The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time

Whether across Screaming Females’ eight LPs or her solo work as Noun, Marissa Paternoster plays with both immense skill and brutal simplicity. Since forming Screaming Females in New Brunswick. New Jersey, in 2005, she’s tirelessly built a sprawling catalog of raw indie rock and power pop; her hooks are brittle and infectious, and her untamed solos sound like they’re trying to take a life of their own. Paternoster has slowly stripped back the effects and refined her low-fi sound over the years, but it’s still as clear as ever that she’s one of our greatest modern punk voices, carrying on the torch of forebears like Sleater-Kinney and the Breeders. —Z.Y.Key Tracks: “It All Means Nothing,” “I’ll Make You Sorry”

“My part is just a few notes over and over,” Iggy Pop once said about the Stooges song “TV Eye,” “but Ron created a whole world around that.” In Asheton’s hands — on proto-punk anthems like “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “No Fun” — the classic three-digit barre chord felt more like a superpowered battering ram: droning, relentless, and almost mystical. (Asheton, who died in 2009, called it “those magical three fingers.”) You can hear Asheton’s wild-man approach all over the playing of Kurt Cobain, Thurston Moore, and Jack White. —D.B.Key Tracks: “TV Eye,” “I Wanna Be Your Dog”

It’s impossible to think of Ike Turner these days without focusing on the horrific physical abuse he inflicted on Tina Turner during their long marriage. He was a terrible, terrible person. On strictly musical terms, however, he was a visionary. In 1951, years before Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley came on the scene, Turner played loud, distorted electric guitar on “Rocket 88,” an R&B song credited to Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. As candidates for rock & roll’s big-bang moment go, “Rocket 88” is up there. In the years that followed, Turner honed his chops on the blues circuit, helped craft classics like “Nutbush City Limits,” famously hot-wired CCR’s “Proud Mary,” and influenced every other rock pioneer who followed in his wake.—A.G.Key Tracks: “Rocket 88,” “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”

Raised just south of the Tennessee city she chose for her moniker, Memphis Minnie (a.k.a. Lizzie Douglas) is as foundational a blues figure as Robert Johnson or Charley Patton. Minnie was a performer from her teen years and made a name for herself on the frequently rowdy blues circuit with her intricate, rhythmic finger-picking and real-life songs about hardship and hard living. Later settling in Chicago for a time, she was one of the early performers to adopt an electric guitar in order to make herself heard above the din. “All these things cry through Memphis Minnie’s electric guitar, amplified to machine proportions,” wrote Langston Hughes after seeing Minnie play. She wore glamorous gowns but was tough as nails and inspired countless others from Bonnie Raitt, who funded Minnie’s headstone near Walls, Mississippi, to Led Zeppelin, who radically reworked Minnie’s “When the Levee Breaks.” —J.F. Key Tracks: “When the Levee Breaks,” “Me and My Chauffeur Blues”

Mike Bloomfield helped Bob Dylan go electric with his work on Highway 61 Revisited (those are Bloomfield’s skyward spirals on “Like a Rolling Stone”) and two albums with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, including 1966’s raga-blues monster, East-West. A native of Chicago, Bloomfield studied the local electric-blues legends like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf up close while he was growing up, and he packed those lessons into a piercing, clean-treble tone and solos that took off with fluid, modal-jazz ecstasy. “Michael always sounded like a salmon going against the current,” Carlos Santana said. “He comes from B.B. King. But he went somewhere else.” —D.B.Key Tracks: “East-West,” “Like a Rolling Stone”

“I’m the famous guitar player,” the late Duane Allman said, “but Dickey is the good one.” The two spent less than three years together in the Allman Brothers Band, but they established an epic rapport — jamming at length, trading solos, and playing their famous twin-guitar leads. After Allman’s death in 1971, the group continued with Betts, scoring with “Ramblin’ Man” and “Jessica.” For all his blues and slide chops, his roots are in jazz, and you can hear the influence of his clean-toned modal soloing in every Southern rock group that’s followed. —D.W.Key Tracks:“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” “Jessica”

