The New Guitar Gods

The guitar has been the king of rock & roll instruments for more than half a century. What you are about to read are twenty reasons why the present and future of rock guitar are as exciting and explosive as its history. In attack, technique, lyrical ambition and experimental drive, these players are all descendants of the original heroes -- including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and Jimmy Page -- who transformed the electric guitar in the Sixties and Seventies. As John Frusciante says, "For me, the genuine guitar heroes had a lot to say musically and put themselves out there. They tried to take the instrument to new places."

But Frusciante, Derek Trucks, John Mayer and the other guitarists in these pages are all heroes and gods in their own, often extreme, right. They are also proof that, long after Chuck Berry minted the fundamental twang and addicting joy of rock & roll guitar on his 1955 debut single, "Maybellene," there remains much to discover and study in the unlimited alchemy you get from wood, six strings, electricity and the highly personal poetry of touch and strum. The distinguishing mark of rock's greatest guitarists is, Mayer insists, "they're all stuck on what they're seeking, not where they are."

This celebration differs from our 2003 survey, "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," in some ways. The guitarists here are, by the measure of rock's extended history, new. Most are under forty, and all have made their impact in the last two decades. Also, there is no ranking. Numbered lists can be fun; we still get blowback from last time about who should have been up, out, in or down. But nerve and originality are not easily quantifiable, and that goes for record sales too. Frusciante and Mayer are among the few multiplatinum sellers here. Yet everyone in these pages is a true star of the instrument.

In one central way, however, this tribute to the guitar and those who play it is exactly like the 2003 issue: You cannot turn a page without a reference or a deep bow of gratitude to Hendrix. Frusciante, Mayer and Trucks all speak of him with informed reverence, and Hendrix's cataclysmic influence appears repeatedly in the sound and vision of the other players. In the Rock & Roll Guitar Hall of Fame, Jimi Hendrix is, by every standard, Number One. Everyone else -- including the hundreds of great guitarists who will be cited in the blizzard of letters and e-mails sure to follow -- is Number Two.


Ask John Mayer if he is a guitarist or a singer-songwriter, and he replies immediately: "Always a guitarist." As a kid, he goes on, "I had this vision -- sitting by a window on a rainy afternoon, just playing guitar. I said to myself, 'If I have enough strings and electricity, I can play guitar forever. I don't need anything else.'" Today, Mayer, 29, is more famous as a singer-songwriter. His first two albums, 2001's Room for Squares and 2003's Heavier Things, have sold a combined 6 million copies, and his latest record, Continuum, is nominated for five Grammys, including Album of the Year. But as a teenager, Mayer -- who was born in 1977 in Bridgeport, Connecticut -- was so obsessed with Texas guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan that, Mayer recalls, laughing, "in my mind, I was on my way to being the next Stevie Ray." Instead, Mayer is a pop star and a dynamic, accomplished guitarist with an electric-Chicago attack and melodic concision best heard on Try!, his 2005 live album with the John Mayer Trio. He is also a passionate apostle for the blues elders he loves so much, such as Buddy Guy, B.B. King and Eric Clapton. "I never practice," Mayer insists. "I'm always playing. I want to write songs people can just jam on."

In your Jimi Hendrix essay in our 2004 "Immortals" issue, you wrote, "Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix." Can you elaborate on that?
If I could play more like Hendrix, I would. I'd want to do it all the time. But who I am is an amalgam of pop and something rootsier. It's not a choice. As for Jimi Hendrix, all guitar players feel that way: "I'm not him."

When did you get your first guitar?
It was January 1991. I was thirteen. My father rented a Washburn acoustic guitar from a music store. I took it to the bathroom, closed the door and sat there, thinking, "How do I find out what's in here? What are you hiding?"

I'm attracted to what I don't know. Everyone else I knew said things like, "I watched him play, and it made me want to quit." I never wanted to put the guitar down. I watched guys who made me want to pick it up. That's when you have the disease: You get your ass kicked, and you say, "I'm going to figure out why I lost that fight."


When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights," says John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Then he gives an example of how high he gets with six strings and electricity: his hair-raising solo on a recent Chili Peppers B side, "Lyon 6.06.06," recorded live in France last year. "I remember my brain completely going off. The energy flows to such a degree that there's no reason to think." But Frusciante, who turns thirty-seven on March 5th, is also one of the most advanced technical guitarists in rock, a vibrant, chameleonic stylist whose melodic precision and invention were pivotal on the Chili Peppers' commercial breakthrough, 1991's BloodSugarSexMagik. Born in New York and raised in Southern California, Frusciante obsessively practiced guitar in his bedroom, playing along to records, until he joined the Chili Peppers in 1989, replacing the late Hillel Slovak. Frusciante abruptly quit in 1992, beginning a seven-year descent into drug-fueled isolation. But since his return for 1999's Californication, Frusciante's early fusion of punk energy and the exploratory grandeur of Jimi Hendrix has bloomed into a colorful, explosive originality that is all over the Chili Peppers' recent double album, Stadium Arcadium.

