The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, right near Robert Johnson’s crossroads, and describes himself as an “old soul” — which may be an understatement. At 24, he seems to have absorbed the entirety of the blues-guitar canon and beyond, thanks to influences that also include Prince. But his playing evinces not just a startling fluency, seamlessly integrating an entire century’s worth of licks, but also a freshness that can make it feel like you’re hearing a searing blues solo for the first time. He’s a rare 21st-century guitar hero, and the undisputed future of the blues. —B.H.Key Tracks: “Midnight Heat” (live), “Outside of This Town”

Omara Moctar, better known as Bombino, is a Tuareg musician from Niger who specializes in what many have termed “desert blues,” a classification that includes other Saharan artists like Tiniwaren and Songhoy Blues. Influenced by Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler, Bombino’s playing exhibits aspects of both, from knotty fingerstyle progressions to explosive, psychedelic soloing that remains rooted in the melodies and rhythms of northern Africa. Bombino’s music also has a political message — he’s part of a nomadic people who’ve been marginalized and caught in a brutal cycle of violence and rebellion. Bombino’s own form of rebellion has been to let his guitar be the weapon. “I never saw the need to take up arms for the rebel cause,” he said. “I always believed that there was a path out through music.” —J.F.Key Tracks: “Azamane Tiliade,” “Tenere (The Desert, My Home)”

A rockabilly teen sensation who spent time in an orphanage as a child, Jerry Reed first made his bones as a songwriter — Gene Vincent covered his “Crazy Legs” when Reed was 20. He then cut his teeth as a session guitarist, his sprightly sound coloring sides for everyone from Waylon Jennings to Joan Baez. But it was the 1967 hit “Guitar Man” (soon covered by Elvis Presley) that codified his identity: The strummy, plucky solo almost veers into funk, Cajun, and soul, a style he would refine over the years on songs such as “Amos Moses” and one that perfectly illustrated the song’s lyric about an itinerant musician with a unique vibe. —J.G.Key Tracks: “Guitar Man,” “Amos Moses”

A dazzling pyrotechnician with an innate knowledge of how to fit complex riffs into a song’s melody, Nuno Bettencourt made his name as a guitarist with the funk-metal band Extreme. Hisfluid, casually virtuosic solos on songs like the brash “Get the Funk Out” and the chart-topping ballad “More Than Words” made him a formidable foil for the band’s theatrical frontman, Gary Cherone. His innate knowledge of what makes a pop song work led him to get tapped by artists like Janet Jackson and Robert Palmer in the Nineties, and in 2009 he began working with Rihanna, a relationship that has allowed him to show off his stylistic diversity and appear onstage at the Super Bowl halftime show. —M.J.Key Tracks: “Midnight Express,” “Kiss It Better”

James Taylor evolved the sounds of the Sixties folk revival into something sleek enough for the Seventies, and a key part of that evolution was his singular acoustic guitar style — the constantly in-motion accompaniment you hear on a song like “Country Road” is as recognizable as his voice. Folk fingerpickers usually use their thumbs to play rhythmic bass patterns on the guitar’s bottom strings, but Taylor broke free of the patterns in favor of a freer, more pianistic approach. At the same time, he drew on hymns, show tunes, and jazz for his sophisticated chords and unique voicings. —B.H.Key Tracks: “Something in the Way She Moves,” “The Frozen Man,” “Fire and Rain”

Henry Rollins is the most famous member of Black Flag’s rotating cast, but the founder, heart, and soul of the legendary L.A.punk crew is Greg Ginn, whose jagged combination of psychedelic blues-rock, jazz abstraction, and hardcore-defining speed redefined rock guitar for generations to come. Via his iconic, Plexiglas Dan Armstrong guitar, Ginn combined Black Sabbath’s sludge and the Grateful Dead’s spaciness to create screwy solos that could go anywhere, while his frantic chug powered the band’s sweaty, violent excesses. As Rollins himself put it, “Black Flag had at least one ingredient they only made one of and that’s Greg Ginn; that’s the big deal with that band.” —J.G.Key Tracks: “Damaged II,” “Revenge”

The key to Thin Lizzy’s soaring Seventies hard rock was singer-bassist Phil Lynott’s songwriting, which combined early rock, Celtic folk, and Motown into a unique style that was by turns guttural and anthemic. But Thin Lizzy really took flight when Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham joined in 1974, creating a telepathically locked-in, twin-guitar assault that influenced a generation of metal acts, from Judas Priest and Iron Maiden to Metallica. Given how much heavier metal became, it can be hard for contemporary ears to hear how tough songs like “Jailbreak” or “Bad Reputation” sounded at the time, so check out the extra crunch of their BBC sessions tracks, which have been included with various reissues over the years. —J.G.Key Tracks: “The Boys Are Back in Town,” “Emerald”

