Players

Although Adrian Belew has played with some of rock's biggest names over the years (Frank Zappa, David Bowie, the Talking Heads, King Crimson, etc.), he remains one of the most underrated and woefully overlooked guitarists of recent times. Like all great guitarists, Belew has his own recognizable style/sound (one that admittedly tends to be quirky and off-the-wall at times), and is an incredibly versatile player, as he's always found a way to make his signature style fit into a wide variety of musical genres: hard rock, funk, new wave, experimental, Beatlesque pop, and more.

Adje (Adrian) van den Berg (Born: 31 January 1954, The Hague in the Netherlands) is a Dutch rock guitarist, best known for his tenure as lead guitarist in Whitesnake during their successful late 1980s period.

Albert Collins, "The Master of the Telecaster," "The Iceman," and "The Razor Blade" was robbed of his best years as a blues performer by a bout with liver cancer that ended with his premature death on November 24, 1993. He was just 61 years old. The highly influential, totally original Collins, like the late John Campbell, was on the cusp of a much wider worldwide following via his deal with Virgin Records' Pointblank subsidiary. However, unlike Campbell, Collins had performed for many more years, in obscurity, before finally finding a following in the mid-'80s.

Guitarist Al DiMeola first rose to prominence as a blazing jazz fusion player before his playing matured and he began to conquer other styles, such as acoustic Latin music.

Although it's widely agreed that all three members of Rush are incredibly talented at their respective instruments, guitarist Alex Lifeson tends to be the most underrated of the bunch. Born Alex Zivojinovich on August 27, 1953 in Fernie, Canada (his parents were Yugoslavian immigrants), Lifeson grew up in Toronto, and received his first guitar as a Christmas gift when he was 13. Soonafter, Lifeson discovered rock n' roll (via the usual suspects – Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, etc.), and began jamming with local drummer John Rutsey.

Best known for his long stint in support of Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Zakk Wylde was born and raised in New Jersey; although he began studying music at age eight, he soon quit, not returning to his lessons until his mid-teens. He formed his first band, Stone Henge, in 1984, followed by a series of appearances with a variety of bands throughout the Jersey Shore.

Few guitar pickers can out-slide, out-bend or out-torture a Telecaster the way Will Ray can. As a member of the pyrotechnical twang trio The Hellecasters, Will has created a place for himself among some of the world’s guitar greats.

Guitarist/bassist/songwriter/producer Walter Becker hooked up with his partner Donald Fagen when both were attending Bard College in upstate New York in the late '60s. They became members of Jay and the Americans, then signed a songwriting contract with ABC Records in the early '70s. At ABC, they formed the group Steely Dan, who gradually dwindled down to just the two of them while they sold millions of records during the '70s.

As the lead guitarist of Living Colour and a co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition, Vernon Reid has done a great deal to undermine stereotypical expectations of what music black artists ought to play; his rampant eclecticism encompasses everything from hard rock and punk to funk, R&B and avant-garde jazz, and his anarchic, lightning-fast solos have become something of a hallmark as well.

Trevor Rabin was born in South Africa in 1954. He first began playing guitar at the age of 12 after having had piano lessons since he was a toddler. He formed his first band in 1968, at only 14 years old. After being drafted, Rabin played both guitar and bass in the entertainment unit. He began doing session work after his discharge from the military in 1972. It was also that same year that he hooked up with a group of musicians who began recording as Rabbit. That group recorded a total of two albums over the next few years.

It's hard to listen to the music of Tommy Bolin and not wonder what could've been if the exceptionally talented (and versatile) guitarist hadn't succumbed to a senseless drug overdose at the age of 25 - just as his career appeared to be taking off.

Raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Tim Sparks was given his first guitar when a bout of encephalitis kept him out of school for a year. The music he heard around him was traditional country blues, and the gospel his grandmother played on piano in a small church in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so that's what he taught himself to play.

He was nominated for a scholarship at the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts. There he studied the classics with Andrés Segovia protegee Jesus Silva.

Theodore "Ted" Nugent (born December 13, 1948) (a.k.a. The Nuge and The Motor City Madman) is an American hard rock guitarist and vocalist from Detroit, Michigan. He originally gained fame as the lead guitarist of The Amboy Dukes. He is noted for his conservative political views and his vocal pro-hunting, pro-conservation, and Second Amendment activism.

Sylvain Luc comes from Bayonne. Surrounded by the inspiring atmosphere of his eagerly music practising brothers, he chooses the guitar as his instrument at the age of 5. He is 9 when he enters the conservatoire and starts recording his first album of Basque folklore "Elgarrekin" together with his brothers. In the Luc family they remember with tenderness the year when he made his stage debut as Joe Dassin with a local group.

