The 56 Greatest Musical Moments in Guitar History
July 27, 2015 2:54 AM   Subscribe

Get your guit on. As chosen by the staff of Guitar Player. Rumble!
posted by Wolof (51 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Spoiler: this list has "Classical Gas" in it, and it turns out that most of your favourite guitar moments suck.
posted by awfurby at 3:36 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


They seem to have forgotten Sister Rosetta Tharpe's influence so let me just correct that
posted by billiebee at 4:04 AM on July 27, 2015 [12 favorites]


Also Rumble still gives me shivers no matter how many times I hear it.
posted by billiebee at 4:05 AM on July 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh, boy, I love the guitar, but when I clicked on that and hit the autoplaying interstitial for "Keepin' the Blues Alive" followed by the autoplaying "Hey, I was once in Ozzy's band! Learn some lixx from me" ad on the page:

1) Guitar is annoying.
2) I do not have the fortitude to click through four more times.
3) Guitar magazine sites really do not respect their audience, much like Ultimate Guitar Tab Site, et al.

Let me know if anything good is in the top five, if you happen to make it that far!
posted by ignignokt at 4:29 AM on July 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


The guitar part to Eddie Grant's Electric Avenue is missing from this list.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 4:42 AM on July 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


The 56 Greatest Musical Moments in Guitar History

It's funny they specify that the moments are musical, as if they're worried that, if that condition weren't there, Guitar Players' readers would immediately start going: "Let's see, Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire...the guitar case gun from Desperado...Dimebag hitting Vinnie's Sabians with his headstock in the 'I'm Broken' video...Jem & The Hologram's motorcycles..."
posted by Ian A.T. at 5:01 AM on July 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Let me know if anything good is in the top five, if you happen to make it that far!

Eh, it's kind of more like a very selective path through guitar history, and is rather heavily slanted toward the white male history of guitar a.k.a. mainstream rock and (a very filtered sort of) metal, and seems to end with...The White Stripes (did I miss a page)? I mean, that's not so surprising considering that we're talking about Guitar Player mag here.

But I still don't know how they didn't mention John Fahey, and there were no women except as an afterthought at the end ("by the way, women can play guitar too! Here's Jennifer Batten. Now go away") and there were the usual set of token Jazz and Blues guitarists (the obligatory Django Reinhardt, Robert Johnson, and Wes Montgomery, the latter of which posts also managed to slip in a mention of Charlie Christian). Country guitarists seem to not really exist in their world.

However, "Classical Gas," Yngwie Malmsteen, and Kiss were apparently incredibly important milestones for the guitar...*sob*

Again, not too surprised, this is Guitar Player, it's made to sell gear to adolescent boys--at least based on my memory of buying it when I was an aspiring guitar playing adolescent boy. But I would have to disagree that this is the best of the web, to be honest.
posted by dubitable at 5:02 AM on July 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


Let me know if anything good is in the top five, if you happen to make it that far!

It's chronological, so the way it ends is as one would expect from a list in a guitar magazine, with the entries thinning out past the mid-seventies. Things that made it into the list past 1990:
  1. Nevermind is released (1991)
  2. Jennifer Batten backs Michael Jackson at the Superbowl (1993)
  3. White Blood Cells is released (2001)
But nothing else as important as Kiss happened in the last 25 years.

Also, Prince is not mentioned, which is a damn shame considering just how much influence Purple Rain had over the next decades.
posted by frimble at 5:09 AM on July 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


frimble, first of all, jinx on the Kiss commentary, and also seriously why no Prince!! An insane oversight and another illustration of how bad this is.
posted by dubitable at 5:11 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Spoiler: this list has "Classical Gas" in it, and it turns out that most of your favourite guitar moments suck.

Some friends of mine wrote lyrics for Classical Gas, most of which are these repeated lines:

Classical gas is sweeeet!
Classical gas is cooool!


It's a significant improvement. I can never hear the song without the lyrics in my head now.
posted by TrialByMedia at 5:16 AM on July 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Prince is my Van Halen M&M test for lists like these. I scan them for Prince first. If he's left out, or put in as a shocking swerve with prose about how audacious having him on the list is, I don't feel any shame in doubting the rest of it.
posted by frimble at 5:25 AM on July 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


To be fair, this dumb list has a theme related to "moments" in guitar, whatever they decide that means.

Prince is an interesting guy, who did many things. But is there a distilled guitar moment? Ditto for Ellen McIlwaine.

