My Top Eleven Favorite and Most Influential Guitarists
The dictionary defines a guitarist simply as one who plays a guitar. While this is technically true in a literal sense, there is a lot more to what actually defines a guitarist. First and foremost a guitarist is defined by their playing style. Whether a guitarist’s style is complicated or simple, style is a guitarist’s general approach to how they play and their own innovation and imagination that makes their playing style unique, personal, and evolves through several soundscapes as time goes by. Although it is extremely important for a guitarist to be technically proficient and well versed in their instrument, style is everything! Style is what turns an ordinary guitarist into an extraordinary and influential guitarist.
I am a self-taught guitarist. When I came home from my LDS mission to Western Pennsylvania in May of 1998 it took me 6 weeks to find a job and I had some time to burn so I picked up my Dad’s Ibanez guitar and went for it. Because I already knew how to play the bass I learned how to play lead guitar relatively quickly, but learning and mastering the chords took a lot more time, however, I had most of the basics down after three years of learning guitar via trial and error. During my early learning and experimentation process my initial style was very punk oriented and in my early stages I was very influenced by Glen Buxton and Mike Bruce of the original Alice Cooper band, Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers, and Mick Ronson who has worked with David Bowie, Ian Hunter, and John Mellencamp as well as many other talented musicians. Then my style evolves more into classic rock and metal and was very influenced by Neal Schon of Journey and Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad, and today my style is kind of mix of the complexity of progressive rock, the simplicity and energy of punk, and the heart and soul of straight up blues. My style I feel is a unique one that some of my friends have compared to Joe Walsh (during his James Gang years), Kurt Cobain, Robby Krieger, and Tony Iommi (or I guess a strange and unique style combining all of them). But like all guitarists my personal style has been greatly influenced by the guitarists I admire most with a few of my own little quirks I’ve developed along the way. After some very extensive thought and in the tradition of the band Spinal Tap I would like to turn it up to an 11. I’ve come up with my top 11 list of my favorite guitarists. Although there a several guitarists that I admire and enjoy listening to that are not listed here, these 11 guitarists I feel have the most influenced my playing style and ultimately when I play, these guitarists are what I am going for. I am excited to actually write a little bit all 11 of these amazing guitarists.
#11 Phil Manzanera
When I was in high school I really got into British glam rock scene of the early 70’s and especially enjoyed T.Rex, Slade, and Sweet. When I was researching the history and evolution of the British glam rock scene Roxy Music always came up. Unfortunately, in 1995 before the glory of the internet I had never heard any of Roxy’s songs and I did not know anyone who had even heard of them. In a $0.99 reduced cassette bin at a record shop I found the first Roxy Music album and although I did not know one song on the cassette, at $0.99 I bought the tape anyway feeling like I didn’t have anything to lose. The album opens with “Remake/Remodel” which I thought was a good song, but everything else on the album I just couldn’t stand and later on during my second listen of the first Roxy Music album I hated it so much that I threw the cassette out of my car window as I drove down I-15. I thought that was the end of Roxy Music for me. I was wrong.
While serving as an LDS missionary in the Highland Park section of Pittsburgh during the summer of 1996 for reasons that I can’t really define I purchased Street Life: Greatest Hits - Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music. At first this CD did not do much for me. Unfortunately, my massive collection of cassettes and CD’s were back in Sandy, UT while I was on my mission and since my non-religious music collection was extremely limited while I was a missionary I kept the CD anyway and it really grew on me with “Pyjamarama” and “Do the Strand” became my two favorite songs on it.
After my mission because I thought “Do the Strand” was such a cool song I decided to take a chance with the second Roxy Music CD For Your Pleasure. This time I was ready for Roxy Music. The song “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” starts will a very eerie keyboard atmosphere that continues through the bulk of the song and then without warning enters Phil Manzanera’s guitar solo. It honestly took my breath away. I had never heard anything like it. Shortly after I bought For Your Pleasure I had finished working a six month stint as a Casual Clerk with the United States Postal Service in December 1998 and I worked 12 hours a day 6 days a week during the stint. For my reward I purchased my Gibson Les Paul guitar and the solo in “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” was the first solo I obsessively worked to figure out on my new guitar.
As time went by and I purchased more of Roxy Music’s CD’s Phil Manzanera’s guitar work continually impressed me and I learned more of Phil’s leads (and yes I eventually rebought the first Roxy Music album and it is awesome!). In the history of the band Roxy Music, the Roxy Music of the 70’s and the Roxy Music of the 80’s are two completely different bands musically (with Manifesto being the transitional album). In all honesty I was more of a fan of the Roxy Music of the 70’s and although I liked the Roxy Music songs I knew from the 80’s I was very hesitant to buy Flesh and Blood or Avalon. For Christmas in 2002 right before I moved to Logan, UT to attend Utah State University my older brother Alan gave me a copy of Avalon. What impressed me the most about Avalon is that musically it is a full 180 from Roxy Music of the 70’s, but the change in direction works really well. With this change in direction Phil Manzanera’s playing style also changes. In the Roxy Music of the 70’s Phil’s style is very fast, quirky, improvised, and has strong jazz influences as well as early 60’s rock and roll. Phil’s guitar solos and Andy MacKay’s saxophone solos really play off of each other amazingly in the Roxy Music of the 70’s. While in the Roxy Music of the 80’s Bryan Ferry develops a very different soundscape for Roxy Music which is less experimental, more harmonious, and has a mellower yet very deep texture. Phil Manzanera’s playing style during this period of Roxy Music has more finesse, precision, and blends perfectly with the more modern sound of Roxy Music. Although this style is a departure from the Roxy Music of the 70’s it is very innovative. The songs “Take a Chance With Me” and “True to Life” from Avalon especially showcase the depth of Phil Manzanera’s playing. I just love how the guitar playing really adds a lot of depth and beauty to these songs without overpowering and overshadowing the rest of the song. Prior to Roxy Music’s Avalon my playing style was honestly how fast can I play and how much punk can I add to a song regardless of its genre of origin (during this time I had a guitar arrangement of “Sea Diver” by Mott the Hoople that pretty much turned it to a metal/punk song). Phil Manzanera taught me that guitar is much more than going wild and experimentation. He taught me that not everything I play has to turn into punk or metal and broadened my playing horizon. The song “True to Life” I especially enjoy playing. I have noticed that for many guitarists once they develop their initial style, they tend to experiment within that style, but do not veer from it very much (which is not necessarily bad). While on the other hand Phil Manzanera’s style very drastically changes from the 70’s into the 80’s and he is just as unique in both eras.
Outside of Roxy Music Phil Manzanera has worked with David Gilmour, John Wetton, Annie Lennox, and Brian Eno, and has had a successful career as a producer. However, he will be the most remembered as the guitarist of the very influential Roxy Music. Forgiving the fact that Phil may never get the credit he deserves for being a very talented and one of the most stylistically unique guitarists of all time; I think he really stands out from many of his contemporaries.
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#10 Angus and Malcolm Young
My father is a huge fan of AC/DC and I grew up listening to them. My father has purchased the AC/DC album Highway to Hell five times (his 1st LP of it which later was stolen by a burglar, the 2nd was an 8-Track Cassette, the 3rd was an LP replacing the stolen one, the 4th was a regular cassette, and the 5th was the CD). Highway to Hell is actually that great. My father played Back in Black all the time when I was a little kid and for a while I thought chorus of the song “Giving the Dog a Bone” was actually “I’m gonna get Gargamel”. Every time AC/DC put out a new album my Dad bought it ASAP. I can honestly say they are one of his all-time favorite bands and one of mine as well.
When I was in elementary school age AC/DC was my most favorite band ever! I was literally the only person in my elementary school into them, or for that matter I was the only one who had even heard of AC/DC. I was so into AC/DC growing up and because I was the wild bicycle/roller blading dare devil of my neighborhood my nick name was Angus for most of the 80’s. My very first concert was AC/DC with White Lion opening at the Salt Palace on July 26, 1988, when I was 11 years old. In many respects this concert was my first passage into manhood and is still one of the most amazing and awesome concerts I have ever been to. The shirt I bought at this concert (pictured on the About the Blogger page) was practically glued to my body from age 11 to age 13. Through my entire life AC/DC has remained one of my most favorite bands ever. In a way it goes without saying once I learned how to play guitar I immediately looked to Angus and Malcolm Young.
