We Asked 300+ Guitarists the Best Lead Player of All Time. These Are the Top 15
We asked 300+ guitar players who they thought was the greatest lead player of all time.
Now, bear with us because we already know that this is a matter of opinion. We’re not trying to start arguments, or create a “competition” where there isn’t one. But it’s a fun question to see what everyone says.
So here’s the countdown, straight from our poll. Who do you think guitarists named the greatest lead player of all time?
#15. James Burton
James Burton is the session legend’s session legend, if you know what we mean.
Burton played behind Elvis, Ricky Nelson, and about half the records you’ve ever loved, and most don’t even know his name was on them.
The pollers who named him were very passionate and confident about it. So, if you’ve never gone down the Burton rabbit hole, that should be on your to-do list this week.
#14. Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton is the one name your non-guitarist uncle can also name. Slowhand to most. The story goes the nickname came from crowds doing a slow handclap while he calmly restrung a broken string mid-set.. slow hand, Clapton, and it apparently stuck.
By the mid-’60s somebody had spray-painted “Clapton is God” on a London wall, and he was barely into his twenties. But his rรฉsumรฉ backed it up. From the Bluesbreakers “Beano” record with John Mayall, to Cream, then Derek and the Dominos and “Layla”.
But it was never about speed. Cream-era Clapton into the Layla years is a tone and a feel that launched a thousand blues-rock players.
If you’ve only ever filed Clapton under “dad rock,” pull up the Bluesbreakers album and listen to what he was doing in 1966.
#13. Brian May
Brian May is the sound of Queen, and he made it on a guitar he built in his bedroom with his dad, partly out of an old fireplace mantel. They called it the Red Special, and he’s played almost nothing else since.
The rest of the rig was just as homemade. He runs treble boosters into a wall of Vox AC30s and picks with a sixpence coin instead of a pick, and it creates a tone that almost no others can replicate.
And while his gear is fascinating, May’s real signature is the layering. He stacks guitar parts into harmonies and it makes him sound like a full brass section. An example of this is the guitar choir you hear on “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Killer Queen.”
If you’ve only ever thought of Queen as a singalong band, go watch “Brighton Rock” below and hear what he does on it.
#12. Joe Satriani
Joe Satriani is the professor. He taught half the shred guys you’d put on this list, Steve Vai and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett among them, then went out and out-played most of them.
His breakout record was the all-instrumental “Surfing with the Alien,” a guitar album with no singer.
But what makes him really special is that he’s melodic and tasteful for a guy who can do anything with both hands. He can tap and dive-bomb and sweep with the best of them, and yet most of his songs are built around a melody you could hum.
If you’ve written Satriani off as just a technical guy, watch “Always With Me, Always With You” below and hear how much feeling he gets out that song.
#11. Ritchie Blackmore
Ritchie Blackmore gave us Deep Purple, Rainbow, and one of the most copied riffs on planet Earth. Every kid who has ever picked up a guitar in a music store has played those four notes from “Smoke on the Water.”
What really set Blackmore apart was the way he pulled classical phrasing into hard rock. He grew up on Bach and baroque scales, then jumped to a Strat, and that was the blueprint a whole generation of neoclassical players learned to shred from.
If all you know is the “Smoke on the Water” riff, watch him stretch out on “Highway Star” below and hear where guys like Yngwie Malmsteen got the idea.
#10. David Gilmour
If feel is the thing you care about, David Gilmour is your guy. We all know that.
As the voice of Pink Floyd, he built his whole reputation on space and patience. The “Comfortably Numb” solo is the proof, and it still gets voted the greatest solo of all time.
If you’ve never really given his playing a chance, watch the live “Comfortably Numb” below and notice how long he lets each bend hang there.
#9. Roy Clark
Roy Clark was the dark horse pick, and we loved seeing it in our poll. Most folks know Clark from Hee Haw, the country variety show he co-hosted for years, which completely buries the fact that he was an insanely good guitar player.
