The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time

Although his best-known solo is probably a cameo on the Beastie Boys’ 1986 hit “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” Slayer co-founder Kerry King’s contributions to the sound and sensibility of Eighties thrash metal will be his lasting contribution to the world. King, along with his co-guitarist Jeff Hanneman, created a much darker, more dissonant and twisted brand of riffage on Slayer classics like “Angel of Death” and “Dead Skin Mask” than any of other guitar teams in thrash’s “Big Four” of Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer. King’s solos, a face-melting onslaught of tremolo picking, atonal chromatic runs, and howling whammy bar dives, are both unnerving and tinged with a free-jazz skronk that is not just downright evil, it’s timelessly hip as well. “There’s nothing that says playing out of key is wrong,” King told Music Radar. “To me, anything that sounds good is right.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Angel of Death,” “Raining Blood”

His prodigious chops were first recognized when he was the guitarist in Washington, D.C., technical metalcore group Reflux, but it was only after launching his aggressive, acrobatic instrumental outfit Animals as Leaders that Tosin Abasi cemented his reputation as one of the most exciting and innovative of guitarists of the past decade. Abasi adopted an eight-string, extended-range instrument and invented finger-boggling techniques like selective picking, thumping, and “swybrid picking.” It could be argued that Abasi is also redefining the very notion of what it means to be a guitarist. “I’m always trying to progress,” he said in a 2020 interview. “And that means that I have to conceive of new ways of producing harmony and rhythm on the guitar.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Cafo,” “Tooth and Claw,” “The Problem of Other Minds”

When Link Wray released the thrilling, ominous “Rumble” in 1958, it became one of the only instrumentals ever to be banned from radio play — for fear that it might incite gang violence. By stabbing his amplifier’s speaker cone with a pencil, Wray created the distorted, overdriven sound that would reverberate through metal, punk, and grunge. Wray, who proudly claimed Shawnee Indian ancestry and lost a lung to tuberculosis, was the archetypal leather-clad badass, and his song titles alone — “Slinky,” “The Black Widow” — convey the force and menace of his playing. “He was fucking insane,” said the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. “I would listen to ‘Some Kinda Nut,’ over and over. It sounded like he was strangling the guitar — like it was screaming for help.” —A.L.Key Tracks:“Rumble,” “Jack the Ripper,” “Raw-Hide”

When Pavement started, Stephen Malkmus came on like a feedback-loving indie prankster. But he soon proved himself the great guitar romantic of his era. He plays his beautifully ragged, fluently emotional ripples all over albums like Pavement’s Brighten the Corners (“Fin”) or the Silver Jews’ American Water (“The Wild Kindness”). He gets shreddier over the years, in the shaggy psych of Real Emotional Trash, the elegiac wit of Mirror Traffic, or his folk experiment Traditional Techniques. He jams hard on the recent Pavement tours, jokingly introducing the band as “Phishport Convention.” But his crackpot independence has made him an icon to younger guitarists of the Snail Mail/Soccer Mommy generation, inspiring the Beadadoobee tribute, “I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus.” —R.S.Key Tracks: “Gold Soundz,” “Night Society,” “Share the Red”

Mark Knopfler’s first big guitar-hero moment — the fleet, gloriously melodic solo on Dire Straits’ 1978 hit “Sultans of Swing” — came at a time when punk seemed to be rendering the idea of a guitar hero obsolete. And yet Knopfler built a reputation as an intensely creative virtuoso (not to mention an ace songwriter), showing remarkable command over a range of tones and textures — from the gnarly distortion on hit single “Money for Nothing” to the stinging precision of “Tunnel of Love.” One key to Knopfler’s signature style: playing without a pick. “Playing with your fingers,” he has said, “has something to do with immediacy and soul.” Knopfler’s versatility made him much in demand for projects with artists including Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan, who first called on Knopfler for 1979’s Slow Train Coming. —A.L.Key Tracks:“Sultans of Swing,” “Romeo and Juliet”

The ferociously brilliant Mary Timony has been rewriting the guitar rulebook for three decades. A teen Satriani/Vai devotee, she took all her classically trained technique to punk rock. “I’d gone to music school, but I was playing in the D.C. hardcore scene,” she says. “I knew I wanted to be loud.” She made her bones with Helium, one of the Nineties’ most head-spinning bands, in avant-fuzz classics like The Dirt of Luck. She moved on to prog, psychedelia, the rock swagger of Wild Flag and Ex Hex. Other shredders idolize her. Carrie Brownstein calls her “Timony, that woozy wizard.” Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan — one of her guitar students — told Rolling Stone, “Everybody wants to be her.” —R.S.Key Tracks: “XXX,” “Pat’s Trick,” “Glass Tambourine”