As much as I love progressive rock and some of the more musically complex realms of rock and roll, there is amazing power in simplicity. Case and point: the one and only Malcolm Young. Malcolm in my opinion is the greatest rhythm guitarist in rock and roll history. Malcolm always sticks to the basic chords and is extremely well disciplined in his playing. However, just because a style is simple does not mean it can’t be innovative. Malcolm’s rhythm guitar is many respects the most defining feature of AC/DC’s music. Malcolm developed for lack of better term, what I call the AC/DC strum. As much as the chords are very basic and the strum is not a hard one to master, it is the way Malcolm strums the chords that makes AC/DC stand out. I know several people that are not into heavy metal at all, yet they love AC/DC. There is just something about that simple drum beat and rhythm guitar that gets the heart pumping and the body ready to rock. One of my most favorite AC/DC songs ever is “Let There Be Rock”. In the chorus of the song Malcolm is strumming an A, transitioning to a B, and back to an A, a fairly easy chord sequence to play, but the driving force of these chords is what makes the song so amazing. In addition, because Malcolm’s style is relatively simple, if another band is ripping off AC/DC, it is blatantly obvious (such as the songs “Long Stick Goes Boom” by Krokus and “Balls to the Wall” by Accept). It’s really hard to jazz up something that is so simple and make it your own, which to me adds to Malcolm’s genius and it is his guitar work that really drives AC/DC’s music.
On the other hand you have Malcolm’s younger brother Angus. What I love the most about Angus’ playing style is that he completely feeds off of the energy of Malcolm’s guitar and in his playing style. In fact, in several interviews Angus has stated that he could not do what he does on guitar without Malcolm’s guitar playing in the background. Angus’ style to me is the essence of straight up rock and roll. His style is fast and has a small hint of blues. Most of all, my favorite thing about Angus’ guitar style is he literally puts his entire personality into his playing. All five times I have seen AC/DC Angus Young is banging his head, running around the stage, and is very much the life of the party. His lust for life really comes out in his playing and his energy level never lets up. Angus is just as energetic during the encore as he is when AC/DC starts their show.
The main thing I learned from AC/DC is how much fun it is just to play rhythm guitar. Malcolm Young especially helped me to become more fundamentally sound as a guitarist, regardless of all of the fancy lead I know how to play; the basics are just as important. While at the same time when I am playing lead guitar I am a lot like Angus Young in the respect that I feel like my whole personality comes through in my guitar leads and I am very energetic when I play.
As much as the punk scene as a whole does not claim AC/DC as an influence, it should. Musically punk is all about the basics of rock and roll just taken up a couple of notches with lots of energy, and that is what AC/DC is all about. In fact when AC/DC relocated from Australia to London in 1976 they were an instant hit with the punk fans in London music scene. In another interview I saw once with Brian Johnson and Angus Young the reporter asked how they wanted AC/DC to be remembered and Angus said that he wanted AC/DC to be remembered as a great rock and roll band, no more, no less. Angus and Malcolm Young are the simply the best rhythm/lead guitar team in the history of rock and roll.
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#9 Steven Wilson
In 2007 I very impulsively purchased the CD Octavarium by Dream Theater and just loved every moment of it. At this point in my life I was still into the metal I grew up listening to, but because my musical direction changed fairly drastically in the 90’s I did not really follow the metal scene again until I got into Dream Theater. Once I got into Dream Theater I introduced them to my older brother Alan and via youtube.com Alan started to explore their music as well as many bands associated with the progressive metal scene. One day on youtube.com Alan stumbled upon the song “Darkmatter” by Porcupine Tree and was completely blown away by the song. The following Sunday after a family dinner at my parent’s house Alan got online and showed me a video for “Darkmatter”. I thought “Darkmatter” was a pretty good song, but I did not have the experience Alan did. A few months later I was on vacation in Denver with my father and I found a used CD of Signify by Porcupine Tree and I knew Alan had been looking for it so I bought it for him. Once I returned to Salt Lake City I decided to give Signify a listen before I gave it to Alan and from the very beginning of “Bornlivedie” Signify immediately had my attention and the CD was one of the most unique metal albums I had ever heard. It was everything that is awesome about metal combined with progressive rock (especially Pink Floyd) and with several elements from trans. Porcupine Tree created a musical atmosphere very different from anything I had ever heard and Signify just as Octavarium did, further introduced me to the realm of progressive metal.
“Idiot Prayer” very quickly became my favorite song on Signify. One night I was watching a Utah Jazz game and the Jazz went into a 22 point deficit half way into the 2nd quarter and I started playing guitar to pass the time. “Idiot Prayer” popped into my head and about 10 minutes later I figured out the bass line and by the end of the game (which the Jazz horribly lost) I figured out the rest of the guitar work for the song. The next day as I listened to “Idiot Prayer” on the way to work I was really taken by it. Back in 1998 I never thought I could play a song like that by 2009. I honestly did not realize how much I had really grown and improved as a guitarist until this moment.
I would continue to buy Porcupine Tree’s CD’s and Steven Wilson’s guitar playing I especially enjoy. Steven Wilson when he was growing up was a huge fan of Pink Floyd, Donna Summer, ABBA, and a lot of classic and psychedelic rock as well as the British heavy metal scene. However, at the same time he was also into Krautrock scene (Germany’s very experimental electronic music scene of the 60’s and 70’s) and bands like Neu, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and the very influential electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. In the musical landscape of Porcupine Tree Steven Wilson somehow combines all of his influences into one of the most unique soundscapes in all of music. Steven Wilson’s guitar playing style ranges from the psychedelic in songs like “The Sky Moves Sideways” to straight up speed metal with songs like “The Creator has a Mastertape”, then to heavy progressive rock with songs like “Anesthetize”, the folk style with songs like “Trains”, and yet Steven Wilson makes this wide range of styles completely his own.
As I have done some research I have discovered that Steven Wilson and I have a lot in common musically. Both of us have very diverse and wide ranging musical tastes. Both of us have a tendency to embrace and incorporate all of our musical influences into our guitar playing style. Lastly, both of us are self-taught guitarists. I have noticed that in many respects Steven Wilson and I have a very similar approach to playing. It’s hard to describe exactly what I mean, but here is the gist of it. Because I am a self-taught guitarist my approach is that I play it how I feel it. When I am figuring out a song on guitar it is more important for me to get the right “feel” of the song rather than playing it 100% like the record. I like to have a lot of freedom to experiment and improvise, even with songs that I have played many times. For example, one of my most favorite Porcupine Tree songs is “The Moon Touches Your Shoulder”. The studio version on the album The Sky Moves Sideways starts out slow and acoustic and is very much in the vein of “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd and builds more into the perfect combination of metal and psychedelic. However, the live version of “The Moon Touches Your Shoulder” from the Coma Divine CD Steven Wilson slows it down a little bit and it has a completely different feel to it. I especially love the soft and beautiful intro used in this arrangement. I am very amazed by how Steven Wilson can take the song and present it very uniquely and beautifully in both versions. I have learned to play “The Moon Touches Your Shoulder” both ways and I just love to play this song. On a personal note, although I know this is not really a love song, the live version of “The Moon Touches Your Shoulder” is a song I associate with being in love in my personal life (I can’t really put my finger on why I feel this way. For that matter I feel the same away about the Porcupine Tree song “Half Light”. I guess I am a non-traditional love song person).
I have really enjoyed all of the Porcupine Tree albums I have bought, however, Fear of a Blank Planet stands out as my favorite. The song “Fear of a Blank Planet” starts with a very haunting acoustic guitar in the vein of “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead, then progresses into some dark and heavy guitar work in the vein of “One More Red Nightmare” by King Crimson, and builds up to a very powerful and unique progressive metal song. This is my favorite Porcupine Tree song to play, especially because several different guitar styles are employed by Steven Wilson within just this song alone. The day I figured out how to play “Fear of a Blank Planet” I had a long, challenging, and extremely frustrating day at work. I sat down in my living room and picked up my acoustic guitar to just alleviate some of the stress. Doing some random strumming and by complete accident I figured out the acoustic intro and the rest of song just kind of fell in place as I continued playing. Because I feel like Steven Wilson and I have at the very least some stylistic similarities as guitarists I have learned a great amount from him.
The most endearing thing about Steven Wilson as a guitarist is his amazing range and depth in his own musical tastes and incorporating it all into his guitar playing and song writing. At least in my own life many people tend to put labels on things and Steven Wilson is a guitarist that it is impossible to put a label on. Although to the world he is viewed as a metal guitarist, this is not really a great label for him. He is not afraid to embrace all of his musical influences in his playing style. Steven Wilson is one of the most unique guitarists and songwriters in music industry today.
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#8 John Petrucci
Forgiving the fact that I was aware of Dream Theater in 1992 when Salt Lake City’s KBER used to play “Pull Me Under”, it was the early 90’s, I was having issues with the metal scene, I completely embraced Nirvana and I started to explore lots of different musical genres outside of the realm of heavy metal. Sadly, because of this fairly radical change in my musical direction I swept Dream Theater under the rug and I did not give them a fair chance in the 90’s. However, in 2007 I was at the Graywhale CD at the University of Utah and on complete impulse I bought Octavarium by Dream Theater having not heard one song off of it. Within the first 30 seconds of “The Root of All Evil” I quickly discovered that I had horribly misjudged Dream Theater back in the 90’s and I discovered the one and only John Petrucci.
