100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time

Jimi Hendrix

Hendrix didn't just play the guitar — he reimagined it as an instrument without limits. Feedback, whammy bar abuse, teeth and tongue playing: he found sounds no one had named yet and made them musical.

Eric Clapton

Three bands, three identities — the Bluesbreakers' raw power, Cream's psychedelia, and Derek & the Dominos' devastating blues. Clapton's tone alone is a masterclass in what the guitar can sound like.

Jimmy Page

The studio innovator and the live shaman — Page's bow solo, the theremin, the double-neck Gibson on Stairway: a guitarist who thought about architecture as much as notes.

Chuck Berry

Every rock guitarist since 1958 is playing something Berry invented. The double-string runs, the showmanship, the duck walk — rock guitar's entire vocabulary.

Robert Johnson

Twenty-nine songs recorded in the 1930s that contain everything that followed. The crossroads myth was invented to explain how one man could have known this much.

Duane Allman

His slide guitar work on Layla is the pinnacle of the instrument — fluid, singing, and emotionally overwhelming.

B.B. King

Lucille was the name of his guitar; vibrato was his signature. No guitarist has made a single note carry more emotion.

Keith Richards

The open-G tuning, the five-string configuration, the riff as the song's entire reason for existing — Richards invented a way of thinking about rhythm guitar.

Pete Townshend

Power chords, windmill strumming, and the guitar as instrument of controlled violence — Townshend playing rhythm like a lead guitarist.

Eddie Van Halen

Eruption changed everything. Two-handed tapping as a full vocabulary, not a trick — Van Halen rewrote the curriculum in 1978.

Carlos Santana

The sustained note that sings — Santana's tone is instantly identifiable and his fusion of blues and Latin music entirely original.

Slash

The top hat and the Les Paul; the intro to Sweet Child O' Mine and the November Rain solo — Slash is the last great guitar hero.

David Gilmour

Gilmour's second solo on Comfortably Numb is the most voted-for greatest guitar solo in history — warm, singing tone and complete emotional intelligence.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Texas blues at maximum voltage — SRV played harder and louder than anyone else and made it sound effortless.

Tony Iommi

The man who invented heavy metal while missing the tips of two fingers — Iommi's tuning down and downward riffs created an entire genre.

Angus Young

School uniform, duck walk, and the greatest hard rock rhythm section in history behind him — Young plays three notes and fills stadiums.

Mark Knopfler

Fingerpicking precision and a clean, warm tone that is immediately recognisable — Knopfler plays the guitar as if it were a conversation.

John Mayer

The most technically accomplished blues-rock guitarist of his generation — Dead & Company have confirmed he can do what the masters could do.

Buddy Holly

The Stratocaster's most important early evangelist — Holly's rhythm playing influenced the Beatles' entire approach.

Les Paul

He invented the solid body electric guitar and multitrack recording — the instrument and the studio were both his creations.

Albert King

The left-handed upside-down player whose string bending influenced Hendrix, Clapton, and SRV.

Muddy Waters

Chicago blues electricity — Waters amplified the Delta and invented the electric blues vocabulary.

Howlin' Wolf

Willie Johnson's guitar work behind Wolf was the most ferocious thing in Chicago blues.

T-Bone Walker

The first electric blues guitarist — Walker's behind-the-head playing and split-note tone.

Django Reinhardt

The greatest jazz guitarist — playing intricate leads with only two functioning fingers on his left hand.

Wes Montgomery

Thumb-only picking and octave playing — Montgomery's influence on jazz guitar is foundational.

Joe Pass

Solo guitar playing taken to its logical conclusion — Pass made the guitar sound like a full ensemble.

Pat Metheny

Chorused guitar and lyrical composition — Metheny's approach is the warmest in jazz.

John McLaughlin

Fusion speed and Indian classical sensibility — McLaughlin playing at a velocity that still sounds impossible.

Frank Zappa

Comedy and virtuosity in perfect balance — Zappa's solos were as compositionally rigorous as his orchestrations.

Neil Young

Distorted, feedback-drenched, deliberately rough — Young's Godfather of Grunge status is earned.

Tom Verlaine

Marquee Moon's interlocking guitar lines with Richard Lloyd — post-punk guitar at its most poetic.