Even if he was only known as the guitarist who once counted Kirk Hammett and Steve Vai among his pupils, Joe Satriani might still be a player whose name is whispered in hushed tones. But in the “faster is better” ecosystem of the Eighties, Satriani astutely found a niche for himself as the “tasteful shredder,” a melodic voice of reason in a the era’s fretboard arms race. Sure, “Satch” as he is often referred to, had chops to burn, but on signature tracks such as “Surfing With the Alien” and “Summer Song,”he deploys them judiciously and always in service of the song like the classic rock guitarists he grew up idolizing. “If someone wants to play really fast, they can practice six hours a day, and in two years see amazing results,” Satriani told Guitar Player. “But there’s no method to playing like Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Surfing With the Alien,” “Summer Song”

Growing up in New Orleans, Leo Nocentelli wanted to play jazz like his guitar heroes Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery. But when he would “wake up in the night with a riff in my head,” as he told a reporter, the music would take on a funkier shape. Along with his bandmates in the Meters, Nocentelli “used to take things that were already pretty funky and make them really funky,” as generations of hip-hop and dance-music samplers would affirm. Nocentelli’s riffs stung coolly, whether on Meters masterworks like “Cissy Strut “ and “Just Kissed My Baby” or while accompanying Labelle on “Lady Marmalade,” among many others. —M.M.Key Tracks: “Cissy Strut,“ “Just Kissed My Baby”

More than the guitar, Wata’s instrument is her amplifier. Over the years, her band, the avant-garde metal trio Boris, have titled albums Amplifier Worship, Feedbacker, and Noise — literalisms for how she conjures long, grumbling drones and overtones from her amp, letting each fuzzy chord burble until it fizzles away. But Wata is a master of more than noise. On Boris’ nearly 30 albums, including collaborations with noiseniks like Merzbow and Sunn O))), she and her bandmates have alternated between psychedelic rock, doom metal, and shoegaze. Most impressively, on Pink, she uses an EBow (an electronic violin bow for electric guitars) to create notes that surf atop the waves of sound. —K.G.Key Tracks:“Huge,” “Just Abandoned Myself”

Stephen “Cat” Coore of Third World practically redefined the heights that reggae guitar could soar to, with searing solos that can stand alongside those of the most acclaimed rock guitar gods — check out his string work on 1982’s “Try Jah Love” for an example of why his lead playing is sometimes compared to that of Carlos Santana. But Coore’s appreciation of the importance of rhythm is essential to his style, and his pick accompaniments often help drive the engine of Third World’s best. He’s also a master on the acoustic guitar, not always associated with Jamaican music — his fretwork on “1865 (96 Degrees in the Shade)” helped open the minds of Jamaican listeners and other Jamaican guitarists as to the possibilities of the acoustic in reggae. —M. GoldwasserKey Tracks: “Try Jah Love,” “1865 (96 Degrees in the Shade”

Growing up in Niger, Mdou Moctar was forbidden by his strict parents from playing guitar. Undaunted, he built a four-string guitar out a piece of wood, repurposed bicycle cables, and sardine-can openers and began a musical journey that has brought his unique and hypnotic brand of Touareg music to Europe, the U.S., and beyond. Having now graduated to a Fender Stratocaster, Mdour uses modulation effects like flanging and chorus along with echo and reverb to give his sharp but unerringly tuneful lines a sheen that evokes vast expanses both spiritual and terrestrial. “The sky and the stars, that inspires you when you want to write something or when you need to play,” he told Guitar World in 2021. “It’s a feeling of being free to do whatever you need to do.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Tarhatazed,” “Mdou’s Theme,” “Afrique Victime”

