OFF: 100 Greatest Guitarists

[Nick Medford]

On Wed, 3 Sep 2003 00:40:04 EDT, RMayo19761 at AOL.COM wrote:

>
>my teeth hurt.... this must have been a poll, please someone tell me it
was a
>poll; that would explain the utter lunacy of this list

Well, I haven't read it, nor do I intend to, but my guess it wasn't a poll,
at least not one of the general readership- would Robert Johnson be in at
No 5, for example, and wouldn't others (e.g. Eddie Van Halen and Dave
Gilmour) would have come in a lot higher if it was based on mass popularity
alone (which it what such polls generally come down to)? The fact that the
2 guitarists from the MC5 (hurrah) and, er, Radiohead (ahem) are placed
together also indicates this wasn't a poll.

Interested to see Doug's agree/disagree list, I broadly concur. The VU were
a fantastic group but there's no way anyone could straightfacedly claim
that Lou Reed should be on this list! Top 100 songwriters, yes, but not
guitarists. And Kurt Cobain at number 12 is a farce.

People I would have liked to have seen on the list (some very wishful
thinking here given the nature of Rolling Stone magazine, but here goes
anyway):

Steve Hillage
Steve Albini (Big Black)
Ray "Captain Sensible" Burns
Richard Lloyd (Television- Tom Verlaine got in but no Lloyd, who's perhaps
not quite as great as Verlaine, but still deserving)
Gary Lucas
Peter Laughner (early Pere Ubu)

As for people I might have *expected* to be there, but aren't, well I'd
have included Buck Dharma and Billy Gibbons for sure.

Having said all that, there are some people I wouldn't necessarily have
expected to make a list in such a mainstream publication- I'm pleasantly
surprised to see for example:

19 Richard Thompson
33 & 34 Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth
71 Lightnin' Hopkins
89 D. Boon of the Minutemen
92 & 93 Fred "Sonic" Smith, Wayne Kramer of the MC5
94 Bert Jansch
95 Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine
98 Leigh Stephens of Blue Cheer
99 Greg Ginn of Black Flag

So it could have been better, but it could have been worse too.

Nick