Who are your guitar heroes?
I always felt it was limiting to stick with guitarists for your inspiration. I also draw inspiration from what you might call guitar anti-heroes -- people with an originality that goes beyond the guitar-hero aesthetic.

OK, who are your anti-heroes?
Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground. In the Seventies, Keith Levene of Public Image, Ltd. and John McGeoch of Magazine invented interesting styles. I'm a big fan of Matthew Ashman of Bow Wow Wow. I have nothing against flash. But I grew up in a time when heroism and flashiness were overtaking the desire to make beautiful music. Kurt Cobain took guitar playing further than anyone with way more technique had done in a while.

Who made you want to play guitar?
It was Ace Frehley, Jimmy Page and Joe Perry. But it was a while before anybody would buy me an electric guitar. By then, I was into [Black Flag's] Greg Ginn, [the Germs'] Pat Smear, and Joe Strummer and Mick Jones [of the Clash].

But the point of punk was that you didn't have to be a great player to get your angst across.
It was a long time before I thought of technique meaning anything at all. But Pat has an amazing rhythm-guitar style. Most punk guitarists base their thing on down strokes. Pat has an interesting combination of up-and-down strokes. I can't describe it. But the colors and feelings in what he did were meaningful to me as a kid. They spoke to my brain.

What is your role in the Chili Peppers? You have big room to roam amid Anthony Kiedis' vocals, Flea's bass and Chad Smith's drums.
Before I joined, the Chili Peppers were all style. The sound wasn't about harmonic movement or musical texture. It was purely energy. Hillel's playing was much simpler than other guitar players can get away with, because of how busy Flea was on bass.

Once I felt like I understood that simplicity, I put aside my idea of the guitar's original role in the band. I wasn't just writing things that reminded me of the Chili Peppers. "Under the Bridge" [on BloodSugarSexMagik] was an attempt to do a song in the style of Jimi Hendrix's prettier songs -- "Castles Made of Sand," "Bold as Love."

How did you write the guitar part for "Under the Bridge"?
Anthony wrote the lyrics and vocal melody. I went over to his house, and we put his melody in shape according to chords I thought would be good behind it. I got the idea for the chorus from a Joe Jackson song, "In Every Dream Home (a Nightmare)" [from 1980's Beat Crazy]. It has this drum break before the chorus, then the music starts on the offbeat. In "Under the Bridge," I did the same thing.

The chord I play before the drum break -- I got that from "Rip Off," by T. Rex. I figured I'd rip it off [laughs]. You just hold the major-7th chord. In his song, it's a C major 7th. In mine, it's E major 7th.

How much of a solo is improvisation -- and how much is advance planning?
Most are spur-of-the-moment. But I make it a point to come up with a way to start a couple of them. On Stadium Arcadium, I have a few written solos, on "Dani California" and "Make You Feel Better." The solos in "Hey" and "Only 18" were different from take to take. In "Hey," that's the solo I played on the basic track, only it was from a different take. So we edited in that solo section.

Did you play or practice music in the seven years you were out of the Chili Peppers?
I pretty much put down the guitar that whole time.

Did you have your chops when you rejoined?
I didn't have my chops at all. But I've come to deeply understand that it doesn't matter. I could have been a defeatist: "I remember when my left hand used to be strong like Jimi Hendrix's." That's a sign of somebody's strength as a guitar player -- the sound of the strength of their left hand. But everything I learned as a person in that period, everything I had been through as a soul -- that all went into the music. I'm happier with my playing on Californication than with my playing on BloodSugarSexMagik. Even though I had way less ability, I see myself doing the best I could and coming from the right places. On BloodSugar, I'm still seeing everything in relationship to Hillel. On Californication, it's "What can we do? It's four friends playing music. We can do anything."

Do you have a favorite Hendrix album?
I'm an Electric Ladyland guy. His music always sounds perfect to me, because he's bending sound, taking care of music in every dimension. Where most people think of it in two dimensions, he's thinking of it in four.

I don't think there's a better guitar player in history. He's not something that can be improved on. And there's the spirit that goes into it. He creates a place where you can be high and hang out and lose yourself. He's bringing out aspects of sound we didn't know were there. I feel there are people moving ahead on that front, but they're not so much guitar players -- like [electronic artists] Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. They continue the work Jimi Hendrix started, but not on the guitar.

Do you ever wonder if, after half a century of rock guitar, there is anything left to discover?
Luckily, I've always thought of myself as a musician more than a guitar player. Since I'm always changing as a person and my tastes are always changing, that is reflected in the ways I approach my instrument. I never feel like I'm running out of ideas, because it is clear to me -- music is infinite.