Revered more as a songwriter than a virtuoso player, Lou Reed has always been a ferocious guitarist — a fan of both Ike Turner’s muscular R&B and Ornette Coleman’s scalding free jazz who was inventing new approaches straight out of the gate (including his single-pitch “ostrich tuning”) with the Velvet Underground. Listen to the sweetness and blood of “Heroin,” the godhead garage rock of “What Goes On,” the epic bad-trip psychedelia of “Sister Ray.” “He was rightfully quite proud of his own soloing,” wrote fellow New York guitar luminary Robert Quine, “but resigned to the fact that most people weren’t ready for it.” As a solo artist, Reed kept on ripping up the rulebook: See 1975’s Metal Machine Music, a noise opus that took feedback further than Jimi Hendrix could have imagined. —W.H.Key Tracks:“Sister Ray,” “Heroin,” “Foggy Notion”

Not surprising for someone who grew up adoring both Kiss and the Melvins, Kurt Cobain’s approach to his instrument lay in that fertile ground between arena rock and indie punk. “I never wanted to sing,” Cobain told Rolling Stone in 1994, recalling his pre-success days. “I just wanted to play rhythm guitar —hide in the back and just play.”Cobain knew his way around a potent power chord (“In Bloom” and “Stay Away”), but his solos were always inventive and unconventional, from the serrated-edge grind in “School” (on Nirvana’s debut, Bleach) to the fire-alarm buzz in his last recording, Nirvana’s “You Know You’re Right.” Cobain favored texture and rawness over flash, and from him, a generation of alt rockers learned you didn’t have to be a virtuoso to be a guitar hero. —D.B.Key Tracks:“Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Scentless Apprentice”

Poison Ivy put it best herself: “Nobody ever talks to me about music or guitar. I’m the queen of rock & roll, and for this not to be recognized is pure sexism.” The true engine of the Cramps, Ivy and her orange 1958 Gretsch 6120 added the zombie Dick Dale flavor to the haunted rockabilliy band. Despite being the band’s de facto co-lyricist and composer, Ivy may have at times taken a back seat to her more flamboyant bandmate and partner Lux Interior, who died in 2009, but her six-string stylings have inspired countless bands with a taste for sexy surf rock with a bloody edge. “Maybe that made it easier for me to consider playing guitar because I was such a misfit anyway,” she once said. “Maybe it’s harder for someone who fits in to do that. For me, anything was fair game.” —B.E.Key Tracks: “Human Fly,” “Goo Goo Muck”

Sonny Sharrock wanted to be the next John Coltrane — until asthma drove him to the guitar instead of sax. But as he said in 1990, “I consider myself a jazz saxophonist with a very fucked-up horn.” Sharrock brought rock-style distortion to jazz on classics like Pharoah Sanders’ Tauhid (1966) and Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson (1971). He disappeared for years but hit his prime in the Eighties with his solo Guitar and Bill Laswell’s avant-noise band Last Exit. He finally made his masterpiece in Ask the Ages, blasting with Sanders and drummer Elvin Jones, right before his tragic death in 1994. “Interdenominational intergalactic music,” Carlos Santana called him. “He’s like Coltrane — he’s the cosmic lion.” —R.S. Key Tracks: “Yesternow,” “Sheraserhead’s High-Top Sneakers,” “Many Mansions”

When Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan, two of the most musically adventurous acts of the Seventies, wanted to make jazz-infused masterpieces, they both turned to the same guitarist: session master Larry Carlton, who played as if there was no difference between dauntingly sophisticated chord changes and the most elementary rock and folk. You can hear Carlton’s signature licks intertwining with Mitchell’s own playing throughout Court and Spark and Heijira, as well as all over the Dan’s Aja. But his most famous moment came with dual leads on that band’s “Kid Charlemagne,” where he casually melds blues-rock bends, jazz runs, and cosmic psychedelia into one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded. —B.H.Key Tracks: “Kid Charlemagne,” “Josie,” “Rio Samba”

Had he stayed in Mississippi playing roadhouses in and around Clarksdale, McKinley Morganfield would undoubtedly have been remembered as a giant of country blues. But after he’d moved north to Chicago and discovered the electric guitar, Muddy Waters changed the rules by which the blues were played. At first, he went electric simply to ensure his guitar would be heard over the din of raucous, big-city crowds. But as his playing adapted to the new instrument, his music took on a more aggressive edge, one that was intensified by a band that included pianist Otis Spann and harmonica wizard Little Walter. His songs, which included such classics as “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Got My Mojo Working,” and “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” became touchstones for blues players and young rockers alike. —J.D.C.Key Tracks:“Rollin’ Stone,” “Mannish Boy”

