“Had he recorded nothing but the 10-minute Maggot Brain solo, Eddie Hazel’s place in guitar history would be complete”: The 30 best guitarists from New Jersey – from Al Di Meola and Richie Sambora to Gibson's best-selling signature artist
We gone and made a list of our favorite Garden State guitar heroes... Do write in for which state you'd like to read about next. One way or another, it won't have better pizza
Claydes “Charles” Smith
Claydes “Charles” Smith stayed in the background, but his contributions to dance, funk and pop music are significant. Born in Jersey City, he learned jazz guitar from his father.
In 1964, he joined other local musicians – including Ronald Bell, Robert “Kool” Bell, George Brown, Dennis Thomas and Robert “Spike” Mickens – to form an instrumental jazz and soul outfit that went through various names (the Jazziacs, Kool & the Flames) before becoming Kool & the Gang.
Smith’s jazz approach to guitar – his chief influences were Wes Montgomery and George Benson, from whom he incorporated lead lines and high-octave vamps into his style – proved to be a crucial element of the Kool & the Gang sound. His supple, understated melodies in the 1974 song Summer Madness have been sampled dozens of times over the years.
As the band moved toward pop and disco in the mid-Seventies, Smith’s songwriting prowess resulted in numerous hits such as Jungle Boogie, Hollywood Swinging, Celebration and Joanna.
Smith continued to perform with Kool & the Gang until January 2006, when he took ill; he passed away the following June.
Frank Infante
Blondie - Rapture (Official Music Video) - YouTube
During the mid-seventies, Jersey City native Frank Infante played in a number of blues-based rock groups, but when he joined friends Debbie Harry and Chris Stein in Blondie, he became a part of a musically adventurous outfit whose pioneering mix of punk, new wave, garage rock, disco, reggae and hip-hop would result in international stardom.
Throughout his five-year tenure in Blondie, Infante proved to be the secret sauce on a cavalcade of hit songs. Among his notable contributions are the rip-snorting riffs on One Way or Another, the scorching rhythm blasts on the Number 1 hit Call Me and the fabulously whacked-out solo on Rapture (he was “the man from Mars that eats guitars!”).
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Infante’s post-Blondie activities have included stints with Iggy Pop and the New York Dolls, and with Blondie drummer Clem Burke he formed his own band, Infante’s Inferno. Currently, he’s writing material with Divinyls guitarist Mark McEntee.
Lenny Kaye
Patti Smith & Lenny Kaye - "Pale Blue Eyes" | 1996 Induction - YouTube
Even if he never picked up a guitar, Lenny Kaye (born in Manhattan but raised in North Brunswick) would be regarded as one of the most influential figures in rock ’n’ roll.
As a music critic in the late Sixties, he wrote trailblazing pieces for Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy and Jazz & Pop. His 1972 two-album anthology set, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 (containing tracks by the Prunes, the Seeds and the Vagrants, among others), helped to popularize garage rock; Kaye’s liner notes contained one of the first uses of the term “punk rock.”
But it’s the guitarist’s partnership with Patti Smith that had a seismic impact on music. During the course of four albums, starting with 1975’s Horses and on through 1979’s Wave, the two combined beat poetry with raw, improvisational rock ’n’ roll driven by Kaye’s howling, explosive guitar playing.
Kaye went on to work with poet-turned-rocker Jim Carroll, as well as fronting his own band
Kaye went on to work with poet-turned-rocker Jim Carroll, as well as fronting his own band. He produced albums by Kristin Hirsch, Throwing Muses and Soul Asylum, and his production of Suzanne Vega’s 1987 album, Solitude Standing, yielded the Grammy-nominated hit single, Luka.
In 1996, he returned to work with Smith, a collaboration that continues to this day.
Richie Sambora
Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead Or Alive (Official Music Video) - YouTube
The pride of Perth Amboy, Richie Sambora saw his fame shoot through the stratosphere in the 1980s as the lead guitarist and songwriting partner for another famous Garden Stater – Jon Bon Jovi.
As a teen, Sambora immersed himself in learning the styles of guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and B.B. King. He performed with a number of local acts (one of them, Mercy, was briefly signed to Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song Records) and unsuccessfully auditioned to replace Ace Frehley in Kiss. And then he met Jon Bon Jovi in 1983. Once he joined the band Bon Jovi, Sambora and Jon began writing songs at a fast clip, and it wasn’t long till the hits started coming.