Bob Dylan once said, “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta.” The revelation led him to exchange his electric guitar for the same acoustic flat-top Gibson that Odetta so unflinchingly wielded in Greenwich Village’s coffeehouses. Using her thumb to pluck bass notes and her fingers to deftly pick out chords and melodies, she achieved the rhythmic charge of multiple instruments while standing alone. This self-contained artistry paralleled Odetta’s broader intent: to represent the Black female experience with dignity. The songs she performed were, she once said, “a history of us … not in our history books.” —S.G.Key Tracks: “Hit or Miss,” “‘Buked and Scorned,” “Take This Hammer”

When Yo La Tengo made their debut album in 1986, Ira Kaplan’s guitar credit was “the easier stuff.” But he moved on to the hard parts. Since then, he’s been one of indie rock’s most adventurous guitarists. The sonic premise might be the Velvet Underground, but Kaplan’s got his own unique style, from woodsy melodic finesse (“Pablo and Andrea”) to crazed feedback (“Deeper Into Movies”). As he says, “I’m frequently just like, ‘Whatever’s at hand I’ll plug in and try to make something I wanna listen to.’” He stretches out in classics like Painful, Electr-O-Pura, and I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One. Yo La Tengo’s annual NYC-area Hanukkah residencies are the stuff of legend. —R.S.Key Tracks: “I Heard You Looking,” “Blue Line Swinger,” “Sinatra Avenue Breakdown”

“It has to be very quiet for me to produce the sounds I’m thinking of,” João Gilberto said. But the Brazilian singer-guitarist’s quiet sound echoed everywhere, especially when the 1964 album Getz/Gilberto turned bossa nova into a global hit. Gilberto’s acoustic style mixed samba rhythms and jazz chords, immediately transforming music in his home country and influencing generations of pop and rock as well. His cool, intimate singing made his elegant playing seem deceptively breezy, but at the root of his music was a steely sense of timing and a skill at fluidly working intricate melodic patterns. “I learned everything I knew from him,” said Brazilian music titan Caetano Veloso, one of his many inheritors. —J.D.Key Tracks: “”Chega de Saudade/No More Blues,” “Undo”

Fredrik Thordendal of the Swedish extreme metal band Meshuggah strikes his strings in a way that sounds more like percussion than guitar, since he restricts his strings so much with palm muting (depressing his picking hand at the bottom of his strings so hard that they barely move). In his chokehold, only the faintest shadow of a pitch breathes. On Meshuggah’s “Bleed,” the mechanical riffing rises and drops in minute measure, just enough to rattle your vertebrae, while on “Rational Gaze,” he plays a funky array of rhythms that barely align with the drums. Thordendal’s technique spawned a whole metal subgenre called “djent,” an onomatopoeia for the sound of his pick hammering out chords, which includes groups like Tesseract and Animals as Leaders. —K.G.Key Tracks: “Bleed,” “Demiurge,” “Born in Dissonance”

“He’s a musical genius,” Neil Young once said of Stephen Stills, his bandmate and co-lead guitarist in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Off and on for more than five decades, he has challenged and complemented Young’s feral breaks with a Latin-and country-inflected chime. Stills has never lost his fervor for adventurous shredding. Such was his pull as a musician that he got both Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix (a close friend of Stills’) to make guest appearances on Stills’ 1970 self-titled solo debut — the only album in rock history to feature both guitar giants.Key Tracks:“Bluebird,” “Carry On”