Iron Maiden’s secret weapons have always been speed and harmony, techniques pioneered by guitarists Dave Murray and Dennis Stratton on the band’s self-titled debut and later perfected by Murray and Adrian Smith beginning with 1981’s Killers and the band’s classic Eighties albums. The duo commands the band’s galloping riffs with rare intensity, taking breaks only to indulge in their own unique solos: smooth, creamy leads for Murray and cutting blues licks for Smith. It’s a combo that defines beloved songs like “The Trooper,” “Run to the Hills,” and “Aces High.” Since 1999, the guitar line has been a trio with Janick Gers, only adding to its harmonies and power. —K.G.Key Tracks: “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” “Aces High,” “The Evil That Men Do”

In the documentary Influences, Carlos Santana named Wes Montgomery as one of the three guitarists who most inspired him. Known for a unique thumb-picking style that allowed him to play melody lines in octaves, Montgomery became one of the most sought-after guitarists in jazz. Working with producer Creed Taylor, he cut everything from driving hard bop (1965’s Smokin’ at the Half Note) to funky soul jazz (1966’s Tequila). But it was his lushly orchestrated take on rock hits, 1967’s A Day in the Life, that earned him his biggest audience, in the process paving the way for smooth jazz. Said Bill Frisell, ““Wes Montgomery was playing music that was popular at that moment. It was like he was the Pied Piper or something”. —J.D.C.Key Tracks: “Four on Six,” “Willow Weep for Me,” “Bumpin’ on Sunset”

The U.K. folk-rock scene of the Sixties gave us a music class full of accomplished players, including Richard Thompson and John Renbourn. But there’s a reason Bert Jansch, the Scottish singer and guitarist, was name-checked by Jimmy Page and Neil Young. Whether on his own records or with the classic band Pentangle, which also featured Renbourn, Jansch’s austere fingerpicking (which also matched his singer voice) had an agile, moody personality all its own. In his hands the acoustic guitar conjured isolated walks in the British countryside more than sing-alongs in pubs. His “Black Water Side” clearly inspired Led Zeppelin’s “Black Mountain Side,” and their “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” takes a cue or two from Jansch’s “The Waggoner’s Lad,” and Young covered “Needle of Death.” —D.B.Key Tracks: “Black Water Side,” “The Waggoner’s Lad”

Literally raised in the Allman Brothers family, Derek Trucks — the nephew of Allmans drummer Butch Trucks — started playing slide guitar at age nine and was touring by 12. When he stepped into the late Duane Allman’s slide-guitar spot in the Allman Brothers Band in 1999, at age 20, Derek’s soloing exploded in thrilling directions, managing to incorporate Delta blues, hard-bop jazz, the vocal ecstasies of Southern black gospel, and Indian-raga modality and rhythms. “He’s like a bottomless pit,” said Eric Clapton, who took Trucks on tour as a sideman in 2006 and 2007. “His thing is very deep.” —D.F.Key Tracks:“Joyful Noise,” “Whipping Post” (One Way Outversion)

When Ernie Isley first picked up the guitar as a teenager, it was to learn Jose Feliciano’s acoustic version of the Doors’ “Light My Fire” — and, of course, one-time Isley Brothers guitarist Jimi Hendrix had lived with the family when Ernie was an adolescent. So he was ready for the spotlight when he took his soaring solo on “That Lady,” in 1973, done in a single take. ”I plugged in, and when I hit the very first note on the ‘That Lady’ rhythm track, it went from black-and-white to 3D Technicolor,” he recalled. “It was astounding.” The song had an immediate, outsized impact on the Isleys’ sound — his long solos were a feature of both the band’s classic Seventies albums and their live shows — and his irradiated, ecstatic fuzztone remains a marker of a halcyon era. —M.M.Key Tracks: “That Lady,” “Voyage to Atlantis”

He never led a recording session, and spent a scant three years in the national spotlight before succumbing to tuberculosis in 1942, but Charlie Christian still managed to become one of the most influential guitarists of all time. He bought his first electric, a Gibson ES150, in 1937, and a year later the company was advertising it “as used by Charlie Christian.” His big break came in 1939, when he was hired by Bennie Goodman, who quickly made him a featured soloist in his sextet, where his punchy, single-note style put him on par with the horn players. “The beat came first,” said Les Paul, a friend. “He locked himself into that driving sound.” —J.D.C.Key Tracks: “Solo Flight,” “Gone With What Wind,” “Lester’s Dream”