For Prince, maybe the time he took all the solos when they inducted George Harrison into the RaR Hall of fame?

Still, badly presented listicles are badly presented.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:27 AM on July 27, 2015


If anybody has a link to a one page text with no video or audio crap I would be interested in reading it.
posted by bukvich at 5:35 AM on July 27, 2015


That was interesting. Given that every issue with n the early 80's had an article about Steve Morse (and he consistently topped their readers poll) I'm surprised they didn't find a way to work him in. Or maybe they did and I just missed it. That article is even worse on a slow connection. No way could I attempt the videos.
posted by TedW at 6:03 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Someone hasn't seen the Rock and Roll HoF bit where Prince absolutely destroys the While My Guitar Gently Weeps solo with a ridiculous host of guitar gods on stage.
posted by Sphinx at 6:10 AM on July 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


Prince is an interesting guy, who did many things. But is there a distilled guitar moment? Ditto for Ellen McIlwaine.

This is a fantastic Prince guitar moment in an otherwise staid all-star (old guys) cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Really, the best part is is Tom Petty's face at 4:42 reacting to Prince not stopping.
posted by ignignokt at 6:21 AM on July 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


Prince is an interesting guy, who did many things. But is there a distilled guitar moment?

Let's Go Crazy, after the spoken word intro. And then the outro. Still makes me shiver 30 years later.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:23 AM on July 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Someone hasn't seen the Rock and Roll HoF bit where Prince absolutely destroys the While My Guitar Gently Weeps solo

I just watched that for the first time. Oh God that is pure joy! He tears the shit out of it. Dhani Harrison looks so happy and Prince being pushed back on the stage is the funniest thing I've seen in a while! I love that little genius.
posted by billiebee at 6:27 AM on July 27, 2015


When people put Kiss on a list of 'great' rock and roll anything, it's like when they put Star Trek on a sci-fi list.
Pass.
posted by signal at 6:27 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've heard from various individual sources that Prince playing guitar at the Superbowl (2007-phallic shadows and all) was their inspiration for picking up the instrument. I think this is probably equivalent to how the end of Back to the Future inspired scads of people in my generation to try guitar.
posted by Locobot at 6:31 AM on July 27, 2015


When people put Kiss on a list of 'great' rock and roll anything, it's like when they put Star Trek on a sci-fi list.

Hello! They rocked and rolled ALL NIGHT. And that following a day of partying!
posted by Chrysostom at 6:33 AM on July 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Hugely influential guitarists also omitted: Glenn Branca and Jean Bosco Mwenda.
posted by swift at 6:47 AM on July 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's funny they specify that the moments are musical, as if they're worried that, if that condition weren't there, Guitar Players' readers would immediately start going: "Let's see, Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire...the guitar case gun from Desperado...Dimebag hitting Vinnie's Sabians with his headstock in the 'I'm Broken' video...Jem & The Hologram's motorcycles..."


Even with that specificity, Pete Townshend's first guitar-smashing made the list.
posted by DiscountDeity at 6:54 AM on July 27, 2015


OMG, Swift. Thank you. I'd not heard of Glenn Branca before, despite listening to tonnes of music clearly influenced by his compositions. I have some listening ahead of me.
posted by frimble at 6:55 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Sorry, did not include Neil Young's one note solo from "Cinnamon Girl."
posted by eriko at 6:58 AM on July 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


No Samba Pa Ti? wtf?!
posted by peacay at 7:05 AM on July 27, 2015


Christ, peacay, you want TWO Santana listings?!
posted by batfish at 7:14 AM on July 27, 2015


At least Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar is there.

That said, the list seems to start with a handful of legit moments in the history of guitar, but it quickly devolves into more of a personal favorites list. I mean, yeah, Kiss was huge, and their shows were legendary theater, but they really didn't do anything new or momentous with their guitars. And Spinal Tap as a "greatest moment"? Seriously?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:42 AM on July 27, 2015


Guitarists can be both fickle and obstinate simultaneously while arguing "who is the best" at this or that. It's one reason why, when asked what my "favorite" song is, I often reply: "Schubert's Trout Quintet." And while I do really like that "song" a lot, it's a calculated lie. It's a lie because I'm deliberately denying that which I otherwise know to be true: I have no favorite and could never have a favorite. There's simply too much good/talented/moving music in the world. It's calculated because I like to cause a little dissonance in the minds of my fellow friends.