On platinum smashes like Wanted Dead or Alive, You Give Love a Bad Name, Bad Medicine and the talk box classic Living on a Prayer, Sambora’s solos leap out and grab you by the ear. Each lead functions as a mini “song within a song,” brimming with melody and expert phrasing, but also packing blues passion and judicious touches of shred flash.
During his 30-year career with Bon Jovi, Sambora issued three critically hailed solo albums, and after splitting with the band in 2013 he began the duo RSO with Australian guitarist Orianthi.
Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan & Dave Schramm
Yo La Tengo - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) - YouTube
Okay, neither guitarist hails from New Jersey, but thanks to their work with Yo La Tengo – regarded by many as the quintessential indie rock band, as well as being one of the leading lights of the “Hoboken sound” – they’ve more than earned their Garden State bona fides.
Kaplan and Schramm proved to be a fascinating guitar duo, mixing abstract noise and dreamy melodicism on the band’s 1985 debut, Ride the Tiger
A former rock critic, guitarist and singer, Ira Kaplan formed Yo La Tengo (Spanish for “I have it”) with his drummer-singer wife, Georgia Hubley, in 1984. Adding lead guitarist Dave Schramm a year later, the band became something of the house band at Maxwell’s, the tiny Hoboken club that hosted acts like the Bongos, the Feelies and the dB’s.
Kaplan and Schramm proved to be a fascinating guitar duo, mixing abstract noise and dreamy melodicism on the band’s 1985 debut, Ride the Tiger. A year later, however, Schramm left and Kaplan stepped into the lead guitar role, a position he holds to this day.
Schramm formed his own outfit, the Schramms, and has also performed with the Replacements, Soul Asylum and Chris Stamey. In 2015, he briefly returned to Yo La Tengo for the album Stuff Like That There. Kaplan has contributed to albums by artists like Amy Rigby and Antietam, and has dabbled in film composing. Last year, Yo La Tengo released their 17th album, This Stupid World.
Guitarist Dave “Snake” Sabo was born in Perth Amboy and grew up in nearby Sayreville. In high school, he played in an early version of Bon Jovi. After being replaced by Richie Sambora (also from Perth Amboy), Sabo met bassist Rachel Bolan and the two set about forming their own band, Skid Row.
Enter Scotti Hill, who had previously driven 140 miles from his home in Middletown, New York, to Toms River, New Jersey, in the hopes of joining Bolan’s previous band, Godsend. With Hill ensconced in Skid Row, he and Sabo formed a formidable hard rock guitar duo – each taking turns at solos – that powered the band’s 1989 eponymous debut album (chock full of hits like 18 and Life, I Remember You and Youth Gone Wild) to mega-platinum success. The two got even heavier on the band’s 1991 follow-up, Slave to the Grind, another platinum seller.
The band’s history has been turbulent (a three-year hiatus from 1996, various lead singers), but Sabo and Hill have remained constant figures. On their latest album, 2022’s The Gang’s All Here, the two shredders peppered tracks with their first-ever dueling solos.
Robert Randolph
Robert Randolph | Crossroads Guitar Festival - YouTube
Like David Lindley before him, Robert Randolph does his best work sitting down. The pedal steel virtuoso has almost single-handedly (all right, he uses both hands) redefined the instrument, both in sound and style (in other words, it’s not just for country music).
With the mighty Family Band as his backing group, Randolph – who cites Stevie Ray Vaughan as a major influence – has blazed new trails for the pedal steel on albums that span gospel, rock, funk, blues and even some dashes of hip-hop.
Randolph honed his pedal steel skills at services, and it wasn’t long till his prodigious talents spread to the secular world
Randolph’s fiery playing will take you to church, and fittingly, that’s where it all started – at the House of God Church in his hometown of Orange. Randolph honed his pedal steel skills at services, and it wasn’t long till his prodigious talents spread to the secular world.
Opening slots for the Derek Trucks Band, Medeski, Martin & Wood and the North Mississippi Allstars got the word going. Eric Clapton became a fan and brought Randolph and the Family Band on tour.
Among Randolph’s most notable albums are the T-Bone Burnett-produced We Walk (2010), which features guests Ben Harper and Doyle Bramhall II, and 2019’s Brighter Days, produced by superstar studio man Dave Cobb.
