The electric guitar and rock and roll have been intertwined pretty much since the genre first emerged as a hybrid of several different types of roots music. Since that time, teenagers all over the world have picked up axes and started fiddling with them in the hopes of achieving rock glory. Hundreds upon hundreds of guitarists have made their impact on rock and roll over the past 75 years or so, which means picking just five as the most notable legends is a near-impossible task. Consider this quintet as a great starting point for a fun, fierce argument.
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1. Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry needs to be included on any list of the greatest guitarists in rock and roll because it’s hard to imagine the music without the signature sound he created. He didn’t indulge in the kind of pyrotechnics that would later become par for the course as the genre progressed. Then again, he didn’t really have the luxury to do so because, at the time that he broke it big (the mid to late 1950s), there was no market for songs that were any longer than 2 ½ minutes. Every note had to be strategically placed for effect, while also ensuring that none of it trampled on Chuck’s outstanding lyrics. It’s a balance that trips up even modern guitarists/songwriters, and yet Chuck had it down pat from the jump. Berry gave us “Johnny B. Goode,” whose story not only mimicked Berry’s own electric-guitar-fueled rise but also foresaw a day when the axe could be a ticket to stardom for folks of any background. And the frenetic solos he played on that tune set the standard for generations of rock guitarists who come in his wake.
2. Jimi Hendrix
At some point in the mid to late 1960s, rock and roll, with its rebellious aspects very much expressed in black-and-white fashion, transformed into rock, a gloriously colorful, mind-altering, boundary-expanding entity. You can make the case that Jimi Hendrix, along with his sleek Stratocasters played through earth-shaking Marshall amps, was the catalyst for this transformation. When Hendrix played, his body would swerve and swivel, his arms flying akimbo in all directions as if the guitar was playing him instead of the other way around. While Hendrix’s influences were the same as many other axemen, somehow what he created from them was one-of-a-kind, with blues, psychedelia, soul, and hard rock all melding together seamlessly at his will. His cover of “All Along the Watchtower” might have been his greatest recorded feat of imagination and high-wire soloing, while his performance of “The National Anthem” is high in the running for the most transcendent moment in the history of the electric guitar. It’s mind-boggling to think he accomplished all this in less than 28 years on the “3rd Stone from the Sun.”
3. Eric Clapton
In the ’60s, the graffiti swore that “Clapton Is God.” Maybe it’s more accurate to borrow a term coined by another pretty good player (Pete Townshend) and call him The Seeker. Because Eric Clapton has restlessly pursued his muse in the manner of someone in mortal terror of ever repeating himself. Think about all the genres he has mastered (and all the different bands that he’s gone through) during his career. When he started out, he was the blues traditionalist who could burn down any club with his dexterity and potency. After he moved on to Cream, he and his bandmates took those blues, put them through a modern prism, and emerged as progenitors of what came to be known as hard rock. Clapton then lost his affinity for that style, but he quickly found a more soulful incarnation as leader of Derek & the Dominoes (where he also produced a riff for the ages in “Layla.”) As his career progressed, the term “Journeyman,” which Clapton once used for an album title, seems to fit the best. Guitar in hand, from album to album and town to town, he just went out and played better than anybody else around him.
4. Jimmy Page
His early days as a session musician served Jimmy Page very well because it meant that he spent a lot of time playing in recording studios. While he developed as a serious on-stage guitar flamethrower, particularly in his brief time with Jeff Beck with the Yardbirds, he also concocted firm ideas for what he wanted to do with the instrument and the sound he wanted to conjure, once he had the pieces in place for his own band. What Page did with Led Zeppelin was explore the limits of his instrument in conjunction with studio technology. (And it didn’t hurt that he was surrounded by three aces who could help him realize his vision.) Songs like “Whole Lotta Love” and “Stairway to Heaven” have riffs, of course. But what sets them apart, and why Page has to be considered among any conversation about rock’s greatest guitarists, is how he varies his approach and creates new textures of sound that many other players couldn’t have imagined in their wildest dreams.
5. Eddie Van Halen
It’s only 1 minute and 42 seconds long. Yet in that brief time span, Van Halen’s “Eruption” likely inspired more people to try the electric guitar than any other piece of music in history. And it’s all just Eddie Van Halen doing what he did naturally. Using the fretboard like his own personal amusement park, Eddie created a new style of playing that has informed hard rock guitar ever since. Much like Jimmy Page, he also could conjure new sounds out of his instrument that kept what he did from ever sounding like the same-old, same-old. Yet listening to those early Van Halen records, it’s amazing how none of it ever seems like grandstanding or glory-hogging. All the acrobatics served the songs. Except for “Eruption.” That was Eddie throwing down the gauntlet that has been chased, often in futility, by just about every rock guitarist since.
Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