Alas, for some, Socrates could be shredding some sweet, sweet, flamenco in counterpoint to Anytus' cover band and he'd still have to drink the Kool Aid.

Enjoy what you enjoy; be inspired by what breathes life into your soul; there's no need to make a list and rank that which animates your life.

And in case you think I'm fulla crap, let me just note that lightning cracked the sky on the day Leo Kottke was born.
posted by CincyBlues at 7:54 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


3) Guitar magazine sites really do not respect their audience, much like Ultimate Guitar Tab Site, et al.

I am not sure that it is so much disrespect as catering precisely to a very specific audience, which is composed mainly of that headbanger in your grade 10 history class who has inked the Metallica logo freehand onto the cover of the textbook. As with one or two others above, I misspent my youth reading Guitar Player and Guitar for the Practicing Musician (the Cracked to GP's Mad), and it is absolutely unchanged. The article is dated June 2015 and contains this:
Clapton worked his magic with a 1960 Les Paul Standard and a Marshall combo, and he cranked the volume so loud that the session engineers were literally freaking out. Genius!
This is more or less exactly the same prose style that I recall from thirty years ago. Weirdly, it anticipates the sort of content that is written where style and communication and fact are all in the back seat while search engine optimization is driving.

And I also assumed I must have missed a page when things ended a couple of decades back. But signal's mention of Star Trek being the Kiss of sci-fi reminds me of something else -- the GP editorial stance of history more or less ending around the time that hair bands faded away puts me in mind of a series of anthologies I used to spot in the science fiction sections of bookstores: The Best of Trek, From the Magazine for Star Trek Fans. I have never ever seen an actual copy of the magazine itself, but to my certain knowledge there were at least eighteen volumes anthologizing its articles. They were still appearing until at least the latter half of the nineties and the few times I read them, they were always remarkable in their polite assumption that Star Trek ran from 1966 to 1969 and had a half-dozen movies in later years, and no other series followed it. It was oddly surreal to see Star Trek fandom gripped by the cliffhanger that had Picard captured and assimilated by the Borg while TBOTFTMFSTF was still pondering the economic model that allowed Cyrano Jones to operate.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:56 AM on July 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Color me completely unsurprised that Guitar Player remains just as stubbornly irrelevant in 2015 as it was in 1985, which is the last time I picked up an issue.
posted by uberchet at 8:05 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I would have thought the solo from Comfortably Numb was a piece of low-hanging fruit.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:07 AM on July 27, 2015


Let me guess: Tom Verlaine didn't make the list, Y/N
posted by pxe2000 at 8:13 AM on July 27, 2015


Guitar Player remains just as stubbornly irrelevant in 2015 as it was in 1985

irrelevant to what? tubas?
posted by thelonius at 8:21 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


No "Layla," no sale.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:49 AM on July 27, 2015


This is not a good list.
posted by Cosine at 9:18 AM on July 27, 2015


No Franco?

No Diblo Dibala (playing with Kanda Bongo Man)?

No Gabby Pahinui (music starts at 1:20)?

No Junior Barnard?

No Don Rich?

No Boogaloo Joe Jones?

No Johnny Marr?

That's just off the top of my head. This list makes me sad. Oh, and Latin rock and Chicano rock had been around for a long, long, time before Santana. Hell, the canonical frat rock number, "Louie Louie" is a straight cop of a cha cha by Rene Touzet, who himself stole it from Ricky Rosenda, a Cuban bandleader (not a guitar track though).
posted by Fnarf at 9:25 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am not sure that it is so much disrespect as catering precisely to a very specific audience, which is composed mainly of that headbanger in your grade 10 history class who has inked the Metallica logo freehand onto the cover of the textbook.

Yup, that's me.

But I'm talking more about the obnoxious levels of obtrusive advertising than the content. Whatever their faults may be, they don't do this to their readers over at newyorker.com.
posted by ignignokt at 10:31 AM on July 27, 2015


No Sonny Sharrock?!?!
posted by Television Name at 10:32 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I read Guitar Player when I was a kid ( along time ago). I remember loving these sorts of lists - not because they were definitive - but because they gave me neat places to look. I still have an early 80s 'Greatest Guitar Players' issue, without which I might have never found Adrian Belew, Link Wray, Roy Buchanon, Alan Holdsworth...