With his astonishingly accomplished guitar playing, Stevie Ray Vaughan ignited the blues revival of the '80s. Vaughan drew equally from bluesmen like Albert King, Otis Rush, and Muddy Waters and rock & roll players like Jimi Hendrix and Lonnie Mack, as well as the stray jazz guitarist like Kenny Burrell, developing a uniquely eclectic and fiery style that sounded like no other guitarist, regardless of genre (see his rig). Vaughan bridged the gap between blues and rock like no other artist had since the late '60s.

Along with his one-time teacher Joe Satriani, six-string (sometimes seven-string) wizard Steve Vai set the standard for rock guitar virtuosity in the '80s. Born on June 6, 1960, and raised in Carle Place, NY, Vai became interested in the guitar via such legendary artists as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Alice Cooper as a teenager, and upon starting high school, took lessons with an older player from his high school, Joe Satriani.

Best-known as the guitarist for early MTV-era hit makers Toto, Steve Lukather remains one of the world's top session men, having played on well over a hundred recordings by a wide variety of artists over the years. Born in Los Angeles, California on October 21, 1957, Lukather discovered rock music the way just about every single other young U.S. citizen did during the '60s - via the Beatles. Starting off as a drummer and keyboardist, it wasn't until his father purchased Lukather a guitar that he found his true musical calling.

Steve Hackett is best known as the guitarist with Genesis during their best years as both a progressive and a commercial band, across ten albums of their history. His arrival in the group's lineup at the start of 1971, replacing original guitarist Anthony Phillips, provided the group with the last ingredient that it needed for success. In the years since, while Phil Collins may have enjoyed pop/rock stardom and an acting career and his other bandmates their periodic successes, Hackett has come the farthest as a star performer and composer in his own right.

Stanley Jordan's discovery in the early '80s rightfully earned a lot of headlines in the jazz world for he came up with a new way of playing guitar. Although he was not the first to use tapping, Jordan's extensive expertise gave him the ability to play two completely independent lines on the guitar (as if it were a keyboard) or, when he wanted, two guitars at a time.

As the lead guitarist for Guns N' Roses , Slash established himself as one of hard rock's finest and most soulful soloists during the late '80s, technically adept yet always firmly grounded in the gritty Aerosmith and Stones ' licks he loved. Slash was born Saul Hudson on July 23, 1965 in Stoke-on-Trent, England, to artistic parents both involved in the entertainment industry; his mother was a clothing designer who worked on David Bowie 's film The Man Who Fell to Earth , and his father designed album art for such artists as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell .

One of the finest fusion (as opposed to crossover) guitarists of the 1980s and '90s, Scott Henderson 's explosive playing is often teamed up with electric bassist Gary Willis in their group Tribal Tech . Originally most influenced by rock, Henderson (who grew up in West Palm Beach, FL) played in local funk and rock bands. In 1980, he moved to Los Angeles to attend the Guitar Institute of Technology, studying with Joe Diorio.

Roy Buchanan has long been considered one of the finest, yet criminally overlooked guitarists of the blues rock genre whose lyrical leads and use of harmonics would later influence such guitar greats as Jeff Beck, his one-time student Robbie Robertson, and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. Although born in Ozark, AR, on September 23, 1939, Buchanan grew up in the small town of Pixley, CA. His father was both a farmer and Pentecostal preacher, which would bring the youngster his first exposure to gospel music when his family would attend racially mixed revival meetings.

Guitarist Ron Wood has been a member of several "classic" British rock outfits, but the one that he's undoubtedly most associated with is the Rolling Stones, with whom he's been a member since 1976. Born on June 1, 1947, in Hillingdon, London, Wood made his first appearance on record during the late '60s, as a member of the oft-overlooked mod outfit the Creation (Wood only appeared on a smattering of singles, collected years later on the compilation Complete Collection, Vol. 1: Making Time).

Throughout his long and winding solo career, guitarist Robin Trower has had to endure countless comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, due to his uncanny ability to channel Hendrix's bluesy/psychedelic, Fender Strat-fueled playing style. Born on March 9, 1945, in Catford, England, Trower spent the early '60s playing guitar in various London based outfits; the most successful one being the R&B group the Paramounts, who specialized mostly in covers, but managed to issue several singles between 1963 and 1965.

Throughout his career, guitarist Robert Fripp has continually pushed the boundaries of pop music, as well as pursuing many avant-garde and experimental musical ideas.

Fripp began playing professionally with the League of Gentlemen in the mid-'60s, providing instrumental support to many American singers who were touring England. During this time he began Giles, Giles and Fripp with Pete and Mike Giles . The trio only released one album, 1968's The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp, yet the group soon evolved into King Crimson.