Banjo, guitar, mandolin, it didn’t matter what you handed him, he could rip through country chicken-pickin’ one minute and a clean flamenco piece like “Malagueรฑa” the next.
If your idea of Roy Clark is a TV variety show, watch the footage below.
#8. Gary Moore
Gary Moore had the tone, the chops, and the aching blues vibrato.
There were very few players that moved between metal and blues the way he did and made both sound good. He gained recognition shredding hard rock with Thin Lizzy, and then later poured all that firepower into the blues.
If you only know one Moore song, watch the “Still Got the Blues” solo below.
#7. Stevie Ray Vaughan
SRV came up over and over, and for good reason.
He played Texas blues through a beat-up Strat strung with cables, and he hit harder than physics should allow while still making it look easy. He took the old blues he grew up on and played it with so much force.
He was gone way too soon (RIP), but his playing still sets the bar for every blues player who picked up a Strat after him.
Take a few minutes to watch the “Texas Flood” solo below:
#6. Randy Rhoads
Randy Rhoads earned the sixth spot on this list in almost no time at all. The Ozzy years were sadly short, but the legacy is enormous.
He poured classical training into metal, writing solos that felt composed rather than just shredding.
Then passed away at the age of 25 in a plane crash. Ironically, it was right as he was talking about leaving rock to study classical guitar full time. That “what if” is one of the saddest things to think about.
Watch the “Crazy Train” solo below and remember he was barely into his twenties when he wrote it:
#5. Dimebag Darrell
As the engine behind Pantera, Dimebag Darrell’s tone was a buzzsaw, squeals were his signature, and the riffs hit like a truck. He took everything his ’80s shred heroes taught him and aimed it at being as heavy as possible.
We lost him far too early; he was shot onstage in 2004, which only made the metal world hold onto his legacy tighter (and rightly so). And I think we can all agree that every heavy player who came after owes him something.
Watch the “Cemetery Gates” solo below and hear how much melody he hid inside the heaviness:
#4. Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page is the architect of the riff as we know it.
Zeppelin built the temple, and Page laid every brick. He was sloppy live sometimes, sure, but nobody cared then and nobody cares now.
Half his genius was in the producing, too. He layered guitars in the studio in ways nobody had really tried yet, which is why a Zeppelin record still sounds unbelievable so many years later.
Watch him pull “Stairway to Heaven” together live below:
#3. Jimi Hendrix
A lot of people assume Jimi Hendrix wins this one by default. But he landed third in our poll.
Unfortunately, Jimi only had about three years at the top before he was gone, but in that time he rewrote what the instrument could do including the feedback, the whammy bar, the wah, and all the stuff we now take for granted. He was the one who turned it into music instead of noise.
Every player after him was playing in a world Jimi built, whether they want to believe it or not.
Watch the Woodstock “Star-Spangled Banner” below:
#2. Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen came so close to the top, and the case for him is pretty simple. He influenced more guitar players than almost anyone of his era. Every rock guitarist in the ’80s was either trying to copy Eddie or actively trying not to copy him, which says a lot.
When “Eruption” came out, it more or less reset what people thought was possible on guitar.
He had the brown sound, tapping, and sense of joy, and he finished just one vote short of being #1 on this list.
Watch the “Eruption” solo below:
#1. Jeff Beck
Jeff Beck won our poll by a hair, but a winner is a winner. And it’s the most player’s player answer you could ask for.
The thing about Beck is that he never had a signature trick he leaned on. He went from the Yardbirds to instrumental fusion to whatever he felt like that decade, and at some point he ditched the pick and just played with his fingers and the whammy bar.
When a poll full of guitarists picks one of their own as the best, that tells you something.
Watch him play “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” below:
A Final Note
So there you have it. We had fifteen players and hundreds of voters. Tthe winner was someone nobody outside a room full of guitarists would have picked first, but he was also the best possible answer.
