Friday 4 May 2012

SPIN's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time

1 Lee Ranaldo & Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth)
2 Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) 
3 John Fahey 
4 Kurt Cobain 
5 J Mascis 
6 Prince 
7 Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd (Television) 
8 Johnny Ramone 
9 Eddie Hazel (Funkadelic) 
10 Jam Master Jay (Run-DMC) 
11 Ron Asheton (The Stooges) 
12 Andy Gill (Gang of Four)
13 The Edge 
14 Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman (Slayer) 
15 Greg Ginn (Black Flag)
16 Frank Zappa
17 Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison
18 Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath)
19 d. boon (Minutemen) 
20 Neil Young 
21 Sonny Sharrock
22 Jimmy Nolen (James Brown) 
23 Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins/This Mortal Coil) 
24 Steve Albini (Big Black/Shellac) 
25 Robert Fripp (King Crimson) 

Read the complete entries HERE

No Hendrix, Clapton, Beck or Page anymore? 
btw,  thumbs up for including # 9 & 21!

4 comments:

  1. BIG thumbs up from me mostly for that list esp as there is NO Page, Beck or Clapton in there and gawd forbid the likes of Steve Vai etc...I myself do feel that no. 32 should have been much higher tho :)
    As Richard Lloyd just said on Facebook:
    "As far as the spin top 100, guitarists of all time, I am tied with Tom Verlaine at number 7. In the top 10, baby. Nothing to complain about there, except that Cheetah Chrome and I were just as good a team as Me and Tom, in RFTT reunion, just harder rock. And Television was planned that way, because we were BOTH lead guitarists who could play a damn good rhythm and nobody knew (Unless they saw us live AND payed detailed attention), who played what. Like gears in a clock, or the Stones before Brian sank neath the deep blue sea. NOBODY ELSE was doing that, blatantly-- one guy was lead and one guy was rhythm, period. We broke THAT mold, lickety split."
    Who said that punks couldn't play eh?

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  2. Interestingly enough I do remember at the time of the Destiny Street Repaired release Richard Hell saying that a lot of the Voidoid's guitar breaks that people thought were by Quine were actually the work of Ivan Julian tho...

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  3. Hmm, no David Byrne, John Martyn, Mick Jones, Keith Levene,(insert name of favourite guitarist here)etc, but fucking Skrillex makes the list. Jeez.

    Aaaagh, have just fallen into the "my favourite's not there so the list is worthless" trap!

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  4. Stephen Thomas Erlewine on Facebook: "Lists are primarily useful for pointing out what you don't know but they're usually used as validation for what you already do know. At this point, everybody pretty much knows Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Beck have an unimpeachable reputation--and guitar freaks can talk about Trower, Morse, etc--so it's not only a more interesting list to not have them there, it does a good job of explaining what Spin's current editorial voice is...and while there is CERTAINLY a lot of intentional outrage here (all the better to get those hits), all the choices are tied together by a certain aesthetic. And to be honest I'm not sure if it's one aimed at a young demographic--younger than Rolling Stone, sure, but there are an awful lot of "out" choices here, the kind that will appeal to a certain kind of impassioned, dedicated music fan that wants to read and debate about music. And I'm sure that's the demographic that Spin is chasing--fanatics between 20-40 who will be happy to see Zoot Horn Rollo, Rhys Chatham or Robbie Basho. My only question is how big that demographic is...but I'm sure they're the ones that are more likely to buy magazines to read about music than the the alleged kids that are allegedly nuts for Skrillex."

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