I find their tone more 'here's some cool stuff', as opposed to, say, Rolling Stones, 'here's some stuff that if you agree with us, you are cool.'
posted by j_curiouser at 11:11 AM on July 27, 2015


No "boo-boo-WOMP-WOMP: jinkajink jinkajink jinkajink-a-koo biddleyboo biddleyboo biddleyboo BING" from Magic Man?
posted by Ian A.T. at 11:35 AM on July 27, 2015


“Rock Around the Clock” . . . Danny Cedrone’s amazing guitar solo . . .

Worth mentioning that Cedrone had previously played this solo note-for-note on an earlier record, Rock The Joint.

“Train Kept A’Rollin” . . . Paul Burlison dropped his amp after a gig and knocked a tube loose, it lead to one of the earliest examples of distorted rock guitar. Burlison replicated the fuzzy roar by intentionally dislodging one of his amp’s tubes to record [this track] . . .

This is a not un-controversial claim, from several angles. You don't need to go any further than Wikipedia to see.

The Woodstock Music & Art Fair . . . Consider proto-shredder Alvin Lee going all pentatonic on “I’m Going Home” . . . .

Yeah, it's long past time to put this one to bed forever. I didn't go to Woodstock; if I had, I wouldn't have such clear memories of it. But I did see the Woodstock film when it first came out summer of 1970. I don't know why people keep repeating the idea that there was something special about Ten Years After's performance of "I'm Going Home" but I am here to tell you this:

The inclusion of this performance was a tragic waste of precious limited movie runtime. The guitar playing is pure wankery, the singing and patter are dire; the lyrics, arrangement, and backing: banal. And it is boring. It was boring then and it's boring now. It was boring when prog was on the rise, and it was boring when punk and disco were happening. It was boring when people were buying "Frampton Comes Alive" and it was boring when they all donated their copies to the Salivation Army. It was boring when synthesizer bands were cool, and it was boring when guitar bands were hot again. It was boring when nobody cared about the blues and it boring during all of the blues revivals. It is the single lamest recorded performance from the Woodstock festival, and I mean including The Incredible String Band, The Dreadful Greats, and the stage announcements about avoiding the brown acid. The only thing memorable about it is that apparently, many members of the contemporary rock press took the brown acid before Ten Years After went on-stage, and the flashbacks keep them repeating this myth.

Go ahead: take 15 minutes out of your life and listen to it -- if you dare.
posted by Herodios at 12:05 PM on July 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


For this list to be true to its own self-description, it would have to include the moment Michael Angelo Batio first strapped on his 4-neck guitar, unleashed a swirl of screaming solos, and let us know we had gone too far.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 4:17 PM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


In the last 14 years, there hasn't been any guitar performances of note? Guitar culture is so boringly conservative and skewed towards white, male baby-boomers. Bah humbug.
posted by Sreiny at 4:35 PM on July 27, 2015


No Keith Rowe? No Derek Bailey?

Um, yeah.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:02 PM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


When I was 15, the opening few seconds of The Jam's But I'm Different Now was the greatest guitar sounding guitar I had ever heard. 30 odd years later, for me, it still tops most of the tracks on this Guitar Player list.
posted by gfrobe at 6:36 PM on July 27, 2015


These are the type of lists that kids who bash Lil Wayne on the youtube comments section of his songs enjoy. Did I mention they love Queen and they're 12?
posted by gucci mane at 6:55 PM on July 27, 2015


It is the single lamest recorded performance from the Woodstock festival, and I mean including The Incredible String Band, The Dreadful Greats, and the stage announcements about avoiding the brown acid. The only thing memorable about it is that apparently, many members of the contemporary rock press took the brown acid before Ten Years After went on-stage, and the flashbacks keep them repeating this myth.

Lamer than Sha-na-na?
posted by TedW at 7:38 PM on July 27, 2015


Prince is an interesting guy, who did many things. But is there a distilled guitar moment?

The octave-doubled intro to "When Doves Cry" comes to mind. Not many pop tunes start out with a solo that fierce.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:17 PM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


That RnRHoF thing with Prince is a Perfect Moment.

And you know, I hate having to flip through page after page, so I didn't really see. Keith hitting the Fuzz Box 30 seconds or so into Satisfaction. *CLICK*.
posted by mikelieman at 11:03 PM on July 27, 2015


[Ten Years After were l]amer than Sha-Na-Na?

Don't conflate lame with lamé.
 
posted by Herodios at 3:52 AM on July 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


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