Susan Tedeschi’s husband and musical partner, Derek Trucks, tends to get more coverage for his fretwork, but Tedeschi is the secret sauce of the pair’s Tedeschi Trucks Band, lending a healthy dose of freewheeling soul and blues to the outfit’s take on American roots music. Once a longtime Telecaster player, Tedeschi now favors a Strat, having developed a thicker, rounder tone that plays beautifully off Trucks’ honeyed slide licks. That Tedeschi is also a celebrated vocalist, often drawing comparisons to the likes of Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt, only heightens her guitar prowess, as she brings a vocalist’s sense of phrasing and dynamics to her already masterful playing. —B.M.CKey Tracks: “It Hurt So Bad,” “Midnight in Harlem,” “Angel From Montgomery” 

One of the key components of the Memphis soul sound, Mabon “Teenie” Hodges added sumptuous grooves to some of American pop’s most memorable cuts. A member of the Hi Rhythm Section, Hodges’ limber style was crucial to that label’s signature sound — and his songwriting credits on tracks like “Take Me to the River” cemented his legacy as an architect of R&B. “As a brother, he made me proud. And as a musician, he was one of the greatest of the rhythm players,” his brother, Hi Rhythm Section organist Rev. Charles Hodges, told Guitar Player in 2021. “He had that style, bounce, and soul pocket, which he worked on real hard to create as he was growing up.” —M.J.Key Tracks: “Love and Happiness,” “Take Me to the River”

Liz Phair made her legend with the eccentric, freewheeling, innovative guitar stylings of Exile in Guyville and her Girly Sound tape — even when her playing was the last thing people noticed. “I have always advocated for her genius on guitar,” her producer Brad Wood says. “There is no one else that I’ve ever recorded in 30-plus years of doing this that approaches the guitar like she does. Her chord shapes have more to do with Glenn Branca than they do with Joni Mitchell or anyone.” She blends brilliantly with Casey Rice’s slide solo in “Mesmerizing,” but the epic shred-and-run showcase “Strange Loop” is all Phair. Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan got her start in a tribute band called Lizard Phair. —R.S.Key Tracks: “Fuck and Run,” “Strange Loop,” “Shane”

Captivated by British blues stylists like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Peter Green, Aeresmith;s Perry developed an expressive and elastic style that evolved with and around the untamable voice of his longtime partner and occasional adversary Steven Tyler. The Boston band’s powder keg mix of rock and R&B would become a blueprint for a great deal of 1980s and Nineties hard rock. Next-gen virtuosos like Eddie Van Halen, Slash, and Billy Corgan have all pointed to Perry as an early North Star. “I saw the blues as a beautiful mongrel,” Perry said. “English and American, Black and white, [people] who had taught their guitars to talk in a secret language that seemed as easy as a conversation.”–S.G.Key Tracks: “Mama Kin,” “Walk This Way,” “Janie’s Got a Gun”

Roger McGuinn’s sparkling, chordal 12-string Rickenbacker riffs on the Byrds‘ early hits were the sonic bridge between folk and rock — and an irreplaceable color in rock’s palette. Every indie band who’s more interested in beatific strumming than screaming solos owes him a debt (the striking break in “The Bells of Rhymney” could be on a Smiths record). McGuinn could do a lot more than chime, however, as demonstrated by his still-astonishing psychedelic-raga-Coltrane licks on “Eight Miles High.” —D.B.Key Tracks:“Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Eight Miles High”

The image of Bob Mould onstage with Minnesota three-piece Hüsker Dü coaxing swarms of noise from his Flying V guitar was the stuff of indie-rock myth. Mould’s work in that band was the essential link between Sixties harmony, Seventies punk, and Nineties dissonance — Pete Townshend wall-of-strum rhythm guitar, clarion Byrds beauty, Ramones buzzsaw,and Kevin Shields-style blanket drone. “I’ll sit down to write something that sounds like the Association,” he once said, “and it’ll come out like My Bloody Valentine.” He was being deprecating, but his casual brilliance at collapsing all that history is at the heart of his greatness. —J.D.Key Tracks: “Real World,” “Celebrated Summer”