One of the premier songwriters of the rock era, Robbie Robertson was born July 5, 1943, in Toronto, Ontario. The son of a Jewish father and Mohawk mother, Jaime Robbie Robertson's first brush with live music came at the Six Nations Reservation, his mother's girlhood home; at the age of five, he also gained exposure to the country music of rural America.

Robben Ford has had a diverse career. He taught himself guitar when he was 13 and considered his first influence to be Mike Bloomfield. At 18, he moved to San Francisco to form the Charles Ford Band (named after his father, who was also a guitarist) and was soon hired to play with Charles Musselwhite for nine months. In 1971, the Charles Ford Blues Band was re-formed and recorded for Arhoolie in early 1972.

British guitarist Ritchie Blackmore started out as a session player and then was a cofounder of the hard rock group Deep Purple in 1968. With Deep Purple , he made the albums Shades of Deep Purple (1968), The Book of Taliesyn (1969), Deep Purple (1969), Concerto for Group and Orchestra (with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra , 1970), Purple in Rock, Fireball (1971), Machine Head (1972), Purple Passages (1972), Made in Japan (1973), Who Do We Think We Are? (1973), Burn (1974), and Stormbringer (1974) before leaving the group in April 1975.

Guitar virtuoso Richie Kotzen burst onto the heavy metal scene as a teenager with a lightning-fast guitar technique. After recording three albums for the Shrapnel label - including his 1989 self-titled debut, the following year's Fever Dream and 1991's Electric Joy - he was recruited into the party-metal group Poison to replace C.C. DeVille, who was forced out of the band due to his substance abuse problems.

One of the founders of Oregon, Ralph Towner is one of the few modern jazz musicians to specialize on acoustic guitar. His playing often stretches beyond the boundaries of conventional jazz into world music and is quite distinctive. He started playing piano when he was three and trumpet at five, performing in a dance band when he was 13. Towner studied classical guitar in Vienna and played with classical chamber groups in the mid-'60s. After moving to New York in 1969, Towner worked with Jimmy Garrison, Jeremy Steig, and Paul Winter's Winter Consort (1970-1971).

His career riddled by drug abuse and paranoia, Peter Green is still regarded by some fans as the greatest white blues guitarist ever, Eric Clapton notwithstanding. As he grew up in London's working-class East End, Green's early musical influences were Hank B. Marvin of the Shadows, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Freddie King, and traditional Jewish music.

Throughout the years, rock music has been littered with talented musicians whose lives were cut short due to drug-related deaths. Free/Back Street Crawler guitarist Paul Kossoff was one such casualty. Kossoff was born in London, England, on September 14, 1950, and early on studied classical guitar (before giving up on the instrument by his teenaged years). But upon discovering the British blues-rock movement of the '60s, Kossoff's interest in guitar perked up once again, especially after catching a John Mayall's Bluesbreakers live show with Eric Clapton.

One of the most original guitarists from the '80s onward (he is instantly recognizable), Pat Metheny is a chance-taking player who has gained great popularity but also taken some wild left turns. His records with the Pat Metheny Group are difficult to describe (folk-jazz? mood music?) but managed to be both accessible and original, stretching the boundaries of jazz and making Metheny famous enough so he could perform whatever type of music he wants without losing his audience.

Breaking into the R&B Top Ten his very first time out in 1956 with the startlingly intense slow blues "I Can't Quit You Baby," southpaw guitarist Otis Rush subsequently established himself as one of the premier bluesmen on the Chicago circuit. He remains so today.

Extreme was formed in Boston in 1985 when Gary Cherone was in a band with drummer Paul geary, and guitarist Nuno Bettencourt (see his rig) was in a rival band with bassist Pat Badger. Bettencourt was born in Portugal and lived in the Azores Islands, His family moved to Massachusetts in the 70's.

After Neil Young left the Californian folk-rock band Buffalo Springfield in 1968, he slowly established himself as one of the most influential and idiosyncratic singer/songwriters of his generation. Young's body of work ranks second only to Bob Dylan in terms of depth, and he was able to sustain his critical reputation, as well as record sales, for a longer period of time than Dylan, partially because of his willfully perverse work ethic.

A postwar Chicago blues scene without the magnificent contributions of Muddy Waters is absolutely unimaginable. From the late '40s on, he eloquently defined the city's aggressive, swaggering, Delta-rooted sound with his declamatory vocals and piercing slide-guitar attack. When he passed away in 1983, the Windy City would never quite recover.

Recognized as one of the finest guitarists among his peers, Mike Stern was born on January 10, 1953 in Boston, MA, but grew up in the Washington D.C. before returning to Boston to study at the Berklee School of Music. Stern was only 22 when he joined Blood, Sweat & Tears, for whom he played three years before signing on with Billy Cobham's jazz fusion outfit which led to Stern's big breakthrough when Miles Davis enlisted him as guitarist for Davis' return from a five-year musical hiatus in 1981.