In my guitar playing/learning process one of my favorite activities to do put and album on my iPod and play along with it. Going back to when I learned how to play guitar I used to play along with the album The Velvet Underground & Nico and I learned the basics of guitar As much as I am a fan of the Velvet Underground, musically they are not a complicated band and they were the perfect band get started with. By 2001 I had evolved to where I would play along with Billion Dollar Babies by Alice Cooper, ELECTRICLARRYLAND by the Butthole Surfers, and Live Album by Grand Funk Railroad with a huge degree of success. As much as I own a very extensive collection of guitar books, I still prefer to figure out songs by ear and by trial and error when I play along with them and over the years this process has been perfected.
However, this type of process does not work for the songs of Dream Theater. In early 2008 I had owned the CD of Octavarium for about 6 months and I was feeling pretty confident that if I put on my CD of Octavarium that after a while I could figure out some of the songs. What I discovered is John Petrucci’s style as much as it is very much founded in heavy metal, has a complexity to it that rivals Steve Howe of Yes, Steve Morse of the Dixie Dregs/Deep Purple, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani. I tried so hard to get down some of the leads from “The Root of All Evil” and all I could pull off were some of the very basic chord structures and maybe I could figure out two or three notes of one of the leads, but the note sequence was so different and complicated that I just felt overwhelmed. Every guitarist in order to improve and be inspired to achieve greater heights needs a great guitarist to sufficiently humble them and John Petrucci is this guitarist for me.
Initially I kind of gave up on attempting to play Dream Theater on the guitar for a little while because I felt like I was so in over my head. However, one evening I was just jamming around on guitar watching a Colorado Rockies game and while randomly playing some leads I figured out part of the first verse of the song “Honor Thy Father”. I tried to figure out the rest of the song without much success, but I was able to get a least a small part of it figured out which just thrilled me beyond belief. A few weeks later by accident I figured out some of the song “Finally Free”. For the first time I kind of felt like I at least had a small chance of learning to play some Dream Theater on guitar. For my birthday my Dad gave me the guitar book for Octavarium and shortly thereafter I bought the book for Scenes From a Memory and started to learn a few of the songs.
From my experience in playing guitar I view John Petrucci very much as the ultimate professor of guitar and I feel that he has upped the ante for the quality, complexity, and precision of guitar work for the metal scene and the rock and roll scene as a whole. In his teenage years as John Petrucci was learning guitar he was very influenced by Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Deep Purple, and Metallica, however, at the same time John Petrucci loved progressive rock and was always looking for more challenging songs to play and was inspired by Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Dixie Dregs, Marillion, and King Crimson. He has created a guitar style that has the raw power of heavy metal with the complexity and finesse of progressive rock and is the definitive guitarist of the progressive metal scene. John Petrucci’s style has ranged from classical guitar in the song “Hollow Years”, pure metal in the song “Forsaken”, displays all things progressive rock in the “A Mind Beside Itself” suite (features the songs “Erotomania”, “Voices”, and “The Silent Man”), the soft and melodic in the song “This is the Life”, and really everything in between. The thing I admire the most about John Petrucci is in his guitar playing and song writing all of the arrangements have a precision to them that I associate with classical music. Regardless of what musical style or genre John Petrucci plays in for a given song, he plays at an expert level without exception.
I have now seen Dream Theater live three times and they are honestly one of the best live bands out there. Every member of Dream Theater is truly a master of their musical craft. When I go to rock concerts as much as I go to have fun I am also attending as a music student and I very much watch the bassists and guitarists and analyze how they play and learn a few things during the show. Many of the concerts I go to when I watch the guitarists, generally I have a pretty good idea how they are playing and pick up on some of their quirks and techniques. However, every time I have seen Dream Theater when John Petrucci plays in my mind I am usually thinking “I’ve never seen that before…That’s kind of different…I didn’t even know such a chord existed…What in the world did he just do?!?!”. Watching John Petrucci play is like to being able to see Leonardo da Vinci paint. It’s very humbling yet very inspiring to see the master at work.
My favorite Dream Theater song is the 24 minute epic “Octavarium”. What I love the most about this song is it goes through a complicated song structure and each of the five movement keep building upon each other. Every single time I listen to “Octavarium” when the “Razor’s Edge” movement begins I literally get the chills. John Petrucci’s guitar solo in “Razor’s Edge” is my most favorite guitar solo of all time and it really brings the entire epic to the perfect conclusion.
John Petrucci today is respected as one of the greatest guitarists in the world and I think he is the best guitarist to ever emerge from the heavy metal scene. Forgiving the fact I can’t play these songs perfectly, I am very proud that I can somewhat play “The Spirit Carries On”, “Finally Free”, “Surrounded”, “Pull Me Under”, “Honor Thy Father”, and “Metropolis” on guitar. In addition, I have come up with a way cool guitar arrangement for “Space Dye Vest”. I may never be able to achieve in my own guitar playing what John Petrucci has in his; however, he inspires me to keep pushing my limits and to break new ground as a guitarist.
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#7 David Gilmour
Back in 1987 when Pink Floyd released the album A Momentary Lapse of Reason and MTV used to play the music videos for “Learning to Fly”, “Dogs of War”, “On the Turning Away” and the live video for “Comfortably Numb” from The Delicate Sound of Thunder was my first exposure to Pink Floyd. I thought all of these songs were pretty good at age 10, but other than really being into Rush, I was not quite ready yet for progressive rock.
When I was 11 years old I wanted to get a paper route really bad and the one in my neighborhood was not available. However, there was an afternoon route about two miles from my house and my father agreed to drive me on my route until I could land a route closer to my neighborhood (I consider my father driving me on this route for about a year to be one of the nicest and most compassionate things my father ever did for me. I know it cost him more in gasoline and car repairs than what I made on this route, but he gladly did this for me and I am grateful for it. I did this route for one year before the morning route in my neighborhood became available). One day in 1989 as my father was driving me on my paper route I heard the song “Us and Them” by Pink Floyd for the very first time on Salt Lake City’s Z93 and it completely blew me away. I loved the mellow and somewhat psychedelic soundscape and some of the most awesome and unique guitar work I had ever heard. My parents gave me a cassette of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon for Christmas and my world musically changed forever. Pink Floyd was one of the very first bands I ever explored outside of the realm of heavy metal and they were a significant part of the soundtrack of my life from middle school all the way through high school.
For my 17th birthday my parents gave me one of the greatest birthday gifts I have ever received. My Dad bought our family tickets to see Pink Floyd at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, as well as flights and hotel for this concert. I was so excited I about passed out. I honestly felt like at age 17 that the likelihood of ever being able to see Pink Floyd perform live was very low and tickets to this concert was the surprise of a lifetime. Finally April 24, 1994 arrived. What I will never forget about this show is over the P.A. there were a lot of weird and abstract sounds that played for about a solid hour which created a great diversion for the band. When Pink Floyd entered the stage and began it took the audience completely by surprise. Pink Floyd opened their show with “Astronomy Domain” which was a song of theirs I had never heard before and I was completely taken back. David Gilmour was beyond amazing on the guitar and this concert has gone down as what I consider to be the best concerts I have ever been to. Prior to when I saw Pink Floyd most of my concerts had been heavy metal concerts and a few classic rock bands, but Pink Floyd was something amazing to behold live. In 1994 I knew how to play bass and as I watched David Gilmour I wished I could play guitar like him.
When I purchased my Gibson Les Paul in December 1998 the first guitar book I ever purchased was Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and I thought from all of the times I had listened to it that “Us and Them” sounded like it would be the easiest song to learn. “Us and Them” very quickly proved to be much more challenging then I had anticipated, but I wanted to learn this song so bad that I painstakingly kept trying. Quite honestly I could not play this song very well on guitar until after I graduated college in 2005. However, today when I listen to “Us and Them” I am very happy that I can play this song and humbled by how far I have come along on guitar.
David Gilmour’s guitar playing style is founded in 60’s psychedelic rock. However, David Gilmour goes far beyond the distortion of sounds and experimental guitar of psychedelic. As experimental as some of the music of Pink Floyd’s music on the surface, they are four of the tightest musicians in history. The one thing I feel sets David Gilmour apart the most from his progressive rock contemporaries is he is as precise as Steve Howe and Steve Hacket, however, David Gilmour’s guitar style has a loose and experimental feel to it and at the same time he adds great depth and completely to the soundscape of Pink Floyd. His style is the perfect mix of the experimentation of the 60’s psychedelic with the refinement and virtuosity of 70’s progressive rock.
