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Skinnyman

Top three guitarists?

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As the title suggests, who are your top three guitarists?

Not necessarily “who’s the best” as that’s a much bigger question - who are your favourites, the guys (or girls) who’ve influenced you or had the most profound effect?

My three;

Andy Latimer (Camel)

Pat Metheny 

Dave Gilmour (Pink Floyd)

 

Once we have a decent selection in I’ll create a poll of the candidates so we can decide who’s the most influential/respected/liked guitarist out there

B|

Edited by Skinnyman
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Alan Murphy - hauntingly beautiful solo lines but always supportive of the song.
Steve Lukather - bombastic solos and solid, rock rhythm work
Nile Rodgers - chord progressions around a tonal centre, plus he's a down to earth and very streetwise guy

Honourable mention: Steve Stevens, totally underrated as a musician because of the hair and the eye liner.  But wow, so versatile and creative.

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Ok, I could overthink this one... but, for formative main influences I'll go for: Hendrix,Clapton and Gilmour..   with honourable mention to Angus, Jimmy Page and even the Dual attack of Rossi/Parfitt. But that really is just getting started...

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When you look at my top 3 I think it's quite easy to spot that I am a product of the 80s. My top 3 are:

John McGeoch (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Magazine, PIL, etc) - amazing unorthodox talent and much missed (probably the guitar equivalent of Mick Karn).

Geordie Walker (Killing Joke) - again, an amazing unorthodox talent.

Andy Taylor (Duran Duran, Power Station, etc) - at first consideration, kind of the opposite of my other two choices but still a little unorthodox in his own way if you consider his hard rock playing style in the context of an 80s pop band.

Edited by darkandrew
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I honestly don't think I could cut it to just three.... In no particular order, my favourites are:

1] Hendrix has to be in there - I'm sure he's a formative one for all of us left-handers especially. Certainly got me to push past the bullshit from every guy who really just wants to sell you a right handed guitar and claim that it's not a 'handed' instrument - or, my favouerite, "You'll havean advantage with your stronger hand on the fretboard" (Yeah? So why don't *you* all play "lefty", then, genius?)

2] Johnny Ramone and Daniel Rey - Ramone for the minimalism, Rey for basically any lead guitar you ever heard on a Ramones album. Also, Rey for that hint of the surf sound on Sheena is a Punk Rocker.

3] Steve Jones and Mick Jones are both guitarv titans in my world. JonesS's crowning glory is that riff on God Save the Queen - a defiant, punk rock answer to the staid, rock and roll establishment best represented by Queen with their take on a song of the same name. Jones M for those wonderful Clash melodies,  rooted in old school rockabilly, not least his absolute owning of the definitive rendition of I fought the law.

4] Dick Dale would be an influence on how I listen to guitar even if he weren't left handed, but again being a fellow Southpaw (even if he played it all funny....) helps to inspire.

5] Link Wray. If I can *ever* play close ot sounding like Link Wray, I'll die happy. Primal, true, beautiful.

6] Chuck Berry has to get a mention in there; Johnny B Goode was the song that made me want to learn to play guitar. (Via Back to the Future originally, yeah - except evne back when I never liked it when he drops the melody in favour of all that Van Halen wankery.)

7] Joe Moretti's lead guitar playing on Vince Taylor's Brand New Cadiilac is as near the pure spirit of rock and roll that it's possible to get. (The only track that I think comes as close to fun for me to jive to is JLL's Great Balls of Fire.) If ever there was a single track that summed up everything I find joyful about guitar, it's that one. Moretti was quite the player, worked with a number of big names, but even if this was the only thing he did it still makes him, for me, one of the most important guitar players in history. If an alien civilisation landed and put a ray gun to my head and asked me which should avoid being erased from histroy forever, both from that point on and all memory of it wiped to - BNC or the entire Beatles back catalogue, I'd wave bye bye to Scousers without a second thought. BNC was probably the first true "British" rock and roll recording, certainly it was part of a wider British rock and roll boom that was prematurely killed off by Merseybeat. It hasn't dated the way the Beatles did; BNC Still sounds fresh and alive today.

Beyond those direct influences...