Johnny Ramone

Pure power chord aggression at maximum speed — Ramone defined punk guitar with absolute minimalism.

Steve Jones

The wall of guitar on Never Mind the Bollocks — Jones playing rhythm like a wrecking ball.

The Edge

Delay pedal as compositional tool — The Edge's "Where the Streets Have No Name" intro is guitar as landscape.

Robert Smith

The guitar player whose sound is inseparable from a particular emotional atmosphere — dark, beautiful, yearning.

Andy Summers

Jazz-inflected reggae textures — Summers' restraint was the Police's secret weapon.

Johnny Marr

The most melodically inventive British guitarist of the 1980s — twelve-string jangle as an entire emotional language.

Kim Deal

The bassist who also defined a guitar sound — Deal's contribution to Pixies' dynamics.

Kim Thayil

Drop-D detuning and psychedelic heaviness — Thayil's playing on Superunknown is genuinely strange and great.

Mike McCready

The Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan heir — McCready's solos are emotional outbursts of guitar brilliance.

Jerry Cantrell

The heaviest melodist in grunge — Cantrell's harmonized guitar and vocal parts are entirely original.

Billy Corgan

Overdriven guitars layered into orchestral density — Corgan as the most ambitions alt-rock arranger.

Jonny Greenwood

Guitar as texture and disruption — Greenwood treating the instrument as one element in a much larger sonic palette.

Tom Morello

The engineer who treated the guitar as a turntable — Morello creating sounds the guitar wasn't supposed to make.

Jack White

Punk blues with maximalist ambition — White making two people sound like an army.

John Frusciante

Californication and Blood Sugar Sex Magik — Frusciante's melodic instincts elevating the Chilis beyond funk-rock.

Dave Grohl

The drummer who became a guitarist with a drummer's sensibility — everything Grohl plays hits like a rhythm instrument.

Kurt Cobain

Power and vulnerability in the same strum — Cobain's rhythm playing was the engine of the most important band of the 1990s.

Josh Homme

The desert rock architect — Homme's stoner-metal riffs and baritone voice as a unique package.

Gary Moore

Irish blues-rock virtuosity — Moore's Still Got the Blues is a masterclass in emotional guitar playing.

Robin Trower

The most Hendrix-influenced guitarist to find his own voice — Bridge of Sighs as a sustained mood piece.

Jeff Beck

Beck's complete refusal to settle on a style made him the most consistently surprising guitarist of his generation.

Ritchie Blackmore

Classical music filtered through hard rock — Blackmore's neo-classical approach predating shred by a decade.

Steve Vai

The most technically complete guitarist of the 1980s — Vai's Passion and Warfare as the shred masterpiece.

Joe Satriani

The teacher of Vai and Kirk Hammett — Satriani's melodic instincts make virtuosity feel emotional.

Yngwie Malmsteen

Classical composition at rock guitar speed — Malmsteen taking neo-classical shred to its logical extreme.

Randy Rhoads

Two albums and an infinite legacy — Rhoads's classical training transformed heavy metal guitar in two years.

Kirk Hammett

The wah pedal and the pentatonic scale as emotional devastation — Hammett's solos at the peak of Metallica's powers.

Dimebag Darrell

The most ferociously original heavy metal guitarist since Eddie Van Halen — Cowboys from Hell as his monument.

Alex Lifeson

Progressive rock's most underrated guitarist — Lifeson's textural range across Rush's catalogue.

Steve Howe

Classical guitar technique applied to progressive rock — Roundabout's intro as prog guitar's greatest statement.

Robert Fripp

Ambient guitar with Eno and prog rock with Crimson — Fripp the most conceptually adventurous guitarist.

Peter Green

The early Mac's blues lead guitarist — Albatross and Oh Well as the twin peaks of his too-brief career.

Lindsey Buckingham

Finger-picking and studio arranging as inseparable skills — Buckingham's guitar on Rumours is flawless.

Nels Cline

Avant-garde noise meets classic rock — Cline's work on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot changing what indie rock's lead guitar could do.

Bill Frisell

The most lyrical jazz guitarist working in the intersection of jazz, country, and ambient music.

Chet Atkins

The architect of the Nashville Sound — Atkins' fingerpicking defined country guitar for a generation.