Mike Keneally obviously doesn't like to be labeled - he's a bandleader and bandmember, a rock and jazz fusion player, and also an outstanding guitarist, vocalist, keyboardist, and percussionist. Taking up keyboards at age five, Keneally's life changed when he moved from New York to California in 1970 and heard Frank Zappa for the first time at age ten. Woodshedding for the next 15 years as a self-taught guitarist, Keneally formed a band called Drop Control in his hometown of San Diego in 1985 and became one of the city's musical heroes.

There's no denying the great string of classic albums the Rolling Stones issued during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s - 1969's Let It Bleed, 1970's, 1971's Sticky Fingers, and 1972's Exile on Main Street. But while Jagger and Richards received the lion's share of credit for these aforementioned albums, it was the guitar work, and uncredited songwriting contributions, of Mick Taylor that helped make these albums so special.

In a very real sense, Mick Box is Uriah Heep. He has been the one constant throughout the somewhat turbulent history of the band. In fact, the only recording he has ever done has been with that band, with the exception of working on David Byron 's solo album. With Byron being a fellow Heepster, this is only so much of a stretch.

His guitar style is one of the corner stones of the '70s Brit Rock, baseed on the '60s Brit Blues.

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Along with Gary Moore, Michael Schenker never quite reached the same level of acclaim stateside as he did in Europe (and other parts of the world), despite possessing exceptional, and quite influential, six-string skills. Born on January 10, 1955, in Savstedt, Germany, it was Schenker's older brother, Rudolf, who sparked the youngster's interest in guitar at an early age.

One of the most innovative and acclaimed solo guitarists of his era, self-described "violent acoustic" artist Michael Hedges rose to success on the strength of a unique performing style which utilized harmonics and picking to create the impression of multiple guitars playing simultaneously.

One of the ultimate '80s guitar shredders, Marty Friedman first made his name with the speed-burning virtuoso outfit Cacophony, but landed his most widely renowned gig as the lead guitarist of Megadeth during the thrash legends' greatest period of popularity.

Mark Knopfler is a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and bandleader. His group, Dire Straits , was formed in London in 1977 and went on to become an international success after the release of its debut album in 1978. Though it began as a group with a permanent lineup led by Knopfler, in its first few years it evolved into a brand name for Knopfler with varying personnel.

He's got a personal sound, full of feeling, usually doesn't use a pick.

Frank began playing guitar at age 7 in Canberra, Australia where he was born and raised. He was influenced by the blues playing of Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall / Eric Clapton, and Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. In his mid-teens he discovered Steely Dan, The Brecker Brothers and Chick Corea, which pointed him in a jazzy direction. In 1982 at 23 he decided to leave his home to study at the Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT) in Hollywood. He graduated with the highest honor, Student of the Year and was offered a teaching position which he kept for 4 years.

Sam Hopkins was a Texas country bluesman of the highest caliber whose career began in the 1920s and stretched all the way into the 1980s. Along the way, Hopkins watched the genre change remarkably, but he never appreciably altered his mournful Lone Star sound, which translated onto both acoustic and electric guitar. Hopkins' nimble dexterity made intricate boogie riffs seem easy, and his fascinating penchant for improvising lyrics to fit whatever situation might arise made him a beloved blues troubadour.

Leslie West first gained recognition as the lead guitarist for the Vagrants, a locally popular 1960s Long Island group. One of that group's singles was produced by Felix Pappalardi, a bass player who also produced Cream. After the Vagrants and Cream split up, Pappalardi played bass on and produced West's debut solo album, Mountain (July 1969). Following its release, the two teamed up with drummer Norman Smart (soon replaced by Corky Laing) and keyboard player Steve Knight to form the band Mountain, which cut the albums Mountain Climbing!

Huddie Ledbetter, known as Leadbelly, was a unique figure in the American popular music of the 20th century. Ultimately, he was best remembered for a body of songs that he discovered, adapted, or wrote, including "Goodnight, Irene," "Rock Island Line," "The Midnight Special," and "Cotton Fields." But he was also an early example of a folksinger whose background had brought him into direct contact with the oral tradition by which folk music was handed down, a tradition that, by the early years of the century, already included elements of commercial popular music.

Like so many other Los Angeles studio musicians, guitarist and composer Larry Carlton was faced with a choice a number of years back: whether to go solo and develop a name for himself under his own name or to continue the less risky, more lucrative existence as a session guitarist, making good money and recording with prominent musicians. Fortunately for fans of this eclectic guitarist, he chose the former, and has recorded under his own name for Warner Bros., MCA Records and GRP Records since 1978.