In the summer of 2004 I was hired along with three other Utah State University College of Business students for a summer Corporate Finance internship at the corporate office of the Schwan Food Company in Marshall, Minnesota, and all four of us shared a house for the summer. All three of my roommates were awesome and we got along extremely well. However, because Marshall, Minnesota is such a little town there was not a lot to do after the work day. My roommate Bryce had an X-Box and had the games Halo and NCAA 2004 which were fun to play, but Halo makes me really dizzy when I play it and I was just not into video games, and once the NBA playoffs and championship ended, my roommates usually watched Fox News or CNN. However, I brought my Gibson guitar with me to Minnesota and I played so much that I made a huge quantum leap as a guitarist when I lived in Minnesota. I still remember one day when I was watching TV with my roommates and I was strumming an A minor on my guitar and about 15 minutes later this simple A minor became me figuring out the guitar solo at the end of the Pink Floyd song “Is There Anybody Out There?”. My roommate Brian brought his acoustic guitar to Minnesota and I grabbed Brian’s guitar and played “Is There Anybody Out There?” just to see if I had it right and was shocked that I did. For a long time I felt like I would never be able to pull off some of Pink Floyd’s songs and I felt like I had really grown more than I ever thought I would as a guitarist.
Today I can play the whole album of The Dark Side of the Moon on guitar and several other Pink Floyd songs. “On the Turning Away”, “Us and Them”, “In the Flesh”, “Sheep”, “Comfortably Numb”, and “Brain Damage/Eclipse” are my favorites to play on the guitar. David Gilmour’s style of precision experimentation and creating incredibly unique soundscapes have made him one of the most well-known guitarists in rock and roll and helped define and mold Pink Floyd into one of the most legendary bands in music history.
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#6 Ritchie Blackmore
In 1971 my father had been home from serving his LDS mission in Southern California for a little over a year and had relocated from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Salt Lake City, Utah. When my father returned home from his mission he still had a huge soft spot for Byrds, Doors, Love, Jeff Beck, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Rolling Stones, and all of the 60’s British Invasion, Psychedelic, and early hard rock he grew up listening to. However, like many LDS missionaries when they return home from two years of missionary service, my father was listening to mellower music and especially enjoyed The Carpenters, Bread, Todd Rundgren, Laura Nyro, Poco, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Around this time Salt Lake City radio was playing “Strange Kind of Woman” by Deep Purple which my father thought was a way cool song. Shortly thereafter my father’s best friend, who was attending Brigham Young University at the time, as a gift gave my father an album of Fireball by Deep Purple and from the first time he listened to it, my father’s musical world turned upside down. My father loved every second of it and Ritchie Blackmore very quickly ranked with Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton (back when he was in Cream) as one of his one of his very favorite guitarists. Fireball by Deep Purple along with Live Album by Grand Funk Railroad introduced my father to world of 70’s hard rock and what would become the metal scene and he was on board.
After Deep Purple broke up in 1976 my father followed Rainbow and Whitesnake, but remained very loyal to Deep Purple and I don’t think there was a person more excited for when Deep Purple reunited in 1984 and released Perfect Strangers. Not only did my father just love Perfect Strangers, he pulled out all of his old Deep Purple albums and for the first time I was introduced to In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head, Who Do You Think We Are, Made in Japan, Burn, Stormbringer, and Made in Europe. My senior year of high school in 1995 I found a cassette of Machine Head for $4.00 and since it had been a while since the last time I heard “Smoke on the Water” I bought it. At this point in my musical journey I was way into Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Black Flag, The Misfits, Weezer, and the Rolling Stones, but from “Highway Star” to “Space Truckin” and everything in between Machine Head was freaking cool and the guitar work of Ritchie Blackmore is one of the key cornerstones of heavy metal guitar. I started to listen to my Dad’s old Deep Purple albums and they were one of my favorite bands. In 1998, when I came home from my LDS mission in Western Pennsylvania I got back into Deep Purple pretty quick and started listening to Rainbow.
Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar style I fell is largely taken for granted today. Guitarists like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Robby Krieger, and Jimi Hendrix had built a firm foundation for hard rock/heavy metal. However, Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar style is the essence of what heavy metal guitar is all about and although like many of his contemporaries there is still a hint of blues in his guitar style, he is very much one of the first heavy guitarists and he has a style that has influenced all things heavy metal ever since. As much as “Smoke on the Water” will always go down as one of the greatest guitar riffs in history and as one of the songs that is very foundational to heavy metal. However, I think that “Child in Time” best showcases what Ritchie Blackmore is all about. “Child in Time” starts out very mellow with Jon Lord’s entrancing organ and Ritchie Blackmore’s somewhat ambient guitar playing creating a very unique atmosphere and builds up in intensity and just really rocks out for an amazing ten minute epic. Ritchie Blackmore is the master of the art of mellow and bluesy guitar leading into the powerful and intense guitar riffs and solos that define Deep Purple and heavy metal guitar.
In addition, the dual guitar style of heavy metal I feel owes a lot to Deep Purple. The song “Highway Star” is a prime example of how Jon Lord’s keyboard/organ playing one of the most unique things about Deep Purple and is what set them apart from the early pioneers of heavy metal. Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore really feed off of each other’s energy. Jon Lord establishes the power level, Ritchie Blackmore takes up a notch, then Jon Lord takes it up another notch, and back and forth it goes. This dynamic is what creates the amazing depth to Deep Purple’s music. Although heavy metal did not quite embrace and incorporate the keyboard (or least not until the progressive metal scene emerges) to the degree Deep Purple did, I feel like many dual guitar metal bands really incorporated the Jon Lord/Ritchie Blackmore style and dynamic. My favorite Deep Purple song to play on guitar is “Hard Loving Man” and as I play the opening riff and Jon Lord’s keyboard comes in I still get chills.
My favorite guitar riff from Ritchie Blackmore is from his days in Rainbow. On the live album On Stage Rainbow covers “Still I’m Sad” by the Yardbirds. The original “Still I’m Sad” is in E minor (the most depressing of all guitar chords), very slow and almost has a Gregorian monk style vocal chant in the background, but for what it’s worth it’s a pretty good song. However, “Still I’m Sad” on Rainbow On Stage Ritchie Blackmore had a much different arrangement in mind and Rainbow’s version is a full 180 form the Yardbirds. Ritchie Blackmore turns “Still I’m Sad” into a full blown metal song and Ronnie James Dio’s vocals really take this song up many levels from the Yardbirds. But true to the style of Ritchie Blackmore in the middle of the song he slows it down a little bit and pays tribute to Jeff Beck’s guitar solo in the original song, however, the moment you catch your breath he is off and running again. Although Rainbow’s “Still I’m Sad” is radically different from the Yardbirds, Ritchie still is able to keep the key components in tact beneath the surface. I can play both the Yardbirds and Rainbow’s versions of “Still I’m Sad”, but I really love what Ritchie Blackmore did with it.
Although Ritchie Blackmore’s style has changed from Deep Purple to Rainbow and into Blackmore’s Night it is still unmistakably unique. Today Ritchie Blackmore is ranked at #16 on Guitar World magazines 100 greatest metal guitarists of all time, #50 on Rolling Stone magazines 100 greatest guitarists of all time, and along with Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi, and Ted Nugent is viewed as one of the founding fathers of heavy metal.
On a personal note, one of my all-time favorite memories indirectly involves Deep Purple. In June 1995 after I graduated high school my parents, little brother, and I went to Los Angeles for about a week and visited my Aunt and Uncle in Lancaster, CA, as well as Six Flags and Disneyland. The day we were at Six Flags I was wearing my Deep Purple shirt and Scott and I were having a total blast on all of the rides. As we were walking to the next ride I heard a girl yell “Hey Brent!” I turned around it was my good friend Kathy W., one of the cutest girls at Hillcrest with a bunch of her friends, also extremely cute girls and good friends of mine. Kathy then said to me “I saw that Deep Purple shirt and I knew there could only be one guy who would be wearing it”. It was freaking awesome to see all of them at Six Flags and I’m glad Deep Purple made this magical moment possible!
More importantly I’d like to thank Ritchie Blackmore for creating a guitar style that very much changed the world of rock and roll and still influences many guitarists today.
