Gibson's Top 10 Guitar Stylists

Over at gibson.com they've made up a list of the "most influential guitar stylists."

10. Curtis Mayfield


Along with James Brown guitarist Jimmy Nolan, Curtis Mayfield pioneered the funk-guitar sound that continues to be adopted by such torch-bearers as Prince and Nile Rodgers. Utilizing a self-devised tuning based on the black keys of the piano, Mayfield played with a choppy, muted style that revolutionized R&B rhythm playing. His masterpiece, the Superfly soundtrack, sounds as fresh today as it did upon its initial release nearly 40 years ago.


9. Jonny Greenwood


Few contemporary guitarists have forged a style as eclectic as that of Jonny Greenwood. Citing such far-flung influences as Miles Davis, Can and (especially) new wave guitarist John McGeoch, Greenwood often uses his instrument to achieve near-symphonic effects that range from lush soundscapes to aggressive maelstroms. A supremely gifted composer, Greenwood has said his playing is so closely aligned with Radiohead’s distinctive songcraft, he’s not sure he could play with another band.


8. The Edge


Lots of guitarists have forged a style based on the judicious use of effects, but few players have done that with as much finesse as The Edge. As its most recognizable, The Edge’s sound chimes and shimmers with a clarion beauty, as the U2 veteran employs delay and reverb to add specific colors to the notes emanating from his fingertips. Many contemporary players have cited The Edge’s influence, among them Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Coldplay’s Jonny Buckland, but no one else sounds quite like him.


7. Tony Iommi


Heavy metal would be far less heavy were it not for the dark, minor key riffs of Tony Iommi. With his ever-present SG, Iommi continues to craft melodically menacing leads and foreboding blues-based solos that sound like the aural equivalent of the Frankenstein monster. As evidenced by such Black Sabbath classics as “Iron Man” and “Paranoid,” no one has managed to combine brooding tempos and memorable riffs in the way Iommi has.


6. Les Paul


Simply put, the great Les Paul was the man who made the sound of rock and roll possible. Paul’s technical innovations were so pioneering, people sometimes forget that he was a premier guitar stylist. Singing six-string trills, newfangled fretting techniques and dizzying manipulations of time signatures were all part of his stylistic repertoire. No less an icon than Jeff Beck once said, “When I heard Les Paul [playing] things like ‘How High the Moon’ and ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise,’ I wanted to be that. It goes way before the influence from ’60s rock and roll.”


5. Duane Eddy


No guitarist is more closely associated with “twang” than Duane Eddy. Along with his close friend and producer Lee Hazlewood, Eddy forged his unique style by playing lead on his bass strings, employing a technique that produced a low, reverberant sound. Hazlewood suggested the distinctive approach after hearing a pianist who’s own style incorporated playing melodies on the low keys of the piano.


4. Robert Fripp


Sometimes fitted with a serrated edge, other times delivered with celestial beauty, Robert Fripp’s ferociously original playing has always pushed at the boundaries of what rock music could be. In an era when his peers were immersing themselves in the blues, the King Crimson mastermind embraced avant-garde influences, and in the process created painterly experiments with ambiance and tone. King Crimson songs such as “20th Century Schizoid Man” and “Larks’ Tongue in Aspic, Pt. 2” pit melody against maelstrom in ways that thrill to this day.


3. Bo Diddley


The late Bo Diddley will forever be best-known for developing the “Bo Diddley beat,” a percolating, rumba-like chug based on the “hambone music” popularized by street performers. Fact is, however, Diddley’s hard-edged guitar style was just as distinctive. First with a Gibson L-5, and later with custom-made instruments, Diddley became a master at dialing in just the right tone and attack to achieve his driving rhythms.


2. Pete Townshend


Windmilled power chords, controlled feedback and calypso-on-steroids strumming continue to be the hallmarks of Pete Townshend’s pioneering style. Live, Townshend’s playing often takes on an orchestral power, as it approximates the majestic sweep of such masterworks as Tommy, Who’s Next and Live at Leeds. Asked about the origins of feedback as musical texture, Jimmy Page once observed, “Pete Townshend obviously was the one … who made the use of feedback more his style.”


