Top Ten Guitarists

For this issue of Naked Sunfish, Rick wants us to name the top ten guitar players that we've seen perform live. Well, I suppose it appears to be a straightforward enough assignment on the face of it. Sitting down to do the actual writing, however, I find the subject a bit slippery. Since I've been fortunate to see so many truly great artists in my life, ten seems like an awfully small number. Let me put it this way, the first three concerts I saw were the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, Eric Clapton (with Jimmie Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds opening) and Larry Coryell with Stephane Grappelli. That's a pretty good start, I think. And how do I rank these guys anyway? Pick the ten 'best' from some standpoint of historical significance or musical virtuosity? Should I try to pick representative guitarists from all of the genres I follow, say three blues players, three rockers, a couple jazz artists and a country and folk picker each? Perhaps I ought to just go by what seem like the ten best performances I've seen in person by a guitar player. I think maybe the best thing is to explore all those approaches and see what we come up with at the end.

Take BB King, for example. One of the most influential guitarists of all time, one of a handful of guys who literally changed the way the instrument is played. But, though he's been entertaining each of the three or four that I've seen him perform in person, I couldn't honestly rank any of those shows among my personal top ten. I could say the same about Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, though I have to give Bo due credit for always turning in an honest effort. John Lee Hooker, though he still exuded incredible stage presence, was barely able to play at all due to arthritis by the time I saw him for the first time at Stache's in 1985 or 86. Should I leave him off, then? And John Fahey, too. The folk iconoclast was very different when I saw him in the late nineties, a decade after the stroke that forced him to change his entire technique and sound and not so long before he died. He was actually pretty brilliant in his way that night, but nowhere near in the same league as his recordings from the 60s and 70s. Be that as it may, it was still a real treat to finally see such a hero in person. Of course, Fahey's most famous follower Leo Kottke was pretty damn good when I saw him a few years ago, too.

On the other hand, you have guys like Pat Metheney and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Great players, they each put on an impressive display of musical virtuosity that I was glad to witness. But that's about as far as I can go with them; I certainly wouldn't say they left me cold, as they were each much better than that, but they didn't exactly set my soul on fire either. Is it wrong that I got more out of hearing Dave Davies play his deliciously sloppy riffs with and without the Kinks, not to mention an unapologetic punk such as Johnny Ramone; Hell, my only regret about seeing the Ramones a dozen or so times is that I didn't get to see them even more often than that.

There probably isn't any way to completely separate the great live performers from the great artists entirely; the whole thing is so subjective, and what you get out of a concert is to some extent tied to the preconceptions you bring into the event. So, all this prefatory discussion out of the way, here's my stab at a final list, in no particular order and with apologies to the many deserving players that got left off.

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown

Gatemouth Brown was a fantastic musician; in addition to being a unique and beautiful finger-picking guitar player, he was a great blues violinist and a solid harmonica player as well. He also smoked a pipe which, or so I gathered, included more than tobacco. Like a lot of bluesmen, Gate made his living on the road; some years the native Texan would play Columbus twice, which would suggest a pretty grueling schedule. Naturally, then, some shows would be more inspired than others, but he always maintained a high degree of professionalism in even his most perfunctory appearances--on those occasions he might play, say, an hour and forty-five minutes of sophisticated blues, jazz and country rather than the usual two and half. I remember one show at Stache's on a Sunday night, my birthday as it so happened, when Brown came on somewhere before ten and proceeded to literally close the bar. He played four hours that night, three or four sets. He was having a great time and so were we; at some point in the evening he'd gone through all the songs he had planned to play for the night and started taking suggestions from the crowd, ending up playing songs like "Crazy." His death last year was just a huge loss.

Pete Townshend

I've always held that The Who were and, however improbably, remain the greatest live act in rock and roll; I mean, what can you say about the group that laid the foundation for both arena rock and punk, the former's antithetical response? Townshed is justly lionized for his rhythm guitar and songwriting, but sometimes dismissed as an average lead player. That's nonsense, of course; Pete was never meant to be the virtuoso of the group in the first place--John Entwistle filled that role--and, in any event, Townshend has always been an effective soloist whose improvisations benefited from his strong compositional sense. Besides, playing the guitar is about more than just manual dexterity, no matter what the guitar magazines want you to think. Pete has a distinct and powerful sound that makes him one of the few guitarists that can still play epic rock in front of 20,000 fans in 2006 without sounding trite. What's impressed me the most about seeing Pete perform live in the last ten years is that he's continued to grow and learn on the instrument. Though their detractors are always quick to point out that there hasn't been a new Who album in a couple decades, they are oblivious to the fact that Pete has continued to add new techniques to his repertoire while not compromising his signature guitar style. When you hear Pete play "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" or "My Generation," songs he's been playing literally his entire adult life, they sound at least as fresh as most of his peers' "new" songs do.

