Danny Gatton
SIGNATURE SONG: “Elmira Street Boogie”
88 Elmira Street
It was always a treat to watch the late Danny Gatton’s stubby fingers dance like fire on the maple fretboard of his battered Telecaster. The “Telemaster” fused country, blues, rockabilly and jazz into a blue-collar virtuoso style that the man himself once called “Redneck Jazz.” His unique combination-picking technique (plectrum plus fingerstyle) propelled chicken-pickin’ riffs, muscular jazz chords, blue notes and open-string banjo runs, all of which he made dance gracefully side by side. Gatton took his own life in 1994, opting out of a world where instrumental prowess is no guarantee of commercial success. His legend and legacy live on.
Paul Gilbert
SIGNATURE SONG: “Scarified”
Second Heat (RACER X)
Paul Gilbert has always been a reluctant guitar hero. He’s humble, good humored, polite and obliging, but when he straps on that guitar, he becomes the biggest, baddest monster in the entire shred forest. Gilbert’s Eighties work with Racer X and Mr. Big paved the way for a varied and compelling solo career. His fleet and flawless fretwork has always been tempered by highly developed harmonic sensibilities born of his abiding love for pop music.
John5
SIGNATURE SONG: “The Washing Away of Wrong”
The Devil Knows My Name
It takes a sick and twisted mind to be able to play guitar with Marilyn Manson, David Lee Roth and country singer k.d. lang. But John5 has exhibited more than enough warped imagination and dazzling dexterity to shine in all these wildly diverse musical settings. Whether it’s a barn dance or a ritual virgin sacrifice to the Lord of Darkness, count on Mr. 5 to turn up with all the right licks, and the clothes to match.
The Great Kat
SIGNATURE SONG: “The Flight of the Bumble Bee”
Beethoven on Speed
It’s hard to know whether the Great Kat’s thrash metal interpretations of classical music compositions are meant to be taken seriously—especially when her albums have titles like Beethoven on Speed, Bloody Vivaldi and Rossini’s Rape—but when this Juilliard-trained virtuoso plays it’s certainly no joke. With a heavy leather dominatrix persona so over the top that she makes Yngwie Malmsteen seem like Tony Randall, the Great Kat would make a fine role model for young ladies who want to shred if she didn’t scare the living shit out of them.
Richie Kotzen
SIGNATURE SONG: “You Can’t Save Me”
Into the Black
Richie Kotzen made his debut at the tender age of 19, quickly establishing himself as one of the fastest young guns in the whole Shrapnel Records corral. From the start, his style has been admirably fluid, incorporating techniques like tapping and sweeping to create extended legato passages of daunting complexity. Kotzen has lent these skills to both Poison and Mr. Big. In recent years, he’s emerged as an all-around classic rock talent, adding a soulful Paul Rodgers/Rod Stewart/Steve Marriott–influenced vocal style to his considerable resources as a guitarist.
Alexi Laiho
SIGNATURE SONG: “Needled 24/7”
Hate Crew Deathroll (CHILDREN OF BODOM)
An incredibly prolific guitarist who is the member of several bands—Children of Bodom, Sinergy and Kylähullut—as well as a frequent guest performer with bands like Annihilator, Godsplague and Pain, Alexi Laiho has probably recorded more notes than Bach ever wrote down on paper over his entire lifetime. Laiho has mastered the same sweep, tapping and precision picking techniques and neoclassical scales that placed his Scandinavian predecessors on the map, but unlike his cohorts he’s never shown any ambition to record a guitar concerto or metal opera.
Shawn Lane
SIGNATURE SONG: “Savitri”
Good People in Times of Evil (HELLBORG, LANE AND SELVAGANESH)
Many guitarists pursue speed for its sheer ability to impress others. For Shawn Lane, it was merely one of numerous avenues of expression that he discovered on a strange and twisted path to musical enlightenment that started when he joined southern rockers Black Oak Arkansas at 14 and culminated in his mastery of Indian music in the years before he passed away at the age of 40. Few, if any, guitarists can play faster than Lane could, and his arpeggio sweeps and precision-picked lines blasted more rapid-fire notes than the average human mind could comprehend, blending into a hypnotic blur that leaves listeners feeling intoxicated and disoriented.