Robert Cray played a huge role keeping blues on the mainstream radar during the 1980s, influencing a wide swath of younger guitarists including Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and John Mayer with his traditionally informed yet ever-evolving style of blues playing. Born in Columbus, Georgia, he relocated to Seattle as a teenager, where he found success after being inspired by seing iconic blues artists like Muddy Waters and Albert Collins. Cray debuted with Who’s Been Talkin’ in 1980, quickly going on to have crossover success with his 1986 album, Strong Persuader. Unsurprisingly, Cray has performed with a murderers’ row of guitar royalty over the course of his storied career, including John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. —B.M.Key Tracks: “Smoking Gun,” “This Man,” “Foul Play”

At this point, Nils Lofgren is likely best known for his supportive role in the E Street Band. He’s done splendid work there — his solo on live versions of “Youngstown” and their remake of Edwin Starr’s “Wire” more than proved he was up to the task. But his own records, both solo and with his early band Grin, remain the best showcases for his sinewy, switchblade-sharp solos (“Keith Don’t Go,” “A Child Could Tell”), gossamer slide guitar (“Cry Tough”), and refined fingerpicking (Grin’s “Rusty Gun,” his own “Two by Two”). And as heard on the two different versions of Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night,” his guitar can also snarl with the best of them. —D.B.Key Tracks: “Keith Don’t Go,” “Share a Little,” “Beggars Day”

One of modern metal’s key figures, Dimebag Darrell founded Pantera with his brother, drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott — forging a style that combined brutally precise, punk-honed grooves with splatter-paint melodic runs. After he was tragically shot by a deranged fan during a show with his band Damageplan in 2004 — on the anniversary of John Lennon‘s death, freakishly enough — the tributes rolled in from fans, peers, and forerunners. “One of the greatest musicians to grace our world,” Black Sabbath‘s Geezer Butler said simply. “Rest in peace.” —W.H.Key Tracks:“Floods,” “Cemetery Gates,” “Mouth for War”

In Cleveland power trio the James Gang, Joe Walsh combined Who-style fury with Yardbirds-style technical fireworks and R&B crunch, notably on 1970’s “Funk #49.” The humor in Walsh’s bluesy facility came out in the talk-box flight on his ’73 solo hit “Rocky Mountain Way.” But it was when he joined the Eagles in 1975 that he truly lodged himself on classic-rock radio. Walsh brought a hard-rock edge to the Eagles’ easygoing pop songs, creating a series of indestructible licks in the process: See his staccato-snarl riff in “Life in the Fast Lane” and his elegant aggression in the dueling-guitars section of “Hotel California.” —D.B.Key Tracks:“Rocky Mountain Way,” “The Bomber,” “Funk #49”

Having made her name through smoothly virtuosic solos with Alice Cooper’s touring band, L.A.-bred Nita Strauss cemented her reputation as a six-string hired gun after being recruited forDemi Lovato’s all-female Holy Fvck band. In her spare time, Strauss released two solo albums,as well as serving as house guitarist for the L.A. Rams. (She even got a Super Bowl ring for the2021 season.) Basically, she was born to shred. “I was always drawn to guitar players that playfast,” she told Guitar Girl Magazine. “I saw Steve Vai in Crossroads, and that was it for me.” —J.D.C.Key Tracks: “Halo of Flies,” “The Wolf You Feed”

The Replacements’ chaotic guitar genius loved technical masters like Johnny Winter, Steve Howe of Yes, and Prince, but Bob Stinson was in a band of drunk wiseass Minnesota boys whose records had titles like Stink! and Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, so what came out was a kind of gloriously mangled, self-immolating virtuosity. At his best he bridged the divide between classic-rock flash and punk-rock trash so instinctually it was like he never even knew it was there — though it’s probably more likely he just never cared. “He was one in a million,” ‘Mats leader Paul Westerberg said when Stinson died in 1995. “I haven’t met his equal yet.” —J.D.Key Track: “Kids Don’t Follow,” “I Hate Music,” “Nowhere Is My Home”