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#5 Eddie Van Halen
In my early childhood my parents lived on Bunker Hill Street in Holladay, UT, and on one unfortunate day in 1979 our home was burglarized. However, compared to your average get in and get out type of thief, this particular robber went through my Dad’s record collection one at a time and only took music he was personally into. Upon post robbery inspection my Dad noticed that several of his AC/DC, Sammy Hager, Journey, Led Zeppelin, Rush, and all of his Van Halen albums were stolen, but anything soft rock or tied to the 60’s was not stolen. My father came up with a pretty good criminal profile based on the records the guy had stolen. Because of the bulk of the records stolen my father could not afford to replace all of them immediately, but Van Halen and Van Halen II were immediately replaced with 8 track cassettes. From the very first time my dad ever heard Van Halen he instantly was a huge fan and I grew up listening to them. In my personal cassette collection Van Halen’s Women and Children First and 1984 are within the first 10 cassettes that started the collection when I was 8 years old. When David Lee Roth quit Van Halen and Sammy Hagar joined I thought they were just as great and 5150 still stands out as my favorite Van Halen album. However, the first Van Halen album is the fire that ignited and inspired the Los Angeles heavy metal scene of the late 70’s and 80’s and is an album I rank with Paranoid by Black Sabbath, Machine Head by Deep Purple, the first Led Zeppelin, the first Montrose, Back in Black by AC/DC, and Sad Wings of Destiny by Judas Priest and one of the flagship albums of heavy metal.
Eddie Van Halen’s style is so much more than taping the neck with him right hand and getting some amazing sounds (Steve Hackett is the first guitarist to use this technique, but Eddie Van Halen made it famous and took it up another level). He is the quintessential heavy metal guitarist. Eddie Van Halen when he was growing up originally wanted to be a drummer and when he was 12 years old his parents bought him a drum set on the condition that he had to pay them back while at the same time his brother Alex Van Halen at age 14 had an electric guitar and was learning how to play. Eddie got a paper route in his neighborhood to pay back his parents and while Eddie was throwing his route Alex would play Eddie’s drum set. One time Eddie came home from his route to find Alex on his drum kit and Alex had figured out the drums perfectly for “Wipe Out” by the Safaris and had already passed Eddie ability and talent wise on the drums. Eddie grabbed Alex’s guitar and started to teach himself how to play it and before long the foundation for Van Halen was born.
As much as Eddie was inspired by the guitar work of Eric Clapton (the Cream years), Jimmy Page, and Steve Hackett, yet his style is just very different from his influences. Eddie simply just does things that he thinks sound cool are different. Because Eddie Van Halen is a self-taught guitarist he was not tied by chord and song structure, he strictly plays it how he feels it, or quote Eddie Van Halen from an issue of Hit Parader “@#$! if I know how I do the things I do. I just come up with ‘em”. I don’t know if Eddie would agree with me, but I think I would describe Eddie’s guitar style is he can play rhythm and lead guitar at the same time (“Ain’t Talking About Love”), is the master of artificial harmonics (“Women in Love” and “Dance the Night Away”) and tapping (“Eruption” and “Spanish Fly”), extremely innovative use of flangers, distortion, and tones (too many songs to name), wild and imaginative leads, and most of all I think what defines him the most is Eddie never stops exploring and trying new things on guitar.
Because I am a self-taught guitarist I especially look up to other self-taught guitarists. Like Eddie Van Halen I can’t really read music, I learned how to play exclusively by ear, and I really don’t like to feel restricted or stifled by anything while I am playing. I really admire virtuoso and precise guitarists. However, I have jammed with some of my virtuoso guitarist friends the jam session will start with the “let’s play in the key of C flat and in this specific rhythm or style” speech and in the back of my head I am always thinking why are you trying to suck the fun out of this? Every time this has happened to me at the end of the “this is how we are going to jam” speech I usually respond by “or we can start with an A chord and see what happens in the next ten minutes” and generally my response does not go over big with virtuoso type guitarists. However, this is honestly how most self-taught guitarists approach their instrument. For me it’s all about creating music and sounds that I think sound cool and are fun to play and that is where Eddie Van Halen inspires me the most.
“Drop Dead Legs” is the first Van Halen song I ever figured out on guitar and it was completely on accident. In the summer of 2004 I was living in Marshall, Minnesota and one random Saturday I was strumming an A chord and immediately “Drop Dead Legs” popped into my head and the rest of the song just kind of came to me. I was beyond elated. I never thought in a million years that I would be able to play a Van Halen song. Since then “Ain’t Talking About Love”, “On Fire”, “Light Up the Sky”, and “Why Can’t This Be Love” are my favorites ones to play. I have figured out a lot of Van Halen songs on my own and I am still working towards perfecting them. In my opinion the song “Women in Love” is one of their most difficult songs to play. I’ve got it about 80% down, but the intro with all of the artificial harmonics I still can’t really play and I am far from mastering the tapping technique like Eddie has, nonetheless I really enjoy playing Van Halen on guitar.
If there was a guitarist that in all honesty completely changed the world of rock and roll forever, it is Eddie Van Halen. To many critics and music fans Eddie Van Halen is ranked 2nd to Jimi Hendrix as the greatest guitarist ever and like Hendrix, he has influenced to one degree or another almost all of the heavy metal and rock guitarists that have immerged after him (and a few that preceded him). As I was learning to play guitar I eventually bought some guitar chord and technique books that helped me vastly improve, but one of my friends who is an awesome guitarist said to me “learn all you can about playing the guitar, then forget what you learned and get out there and play!” To me this is a huge part of what makes Eddie Van Halen the legend that he is.
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#4 Steve Hackett
Right before I moved to Logan, UT, in January 2003 my parents gave me Turn it On Again: The Hits by Genesis for Christmas. I was a way huge fan of the Phil Collins era of Genesis and this quickly became a favorite CD when I moved to Logan. My roommate one day downloaded “Red Rain” by Peter Gabriel and after one listen I immediately grabbed my cassette of So by Peter Gabriel that I had owned since I was 10 years old and got back into Peter Gabriel’s music, thus setting the stage for the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis.
At this point in my life I had been into progressive rock for a while and I was a huge fan of Yes, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and King Crimson. But other than “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)” I had never heard any of the songs from the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis. However, the Phil Collins era of Genesis and Peter Gabriel the solo artist had a huge resurgence in my musical rotation, thus naturally I was starting to become very curious about the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis. I was feeling exceptionally ambitious at the record shop when I bought the double CD The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway featuring 33 songs I had never heard before. From the first listen I thought the album was pretty cool and for some reason sounded extra good while I was studying. The album as a whole is really good and Steve Hackett’s solos on “Counting Out Time” and “In the Cage” really stood out as being unique, however, for the most part this album was more keyboard and bass driven (Peter Gabriel primarily focused his time on the lyrics and story and had very limited participation in the song writing sessions and Phil Collins, Tony Banks, and Mike Rutherford wrote most of the music with some minor collaboration with Steve Hackett).
My real introduction to what Steve Hackett could really do on guitar is when I bought Genesis Live. From Tony Banks’ haunting mellotron that begins “Watcher of the Skies” this album immediately had my attention, and then enters Mike Rutherford’s loud and unique bass line broadens the musical landscape, and then comes in the one and only Steve Hackett on the guitar. Everything about Steve Hackett’s playing was awesome. Then where I went from “I’m impressed” to “what the what!” is the song “The Return of the Giant Hogweed”. It starts out with Steve Hackett’s guitar tapping in precise rhythm and time with Tony Banks’ keyboard. To this point I had always assumed that guitar tapping originated with Eddie Van Halen, but there it was coming across my speakers. The song just builds and builds to Steve’s guitar solo which once again he uses tapping to start the solo along with some amazing effects with his pedals to create one of the most amazing guitar solos I had ever heard! What impressed me the most was Genesis Live was recorded in 1973. I didn’t think anyone played the way Steve Hackett was playing until the late 70’s. I had struck gold.
“The Musical Box” was the first Genesis song I learned how to play on guitar. What made this song very challenging for me to play is at this point I was very sound chord wise, but the slow and unique picking style that opens and progresses through “The Musical Box” was initially very hard for me to learn. However, when it came to Steve Hackett’s solos those came a little easier, the solos had several quirks that took some time to figure out, but it all came together.
I came home to Sandy, UT, one weekend and my father gave me an issue of Goldmine magazine that had an excellent interview with Steve Hackett. The interviewer asked Steve Hackett about Genesis’ 23 minute epic “Supper’s Ready”. Steve explained that “Supper’s Ready” was not some elaborate jam session that became Genesis’ longest song. But rather that the song was written with the intension of being an epic piece and that all of the members of Genesis contributed significantly to the final product. My favorite part of this interview was Steve Hackett shared an experience where backstage a fan was telling him how much he loved “Supper’s Ready” and the fan said “I saw God at the end of the song” to which Steve Hackett simply replied “I was just trying to get the notes right”. When I returned to Logan, UT, I bought a copy of Foxtrot and gave “Supper’s Ready” a listen. For whatever reason, it did not do much for me. However, the acoustic guitar instrumental “Horizons” is one of the most beautiful guitar pieces I have ever heard in my life and it really displays the diversity and complexity of Steve Hackett’s guitar style.
