurt cobain???

absolutely

yngwe malmsteen rules tho bro

there are hundreds, maybe thousands of famous guitarists who deserve to be called "derivative" before matt bellamy does. and its such an empty accusation to begin with. isn't billy corgan "derivative" of black sabbath, hendrix, robert smith, richie blackmore, cheap trick? by your logic, some other band has a patent on improvising big dumb pentatonic riffs, using guitar effects is radiohead's shtick, and writing visionary (if lyrically inane) crossover pop-metal songs around classical arpeggios has somehow already been done bigger or better, when it hasn't. and don't even think about saying Queen did it- compared to Muse, they just scraped the tip of the iceberg. and their music was tongue-in-cheek whereas Muse's songs are thematically serious and cinematic.

i'm putting way too much effort into this given that your next reply will probably be just as brief and uninsightful as your last. i get that a guy smoking a cigar in his avatar probably feels pretty self-assured, but you don't know what talking about- or listening to, apparently.

ed- and simon / young are not great guitarists by the same definition. legendary songwriters certainly, but i wouldn't say they've written any defining, totemic guitar pieces that anyone can recognise- they are rightly remembered as songwriters first, guitarists second. and that nils lofgren clip was just as self-indulgent and vacuous as any other show-off guitar solo i've heard. just because he's not shredding, and instead playing slowly with "feeling" or "soul" (as inarticulate people often put it) doesn't mean he's any more tasteful or emotionally connective than any of those other guys. a solo is only powerful if it is played in a powerful song, and has the concise lyrical quality you find in solos like stairway, or classic pumpkins.

bleh.

is adrian belew on the list? i would hope.

being a good guitarist is more than technical skill. I won't defend Kurt Cobain being on the list except in terms of influence, but there are guitarists who belong on there who were probably at his skill level. Obviously Johnny Ramone has to go on. It doesn't matter that he doesn't shred, he changed the way the instrument was played and perceived by generations of players to come. I honestly don't give two shits about speed guitarists because it is just boring technical drivel. Take a look on youtube, there are tens of thousands of guys who can shred your face off. And it is boring every time it's done. Neil Young, Paul Simon, these are guys who tell stories with the sounds that come from their instruments. It doesn't matter how fast they play or if they hit all the notes, they dig deep into an emotional core and bring forth sounds which are seminally creative and new. Songwriting and musicianship are not mutually exclusive... the ability to say something meaningful and communicative through the guitar is ultimately much more interesting than how fast one can move his/her fingers. Hendrix wasn't the fastest or the most accurate, but people love him because he brought something unique and lasting to the canon of guitar music.

What I am saying ultimately is creativity > technical skill

Billy Corgan makes a successful synthesis of his influences though, never leaning heavily enough on any one to get pegged down. He truly owns his style as well. No one can imitate a Billy Corgan guitar solo accurately. No one can sound like that except for him. Matt Bellamy... sounds like Radiohead. Sorry, that's just the truth. I'm going to ignore your comment in Muse being superior to Queen since that borders on negligent ignorance.

You contradict yourself. First you want to separate guitar work from songwriting, and then you demand that guitar work has strong songwriting elements to be good? Nonsensical. Bottom line is that you are trying to defend mediocre music as being extraordinary because you like it. There is nothing wrong with liking Muse if that is what you like, but you are not living in reality if you think Matt Bellamy is in the top 500 guitarists.

oh and also, exactly how many of the guys on that list (or yours for that matter) have "written any defining, totemic guitar pieces that anyone can recognise?" If the credentials for good guitar work are that anyone can recognize it, the list couldn't exceed five to ten people.

is adrian belew on the list

as i said in that fairly retarded billy/josh homme thread in the sp forum, i think, and i agree, that billy's soloing is distinctive. i would however say that i've one guitarist whose solos sound similar, and that is marissa paternoster of the band screaming females. awesome enough that she's a girl, but she is also a huge sp fan and billy is her greatest influence (though you wouldn't know it except for when she solos). check her out or don't.


not even going there. if you can't hear the difference between the two then you are musically colorblind. muse is always highly melodic, they are about catchy riffs and predictable chord progressions. they play fun stadium rock that is easy to follow and rock out to, but its more sophisticated than that because it tastefully blends metal with classical influences and grand thematic gestures. radiohead have always been more cerebral, and their riffs/chords/melodies are frequently more obscure or abstract, and their influences are less obvious. both acts are sophisticated in their own way, and appeal to different tastes. muse's music is romantic, radiohead's is more impressionist. but they are equally good.

I didn't say that. I said that Muse's classical music influence is far more prominent than Queen's, and they use it in different ways. muse are cinematic, queen were flamboyant and theatrical.

no. just that simon / young are not remarkable guitarists. people remember muse and radiohead's guitar work because its bold and different. its interesting even without a vocal over it. would many people say the same thing about simon / young's guitar work? i don't think so.


all of them! just not that the music press establishment would even notice, because they are completely stuck in the past and apparently find it more profitable to keep masturbating over the same old nostalgic shit decade after decade rather than recognize and extol the virtues of non-pentatonic guitar music. but, with me as the self-appointed high priest of the new church of true alternative, that will change.

absolutely should be.

link wray, too

Isle, you couldn't even get those demos together despite the fact that you were threatened by an underpants terrorist. get real

i like the fact that richard thompson is always on these things. he rules.

I fail to see how Johnny Greenwood and friends would be any more interesting sans other instruments than Neil Young soloing like a motherfucker. I guess we just have a different idea of interesting, but I seriously doubt many people would be lining up to listen to Radiohead the instrumental performances. Doesn't mean that J. Greenwood isn't an amazing, creative, and unique guitarist, it just means that the standard you gave doesn't make sense. Neil Young actually utilizes traditional lead guitar a lot more, which would make him more viable than an instrumental Radiohead.

come on dude, that's bullshit. The general public probably can't name songs by any artists on your list except for Seven Nation Army

you are just insistent on being full of shit. He's just playing on some Springsteen song there, but even without that context it is pretty obvious that his work resembles no one else's. Like Young, Corgan, or Greenwood (or any other truly great guitarist) his style belongs to him. Actually, I would say that Lofgren's attack on the instrument is even less imitable than those other players. He's totally unique in the ranks of rock guitarists. And just fucking listen to it man, he's pouring his heart into that solo. It has a pattern and a plot... a clear beginning, middle and end. It conveys something real, as opposed to being a long string of randomly picked notes in in the same key in as fast a succession as possible.

fuck yeah richard thompson is the man

neil young is absolutely 100% known by everyone has a great guitarist except for lala and isle
this is his most nonsensical argument ever