And, the majority of their bands have survived to this day, proving that real musical talent is truly enduring.Īs you explore this collection of fantastic guitarists, you will, of course, throw inanimate objects around the room, call us names, and complain that we didn’t feature so-and-so. Odds are, these guys influenced many of your modern-day favorites. Whether from a platinum selling AOR band in Scandinavia, an underground indie band in America, or a new wave band in Great Britain, the following artists are guitar players that serious musicians, like you, should get to know.Įxplore their back catalog of work, and check out what they’re doing today. Many of these guitarists have sold tens of millions of albums with huge bands you’ve been listening to for years, while others toiled in mid-level, gold-record success. Yes, it’s hard to imagine that once upon a time, the Top 40 was filled with bands that featured electric guitars… and guitar solos!
Forty seemed like the magic number since our list included many players from what was then considered Top 40 music. Sometimes the question was whether the person was remarkable enough to have influenced other musicians, or whether or not they had a significant impact on the musical landscape in general.Įventually, we decided to exclude players from the jazz genres, and once we got our list down to fifty amazing players, we decided to chop it a bit further. To be sure, there were days of back-and-forth debate, sometimes just trying to figure out if someone had enough coverage in the old magazines. With an editorial team heavily staffed by ‘80s rock music trivia nuts, and friends and colleagues who shared an almost encyclopedic knowledge of music from that era (not just the shredders), we set about determining the best guitarists from this period whom we didn’t get to read about nearly enough. Adrian Belew and Alan Holdsworth were the "experimental" players. Al DiMeola, Frank Gambale and Scott Henderson represented the world of jazz fusion. The Edge was the token alternative rock guitarist featured regularly, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan represented the universe of blues players, and the only regularly-featured progressive rock guitar players were Steve Howe and David Gilmour.
Unfortunately, the “hair band” shredders dominated ‘80s magazine coverage, with a short list of non-shredding guitar heroes making it into the pages of the big three guitar magazines of the day: Guitar World, Guitar Player, and Guitar for the Practicing Musician.įor those of our readers old enough to have grown up in the United States during that decade of parachute pants, ripped denim and bolo ties, you’ll recall some names that were featured almost monthly on magazine covers: Eddie Van Halen, Reb Beach, Warren DeMartini, Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Nuno Bettencourt, Joe Satriani. It was the era of shred and neoclassical soloing, and while the ‘70s laid the foundation for hard rock guitar, it was during the ‘80s that players really took their technical mastery to another level, practicing guitar sometimes for seven or more hours per day in their quest to be the quickest, most precise, players ever heard.īut while the ‘80s gave us some of the most undisputed guitar heroes in the shred arena, it also gave us a number of amazing guitar players in all styles of music ranging from pop to new wave to punk to progressive to alternative rock. The ‘80s were a period in rock and pop music that showcased the most developed technical fretwork ever put on display. We decided to take a completely different “spin” on this topic, uncovering the best guitarists from the ‘80s who didn’t receive nearly as much press (if any) from guitar magazines as their more famous contemporaries, despite having equally impressive talent, a unique sound and style, and now in retrospect, the fact that they left an everlasting mark on the music world. How many “World’s Best Guitar Player” features have you read that include the same 25, 50, or even 100 players that you’ve read about in every other magazine? How unoriginal! How boring! Some are reader polls where you vote on names from a predetermined list, while others are lists compiled by the magazine editors according to their preferences. Every musician’s magazine routinely publishes a list of the greatest guitarists known to mankind.
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