4 Reasons Why I Don't Like Rolling Stone's "Greatest Guitarists" List

I like lists. Heck, I even love lists. I love seeing people and things and places ranked just as much as the next person. That said, I have never liked Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” I dislike the list for a few reasons. You should be aware that from here on out I field only complaints—some nuggets of compliment to the insight of RS writers and editors—but mostly complaint. My response, fittingly, takes on the form of a list.

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1. There are no guidelines

“Greatest” is a loaded word. Standing alone, as it does in so many supposedly “critical” contexts, it doesn’t mean anything. “Favorite” or “influential” or “best-selling” all connote specific guiding principles, although some are more obscure or difficult to parse through than others. It would not be a problem if RS phrased the list as their “favorite” guitarists; that would imply a subjective measurement with which readers/writers (like me!) cannot literally contest. The list would become an exercise in taste, which is fine with me, because so much of RS (music/film/culture reviews) is premised upon their opinions being better informed, better researched, better observed than those of the rest of the world.

But they don’t phrase the list in such a way. Instead, as I’ve already harped on, they claim it as a list of the “greatest” guitarists. Given the placement of so many key early blues and rock figures, the notion of “influence” weighs heavily on the whole affair. The way they explain the list (at least on the RS website) is that they gathered “a panel of top guitarists and other experts to rank their favorites and explain what separates the legends from everyone else” (Rollingstone.com). But was that the only guideline they provided these voters? I assume—perhaps incorrectly—that this group of mostly guitarists was not assembled into a single space in which they carried out this grand debate. Rather, I would think that each participant (besides contributing RS editors, who probably had a more inside understanding on the project) had his or her own differing set of valuations.

So what are we left with? Are we left with a collection of “favorites” that somehow translates into “greatest” by virtue of the participants? Are we trying to create a canon of guitarists? If that is the intention, then I doubt there is much scholarly sensibility at work. In part, those who actively participate in the art form create the canon, but readers and scholars also help formulate the canon. Hemingway (and those who studied him) was fond of pointing to Sherwood Anderson’s short story cycle Winesburg, Ohio as a formative experience in terms of his writing. But is Winesburg, Ohio part of the short story canon the same way that Hemingway or Flannery O’Connor are? I don’t doubt that Anderson’s work has a place in an extended vision of the American literature canon, but I don’t think one would comfortably posit his work sitting next to the like of “Big Two-Hearted River.”

I would offer that RS either clarify the guidelines of the list or introduce far more input from critics and writers to offset the literal monopoly that guitarists have on the list. They might even go so far as to reshape the list into two separate parts similar to how Sight & Sound conducts their “greatest” (another problematically titled list) films list—breaking it into the list from directors and the list from critics.

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2. Why is John Lennon on the list?

I don’t offer this quite as a complaint, but rather as an annoying feature. Some of the folks on this list are givens; if Hendrix had not been at the top of the list, there would have been a violent backlash. But there are other contributions that seem like merely pandering either directly to the stars themselves or their legacies. I’ll rag on Lennon because it is the most glaring error in the list.

Even RS has some trouble justifying Lennon’s presence. Lennon’s musical chops are decidedly thin: he was merely capable on guitar and piano, but he had a brilliant voice and an otherworldly knack for writing music. Lennon’s inclusion raises the question of whether or not he would have been included in the list had he not been both a member of The Beatles and a successful solo artist in his own right. I apologize if that seems like a dumb point, but I think it’s a point worth making. Would, for instance, Lennon have been brought into the studio to lay down a rhythm guitar track? It might even be worth comparing him to Ry Cooder (another guitarist on the list at #31 compared to Lennon’s #55), who is actually someone who might have been pulled into the studio for a rhythm guitar track.

My complaint raises the question of whether or not we can ever truly separate a songwriter from his guitar work (or, for that matter, his work on any other instrument). In the case of other guitarists on this list—say, separating Angus Young from his riffs in “Back In Black”—I think that would be a contentious claim. But is “often adding rawness to pristine pop songs” deserving of #55 in the “top 100 greatest guitarists”? I think not…

3. What are we supposed to make of the changes?

RS published a list in the same spirit in 2003. In some sense, we aren’t supposed the make anything of the differences between the two lists. As I pointed out above, the more recent list was composed of guitarists selected by a diverse group of people. On the other hand, one of the RS senior editors, David Fricke, compiled the 2003 list.

But that doesn’t make the changes any easier to parse through; Fricke is a smart man and makes smart choices, especially in terms of influence, that a guitarist might as well have made. But he also provides choices that reveal a critical voice—something that seems largely absent in the recent list. For instance, renowned Malian musician Ali Farka Touré and English folkie Bert Jansch make appearances on Fricke’s list, but go without mention in the newest list. There are curious movements with the new list as well: why, for instance, does Duane Allman slide from #2 down to #9? Why does Eddie Van Halen jump from #70 to #8? Gilmour up to #14 from #82? Why does Prince appear at #33?! He’s nowhere on the first list!

4. What kind of music are we talking about?

I broached this when I expressed admiration for Fricke’s inclusion of Touré and Jansch…exactly what kind of music are we dealing with when we say “greatest guitarist of all time”? Does RS place implicit limitations on which styles of music they choose to include? The obvious answer is yes—of course they do. They focus on rock music, often straying into the blues. But folk music is largely absent in both lists, along with classical music and, more generally, world music.

Next time around, I can only hope that RS considers the matter more closely…and maybe takes some cues from the Sight & Sound poll.