If Eric Clapton is “God,” then, to a certain segment of six-string aficionados, Steve Vai is “God Jr.” In the Seventies, he was a transcriptionist and “stunt guitarist” for Frank Zappa, performing his idol’s impossible black pages of notes with ease. In the Eighties, Vai became he of the wah-wah conversation with David Lee Roth, he of the 10-hour guitar workout, he of monkey-grip guitar, he of the thousand Guitar World covers. But it was in the Nineties when he graduated from cult hero to cult leader, playing elastic, soulful instrumental solos like “For the Love of God” and the funky “Bad Horsie.” At a time when the guitar hero was dead, Vai was still (and is still) inspiring budding musicians to learn what the word “phrygian” means. —K.G.Key Tracks: “For the Love of God,” “Yankee Rose”

As Soundgarden’s resident bearded riff wizard, Kim Thayil experimented with a wide range of alternate tunings, beginning with the ever-sludgy drop D (where the guitar’s low E string is tuned down one whole step), and then when other alt-rock and grunge bands began imitating the group’s approach, exploring a wide range of nontraditional ways to pitch the guitar’s six strings. As a soloist, Thayil is a committed subversive, never resorting to hard-rock clichés. Witness the solo in 1989’s “Gun” or his wah-wah-driven lead on Soundgarden’s 1994 mega-hit “Black Hole Sun”: It may be anarchic and perhaps atonal, but it’s brilliantly congruent with the song’s titular supernova. “I think anything different or mysterious can be channeled into heavy,” Thayil told Premier Guitar. “Abnormality is a key.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Black Hole Sun,” “Gun”

When Viv Albertine was a teen, dreaming of making music in her bedroom, she didn’t have a pop-star voice or many role models when it came to women in bands. Still, the Slits guitarist channeled that inner sense of curiosity into her instrument, making it the engine of one of the Seventies seminal post-punk bands. On the band’s classic album Cut, she eschewed loud distortion for sharp treble and a style that leaped between punk and reggae. Later, she had to reteach herself to play guitar again years after the Slits split up, her marriage ended, and she survived cancer. “I was driven like I was a teenager,” she said in a 2016 interview. “My brain started to fire up again creatively after 20 years of being dead creatively. … All that led back to the guitar.” —B.E.Key Tracks: “Typical Girls,” “So Tough”

From the start, the duality of Pearl Jam’s guitarists, Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, represented the core of the grunge: punk attitude with ragged rock-for-rock’s-sake roots. Gossard had played hard-driving riffs in the pioneering grunge group Green River and alt-rockers Mother Love Bone before finding McCready shredding away at a party. Their sensibilities crossed over one another when they formed Pearl Jam, as they started weaving their riffs together on songs like “Alive,” “Jeremy,” and “Animal,” with McCready’s leads eventually climbing on top of each song. They refined their sound, drew inspiration from Neil Young, busted out the acoustics on songs like “Daughter,” and have made lush rock textures their calling card for the past three decades. —K.G.Key Tracks: “Even Flow,” “Animal,” “Daughter”

The current incarnation of Yes could otherwise be called Steve Howe’s Yes Experience since the guitar virtuoso is the only remaining member from the classic era. He’s equally fluent in jazz, classical, bluegrass, folk, and pop, as evidenced by his work in Asia and several under-the-radar solo albums, but he shines on wildly complex prog-rock songs. For proof, check out his work on “Close to the Edge,” “Yours Is No Disgrace,” and “Starship Trooper.” It’s virtually impossible for others to duplicate his work, even though only true devotees even know his name. “I’ve often said I’d rather be a Chet Atkins back-room guy,” he said. “I’d be quite happy with that. But certainly I’m an opportunist, too. So, if the spotlight keeps falling on me, I’ll have to rise to the occasion.” —A.G.Key Tracks: “Close to the Edge,” “Starship Trooper”

