Guitar World Readers Poll: The Greatest Guitarist of All Time

[Richard W]

In no particular order: Jason Becker, Shawn Lane, Guthrie Govan, and Steve Vai are the best imo.

[Endrik]

I am curious, why do you think he annoys them so much? Do they feel he is butchering their style?

I don't think they feel he's butchering their style as he doesn't play classical music in the first place. Yngwie plays pop music. His music has a very simple, rigid and conservative form just like all pop music no matter if you call pop music rhythm'n'blues, disco or heavy metal.

He annoys the hell out of some people because he plays the most cliché pseudo baroque licks with very banal rhythm, little dynamic variation and within laughably bad harmonic context. If Yngwie seriously wanted to show some serious baroque skills he'd focus on more creative form, compose complex counterpoint bass lines etc. But you never hear it from him.

And of course the term neo-classical used within that context is also ridiculous. Neo-Classical is modern classical music which uses a lot of Classical era (Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven etc.) elements. Something which Igor Stravinsky did in his mid period (his most boring period).

There's even a good comparison point. I remember when Yngwie composed for an orchestra. It was performed by Czech Philharmonic (a very good orchestra) and conducted by Yoel Levi (a good conductor). It's amazing how such a good orchestra could sound so bad. The reason was simple though. The music was terrible. It should have been called "Shitphony for Drunken Bolsheviks". And the guitar didn't go together with the orchestra at all.
Compared it to how Yoel Levi conducted Atlanta Symphony Orchestra when they played Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring". Jaw-dropping. Stravinsky's music is adventurous, rhythmically and harmonically very complex, well orchestrated, good textures, a lot of dynamic etc. The Rite of Spring is the best example of Stravinsky's early era genius and Yoel Levi did an amazing job conducting it.

Yngwie is a very talented guitarist with excellent pitch, he has amazing vibrato and plays with plenty of fire but his music is just terrible, philistine garbage with Guitar 101 for Beginner scale exercises played over and over again over that garbage.

[Endrik]

i think Paul Gilbert is 100times better than Shawn Lane. the guy can play anything, can shred, play tasty stuff, and makes everything look effortless.

Never heard him play over moving harmony. Never.
Never heard him playing something a bit more complex than ascending/descending small interval form at fast pace.

Doubt that he can play everything.

[atomic charvel guy]

From Endrik-
"Yngwie is a very talented guitarist with excellent pitch, he has amazing vibrato and plays with plenty of fire but his music is just terrible, philistine garbage with Guitar 101 for Beginner scale exercises played over and over again over that garbage."


endy,
that's dead on balls accurate, i feel the same way. he's so fuckin' great , but the tunes are a chore to get through for me.
i mean, i can take 1 yngwie tune at a time, but that's it, i could never listen to a whole CD, or even half, it's alot of repetition.

[atomic charvel guy]

that's why i posted that Yngwie van halen tribute tune on the last page, cuz i'd rather hear him play old VH than his tunes haa haa!!
and for you Yngwie disciples that may be offended, the guy is balls out sick on a guitar, and i love hearing him play hendrix tunes too.
and Rising Force was el magico when it first came out, it almost blew my head right off.
Spanish castle magic with Joe Lynn Turner on vocals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQWyNr0pKvk

[Axewielder]

Is it really even possible to be 100 times better than Shawn Lane?? :think:

[atomic charvel guy]

Is it really even possible to be 100 times better than Shawn Lane?? :think:

that's a good one Axe. I don't bother anymore with these top 100 lists, everyone has their favorites, there is no way to rank a guitar player
in my opinion. You can rank athletes, that's why they have statistics, but music is the driving force of the universe, it's unmeasurable.

[Jayster]

Is it really even possible to be 100 times better than Shawn Lane?? :think:

Haven't you heard of the legendary Estaban ????

[METAL MANIAC]

From Endrik-
"Yngwie is a very talented guitarist with excellent pitch, he has amazing vibrato and plays with plenty of fire but his music is just terrible, philistine garbage with Guitar 101 for Beginner scale exercises played over and over again over that garbage."


endy,
that's dead on balls accurate, i feel the same way. he's so fuckin' great , but the tunes are a chore to get through for me.
i mean, i can take 1 yngwie tune at a time, but that's it, i could never listen to a whole CD, or even half, it's alot of repetition.

I can see some your points but I have to disagree...I just can't see how you can say he is terrible in one sentence and fuckin' great in another...He will never get the credit he is due and that is why I got in this thread to start with but oh well, I am a little offended with the use of the word "garbage" and Yngwie or any other great musician for that matter in a descriptive sentence. Obviously his garbage affords him more to do with his time than we have to do with ours..so I rest my case on that...MM............

[Jayster]

+1. Still have 3 years worth of their issues from '88 on... granted, GFPM was 50% ads, 20% tabs and 30% columns/features but at least it wasn't a shill for every manufacturer that was advertising in it.

I used to buy this religiously after I was begining once I found a copy that had "Bach's bouree in Em" and "Skeletons in the closet" in the same issue, it was incredible to me at the time just picking up the guitar(after years of BS formal piano lessons).... Hahahahaha, I still remember the Jackson ads that featured nothing but heastock pointies!!!!!