Merle Travis

Travis picking is named after him — the technique that shaped country and folk guitar.

Doc Watson

Blind guitarist who revolutionised flatpicking technique — Watson playing fiddle tunes at fiddle speed.

Leo Kottke

Twelve-string acoustic guitar as an orchestral instrument — Kottke's technique defies easy description.

Tommy Emmanuel

The most complete acoustic guitarist working — Emmanuel playing rhythm, bass, lead, and percussion simultaneously.

Michael Hedges

Alternate tunings and percussive technique — Hedges reimagining the acoustic guitar's possibilities.

Andy McKee

Internet-era viral guitarist whose technique influenced a generation of acoustic players.

St. Vincent

The 21st century's most original electric guitarist — Clark's signature guitar and her dissonant, angular playing.

Jack White

Already listed at 46 — worth noting that his solo work expanded his guitar voice considerably.

Nile Rodgers

Funk rhythm guitar as architecture — Rodgers's "chucking" technique has driven more hit records than any guitar style.

Prince

The guitar solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction — among the greatest ever played.

John Lennon

Rhythm guitar redefined — Lennon's strumming patterns were the engine room of the most important band.

George Harrison

The slide guitar on My Sweet Lord and the lead playing on Abbey Road — Harrison as the quiet genius.

Albert Collins

Capo positions and minor tuning — Collins's icy tone and percussive attack entirely distinctive.

Freddie King

The third King of the Blues — his instrumentals directly influenced Clapton and SRV.

Son House

Johnson's greatest teacher and one of the rawness of the Delta in undiluted form.

Skip James

Cross-note tuning and falsetto — James's I'd Rather Be the Devil is unlike anything else.

Ry Cooder

Cooder's slide work and his Buena Vista Social Club project bringing forgotten music to new audiences.

Dave Matthews

African-influenced acoustic rhythm guitar as the foundation for jazz-rock improvisation.

Ben Harper

Slide guitar as the weeping of an entire tradition — Harper embodying blues, soul, and folk simultaneously.

Derek Trucks

The most fluid slide guitarist of the current era — Trucks channelling Allman's legacy into something new.

Gary Clark Jr.

The future of blues guitar — Clark bridging Hendrix and the 21st century with authority.

Tosin Abasi

Eight-string guitar and polyrhythmic complexity — the most technically advanced guitarist of his generation.

Guthrie Govan

The most complete technical guitarist alive — Govan playing in any style at any speed with total musicality.

Matthew Bellamy

Classical influence and stadium rock ambition — Bellamy's guitar as the grandest gesture in modern rock.

Alex Turner

The riff writer whose chord voicings define a generation of indie rock — R U Mine? as the proof.

Billie Joe Armstrong

Power chord punk with enough melodic intelligence to cross over — Armstrong's rhythm playing is genuinely exceptional.

John Squire

I Wanna Be Adored and She Bangs the Drums — Squire's Hendrix-influenced lead guitar making Madchester beautiful.

Bernard Butler

The most dramatic guitar player Britpop produced — Animal Nitrate and The Drowners.

Graham Coxon

The angular post-punk guitarist at the heart of Blur's strange art-pop journey.

Julian Casablancas

The riff-writer who made New York indie cool again — Is This It as a document of effortless guitar.

Albert Hammond Jr.

The interlocking guitar lines of The Strokes — Hammond's double-tracked rhythms as a master class.

Courtney Barnett

Conversational guitar for the streaming age — Barnett's playing as relaxed and precise as her lyrics.

Who is the greatest guitarist of all time?

Jimi Hendrix is almost universally considered the greatest guitarist in history, followed by Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Rolling Stone's 2023 list placed Hendrix at No. 1.

Who is technically the best guitarist?

Guthrie Govan is frequently cited by professional guitarists as the most technically complete player alive. Steve Vai and Tosin Abasi are also mentioned for pure technical mastery.

Who invented the electric guitar?

Les Paul and Leo Fender are credited with popularising the solid-body electric guitar in the late 1940s, though earlier semi-acoustic electric guitars existed from the 1930s.

Who has the best guitar tone of all time?

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and Stevie Ray Vaughan are most commonly cited for having the best guitar tone — warm, singing, and instantly recognisable.