#5 Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix and army friend Billy Cox moved to nearby Clarksville, Tennessee, where they formed a band called The King Kasuals. Playing in low-paying gigs at obscure venues, the 'band' eventually moved to Nashville. Playing and sometimes living in the clubs along Jefferson Street, the traditional heart of Nashville's black community and home to a lively rhythm and blues scene offered some sort of 'existence'. In November 1962, Hendrix participated in his first studio session, where his wild but still undeveloped playing found him cut from the soundboard.
In 1966, Hendrix formed his own band, Jimmy James and The Blue Flames, composed of various friends he would casually meet at Manny's Music Shop, including a 15-year old runaway from California named Randy Wolfe. Since there were two musicians named "Randy" in the group, Hendrix dubbed Wolfe "Randy California" and the other "Randy Texas". Randy California would later co-found the band Spirit with Ed Cassidy.
Hendrix and his new band quickly gained local attention and played throughout New York City, but their primary spot was a residency at the Caf Wha? on MacDougal Street in the West Village. During this period, Hendrix met and worked with singer-guitarist Ellen McIlwaine and guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, who was an employee at Manny's. Hendrix also met Frank Zappa during this time, who is credited as having introduced Hendrix to the newly-invented wah-wah pedal.
In the early morning hours of September 18, 1970, Jimi Hendrix was found dead in the basement flat of the Samarkand Hotel at 22 Lansdowne Crescent in London. Hendrix died amid circumstances which have never been fully explained. He had spent the night with his German girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, and likely died in bed after drinking wine and taking nine Vesperax sleeping pills, then asphyxiating on his own vomit.
Hendrix made a gateway to future guitarists. He inspired many guitarist. One being Stevie Ray Vaughan...
#4 Stevie Ray Vaughan
Even though Vaughan initially wanted to play the drums, he was given a guitar when he was 8 years old.. Vaughan's brother, Jimmie Vaughan, gave him his first guitar lessons. Vaughan later quoted in Guitar Player Magazine that " My brother Jimmie actually was one of the biggest influences on my playing. He really was the reason why I started to play, watching him and seeing what could be done." After his brother showed him a few basic chords, Vaughan taught himself to play. He played entirely by ear and never learned how to read sheet music. By the time he was 13 years old he was playing in clubs where he met many of his blues idols. A few years later he dropped out of Kimball High School and moved to Austin to pursue music.
Vaughan's first recording band was called Paul Ray and the Cobras. They played at clubs and bars in Austin during the mid-1970s, and released one single. Vaughan later recorded two other singles under the band name The Cobras. Following the break-up of The Cobras, he formed Triple Threat in late 1975, which included bassist Jackie Newhouse, drummer Chris Layton, vocalist Lou Ann Barton, and sax player Johnny Reno. Barton left the band in 1978 to pursue a solo career, followed by Reno in 1979. The three remaining members started performing under the name Double Trouble. Vaughan became the band's lead singer.
On August 25 and 26, 1990, Vaughan and Double Trouble played shows at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin. At the end of the show, Eric Clapton introduced Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Jimmie Vaughan, along with Stevie Ray Vaughan. All of the musicians played a 15-minute rendition of "Sweet Home Chicago". After the song ended, all the guitarists hugged and went backstage. Double Trouble drummer, Chris Layton, recalls his last conversation with Vaughan backstage. He then remembers when Vaughan said he had to call his girlfriend, Janna Lapidus, back in Chicago. He headed out the door to the helicopters.
The musicians expected a long bus ride back to Chicago. Vaughan was informed that three seats were open on one of the helicopters returning to Chicago with Clapton's crew, enough for Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, and Jimmie Vaughan's wife Connie. It turned out there was only one seat left, which Stevie Ray Vaughan requested from his brother, who obliged. Taking off into deep fog, the helicopter crashed moments later into a ski slope on the side of a hill within the Alpine Valley Resort. Vaughan, the pilot, and two members of Clapton's crew died on impact. No one realized that the crash had occurred until the helicopter failed to arrive in Chicago, and the wreckage was only found with the help of its locator beacon. The main cause of the crash was believed to be pilot error. The next morning Stevie Ray Vaughan's brother Jimmie and good friend Eric Clapton were called to identify the bodies.