1. Chuck Berry


By melding the swing rhythms and horn-like solos of Charlie Christian to the electric blues of T-Bone Walker, Chuck Berry essentially created guitar-based rock and roll. Utilizing the simplest of ingredients – double-stop riffs, memorable intros and well-place slurs and bends – Berry came up with boundless six-string permutations. With the possible exception of Robert Johnson, no guitarist forged a style that had a greater impact on rock and roll’s seminal players.

A few glaring omissions (Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen?), but a pretty solid list I suppose. The top two specifically I could not agree with more. Pete Townshend gets a lot of praise at Gibson but is a criminally underrated guitarist- it seems very few people really understand his role in the creation of rock music.

And of course, Chuck Berry started it all. As Ted Nugent puts it, "If you don't know every Chuck Berry lick, you can't play rock guitar." 

Improvisation vs. Composition

Alright, this topic will probably only appeal to fellow musicians, but it's one that has been bothering me for a long time.

I first started playing guitar because I was listening to guys like Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, etc. Their music appealed to me a hell of a lot more than whatever it was that I was listening to before that (mediocre indie bands), and I loved listening to live recordings of these guys- they put out some of the best live albums ever (Clapton in Cream with Wheels of Fire and Live Cream, Duane Allman in the Allman Brothers with At Fillmore East, Pete Townshend in the Who with Live at Leeds, etc).

If there's one thing that all of those players have in common it is that they improvise every solo they play (for the unaware, "improvise" just means that they make it up on the spot). So naturally, when I began playing the guitar, I just always knew that you were "supposed" to improvise your solos. It never occurred to me that you might play the same thing every time, honestly. Obviously I learned some solos note for note, but I just assumed that when I got in a band I would improvise because that's what all my heroes did.

The first full song I learned, like a lot of people, was "Stairway to Heaven." The guitar solo in that song is legendary. It's a magical melodic masterpiece. Everyone knows it. It's probably the most renowned solo on any instrument ever.

But when playing it live, Jimmy Page always improvised it.



Yeah, the first couple measures are about the same, and the ending is the same, and there's that repeating lick in there that he always plays, but everything else is wide open.

Like most budding rock guitarists, I spent hours learning the studio version of that solo. But I spent many more hours improvising in the key of A minor over the song. Like anything in music, improvisation is a skill that needs to be honed and I've spent countless hours attempting to hone it (with mixed results).

Fast forward a few years and I "discover" Guns N' Roses. Also around this time I am listening to a lot of Rush and I greatly admire both Slash and Alex Lifeson. I look up live videos of these two great musicians and I discover that every solo they play live is almost identical to the one they played on the record. And I'm baffled.

Perhaps the MOST baffling part is that these two guitarists, Slash and Alex Lifeson, had the same influences as me. They were all into Clapton, Hendrix, Page, Townshend, et al. Now to this day I still do not understand why they do not improvise like their heroes did. It can't be that they think people expect to hear the same solo as they recorded on their album and will be disappointed if they don't...because Jimmy Page clearly never had that problem. So what is it?

Now, we all know that music is an expression of emotion. Maybe more accurately, a communication. To me it seemed obvious that when you play a guitar solo it should very much be in the moment- you should be expressing or communicating what you feel as you're feeling it, and not trying to replicate what you felt a year or a decade ago when you recorded the song.

Of course, you can express yourself by playing composed music...that's what all the classical players do. But to be honest, I am not interested in classical music for that very reason. It's not coming from the player, it's coming from some dead white guy from hundreds of years ago. But that's a different story.

Now, there are certain cases where I can see that playing a guitar solo note-for-note can be great. There are some solos that are just so good you know you'll never top them so you might as well not even try (but again, that never stopped Jimmy Page). There are some solos that are more than just solos...they're melodies, they're themes for the song. Take "Estranged" by Guns N' Roses. Slash composed melodies on the guitar that are integral to the song. You wouldn't want to improvise those. I also saw an interview with Tony Iommi, the guitarist from Black Sabbath, who made that same comment about one of his solos in "War Pigs." It sounds more like a riff than a solo, really, and it sort of just became another riff of the song, so he played it the same way each time.

These cases are excusable. But everything else? Well, in my opinion they should be improvised. But that's not going to stop me from seeing these artists who don't improvise live. I've already seen Slash once and am going to again next month, and I'm going to be seeing Rush in April. I'm sure the shows will be great, but think of how much greater they might be...