Albert Lee
SIGNATURE SONG: “Country Boy”
Heads, Hands and Feet
One of the all-time greatest country guitar pickers comes not from America’s sunny deep South but from rainy, gray England. Albert Lee developed his own greased-lightning combinationpicking technique (plectrum plus third, fourth and fifth fingers) and a masterful command of country licks, open-string runs, B-bender gymnastics and all things that go twang in the night. He can unleash cascades of crystalline notes that fall on the ear like a gentle country rain and execute tear-jerking string bends that slither and slide like a moonshiner’s wagon down an icy stretch of road. Lee has played with everyone from Emmy Lou Harris to Eric Clapton to the Everly Brothers. Now in his Sixties, he shows no sign of slowing down.
Alvin Lee
SIGNATURE SONG: “I’m Going Home”
Woodstock
Circa 1969, Alvin Lee was the fastest gun in all of guitardom. He wowed Woodstock with 11 minutes of fretboard frenzy called “I’m Going Home” and was duly rewarded with a large watermelon—presumably an organic hippie tribute to the unmitigated ballsiness of Lee’s playing. Lee and his band, Ten Years After, were among the cream of the mid-Sixties British blues boom—contemporaries and, some would say, co-equals of groups that featured Clapton, Beck and Page. More than just 10 itchy-fast fingers, Lee has always balanced his six-string mastery with a strong singing voice, charismatic center stage presence and solid songwriting skills, making him not just another speed demon but an allaround classic rock contender.
Jeff Loomis
SIGNATURE SONG: “Born”
This Godless Endeavor (NEVERMORE)
Leave it to Dave Mustaine to light a fire under a guitarist’s ass. When Jeff Loomis auditioned for Megadeth at the tender young age of 16, Mustaine told him that he’d become a great guitarist one day but he was too inexperienced for Megadeth. Instead of giving up, Loomis persevered, and six years later he formed the band Nevermore with two ex-members of Sanctuary, with whom he had briefly played as well. Loomis’ trick bag is deep and diverse, including sweep arpeggios, atonal tapping, whammy pedal effects and tremolo picking, and his solos are like mini compositions within the songs. He may never find a spot in Megadeth’s ever rotating second guitar spot, but he’s already established himself as a worthy player.
Les Paul SIGNATURE SONG: “Lover (When You’re Near Me)” Best of Capitol Masters The Wizard of Waukesha’s technological contributions to the electric guitar and multitrack recording are so great that people sometimes overlook his accomplishments as a guitarist. His recordings with the Les Paul Trio in the Thirties and Forties helped establish the jazz guitar lexicon, but he was equally handy with a cornball melody for a Top 40 pop hit. A formidable fretsman and crafty stylist, his highly active brain always seemed to be a little bit ahead of the next chord change, and his nimble fingers knew how to follow. Les’ “New Sound” recordings of the late Forties and early Fifties were the perfect merger of technique and technology.
Django Reinhardt
SIGNATURE SONG: “After You’ve Gone”
Djangology
A dapper Belgian gypsy with a pencil thin mustache and a miraculously nimble left hand, Django set the Twenties and Thirties alight via incendiary guitar performances with the legendary Hot Club of France Quintet and other jazz ensembles. It was a time when the very notion of the guitar solo was just being invented, and Django set a pace that guitarists today are still struggling to match. The astounding thing is that he did all this with just the index and middle fingers of his left hand—his third finger and pinkie had been seriously maimed in a caravan fire. Yet Django did it all: lightning-fast diminished scale runs, frisky double-stop passages and the most lyrical finger vibrato in all of guitardom. There’s a plaintive undertone in even the most jaunty Django passages, and likewise a playful wink lurking just behind his most heartbreakingly romantic playing. Django remains the original and ultimate gypsy king.
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