A son of Nigerian royalty (yes, literally) who’d recorded more than three dozen LPs before he dropped his first U.S.-U.K. title, Juju Music, in 1982, King Sunny Adé’s propulsive, polyrhythmic, hypnotic style was led by his guitar — and “three or four” others. Sunny’s leads were both laid-back and stratospheric, riding the rhythms with catlike grace, with touches of Hawaiian and pedal-steel helping things sound even more otherworldly. “I want very unusual things to happen to my band,” he said in 1983. “We give respect to each instrument in juju music.” For an example of his verdant musicality, check out the lush jams collected on the excellent 2003 release Best of the Classic Years. —M.M.Key Tracks: “Sunny Ti De” (1974), “365 Is My Number/The Message”

“I wanted my guitar to sound like Gene Krupa’s drums,” Dick Dale said, and the hyperpercussive style he invented for his jukebox wonders — including a juiced-up arrangement of the old Greek tune “Misirlou” — pioneered the sound of surf rock. Dale played as fast as possible, at max volume; Leo Fender once attempted to design an amp that wouldn’t be destroyed by Dale’s sheer loudness. Most of his recordings are drenched in the reverb that became a surf hallmark, but that’s not what makes surf music, he’s explained: “I’m just into chopping … at 60-gauge, 50-gauge strings. That’s the sound, the sound of the waves chopping.” —D.W.Key Tracks:“Misirlou,” “The Peter Gunn Theme”

When Warren Haynes was asked to join former Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts’ solo group in 1987, he was so impressive that when the ABB reunited in 1989, he was invited by Betts to join, and his muscular, blues-infused chops and improvisatory acumen were soon embraced by the group’s rabid fans. With his own outfit, Gov’t Mule, and when performing with fellow jam-rock travelers like the Dave Matthews Band and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead — or even with progressive emo acts like Coheed and Cambria — Haynes has demonstrated that his guitar can hold musical conversations in many different dialects. He once said, “Whenever you limit yourself as to what you listen to or what you try and be influenced by, you’re makin’ a mistake.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Soulshine,” “Blind Man in the Dark”

Armed with her Gibson Flying V guitar, Donita Sparks churned out blowtorch riffs on L7 songs like “Slide” and “Shove,” making the L.A. band one of the grunge era’s most explosive acts. “There’s so much about the Ramones that I appropriated — the downstroke barre chords and playing with my legs spread far apart,” Sparks toldRolling Stone. Like the Ramones, L7’s massive influence vibrated past their cultural moment. Earlier this year, Phoebe Bridgers honored the band when she woreL7 merch onstage with SZA. “We’ve never played Madison Square Garden or Coachella,” Sparks said. “But our T-shirt has.” —S.G.Key Tracks: “Deathwish,” “Slide,” “Mr. Integrity”

With his fluid playing and seemingly bottomless arsenal of weird and wonderful sounds, Adrian Belew has an immediately identifiable sonic fingerprint — yet he’s also versatile enough to have seamlessly collaborated over the years with a wide array of artists, including Frank Zappa, David Bowie, King Crimson, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Nine Inch Nails. “In Frank’s band, you didn’t need to be creative — you needed to just play his music consistently correctly,” he recently explained to Guitar Player. “David was quite the opposite. He wanted someone to throw lots of color at the canvas, and he just turned me loose … I think David’s encouragement to try wild and unusual things really helped me to do the things that I did on the guitar.” —D.E.Key Tracks: “The Great Curve,” “Elephant Talk”

In 1968, Jimi Hendrix talked about his love for a Houston blues luminary who wasn’t known outside the region: “There’s one cat I’m still trying to get across to people. He is really good, one of the best guitarists in the world.” Albert Collins, who died of lung cancer in 1993, played with his thumb and forefinger instead of a pick to put a muscular snap into his piercing, trebly solos. His fluid, inventive playing influenced Hendrix, sometimes overtly: Jimi liked Collins’ sustain in the song “Collins Shuffle” so much that he used it on “Voodoo Chile.” —R.T.Key Tracks:“Frosty,” “Sno-Cone Part 1”