Backing a troubadour can’t be easy for a lead guitarist, who has to provide a compatible accompaniment without ever distracting from the singer and the song. Again and again, David Lindley, the stringed-instrument wizard who was on call during the heyday of SoCal rock, was able to do just that while still making his presence known. Just listen to his slide guitar on Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” and “Red Neck Friend,” his rippling lead on Browne’s “Fountain of Sorrow,” or his tender slack-key solo on the Dolly Parton-Linda Ronstadt-Emmylou Harris version of “To Know Him Is to Love Him.” As heard on his rumbly version of “Mercury Blues,” he could also rip it on his own records. —D.B. Key Tracks: “Running on Empty” and “Red Neck Friend” (Jackson Browne), “Mercury Blues”

“I was pretty oblivious to that fact that I didn’t have a penis between my legs,” Lita Ford told Rolling Stone. “All I knew is that I had fingers and the lust for rock & roll.” Ford was among the most technically gifted soloists in Eighties hair metal, with a rich tone she could manipulate on her soaring anthems like 1988’s “Kiss Me Deadly.” As a teenager, Ford hung out with guitar gods twice her age on the Sunset Strip, like Ritchie Blackmore, who turned her on to using a home plate-shaped pick to achieve the snaking solos she’d become known for. Her other idol, Tony Iommi, proposed to her when she was still the lead guitarist of the Runaways. Despite allegations of abuse by the Sabbath legend, it was ultimately Ford who taught Iommi how to play his own riffs when he came out of drug addiction. —S.G.Key Tracks: “Black Widow,” “Lisa,” “Hellbound Train”

One riff shifted the course of turn-of-the-century R&B. When Chalmers Edward “Spanky” Alford brought the longing cry of his guitar to D’Angelo’s ‘00 panty-and-boxer-brief-dropper “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” it helped move Black pop from beat-based hip-hop soul to instrument-rich neo-soul. Alford, who also played on such slow jams as Raphael Saadiq’s “Ask of You,” Total’s “Kissing You,” and Mary J. Blige’s “I Found My Everything,” got his start in the gospel world, working with the East St. Louis Gospelettes and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. His work shows how gospel is still musically relevant to new iterations of soul. Alford died from diabetes complications in 2008 at age 52. —C.S.Key Tracks:“Untitled (How Does It Feel),” “Ask of You,” “Kissing You”

Born in 1912, Samuel John Hopkins was a 32-year-old alumni of the Texas penal system before adopting the sobriquet “Lightnin’’” and beginning a recording career that would see him become one the blues’ most prolific and revered artists. A master of self-accompaniment whose emphatic fills and riffs could shuffle, mosey, or boogie on command, he created much of the blues vernacular that still informs the genre to this day. Hopkins benefited from the blues revival of the 1960s, but one of the spoken-word intros on 1968’s Free Form Patterns, recorded with the rhythm section of Austin psych-rockers the 13th Floor Elevators, shows how hard his road to the spotlight had been. “I’ve been mistreated. I’ve been stepped on, walked on, kicked on, picked up, and put in jail. Lord have mercy.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Little Wail,” “What’d I Say,” “Little Sister’s Boogie”

Jerry Cantrell was raised on classic rock, country, and heavy metal and somehow blended those styles into a uniquely devastating guitar style that alternates between steamrolling, gut-check riffs and cutting, bluesy leads. He plays the talk-box riff for Alice in Chains’ “Man the Box” with weighty force and designed the skull-rattling, 7/8 riff on “Them Bones,” which opens the band’s masterpiece Dirt. He’s kept that pace throughout his career, playing ruinous riffs on his solo “Psychotic Break” and Alice in Chains’ “Check My Brain.” Even when he lightens up, such as on the acoustic “No Excuses,” he still plays in a way that adds clouds for every silver lining. He’s a master of the moody, the Dark Lord of Grunge. —K.G.Key Tracks: “Man in the Box,” “We Die Young,” “No Excuses”

Marnie Stern turned heads in the 2000s with her hyperactive approach to the finger-tapping technique, like an indie-prog math-rock version of Eddie Van Halen. She took her inspiration from indie bands like Sleater-Kinney and Don Callabero, with her own sense of hammer-on bombardment as a metaphor for emotional overload. As she said, “The idea of potential and possibility is the only thing that drives me to keep going with music.” Stern spent years playing in the house band for Late Night With Seth Meyers, but she has made a strong return with her new album, The Comeback Kid. —R.S.Key Tracks: “Vibrational Match,”  “Shea Stadium,” “Female Guitar Players Are the New Black”