Millions of guitarists have been influenced by Jimi Hendrix, but in the early to mid-Sixties, Ernie Isley had the rare opportunity to watch the master up close, when Hendrix (then living in the family house in Englewood) briefly played guitar with the Isley Brothers. Oddly enough, it wasn’t Hendrix who inspired Isley to play guitar; as a teenager, his interest was piqued by Jose Feliciano’s cover of the Doors’ Light My Fire.
After that, the self-taught guitarist was off and running, joining his brothers’ band at age 14 as a drummer, then a bass player (which he played on Isley Brothers’ 1969 breakout hit It’s Your Thing) and later moving to guitar.
He contributed impactful, wah-driven rhythms to the anti-authority anthem Fight the Power (which he wrote), and his one-take solo on the Top 10 hit That Lady (which he also wrote) is a fuzzed-out psychedelic masterpiece. Isley dominated the band’s soulful cover of Seals and Crofts’ Summer Breeze with an extended, distorted lead that positively sails.
Isley has guested on albums by Janet Jackson and Joss Stone, and with his brother Ronald he joined Carlos Santana for the 2017 album The Power of Peace. In 1992, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Isley Brothers. Even better? In June 2021, streets in Teaneck and Englewood were named after the Isley Brothers.
Alex Rosamilia
The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound (Official Video) - YouTube
Formed in 2006 in New Brunswick, the Gaslight Anthem started out playing punk and Springsteen-inspired rock at local bars for free beer. Which makes them not very different from 1,000 or so other New Jersey bands.
But the working-class quartet (comprised of singer-rhythm guitarist Brian Fallon, lead guitarist Alex Rosamilia, bassist Alex Levine and drummer Benny Horowitz) began incorporating other elements – Sixties soul, British blues and even splashes of power-pop – into their sound. By the time of their 2007 debut, Sink or Swim, they left the bars behind.
Complementing Fallon’s gritty vocal style, Rosamilia – who counts players such as Jimmy Page, Peter Green and the Cure’s Robert Smith as influences – adds sparky, robust riffs, strong supporting melodies and blues-tinged solos that make their point and never overstay the welcome.
Not to suggest that he can’t blow – his speed-metal solo on the band’s biggest radio hit, 45, packs more thrills and chills in 20 seconds than most guitarists can muster in an hour.
After a steady succession of albums, the Gaslight Anthem took a six-year break from 2015 to 2021, during which time Rosamilia explored his heavier side with his own band, Servitude. Last year, the Anthem released its first album in nine years, History Books, that featured a guest spot by none other than Bruce Springsteen.
My Chemical Romance’s Ray Toro & Frank Iero
My Chemical Romance - Helena [Official Music Video] - YouTube
Newark-based superstars My Chemical Romance bring together a wide array of styles: emo, goth, musical theater and pop-punk, along with splashes of the Beatles and Queen. Fittingly, the band’s ax team – lead guitarist Ray Toro and rhythm ace Frank Iero – inhabit two radically different musical worlds.
Kearny native Toro grew up listening to his brother’s record collection, chock-full of classic rock. As a guitarist, he formed his style by emulating Randy Rhoads and Brian May.
Belleville-born Iero comes from a musical family; as a kid he watched his drummer grandfather play Dixieland while his father (also a drummer) favored the blues. But it was the sounds of the Clash, the Ramones and Sonic Youth that got him started on the guitar, and by age 11 he was playing in punk bands.
In MCR (which formed in 2001), Toro and Iero are an ego-less, traditional lead-rhythm unit. Occasionally, they trade off on short melody lines, but it’s Toro who belts out the showboat solos.
Among his more notable moments are the spunky, Brian May-flavored harmonized solos in Dead and Na Na Na, while on the hard-charging Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back, he aims for the nosebleed seats with a palm-muted, metallic blues scorcher.
Following their last platinum album, 2010’s Danger Days, MCR went on an extended hiatus, during which time Toro and Iero pursued side projects. In 2019, they regrouped and went on a reunion tour, which concluded last year.
Joe is a freelance journalist who has, over the past few decades, interviewed hundreds of guitarists for Guitar World, Guitar Player, MusicRadar and Classic Rock. He is also a former editor of Guitar World, contributing writer for Guitar Aficionado and VP of A&R for Island Records. He’s an enthusiastic guitarist, but he’s nowhere near the likes of the people he interviews. Surprisingly, his skills are more suited to the drums. If you need a drummer for your Beatles tribute band, look him up.
![My Chemical Romance - Helena [Official Music Video] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/UCCyoocDxBA/maxresdefault.jpg)