A couple of months later I bought the Genesis live album Seconds Out (recorded during the brief period after Peter Gabriel had left Genesis, but before Steve Hackett quit) about one month before I graduated college in May 2005. This period was the most intense and difficult period of my academic life. I was taking 15 credit hours and 4 of my 5 classes had huge group projects and in order to complete these projects I had to coordinate my schedule with 14 different people and I had to usually stay up until 3 to 4 in the morning catching up the rest of my homework. During the wee small hours one particular evening I put the first disk of Seconds Out while I was doing my homework. When it came time to put on the second disk I was debating over completely skipping “Supper’s Ready”, but I decided to give it a listen anyway for good measure. I don’t know what it was, but this time the song sounded a lot better. As I continued to do my homework the song finally arrives at the “As Sure as Eggs is Eggs” movement and once Steve Hackett’s guitar solo started I was so taken back that I stopped doing my homework. It was beyond phenomenal. I put “Supper’s Ready” on repeat and kept listening to it until I wrapped up my homework that evening. It is truly Genesis’ masterpiece. I consider it to be the greatest epic song of the progressive rock scene and Steve Hackett’s guitar solo at the end of it really brings the whole song together.
What I personally enjoy the most about Steve Hackett’s style is its depth. He can play very complicated classical style guitar (“Horizons”, “Blood on the Rooftops”, and “For Absent Friends”), simple and quirky (“I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)”), all things progressive rock with a very unique perspective (“The Fountain of Salmacis”), and frankly the just plain amazing (“…In That Quiet Earth”). Forgiving the fact that Genesis recorded a full length album and a couple of singles in the 60’s, in the eyes of most Genesis fans 1970’s Trespass is the first Genesis album. The album has a very 60’s early progressive rock feel to it in the vein of Procal Harum, but the albums closing track “The Knife” gives the first indication of where Genesis will head musically. Genesis’ original guitarist Anthony Phillips does all of the guitar work on Trespass and is a very talented guitarist with “The Knife” being the highlight. However, shortly after Trespass is complete Anthony Phillips quits Genesis. Peter Gabriel in an issue of Melody Maker saw an ad placed by Steve Hackett and contacted him. After Steve saw Genesis perform live he auditioned and joined them. The unique and innovative guitar work Steve Hackett brought to Genesis was the bands missing link. It had a very significant role in their success and is one of the key factors that set them apart musically from their contemporaries in the progressive rock scene.
One of my favorite things about Steve Hackett is that he is a self-taught guitarist. I have learned a lot from him and we have some stylistic similarities. “The Musical Box”, “The Knife (from Genesis Live)”, and “Afterglow” are my three favorites of his to play. I can play a lot of “Supper’s Ready”, but because of the complexity of the song I almost always have to read the tablature. Since Genesis Steve Hackett has had a very successful solo career and is respected as one of the greatest guitarists in the world and very much influenced Alex Lifeson, Eddie Van Halen, Brian May, and John Petrucci. Every time I think of my life during my days at Utah State University Steve Hackett’s guitar is always in the background and many of his solos are amongst my very favorite to play.
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#3 Alex Lifeson
Back in the days of the TV show Midnight Special my father and his best friend saw Rush perform for the very first time. My father at first thought Rush was good, but there was something initially with Geddy Lee’s voice that did not immediately resonate with my Dad. A little while later my father heard “Bastille Day” on the radio and immediately bought a copy of Caress of Steel and shortly thereafter bought the first Rush and Fly By Night and has been a way huge fan ever since. My father was in on the ground level and I grew up listening to Rush.
Once I landed my first paper route in 1988 and I was making an ultra-amazing $80.00 a month. My cassette collection started its first major expansion and Rush was at the very top of the list. They were the first band I owned more than 10 cassettes of and I biked and roller skated around my neighborhood like a mad man with Rush cranked up a lot. My cassette of A Show of Hands is so beat up that one of the corners of the tape broke off in a bicycle accident, the print is fading away, and the cassette is barely holding together, but it still plays. While serving on my mission I was at a flea market in Hazen, Pennsylvania, and my companion found a used cassette of A Show of Hands for $0.25 and that became the only Rush album I had while serving my mission (when I came home I still preferred to play my beat up copy of A Show of Hands forgiving the fact I did have a nicer copy of it).
On June 24, 1990, I saw Rush in concert for the very first time at the Salt Palace with the one and only Mr. Big opening when I was 13 years old with my Dad and both of my brothers. This concert was as huge a deal to me as my very first concert when I saw AC/DC in 1988. I still remember the lights going down and the fun animated video that started the show (in theme of the Presto tour, the name of the show on the marquee in the film was “Attack of the Killer Rabbits!”), then Rush entering the stage and going right into “Force Ten” as I just stood there in complete awe. When Rush performed “Marathon” when the operatic vocals come in at the end of the song the whole audience joined their voices and added to the operatic harmony. When Rush performed “Xanadu” Alex pulled out his double necked Gibson guitar. It was the very first time I physically saw a guitarist use a double necked guitar and it completely amazed me to watch Alex play this guitar and really showcase the songs the 12-string and 6-string guitar and Geddy played his custom double neck Rickenbacker (bass guitar on top and 6-string guitar on bottom). This whole show was amazing all the way around, but it was their performance of “Xanadu” where I was especially taken back by just how amazing and talented Rush truly is. Rush is one of the greatest bands in Rock and Roll history and they are one of the foundational bands of my musical journey.
Alex Lifeson is a guitarist that I have always admired. One of my favorite parts of the documentary Rush: Behind the Lighted Stage is when Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins talked about how much he loved the album 2112 and then how he pretty much locked himself in his basement for a couple of months figuring out how to play all 20 minutes of the song “2112”. I personally can only play a couple of sections of “2112”. The song is fairly complicated and a lot of work. I have set a goal that hopefully one day I will be able to play the whole thing.
By 2002 I had been playing guitar for nearly four years. One thing that makes me a little different from a lot of guitarists is because I already knew how to play bass and knew a lot of scales I learned how to play lead guitar first. However, by 2002 I finally had the basic chords down and felt comfortable playing rhythm guitar. One of the very first songs I figured out on my own (without cheating and downloading the tablature) was the song “Cough Syrup” by the Butthole Surfers. One day I was playing “Cough Syrup” and part of the song where I was supposed to switch from D to C I mistakenly switched from D to A minor and out of nowhere the Rush song “Something for Nothing” popped into my head. After some tinkering I was able to figure out how to play the first verse (which starts with A minor and D) and a couple of weeks later I had the song down (Alex’s leads took a little more time). For a long time “Something for Nothing” was the only Rush song I could play. It’s hard for me to define what Alex’s guitar really is, but to me it is nothing short of the power and energy of hard rock and heavy metal with the precision and innovation of progressive rock. Alex is truly a master at his craft.
During this period of my life graduating from Utah State University had left me financially destitute and I moved back in with my parents for one year in order to get my first job and financially rebuild from college. Sadly my Grandmother’s health was failing. My Grandparents were divorced when my mother was 5 years old. My Grandmother raised my mom and her younger sister and my mother had an extremely close and personal bond with my grandmother. My grandmother passed away in October 2005 and her loss was devastating for my family and especially for my mother. My mother’s sadness was so devastating that when I came home from work in the evening I did not feel comfortable leaving the house and I really felt like I had to be there for my mom (my father worked night shift which made my spending the evening with my Mom during this time even more important). Her needs were very great during this time and I was not able to even watch a movie or listen to an album without my mother really needing my help which I was glad to provide. I was also dealing with feelings of loss as well (my brothers and I also had a very close relationship with my grandmother) and was more than a little down in the dumps. There were many prayers prayed for our family and God helped us get through this, but it was very difficult.
When dealing with this kind of loss and devastation at least for me personally I had good days and bad days and I really had to take it one day at a time. Besides prayer and spiritual strength, my guitar greatly helped me through this. At this point I was a pretty good guitarist, but I was looking for more challenging songs to work on and I decided to download the tablature for “Natural Science”. The opening chord sequence was fairly easy to play, but where this song got challenging is the part where the song segues from the acoustic opening into where the electric guitar part starts. From having listening to “Natural Science” many times in the past I didn’t think this part would be all that hard to play, however, this segment is extremely hard to play and is the hardest part of the song to master. I used to watch TV or movies with my mother and I would literally work on this segment alone for hours at a time. However, because of the hardship I was going through with my family I really devoted a significant amount of time and like Billy Corgan I borderline locked myself in my parent’s house for four months (with an 8 hour recess to go to work) to get this song down. Learning “Natural Science” was a major quantum leap for me on the guitar and opened a whole new world to me of more complex guitar playing. Alex Lifeson as my indirect guitar teacher really helped me immerge as a better guitarist and very much helped me through a very difficult period of my life at the same time.