He distanced himself from most guitarists with his innovative guitar sound. He was a true legend
#3 Randy Rhoads
By the time Rhoads was 14, he was in a band called Violet Fox (after his mother's middle name, Violet). Rhoads taught his best friend Kelly Garni how to play bass, and together they formed Quiet Riot when Rhoads was about 17.
In 1979, former Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne was forming a new band. Future bassist Dana Strum recommended Rhoads to Osbourne. Rhoads got the call for the audition just before the last Quiet Riot gig. He walked in with his signature polka-dot Flying V guitar and a fender practice amp and started warming up; Osbourne immediately gave him the job. Rhoads recalled later, "I just tuned up and did some riffs, and he said, 'You've got the gig.' I had the weirdest feeling, because I thought, 'You didn't even hear me yet.'" Osbourne described Rhoads' playing as "God entering my life." Before joining Ozzy's band, Rhoads taught guitar school for five years.
On March 19, 1982, the band was headed to a festival in Orlando, Florida, when they stopped at the owner of the bus company's house, Jerry Calhoun, in Leesburg, Florida after driving much of the night. The driver, Andrew Aycock, took Rhoads and hairdresser Rachel Youngblood on a flight in a Beechcraft F35 he had taken without permission. Apparently, during the flight, an attempt was made to "buzz" the tour bus where the other band members were sleeping. They succeeded three times but the fourth time it went horribly wrong. The right wing clipped the right side of the tour bus by accident and crashed into Jerry Calhoun's nearby mansion completely destroying the front. Nobody in the mansion was hurt. Rhoads, age 25, was killed instantly, as were Aycock, 36, and Youngblood, 58. It was found later that Aycock had some amount of cocaine in his system; Rhoads's toxicology test revealed no illicit drugs.
Who knows how much better he could have gotten at guitar. He has one of the greatest sounds I've ever heard.
#2 Tony Iommi
Tony Iommi is synonymous with heavy rock, having more or less invented the genre single-handedly with the dark and doom of Black Sabbath.
But Iommi's musical career was nearly derailed prematurely when he suffered a horrible accident at a sheet metal factory, when a machine sliced off the tips of the fingers on his right hand. Depressed and figuring that his guitar playing days were behind him, a friend turned him onto guitarist Django Reinhardt (who lost use of two fingers in a gypsy caravan campfire accident), inspiring Iommi to give the six-string another go, with soft plastic tips attached to the ends of his fingers.
Many fans focused on Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio in the Black Sabbath days. Tony Iommi wasn't well recognized. Personally, if it wasn't for Tony Iommi, I don't think Black Sabbath would have been anywhere near as successful as they are with Tony Iommi. He was the God of Guitar Riffs.
#1 Eddie Van Halen
As a child, Edward immediately started classical piano training, and won several talent competitions as a child . Upon their arrival in America, his parents immediately sought a piano tutor for him and his older brother, Alex Van Halen.
However, playing the piano did not prove sufficiently engaging - he once said in an interview, "Who wants to sit in front of the piano? That's boring." Consequently, whilst Alex began playing the guitar, Eddie bought a drum kit and began practicing drumming. According to Eddie, while he was delivering newspapers (to pay for his drum kit) Alex would practice on it. After Eddie heard Alex's performance of the The Surfaris' drum solo in the song "Wipe Out", he grew annoyed that his brother had overtaken his ability and decided to switch and begin learning how to play the electric guitar.
Eddie was approximately twelve years old when he started playing guitar, and practiced constantly. He has stated that he would often walk around at home with his guitar strapped on and unplugged, practicing. He once claimed that he had learned almost all of Eric Clapton's solos in the band Cream "note for note" by age 14; however in later interviews he contradicted this by stating he could never play the solos precisely, instead he would modify them slightly to suit his style.
In April 1996, in an interview with Guitar World, when asked about how he went from playing his first open A chord to playing "Eruption", Eddie replied:
"Practice I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Schilts Malt talls. My brother would go out at 7pm to party and get laid, and when he'd come back at 3am, I would still be sitting in the same place, playing guitar. I did that for years — I still do that."
Guitarist Eddie Van Halen redefined what electric guitar could do, developing a blindingly fast technique with a variety of self-taught two-handed tapping, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and effects that mimicked the sound of machines and animals.
His creative guitar skills and sounds have earned my #1 spot in the 5 greatest guitarists of all time