I never really liked the mag it morphed into, but maybe that's because Nirvana tabs are ridiculous!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the derailment, as you were

[atomic charvel guy]

I can see some your points but I have to disagree...I just can't see how you can say he is terrible in one sentence and fuckin' great in another...He will never get the credit he is due and that is why I got in this thread to start with but oh well, I am a little offended with the use of the word "garbage" and Yngwie or any other great musician for that matter in a descriptive sentence. Obviously his garbage affords him more to do with his time than we have to do with ours..so I rest my case on that...MM............

i never said he was terrible, i just think his tunes are too repetitive for my ears. the guy is as accomplished a player as one may can possibly get,
but after a tune or two, i've kind of heard the whole thing already. i'll crank Far Beyond the Sun, and after it, it's time for a different
tune, that's all i am saying. and that's just my ears, others can listen to him all day, and that's great too.

[VitaminG]

i think Paul Gilbert is 100times better than Shawn Lane. the guy can play anything, can shred, play tasty stuff, and makes everything look effortless. & i think i saw Jimmy Page beat Chet Atkins, SORRY, jimmy wrote stairway GREAT (sarcasm), Chet could play circles around Page.

ooooh, watch yourself! You'll find yourself surrounded by Lane fanboys telling you how you clearly just don't have a mature enough ear to understand what Shawn is doing. And that if they have to explain how much better he is than every guitarist that has ever lived, you probably don't have to the mentual acuity to grasp it.

speaking of yngwie, here's a cool tribute to van halen, what a lineup, yngwie, doug from kings x, billy sheehan, and fuckin' vinnie colaiuta for godsakes.
light up the sky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KUCk6bsQA4

you can't go off of lists, be it any publication. there's just too many greats, everyone will always have their own favorites, leave it at that.

Loved Ying Yang's playing on that. It's my favourite track on the whole album. And there are a couple of pretty smoking VH covers on there.

this has been a paid presentation for aTomic Boy Enterprises (tm)

I used to buy this religiously after I was begining once I found a copy that had "Bach's bouree in Em" and "Skeletons in the closet" in the same issue, it was incredible to me at the time just picking up the guitar(after years of BS formal piano lessons).... Hahahahaha, I still remember the Jackson ads that featured nothing but heastock pointies!!!!!

I never really liked the mag it morphed into, but maybe that's because Nirvana tabs are ridiculous!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the derailment, as you were

The Nirvana tabs were great! They were so space-saving. One page, mainly chord slashes, repeat, repeat, repeat.

[atomic charvel guy]

gary,
"i'm the one" with doug aldrich is a hairy ride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbctbWJkEHw

[Endrik]

I can see some your points but I have to disagree...I just can't see how you can say he is terrible in one sentence and fuckin' great in another...He will never get the credit he is due and that is why I got in this thread to start with but oh well, I am a little offended with the use of the word "garbage" and Yngwie or any other great musician for that matter in a descriptive sentence. Obviously his garbage affords him more to do with his time than we have to do with ours..so I rest my case on that...MM............

What case? You just defended mediocrity and populist entertainment business model instead of creative integrity. Synthetic attributes such as money, success, fame etc. are irrelevant to music. Music doesn't care about this at all.
Yngwie has talent when it comes to playing an instrument but not enough talent to create music which is not banal. He has a lot of fun doing what he does but why should I care? I only care what I can listen. I don't like artistic death.

I guess I'm nostalgic for Romantic period. I like people who reached for the stars, pushing the limits and were constantly on the edge just to improve themselves and create something as good as human beings possibly could create.

I hate this cynicism in music. Guitarist gets on the stage plays ascending and descending scale and arpeggio runs really fast, doesn't pay attention to harmonic context, colours, texture etc. Believes everyone in the audience are bunch of idiots who buy this. I'm not impressed when someone vomits in my face anymore.

Why should I read a book where I have hundreds of pages of A B C D E F G written all over it. A simple writing exercise for hundreds of pages. What do I get out from it? How does it compare to "Don Quixote", "War and Peace" or "Madame Bovary"? A B C D E F G compared to actual words, phrases, sentences etc. to express something.
Why should anyone care for A B C D E F G exercise in music instead of "War and Peace" of music?

[METAL MANIAC]

What case? You just defended mediocrity and populist entertainment business model instead of creative integrity. Synthetic attributes such as money, success, fame etc. are irrelevant to music. Music doesn't care about this at all.
Yngwie has talent when it comes to playing an instrument but not enough talent to create music which is not banal. He has a lot of fun doing what he does but why should I care? I only care what I can listen. I don't like artistic death.

I guess I'm nostalgic for Romantic period. I like people who reached for the stars, pushing the limits and were constantly on the edge just to improve themselves and create something as good as human beings possibly could create.

I hate this cynicism in music. Guitarist gets on the stage plays ascending and descending scale and arpeggio runs really fast, doesn't pay attention to harmonic context, colours, texture etc. Believes everyone in the audience are bunch of idiots who buy this. I'm not impressed when someone vomits in my face anymore.

Why should I read a book where I have hundreds of pages of A B C D E F G written all over it. A simple writing exercise for hundreds of pages. What do I get out from it? How does it compare to "Don Quixote", "War and Peace" or "Madame Bovary"? A B C D E F G compared to actual words, phrases, sentences etc. to express something.
Why should anyone care for A B C D E F G exercise in music instead of "War and Peace" of music?

Ok, let me ask you where is your place is guitar musical history????? I did not defend mediocrity ,Yngwie is anything but that...I never have nor do I have this kind of talent but sir you seem to imply that you do...so let's see it! Let us see you come up with something better instead of sitting behind a chair talking shit!!!! We all have our opinions but I never disrespect someone above my talent level....if your talent is above Yngwie let me hear it and then I will shut the fuck up, otherwise you do the same........MM