In May this year SPIN Magazine published their own take on the 'Top 100 Guitarists of All Time', a list I found enjoyable, interesting, flawed, better than Rolling Stone's blues-snooze-inducing 'classic' list, but at the same time there were a couple of glaring errors I thought really marred it from being what it was trying to be, which was an 'alternative' Top 100 Guitarists list, eschewing Clapton for more innovative and under-looked guitarsmiths. The errors I point to may seem a little nit-picking to some but I genuinely believe this list would wield more power if it had thought it through just a little better. My main point is their inclusion of non-guitarists.
The list opens with Skrillex, a Dubstep artist who, at the peak of Dubstep fever, was among the most-known Dubstep acts going. Obviously, I was somewhat bemused by this inclusion, and their rational for it is that "no contemporary musician has a more primal understanding of adrenaline-pumping, pulse-raising, chest-caving bulldozer riffs than [the] dubstep mosh ambassador". But riffs are not something unique to guitar and far from it. They note the amount of 'Skrillex guitar covers' on YouTube, too, but neither of these things help the fact he is not primarily a guitarist, and is certainly not famous for his use of guitar. They even say "as far as we know, [he] has never held a guitar in his life", which seems a rather silly sentence to open a 'Top 100 Guitarists' list. If I decided to write a list of the greatest modern keyboard and piano players ever and began by saying 'look I know this guy isn't even a keyboard player, but hear me out...' I doubt anybody would take it seriously, least of all actual keyboard players.
My other irk is along the same lines and that is their inclusions of DJ's and producers from hip-hop acts who are known for their use of guitar-based samples. My point comes back to the fact these people are just flat-out not guitarists. But in Jam Master Jay's, the DJ from legendary hip-hop act Run-DMC's case, it went a little too far with him taking the number ten spot. They are saying a man who used a turntable to edit somebody else's guitar playing is technically a better guitarist than Ron Asheton of the Stooges. Now personally I think the white hot, reverb-drenched rhythm and lead presented on the Stooges first two classic albums The Stooges and Fun House have a hell of a lot more power and weight to them than a version of 'My Sharona' with a bad stutter. I'm not saying Jam Master Jay is a bad musician but considering he didn't even write the guitar parts in the songs he's credited with in the SPIN article it seems like a bit of a hack to let a non-guitarist into the top ten.
What I've decided to do is write an alternate top 100 guitarists list in instalments of five so I can give each guitarist a good and thorough crediting for their musical contributions. The list will not be numbered from one to a hundred because who can really say who is the 'better' guitarist? Also considering it is just me writing it, it would be an arduous task attempting to construct such a list. Maybe it'll even go over 100, and end up an article dedicated to good guitarists, because let's face it, the chances of me missing somebody essential to the list is fairly high. I will be taking some loose inspiration from the SPIN list in including two guitarists as one item in the list if they are both in a band known for their guitar sound and could not be separated any other way, and also in the sense that this list is an 'alternative' guitarist list and will be heavily biased against typical 60's blues-rock guitar gods, although some typical-to-this-kind of list names will inevitably pop up, too. I am also only including guitarists I know well enough to write about as otherwise I may come across as insincere, and am focussing on guitarists that are centred around rock, alternative, and punk. First instalment due soon.
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