In 2006, in a very intense bidding war on eBay I finally landed a copy of the extremely rare and out of print guitar book Rush Complete and I have now learned a massive number of Rush songs with “Working Man”, “Anthem”, “War Paint”, “Vital Signs”, “Natural Science”, and “The Camera Eye” are some of my favorites to play. However, my most favorite Rush to play is “In the End”. Rush in their career have never really written a love song, however, “In the End” is the closest thing they have to one and I just really love playing it. I wish “In the End” to come back to Rush’s set list, but to my knowledge they have not performed it live since the Grace Under Pressure tour.
Through his career Alex is respected as one of the greatest guitarists of all time and has influenced many guitarists ranging from Billy Corgan to Trent Reznor to John Petrucci. Alex Lifeson along with his Rush band mates Geddy Lee and Neal Peart has been honored as an Officer in the Order of Canada, one Canada’s highest honors. Why this band has not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is beyond me! Their contribution to Rock and Roll is very substantial and their influence on many bands is too large to even measure. Regardless of how Rush is viewed by the media and music critics, they are one of the greatest bands in history and no one on earth has a guitar style quite like Alex Lifeson’s.
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#2 Tony Iommi
My first exposure to Black Sabbath growing was first and foremost through Ozzy Osbourne. I especially loved Blizzard of Ozz and Ozzy Osbourne/Randy Rhodes Tribute when I was really young. In the history of rock and roll sometimes solo artists tend to distance themselves from the bands they emerge from while on the other hand Ozzy Osbourne has always very proudly embraced Black Sabbath through his solo career. My first exposure to “Iron Man” and “Paranoid” were from Ozzy’s live performances. Occasionally Salt Lake radio would play Black Sabbath’s original “Iron Man” and “Paranoid”, but this was usually very rare. My father was a very casual fan of Black Sabbath. He bought Paranoid in 1970 but could not really get into it (at this point Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad, and Johnny Winter were very much his favorites). However, as much as my father really enjoyed the Dio era of Black Sabbath, they were a band that I had to discover on my own.
In 1987 my older brother Alan started at Union Middle School and bought a used copy of Paranoid from one of his friends. Alan gave it a few listens and really loved “Iron Man” and “Paranoid”, but ultimately he couldn’t really get into Paranoid. However, when I borrowed Paranoid from Alan I had very much the opposite experience at age 10. I thought it was the most awesome thing I had ever heard. Paranoid would very much influence my musical direction and in the opinion of Brent is tied with the first Black Sabbath album as the greatest heavy metal album ever made. Growing up Alan and I had a cat and mouse game of borrowing each other’s cassettes. It was ultimately how long could you keep the cassette before the other one knew it was gone and demanded its return. Paranoid was a one of the few cassettes of Alan’s that when I borrowed it he didn’t really miss it at all. He never asked for it back and eventually he flat out gave it to me.
Where I really started to explore Black Sabbath was when I was in 9th grade. At that time I was still big time into Ozzy and No More Tears was very popular. One day I was listening to Ozzy Osbourne/Randy Rhodes Tribute and forgiving the fact that I had owned my tape of this for a few years, the song “Children of the Grave” just grabbed me. I had to have the Ozzy album it was on, but after some frustrating visits to the record store going through the Ozzy section and I couldn’t find the Ozzy album with “Children of the Grave” on it. Later on I was going through a reduced bin of $4.00 cassettes and I noticed the Black Sabbath album Master of Reality, which features the original version of “Children of the Grave”. I felt like a complete idiot for not going through the Black Sabbath section looking for this song! But nonetheless I bought Master of Reality and just loved it. This would later lead me to digging up my Dad’s LP’s of Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules and it fully opened the Black Sabbath flood gate.
Tony Iommi when he was 16 years old was working in a metal shop in Birmingham, England, and he decided that it was time for him to quit his job and follow his dream of being a professional musician. As fate would have it Tony accidentally cut off the tips of the middle and ring finger on his right hand (he’s a left handed guitarist) and he was completely devastated. He very honestly felt that with this accident that he would never be able to play guitar again. However, a few days later Tony’s manager dropped by his house to visit and brought a record of legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. As Tony listened he was really impressed with Django and his manager then explained that Django could only play guitar with two of his fingers due to a terrible burn he suffered in a terrible fire on his left hand. This inspired Tony to not give up. He initially tried to relearn the guitar right handed, but that just didn’t work. Tony would melt down a plastic bottle into two globs, placed to pieces of leather in the fingertips to gain friction, and filed them down until he created his own artificial fingertips. However, he had to relearn how to play guitar while using the artificial fingertips and this greatly changed Tony Iommi’s guitar style into a deeper and darker bluesy style and would evolve into the very core foundation of heavy metal guitar.
When I was 14 years old I learned how to play bass guitar and Black Sabbath was one of the first bands that I learned the bass for. I used to listen by my Black Sabbath cassettes and CD’s over and over again learning Geezer Butler’s bass lines. By the time I was 24 years old I had been playing guitar for about three years and was starting to sound half decent. One day I was in a guitar shop and I saw the guitar books for the first two Black Sabbath albums and bought them immediately. “War Pigs” was the first song of theirs I learned for guitar and I really had to put a lot of work into it. However, what I discovered from Black Sabbath is for reasons that I can’t really pinpoint, if I can play a song on bass (even if the bass line is really simple) I am half way there on guitar and this really gave me a huge advantage when I was learning the guitar for Black Sabbath. One of the main things Tony Iommi taught me is to slow down a little bit. At age 24 I could play a lot of punk, Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad, and Journey. When I would play lead guitar was goal was to play as fast as I could. However, as much as Tony Iommi can play fast leads with the best of them, he slows it down a little bit which I think is part of what gives Black Sabbath their edge and the songs “Fairies Wear Boots” and “Wicked World” I especially learned a lot from. By the time I relocated to Logan, Utah, to attend Utah State University in January 2003 I had mastered a lot of Black Sabbath songs. I still enjoy playing punk and some alternative rock songs on the guitar, but Tony Iommi was the first guitarist that helped me get over my first initial mountain as a guitarist and guided me to the next level.
As much as “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” have gone down as Black Sabbath’s most legendary songs, I think the song “Heaven and Hell” should be included with them. In the realm of complete honesty the first six Black Sabbath studio albums are awesome and still sound amazing today. However, Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die, the last two Ozzy era Black Sabbath albums, forgiving the fact that both of these albums have songs that I like, I consider them to be the two weakest Black Sabbath albums and they are not favorites. On the plus side after Ozzy Osbourne is booted out of Black Sabbath in 1979 he discovers the one and only Randy Rhodes, lures him away from Quiet Riot, and the album Blizzard of Ozz is the result; one of the best heavy metal albums ever made which literally launched Ozzy Osbourne into superstardom almost overnight. On the other hand in 1979 Ronnie James Dio had recently left Rainbow and he crosses paths with Tony Iommi. The very first time Ronnie James Dio and Tony Iommi jammed together the song “Children of the Sea” was written and this jam session would ultimately be the beginning of the Heaven and Hell writing sessions. Dio’s influence and presence in Black Sabbath gave the band exactly what they needed to revitalize their sound and usher them into the 80’s with new found success (this is one of the only times in rock and roll history where the original singer quitting a band was truly mutually beneficial for all parties involved). The opening riff of the song “Heaven and Hell” is one of the greatest guitar riffs in heavy metal history. I have seen Dio in concert three times and every single time the audience always went berserk when he performs “Heaven and Hell”. In addition, I recently saw Coheed & Cambria open for Iron Maiden in Salt Lake City and they did a cover of “Heaven and Hell” during their set and all 15,000 metal heads in attendance cheered extra loud and loved every second of it. What “Iron Man” was in the 70’s, “Heaven and Hell” was in the 80’s. Out of all of the Black Sabbath songs I know how to play on guitar and bass, “Heaven and Hell” is my favorite song of theirs to play and I rank it evenly with “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” as one of Black Sabbath’s masterpieces.
I really can’t say enough good things about Black Sabbath. I have already blogged about their first two albums and even after the departure of Ozzy Osbourne and arrival of Ronnie James Dio (and beyond) their music was still amazing and 100% Black Sabbath and I couldn’t have been more excited when the Dio era of Black Sabbath reunited as Heaven and Hell. Tony Iommi along with Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page are the founding fathers of ultimately what becomes heavy metal and Tony’s guitar style is still one of the primary influences on the metal scene even today. As much as no guitarist on earth would ever voluntarily sign up to lose their fingertips. In a way, this is one of the best things to ever happen to Tony Iommi. His perseverance and drive have made him one of the best, most respected, and most influential guitarists in the world.
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#1 Jimmy Page
Prior to his career in the Yardbirds and in Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page was the premier session guitarist of the 60’s British music scene and had done session work for Donovan, The Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, David Bowie (back when we was still David Jones), The Who, Rolling Stones, Them (Van Morrison’s original band), Brenda Lee, Petula Clark, and countless others. Everyone who was anyone in the London music scene in the 60’s knew and had worked with Jimmy Page.