Equipment wise, Lester Polfus. I don't play anything like his stuff (and I am *so* *over* Les Pauls despite many of my heroes playing them), but given his many influences across recording technology, overdubs, being one of the pioneers of the solid body....I'd say he had more influence on pretty much all of us and how we experience guitar music than most folks. Leo Fender would also come in here, but for the fact that he couldn't play a note. And that's not a bad thing - I honestly think that had Leo been a guitar player, he'd never have come up with the engineering marvels he did.

Maybe also Robert Johnson.... I recently worked through his back catalogue again, and somewhere in those 29 songs I can hear a touch of pretty much any guitarist sicne who has ever been worth listening to. Johnson is, I would argue, the ultimate root of guitarp laying as we know it.

Other honourable mentions: John O'Neill (Undertones), Jake Burns (Stiff Little Fingers). Buddy Holly. Bob Dylan is a huge part of why I play acoustic the way I do. THere are lots of more recent players I really like, but these ones mentioned here were my formatives. Really can't dilute it to just three.

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1 hour ago, EdwardMarlowe said:

If an alien civilisation landed and put a ray gun to my head

 

1 hour ago, EdwardMarlowe said:

Really can't dilute it to just three.

This was meant to be a challenge and make people really think - and it seems to have worked!

I completely understand and agree about Lester and Leo and their influence - but the question is about guitarists so they can’t make the final cut.

If we do get round to a poll then I’d rather keep it to 3 candidates from everyone so how about ranking them in order of importance and influence to you?

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19 hours ago, EdwardMarlowe said:

An engaging ,eloquent , description of his obvious deep and long standing passion for the guitar sounds that have moved him..

Loved reading this...  Robert Johnson and Jake Burns in the same post! Respect to you ,Sir!   

 

Don't quite agree about the Beatles, but then   Iprobably admire them as much for pioneering modern recording as much as their playing - even then Macca's bass work is the highlight there...

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On 12/04/2020 at 20:25, Skinnyman said:

who’ve influenced you or had the most profound effect?

Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze was what made me want to play electric guitar.

Neil Young - because he not only enjoys playing it, it sounds like he enjoys playing it.

My brother because he can teach more a  few sentences than any YT video.

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3) Angus young not the most technical but you can just see and feel the love of what he does every time he plays and man that energy!

2) David gilmour for his economic playing style. Says more in 3 notes than all the flashy over technical guitar Prodigy's can in an hour. And his solos have been known to bring a tear to my eye!

1) slash. I don't even know why! But I could probably listen to him play nursery rhymes for an hour and still be amazed. Probably helps that he was exactly my era. And his records were what I listened to in my late teens.

As everyone seems to be doing it I'll make a few honourable mentions

John squire(amazing and vastly underated)

Brian may 

Gary Moore

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Tough call @Skinnyman. My favourite players list changes depending on so many different things that I could easily give a different set every day for a month or more.

However, since you're being such a git meanie tightwad hard taskmaster about it, I'll go with the three who most heavily influenced my early playing style, who would be...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

pause for effect...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

36.gif

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahem:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Him:

th?id=OIP.RNjCJxdYzeq-ArjJw4fsVAHaHa%26p

Him:

th?id=OIP.urpepdRZCbF-hkiZidJC4QHaJO%26p

and Him:

th?id=OIP.Pmb5t7igsz-VsNeJcKzL5QHaK9%26p

 

(Plus honourable 'if only I could play as well as them' mentions for Guthrie Govan, Joe Pass and Adrian Legg. Tomorrow these three would be replaced by a different three, but the main three won't change.)

 

Edited by leftybassman392
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2 hours ago, vantagepointrocks said:

My three favourite guitarists are,

Steve Morse (Deep Purple)

Adrian Smith (Iron Maiden)

Chris Hayes (Huey Lewis & The News)

If it were a top 5 (4 even) Steve Morse would feature in my list.

Edited by ezbass
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I saw Segovia at the Festival Hall in the early ‘80s. He shambled onto to the stage and I prepared myself for a distinctly dodgy performance by a man well past his prime. Once seated, the years dropped away from the great man and he ripped the living 💩 out of his guitar. Needless to say, I was suitably humbled.

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