Some session players are prized for their ability to blend in unobtrusively. Then there’s Marc Ribot, who’s beloved for the exact opposite — a searing tone and spare but kinetic attack that floated like smoke. Here was a player could take a gnomic musical request from Tom Waits and deliver something both shapely and unearthly. “I remember one verbal instruction being, ‘Play it like a midget’s bar mitzvah,’” Ribot would recall of the sessions for 1985’s Rain Dogs. He’s just as delectable up front — Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos still cultivates an arresting late-night groove, especially on their 1998 debut, The Prosthetic Cubans, where the leader seethes and squalls through the rumba bandleader Arsenio Rodriguez’s teeming songbook. —M.M.Key Tracks: “Jockey Full of Bourbon,” “Aurora En Pekin”

No guitarist summed up the sound of early-Eighties L.A. better than Steve Lukather. A founding member of Toto, he was one of the city’s most sought-after session guitarists, thanks both to his flawless technique and a stylistic agility that found him equally at home with sophisti-funk rhythm licks and screaming, arena-rock leads. He played on three straight years of Grammy Album of the Year nominees: Quincy Jones’ The Dude in 1982, Toto IV in 1983, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1984 (the second and third won). “It was happening big-time back then,” he said. “The last great era of the ‘session guy’ scene.” Lukather is the only member of Toto to have remained through every breakup and reunion. —J.D.C.Key Tracks: “Hold the Line,” “Razamatazz”

Peggy Jones is known as the “Queen Mother of Guitar,” and for good reason. The Harlem-born musician recorded and performed with none other than Bo Diddley early in her career, earning her another nickname, “Lady Bo.” Also trained in opera and dance, Jones brought a technician’s ear to her blues playing, as heard on the track “Aztec,” a complex instrumental Jones wrote and performed herself, despite the song being credited to Diddley on recorded versions. The kind of jazzy, avant-garde experimentation heard on “Aztec” informed Jones’ solo work with her band the Jewels, with whom she also played a Roland guitar synthesizer, one of many ways she proved herself to be ahead of her time. — B.M.Key Tracks: “Aztec,” “Wiggle Wobble,” “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” 

Eldon Shamblin was a country pioneer, bringing the electric guitar front and center in the 1930s with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. He helped create the style known as Western swing. A jazz player from Oklahoma, he joined Wills in 1937, arranging and bringing his wide-ranging tastes; as he told Rolling Stone, “We listened to everything.” He served four years in World War II, then came right back to the Playboys. His influence spreads everywhere — Chuck Berry wrote “Maybellene” as an attempt to mimic Shamblin’s rhythm guitar in the 1938 classic “Ida Red.” He later played with fans like Merle Haggard and Asleep at the Wheel, grooving on his famous 1954 gold Stratocaster. —R.S.Key Tracks: “Ida Red,” “At the Woodchopper’s Ball,” “Twin Guitar Special”

Few guitarists could boast of mentoring the Band’s Robbie Robertson and turning down a job offer from the Rolling Stones, but Telecaster ace Roy Buchanan did both. Buchanan, born in 1939, had performed as a sideman on various recordings and was well known in his hometown of Washington, D.C., but seemed destined to remain a local legend until a 1971 PBS documentary, Introducing Roy Buchanan, brought him to the attention of major labels. The guitarist’s impeccable technique, nuanced blues phrasing, and ability to harness all of the expressive possibilities of the Telecaster — including squawking pinch harmonics and voice-like tonalities coaxed from the guitar’s tone knob — earned him praise from top guitarists like Jeff Beck and Jerry Garcia, but Buchanan never achieved superstar status and died of an apparent suicide in 1988. —T.B.Key Tracks: “Wayfaring Pilgrim,” “The Messiah Will Come Again” “Further on Up the Road”

Earl “Chinna” Smith is perhaps the most recorded guitarist of the classic reggae era, playing on seminal works by Bob Marley, Dennis Brown, Bunny Wailer, Sugar Minott, Jacob Miller, Black Uhuru, Mighty Diamonds, Augustus Pablo, Gregory Isaacs, Freddie McGregor — the full list would take up this entire page. As a member of Bunny Lee’s Aggrovators, and later the Soul Syndicate, Smith influenced a generation of Jamaican players. Aside from his tight rhythm and riff playing, he was also known for coming up with guitar intros for songs such as Marley’s “Rat Race” and Dennis Brown’s “Cassandra” — before this innovation, almost all reggae was started with a drum fill. And to this day, Smith welcomes musicians from far and wide to his yard in Jamaica to learn and play with him. —M. GoldwasserKey Tracks: “Cassandra,” “Rat Race”

