What really makes a guitar player? Is his unique playing style, along with his own sound?Is it creativity? OK, if I think about it, creativity helps defining the style. And sound also, so I think I can stick to this “style” thing. It is about being recognized (again marketing?!) out of the crowded space of guitar playing.

Let’s think for a bit and create an artificial environment where you put a guitar player in a closed box, so you can’t see him, don’t know who’s inside, give him all his equipment and let him create a piece of music.

Can you tell who the guitar player is just by listening the musical piece he created? If you can, you probably have a great name there, a guitar player that is sure of himself, with strong roots, a real “guitar hero”.

I think of a few that I would recognize in such a case:

• Joe Satriani – one of the most creative guitar players IMO, close to my heart since a long, long time. His own high tech guitar sounds and his unmistakable riffs put him there as one of the main guitar icons of the last 20 years
• Steve Vai – OK, maybe this time it is me not being that creative, probably you think that sure, this guy is some kind of Satriani fan, how could he not like Vai? And so it is, but this is not the reason I put Steve Vai here. Now really, can you have Steve Vai playing in that closed box and not recognize him? I think that those long-finger licks he patented make him sure of his place here.
• Slash – I don’t particularly find Slash to be such a great technician, but his fat Gibson sound and the way he always falls on his feet when soloing, plus his licks of a particular sweetness ask for a place here.
• Joe Perry of Aerosmith. Well, I can only think of the ending of songs such as Crazy, Crying and I could tell he’s in the box, no doubt about it.
• Frank Gambale. Here’s the fact that he started to study guitar by listening to keyboard players so his way of playing the guitar is quite unique. If you also count his personal method of fast picking and his upside-down scales, he’s there!
• Gary Moore – He’s got the blues, man!! I know I would recognize him in a moment. Wouldn’t you?
• Stevie Ray Vaughan- I would have put here also SRV from the start but after listening Andy Timmons playing “I remember Stevie” I was amazed by how he managed to catch that particular style of SRV. OK, I said above that each artist should play his own style, not try to sound like somebody else, so SRV should be put there also
• Brian May – no need to say more, he’s there.

Yngwee Malmsteen – no doubt, one of the most powerful influences for skilled players with his own sound and style. However I don’t add him here since too many guitar players copied him that you can not say anymore who’s ho nowadays. But if the list was made 20 years ago probably he would have been the first.

Who did I miss?

Later edit:

• Yngwee Malmsteen – for creating an unique style, neo-classic rock, even if so many followed him that today they assimilated his style that you can not tell the difference. Jon of GuitarNoize.com convinced me to add Yngwee.
• Jimi Hendrix – OK (still Jon)
• Paul Gilbert (Jon)
• B.B. King (Jon)
• Carlos Santana (thanks Pilgrim)
• Albert King (Pilgrim)
• Glenn Kaiser (Pilgrim but I don’t know him so…)
• Fank Zappa (thanks Dr J)

Anybody else?

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If you think about it, I don’t think that any other musical instrument influenced the 20th century more than electric guitars. I think that electric guitars are to the last century what piano and the rest of the historically related instruments were for their time. Of course that if you think about Mozart, Beethoven, they used to compose their music on piano, or how you called it back then. I am sure that if they would have lived today, they would have given a great importance to electric guitars and probably they would have been rock stars. I am not joking, I mean what I say!

Think about Steve Vai, Satriani or Yngwie Malmsteen, gods of electric guitars, right? I have the conviction that born under an other star, a few hundred years ago, their names would have been listed near Mozart’s name and Bach’s name. Today, electric guitars are what drive the rock, blues, country music scene the same way as piano did some time ago.

Will electric guitars gods be remembered a few hundred years later?

Well, this is a really good question, and most of all, difficult to answer because we don’t have a way to compare what is going on with the music industry these days. Think about the fact that they didn’t have too much to do back then so composers, music people were seen as important figures of those days. Today, everything changes fast, electric guitars are a presence of the last 70 years I think, you can not predict how the music will change and if electric guitars will still be part of the next 100 years’ music. But who knows, maybe people will still remember and kids will learn in school about Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or Andy Timmons…

What do you think?

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