When the legendary Eric Clapton quit the Yardbirds in 1965 Jimmy Page was the first guitarist they approached, however, he turned them down and recommended his really good friend Jeff Beck who would go on to be one of the greatest and most talented guitarists the world has ever known. However, by 1967 Jimmy Page eventually joined the Yardbirds and a short few months Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were in the band together before Jeff Beck leaves. The release of the album Little Games by the Yardbirds and the single “Beck’s Bolero” by Jeff Beck introduced the music world to Jimmy Page and by 1968 Jimmy Page with John Paul Jones, another well know session musician he had worked with, along with Robert Plant and John Bohnam became the New Yardbirds, but renamed themselves as Led Zeppelin (a name suggested as a joke by Keith Moon) and they became one of the most successful bands in history as well as one of my absolute all-time favorites.
The story of how I discovered Led Zeppelin is a very unique one. My father back in the 60’s was a huge fan of the Yardbirds which naturally led him to Cream, Jeff Beck’s solo career, and Led Zeppelin. My father bought Led Zeppelin I and II while he was serving as an LDS Missionary in Los Angeles in 1969 and he bought Led Zeppelin III shortly after he returned home to Fairbanks, Alaska, upon completing his mission. Led Zeppelin I and II completely blew my father away and they were two of his favorite albums. However, other than “Immigrant Song” my father could not really get into Led Zeppelin III and he was almost ready to write off Led Zeppelin completely. Fortunately, my father hung on for Led Zeppelin IV which he thoroughly enjoyed, but after that they were kind of hit and miss for my father, but Led Zeppelin I and II very much remained two of his all-time favorites. Unfortunately one day in 1979 our house was burglarized and all of my Dad’s Led Zeppelin albums were stolen and my Dad didn’t replace them so for the most part I did not really grow up listening to them.
When I was going up I am positive I heard a few Led Zeppelin songs on the radio, but I really had no idea who they were. As fate would have it in 1988 my father received his latest order from the BMG music club which for me was always an exciting day. When my Dad opened the box he thought he had ordered Led Zeppelin I and much to his disappointment Led Zeppelin IV was in the box (Educational note: Led Zeppelin IV is actually an untitled album identified by the four symbols . The album is also known as Runes, The Hermit, and ZoSo, but today is most commonly referred to as Led Zeppelin IV. When my father ordered it from the record club is was simply listed as Led Zeppelin and my father automatically assumed it was Led Zeppelin I rather than Led Zeppelin IV). However, my father enjoyed Led Zeppelin IV back in the day, put it on his record player, and I heard the classics “Black Dog”, “Rock and Roll”, and “Stairway to Heaven” for the very first time and I thought the album was pretty good.
For some reason by 1990 my older brother used to listen to “Stairway to Heaven” a lot and I grew to really love this song (to the degree that the lyrics of “Stairway to Heaven” were on the back cover of my Trapper Keeper for a while when I was in middle school) and at age 13 I pulled my Dad’s LP of Led Zeppelin IV and this time the album went from pretty cool to most awesome album ever after one listen. When I was growing up from age 11 to 15 I had an early morning paper route that I had wake up at 4:30am to throw and there is really nothing like Led Zeppelin IV during the wee small hours. To this day “When the Levee Breaks” is still my most favorite song on it and I still have a lot of memories finishing my paper route and watching the sun rise with “When the Levee Breaks” in the background.
By the time I was 14 years old I owned all of Led Zeppelin’s albums and I just couldn’t get enough of them. At age 14 my father bought me a 1979 Ernie Ball Music Man Sting Ray bass guitar from my Uncle David for $50.00 and I started to take bass lessons. The very first song I learned on bass was “Dazed and Confused” and by the time I was 15 I could play every song on Led Zeppelin I on bass.
When I was learning how to play guitar the first Led Zeppelin song I ever learned how to play was “Tangerine” by almost a complete fluke, especially since I just did not know my chords very well when I was 23 years old, but the mere fact that I could a Led Zeppelin song was exceptionally thrilling. Around the same time I would figure out how to play “In the Light”. There were so many Led Zeppelin songs that I wanted to learn how to play, but regardless of trying to play along with Led Zeppelin while I listened to my CD’s, there was just something about Jimmy Page’s guitar style that I just couldn’t put my finger on and it would be a few more years before I was even at a point as a guitarist to play more Led Zeppelin songs.
When I was 27 years old in the summer of 2004 myself along with three other Utah State University College of Business students landed summer corporate finance internships at the corporate headquarters of the Schwan Food Company in Marshall, Minnesota and all four of us shared the house at 104 A Street for the summer. One Saturday some very awesome members of the Marshall, Minnesota LDS branch invited my roommates and me on a road trip to the one and only Mall of American in Bloomington, Minnesota. If you have never visited the Mall of America, it is very much a very overwhelming experience on your first visit. There was just so much to see that I hardly knew where to start. I eventually ended up at the Barnes & Noble which is the largest one I have ever been in. In 95% of the Barnes & Noble’s I have visited the guitar book selection is weak at best, however, this Barnes & Noble actually had a good selection and lo and behold, like finding the elusive City of Atlantis and I found a Led Zeppelin guitar book that had every song from their first five albums! I was completely ecstatic and bought it immediately. Besides the Mall of America we also checked out a lot of the fun sights of Minneapolis/St. Paul and had an amazing time on this road trip. However, when we started the 4 hour drive back to Marshall, Minnesota, it was like the excitement of Christmas Eve for me. I just could not wait to give this book a try.
The next day when I roommates and I had come home from church the first song I went to in the book was “Friends” from Led Zeppelin III. I had been trying to figure out “Friends” for a long time. I had figured out that the song began by strumming a C, but I could never get the leads correct and it always sounded bad when I played it. The first lesson I learned from Jimmy Page was that “Friends” is tuned to open C which is why I generally sounded so horrible when I tried to play this song, but then I could finally play it! It was beyond cool. Then it occurred to me that the same reasons why I could not get “Friends” right might be the same reason why I could never figure out “Going to California” and the book did not disappoint. “Going to California” is tuned to a very different key which is why I could never get that song right, but I could finally play it.
During this summer in Marshall, Minnesota, I really had the experience of a lifetime working for Schwan’s and living with three of the best roommates I ever had during my college days. Marshall is an awesome small town and a great community to live in. However, it is a small town of about 13,000 people which is 4 hours from Omaha and 4 hours from the Twin Cities. The closest large city was Sioux Falls, South Dakota which was about an hour and a half away. Unfortunately when my shift ended at Schwan’s there was not a lot to do in Marshall, Minnesota, and pretty much my roommates and I would watch basketball, movies, play video games, and my roommates had a soft spot for Fox News. I am not particularly into political analysis themed television so I would usually go jogging for about 45 minutes and then play guitar for two to three hours every single day. My Led Zeppelin guitar book became my obsession and during that summer I mastered “Dazed and Confused”, “Whole Lotta Love”, “When the Levee Breaks”, “Tangerine”, and “Out on the Tiles”. Because I was able to devote so much time to guitar this summer I made a major quantum leap as a guitarist in Minnesota and Jimmy Page was the perfect teacher.
Led Zeppelin has so many songs that I love to play that I could go on forever talking about them. However, on a very personal note my favorite Led Zeppelin song to play is “Tangerine”. This is one of the very few Led Zeppelin songs that is written solely by Jimmy Page. (Side note: my love life is something that I generally keep very private and rarely talk openly about so this is a very rare glimpse into it). I have never been married and through my life from age 16 to the present have been some very special women in my life that I wish things could have worked out with, but as fate and circumstances would have it, things did not work out. Regardless of heartbreak, pain, or just simply the time and place were not right; these women hold a special place in my heart. “Tangerine” is a song that lyrically very much expresses the feelings of love lost better than any other song I have ever heard and is a song that I very much identify with. I love to play this song with every ounce of my heart.
Jimmy Page’s style is based in blues first and foremost, but he has also incorporated in classical, folk, jazz, and even country and skiffle. The diversity in Jimmy Page’s guitar style is what in my opinion made him the the premier session guitarist of the 60’s and he brought it all to Led Zeppelin where he would also invent heavier style of blues which has now influenced generations of heavy metal, hard rock, grunge, and alternative rock guitarists. In addition, I need to admit that I am not really into rap at all, but as I have now learned much to my surprise Jimmy Page is the 2nd most sampled musician in rap music (with the one and only James Brown being the most sampled). Almost every genre of music has in one way or another has been influenced by Jimmy Page.
The most fun thing for me with Led Zeppelin on guitar is regardless of what level I am at as a guitarist, Jimmy Page is always upping the ante in my personal playing. For every Led Zeppelin song I can play there is one that I wish I could play and that I keep striving toward. He is truly one of the best and most influential guitarist in rock and roll history and my favorite guitarist of all time.
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