Larissa Strickland (born Larissa Stolarchuk) was one of the American punk underground’s great noise-guitar stylists. Starting with the under-known Detroit punk band L-Seven, Stolarchuk came into her own in the late-Eighties/early-Nineties band Laughing Hyenas, where her bluesy, shuddering treble cut through madman singer John Brannon’s hellacious scream like a pavement saw through concrete. Said Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, “I remember [fellow SY guitarist] Lee [Renaldo] coming backstage … and saying ‘Yeah, Larissa is the real deal.’ … Everybody on the scene knew Larissa Strickland was the best.” After a decadeslong struggle with addiction issues, Stolarchuk died in 2006 at age 46. —J.G.Key Tracks: “You Just Can’t Win,” “Everything I Want”

Tom Petty’s lead guitarist for more than 40 years, Mike Campbell never clutters up a song with notes when two or three bull’s-eyes will suffice. “It’s a challenge to make your statement in a short amount of time,” he has said, “but I prefer that challenge as opposed to just stretching out.” Listen to the skeletal hook that holds “Breakdown” together or the laconic, tone-bending solo in “You Got Lucky” to hear Campbell’s ingenious use of negative space. “Michael is not one to show off,” Petty once said. “What he says is essential.” —D.W.Key Tracks:“Breakdown,” “You Got Lucky”

It’s a simple equation: No Ernest Ranglin, no reggae. Ranglin was a chief architect of Jamaican ska in the early Sixties, inventing the rhythm-guitar pattern of playing on the upbeat, paving the way for rocksteady and then reggae.He played on the first international ska hit, Millie Small’s 1964 smash “My Boy Lollipop,” and came up with the classic riff on Toots and the Maytals’ seminal “54-46 Was My Number.” Besides playing on (and often arranging) hundreds of classic ska, rocksteady, and reggae recordings as a studio musician, Ranglin also started performing live as a leader of his own group almost 60 years ago, and he’s still at it, often showing off his chops in straight-ahead jazz situations, but always with a touch of Jamaica. —M. GoldwasserKey Tracks: “My Boy Lollipop,”“ 54-46 Was My Number”

Born in 1902 in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Skip James showed an early talent for both piano and guitar, but spent his twenties pursuing much more lucrative activities like gambling and bootlegging. The 18 songs he cut at a Wisconsin session in 1931 were so powerful that tracks like the chilling “Devil Got My Woman” and “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” became part of the country-blues canon. James’ unusual D-minor open tuning, baffling right-hand fingerpicking technique, and hauntingly high vocals were lionized by blues aficionados and emulated by other artists, even as their creator remained in obscurity. Fingerstyle guitarist John Fahey would finally locate James in 1964, stricken with cancer and ailing in an Arkansas hospital, and persuaded him to play the Newport Folk Festival in 1966. James even managed to record a few albums during a brief comeback before he died in 1969. —T.B.Key Tracks: “Devil Got My Woman,” “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues,” “Sick Bed Blues”

When Mexican guitarists Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero dropped their debut album in 2006, the sound — flamenco-flavored instrumentals with brushstrokes of heavy metal pathos — was so different from anything else in Latin music that it felt shockingly daring and revulsive. Future stage classics like “Tamacún” and “Diablo Rojo” felt right at home next to a “Stairway to Heaven” cover that began with a mood of aching vulnerability, then built up a crescendo of flamenco frenzy. Five albums later, the recipe still feels fresh thanks to the duo’s virtuoso chops. In concert, they boogie and burn like a forest fire. — E.L.Key Tracks: “Tamacún,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”

Listen to any Speedy Ortiz song, and somewhere among all the lyrical trapdoors and trickily shifting sounds, you’ll almost always find a sick guitar part being played by the band’s self-proclaimed “frontdemon.” “Expectations have historically been low for female musicians, so I want to be really technically good,”she toldRSin 2015. “So I always write parts that are a stretch for me.” She’s kept on pushing herself that way even as her vision has evolved from the knotty indie riddles of her early releases toward something like pop. If you see them live, keep an eye on her dizzyingly inventive playing — you just might have your mind blown. —S.V.L.Key Tracks: “American Horror,” “Tiger Tank,” “Raising the Skate”

“It seems a waste to me to work and work for years,” Rory Gallagher told Rolling Stone in 1972, “and just turn into some sort of personality.” Instead, the Irish guitarist, then only 23, became legendary for his nonstop-touring ethic and fiery craft. Playing a weathered Strat, often wearing a flannel shirt, Gallagher electrified Chicago and Delta styles with scalding slide work and hard-boiled songwriting. His fans included the Edge and Bob Dylan, who was initially turned away backstage at a 1978 show because Gallagher didn’t recognize him. —D.F.Key Tracks:“Bullfrog Blues,” “Laundromat,” “Walk on Hot Coals”