Like his conversational singing, Willie Nelson’s guitar playing is deceptively laid-back, playfully offbeat, and instantly recognizable. Amazingly, Nelson has been playing the same Martin M-20 classical guitar, nicknamed Trigger, since 1969; it has defined his sound, a nylon-stabbing mix of country, blues, and Django Reinhardt’s gypsy jazz. “I named my guitar Trigger because it’s kind of my horse,” he explained. “Roy Rogers had a horse called Trigger.” Though the guitar now has a large gaping hole, Nelson still plays it nightly. “I have come to believe we were fated for each other,” he said. “The two of us even look alike. We are both pretty battered and bruised.”Key Tracks:“Whiskey River,” “Night Life”

Joan Jett’s future as a rocker was foreordained, she once explained: “When I was 11 or 12, I finally got the balls to say, ‘Mom, Dad, I want a guitar for Christmas, and I don’t want no folk guitar.” By age 15, she was hired to play guitar for the mid-Seventies all-girl raunch-rockers the Runaways — not least because, as their manager Kim Fowley put it, “I could tell Joan wanted to be Keith Richard instead of Duane Allman.” The difference is that while Keef always had a foot in the blues, Jett’s glam-derived rhythmic power is more pile-driving and straight-on: She’s a punk lodestone as much as Johnny Ramone was. —M.M.Key Tracks: “Cherry Bomb,” “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)”

Best known for the gargantuan riff at the heart of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” Ritchie Blackmore helped define heavy-metal guitar by mixing intricate classical composition with raw-knuckled blues rock. Blackmore made waves on 1972’s Machine Head; his solos on the boogie rocker “Highway Star” and “Lazy” remain models of metal pyrotechnics. He looked back toward early European music with his next band, Rainbow — even learning cello to write 1976’s stomping “Stargazer” — and has explored Renaissance-style fingerpicking with Blackmore’s Night. But it’s his Deep Purple work that influenced a generation of headbangers. “Blackmore epitomized this fascination I had with the bare essence of rock & roll, this element of danger,” says Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich. —R.T.Key Tracks:“Smoke on the Water,” “Highway Star,” “Speed King”

The massive slabs of rock-candy noise that J Mascis heaved from his Fender Jazzmaster in Dinosaur Jr. contained multitudes: Black Sabbath savagery, melodic Neil Young soul, punk-rock pig slop. His greatest moment may be the sputtering solo on “Freak Scene”, which is so captivating he barely pauses it to wedge in the final verse. Mascis’ 2011 solo set, Several Shades of Why, also showed he can get shamelessly pretty with an acoustic, too. “I remember seeing Dinosaur play this soft, plaintive song — and then it was just completely detonated by this ravaging solo that J did,” says Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. “The whole room was incinerated.” —W.H.Key Tracks:“Feel the Pain,” “Little Fury Things”

“I love Hubert Sumlin,” Jimmy Page has said. “He always played the right thing at the right time.” During more than two decades playing alongside Howlin’ Wolf, Sumlin always seemed to have an almost telepathic connection to the legendary blues singer, augmenting Wolf’s ferocious cries with angular, slashing guitar lines and perfectly placed riffs on such immortal songs as “Wang Dang Doodle,” “Back Door Man,” and “Killing Floor.” Sumlin made such an impact, in fact, that Wolf’s greatest rival, Muddy Waters, even hired him away for a stint in 1956. Sumlin, who passed away in 2011 at age 80, played until the end, sometimes turning up onstage in the company of such acolytes as the Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, and the Allman Brothers Band. —D.W.Key Tracks:“Smokestack Lightning,” “Spoonful,” “Killing Floor”

John McLaughlin was invited to record with Miles Davis while still in his twenties, co-parenting jazz fusion on Bitches Brew (which includes a song titled “John McLaughlin”) and the sublime In a Silent Way, among other Davis LPs. But he achieved guitar-god status with his own Mahavishnu Orchestra, where he made his Gibson spit fire like a many-headed dragon. A breakneck stylist, McLaughlin was peerless, mixing psychedelic rock, R&B, gypsy jazz, flamenco, and Indian raga techniques. He was also an acoustic guitar visionary: see 1970’s My Goal’s Beyond. That polyglot mastery earned him huge respect from jazz and rock peers alike: Jeff Beck called him “the best guitarist alive.” —W.H.Key Tracks:“Right Off,” “The Noonward Race”