Carlos Santana

It is said of some players that they play a "mean guitar;" Carlos plays a beautiful one. Santana concerts are interesting events because, the core audience notwithstanding, the band attracts much the same fans as any other 'rock' band. The catch is, Santana plays as much jazz as anything else. All the instruments get solos, and they jazz solos. Alongside the FM rock hits, they throw in some straight up Latin Jazz, John Coltrane and whatever else they feel like. Santana's solos are miniature works of art, tone poems rather than the kind of shredding you hear at metal concerts. The one knock on Santana you hear, and I think there is something to it, is that he doesn't play rhythm guitar. It's not that he plays it badly, it's that he just doesn't play it most of the time at all; there's sitting out, you know, but Carlos takes it a little beyond that it seems to me. I've always thought that was a little strange given all the rhythm going on in his group. Still, his playing is so pretty, it more than makes up for it.

Son Seals

I've seen a lot of the great blues guitarists from Chicago, Texas and elsewhere in person, and Son Seals, for whatever reason, is the one that impressed me the most. Sure, Buddy Guy can be brilliant when he wants to, but he seems to suffer from some kind of alcohol exacerbated form of musical ADD. Son Seals could be just as devastating and was consistently more focused. He was great in small clubs, but one of the best performances I remember from him was in front of a huge crowd at the Chicago Blues Festival. Being a free event held in Grant Park, the event always draws a near equal ratio of blues aficionados to oblivious, drunken idiots, but Seals played that late afternoon with an intensity that cut through the obnoxious antics of that latter group. A lot of otherwise great performers couldn't accomplish that trick, but Son Seals was good enough to do it.

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is a fine guitar player. I mean, there must be something that has gotten me to go out and see him play close to twenty times, and I'm thinking it's not so much the singing. Bob is not an overwhelming technician, yet when you take the time to listen to him closely, he does a lot of subtle things that are really nice. Dylan is a living encyclopedia of folk traditions, and they find their way into his playing. He doesn't play in a way that normally calls attention to itself, but his rhythm and, when he's feeling it, lead playing have a lot more to offer than meets the eye.

Neil Young

Neil Young is always good live, especially with Crazy Horse. His acoustic guitar is bright and pretty, and his electric is the mirror opposite, just as loud and ferocious as can be. Yet for all the anger that he unleashes, all the dissonance and feedback, he is capable of playing with tender lyricism even at 110 decibels. The Ragged Glory tour was just fantastic, with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion baffling the fans in Cincinnati when I saw them and Neil's feedback laden rendition of "Blowin' in the Wind" was effective as both a commentary on the Gulf War and as a kiss across the sky to the late Jimi Hendrix. Perhaps less profoundly, the encore of "Piece of Crap" at Blossom in '96 was another great moment.

Jerry Garcia

I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole Deadhead thing. When I first saw the Grateful Dead in 1985, it was still something of an underground phenomenon and the atmosphere was enjoyable and conducive to receiving the Dead's particular amalgamation of American music. By the last time I saw them in '89 or '90, they had gone from playing amphitheaters to football stadiums and whatever I liked about the experience was lost in the process. Putting all that aside and simply listening to the music, though, Jerry Garcia was a versatile guitarist who was capable of playing with incredible inventiveness and was one of the most expressive soloists to ever pick up the instrument. When Jerry and the Dead were on top of their game, their performances had a transcendent quality matched only by The Who. One of the handful of concert events I feel most fortunate to have seen in my life was a 1987 weekend engagement by Jerry Garcia at the small, art deco Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles that was split between a bluegrass and folk oriented first acoustic set and a blues/rock electric set. I'll always remember those gigs.

James "Blood" Ulmer

James "Blood" Ulmer is a mercurial talent. One day he'll be doing an avant-garde jazz thing, the next day he'll be singing and playing Delta blues. I've seen him on two occasions, once in New York as the guest of a jam band that was in way over their heads but somehow pulled it off anyway (impressed, we stayed through the break to hear their set sans "Blood" and couldn't last to the end of the second song) and once here in Los Angeles with the accomplished jazz rhythm team of Reggie Workman on bass and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Idiosyncratic can be a backhanded compliment to bestow on someone, but in Ulmer's case it means never knowing what's coming next. A true one-of-a-kind guitarist and a pleasure to see live.

Michael Hampton

There was a period in the 1990s where I went to see every P-Funk concert in the Great State of Ohio. A lot of that had to do with George Clinton, of course, as well as the fact that I had a group of friends who were always up for the trip. But a lot of the appeal was in listening to great Michael Hampton on guitar. Sure, all twenty or thirty or fifty or however many players there are in the P-Funk Army are outstanding musicians, but Michael Hampton is special. He pumps out solid rhythm on the more funk-oriented numbers, and plays some mind-blowing stuff on the psychedelic ones.

Kenny Burrell

Kenny Burrell is a guitarist's guitarist. He plays with a high degree of musical sophistication and command, yet never forgets the primal appeal of the blues. His chordal playing is impeccable, and his leads are always creative and fluid. I find it is all too easy to get cynical about the guitar, given the way the instrument is so often misused these days, but a performance by Kenny Burrell is always a perfect antidote to that Frustration. Kenny Burrell's playing is inspirational, reminding those who need it that the guitar is an instrument with unlimited possibilities,