You can hear the entire histories of rockabilly, country, and rock & roll ring out in country icon Marty Stuart’s signature Telecaster twang. With decades of success in Nashville — first as a sideman to bluegrass legend Lester Flatt, then with Johnny Cash, and finally as a hitmaking solo artist — Stuart has always had a wide-open sense of roots music’s possibilities, especially on recent cosmically inclined albums like 2017’s West Out West with his great band the Fabulous Superlatives. It’s why he’s been lovingly dubbed “Country Music’s Psychedelic Historian.” “There’s two versions of tradition,” Stuart once said. ”It can imprison you, or it can inspire you as you take whatever it is you’re taking into the future.” —C.M.Key Tracks: “Way Out West,” “Hillbilly Rock”

Paul McCartney is a legend for so many things — songwriter, singer, bassist, Beatle — it’s easy to overlook his six-string virtuosity. But Macca played so many of the Fabs’ greatest guitar solos — the psychedelic flash of “Taxman” and “Sgt. Pepper,” the metal blast of “Helter Skelter,” the jagged rock of “Paperback Writer” and “Back in the U.S.S.R.” He’s also got his own folkie acoustic style, as in “Blackbird.” He still blazes on guitar, shredding all over his 2020 gem McCartney III. As he said in 2018, “I’m still thrilled with having the privilege of being able to go up to an amp, turn it on, get my guitar, plug it in and play it very loud.” —R.S.Key Tracks: “Taxman,” “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Too Many People”

Chrissie Hynde’s groundbreaking songwriting and fierce rhythm guitar playing in the Pretenders can’t be divorced from the band’s rock-solid rhythm section and dazzling array of lead players. “James Brown’s guitar player would play one figure throughout the whole song, and I love that,” Hynde once said. Hynde’s craft (and her beloved Telecasters) have meshed brilliantly over the years with a murderers row of six-string foils, from the late James Honeyman-Scott to Robbie McIntosh and, for a short time, Johnny Marr (whose own playing was influenced by Honeyman-Scott). As Hynde puts it, “My position in any band that I’ve been in is to set the guitar player up to make a goal.” —J.G.Key Tracks: “Tattooed Love Boys,” “Brass in Pocket,” “Stop Your Sobbing”

Minutemen guitarist D. Boon favored thick strings and bracing treble, and he sweated so much onstage it messed up his gear. He was influenced by the taut, wiry aggression of post-punk, the classic-rock bluster of the Who and Blue Oyster Cult, the populist choogle of CCR, and the economy of funk and R&B. All that and more came out in his playing. By the time the San Pedro, California, trio made their 43-song 1984 masterpiece, Double Nickels on the Dime, he was mixing punk rock with jazz, country, and folk in a joyously jangled conversational dissonance that perfectly fit the ravenous epiphanies in the Minutemen’s songs. He died in a 1985 van crash at the height of his potential. —J.D.Key Tracks: “Little Man With a Gun in His Hand,” “Corona”

Phil Manzanera’s specialty: “Impossible Guitar,” as he calls it. He helped make Roxy Music one of the most influential bands of the 1970s with his space-glam flash. His sensibility came from growing up in Cuba, Venezuela, and Colombia, listening to his mother’s favorite cumbia and bolero alongside the Beatles. He landed in the London art-rock scene with his spirit of alien irreverence, always experimenting, often filtering his guitar through Brian Eno’s synth. “It’s all down to pan-tonality, man!” he said in 1974. Ever prolific, he’s played on 80 albums in 50 years, with Eno (his clatter on “Needles in the Camel’s Eye”), John Cale (his brutal barrage in “Gun”), and solo gems like Diamond Head. —R.S.Key Tracks: “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” “Amazona,” “Lagrima”

Few traditions have influenced modern-day blues music like North Mississippi Hill Country blues, of which the late Jessie Mae Hemphill was a pioneer. Born in the hill country in 1923, Hemphill began playing guitar at a young age, honing her chops at family gatherings and joining her grandfather Sid Hemphill, another famed hill country musician, onstage with his band. It was when Hemphill relocated to Memphis later in life, where she’d live until her death at 82 in 2006, that she found true notoriety, becoming an award-winning, internationally touring act within just a few years thanks to her deeply intuitive playing, traditionally informed blues songwriting, and raw, emotive vocals. —B.M.Key Tracks: “She-Wolf,” “Shame on You”