Honorable Mentions
Okay, here are the Honorable Mentions. Some of these are going to be ones that you might say, "Vannyboy, we can't be friends." In which case I'd say, "Wait...we were friends?"
These are just my opinions, of course. All of these honorable mentions are here because I simply couldn't fit them over the ones I put in my top 10, which, now that I think about it, is the whole meaning of "honorable mentions".
That being said, dive in. Please let me know what you think, and if you have a different list, send it to me.
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Eric Clapton
Why did I not put the man that Edward Van Halen says was his biggest inspiration in my Top 10? Because, as amazing as he is, I don’t believe he is quite as good as the other guys. By just a hair, really.
Clapton, known as “Slowhand” for the clap he used to get when he’d stop playing to change a broken string, is an absolute master with feel and tone. He has one fill in White Room with Cream (one of the most influential bands of all time), and another at 2:47 that, to this day, are filled with more soul than a Memphis catfish restaurant. And that’s just Cream! Clapton also had Derrick and the Dominos with Layla and a ton more, and his solo work, which is just incredible.
Really, I only have Clapton just outside the top 10 because I only had 10 spots and couldn’t lower the other guys. And as I mentioned, EVH considered him his biggest influence. Also, when George Harrison quit The Beatles, they thought briefly about staying together and replacing him with his best friend, Eric Clapton. Clapton was thiiiiiiiis close to being a Beatle.
So Clapton, as they say, is god.
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Allen Collins & Gary Rossington
Who? Only the two geniuses behind Lynyrd Skynyrd, that’s who! These two country boys helped create what we now know as Southern Rock. Matter of fact, along with The Allman Brothers, Skynyrd is credited with co-creating the genre. And they did it on the backs of Collins and Rossington.
In just 5 years (from their first album to the plane crash that ended the group for all intents and purposes) these two created some of the most memorable songs of all time, plus what many consider the greatest solo of all time: Freebird.
These guys are often overlooked in these "Top Of..." lists, and that's a shame. They absolutely belong here. They are the best in their genre...the genre they helped create.
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Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry was to Rock and Roll what Hank Williams was to country music, he was a singularity. While there were others around him that were equally important in bringing Rock and Roll to the masses (Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.), Berry was the one who did it with a guitar like no one else. Matter of fact, he was the Eddie Van Halen of his day, for sure. He didn’t bring any different styles to the table, so to speak. He was still in the pentatonic blues scale and stayed there for everything he ever wrote. But, oh boy, the songs he wrote set the world on fire!
Especially Johnny B. Goode.
Many of his songs sounded the same, but why shouldn’t they? He wrote them! Plus, frankly, he didn’t have a Chuck Berry to learn from…he WAS the blueprint. Simple as that. But he did it all with style and lots, and lots, of speed. And a duck walk. Which was awesome.
Chuck sort of stained his reputation with a few things later in life, such as, when playing in Memphis, on the day Elvis died, proclaimed that he was now the King of Rock and Roll, or taking video of women using the bathroom in his restaurant. Look them up if you like. But, do yourself a favor, just look up his music. Also, without Chuck Berry, we do not have The Beatles.
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Bo Diddley
Bo knows guitar, that’s a fact. Unlike B.B. King, Bo was a Rock and Roll guitarist from the blues, not just a blues guy. And he created THE single most influential rhythm in Rock and Roll: The Bo Diddley Beat.
Don’t believe me? HERE’S A LIST of just SOME of the songs that use this rhythm. It will blow your mind. Bo was definitely a good guitarist. Not near the top as far as technical skills, but that Bo Diddley Beat was a stroke (or…strum?) of genius. It’s still used today.
A lot.
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Jimmy Page
Okay, people are going to start throwing rocks at me, but hear me out! I understand that many…MANY…people consider Jimmy Page the greatest rock guitarist of all time, but I simply do not, and here is why:
- he stole a lot of his songs
- he played standard blues and pentatonic scales and really nothing else
- he didn’t really push the instrument forward
I simply think that Led Zeppelin, as a band, is overrated.
That being said, he IS one of the most influential guitarists of all time. His tone and attitude set the stage for hard rock in the future, even though a lot of their music wasn’t heavy at all. But they were the band that launched a thousand non-Beatles bands, and I have to give them credit for that. He was their guitarist. I have to give him credit for that.
Look Page is a good guitarist, and the songs he DID write were great. He was influential. They, Led Zeppelin were, and still are, one of the most popular of those late-60s/early 70s bands, made greater in the eyes of history than they really were.
Just like Jimmy Page.
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Nancy Wilson
It must be hard being a woman living in a man’s world. It must be reeeeeeeeaaaaally hard being a woman in a nearly exclusively man’s world. But when you have the chops that Nancy Wilson does, not a lot of doors can stay closed for long.
You can’t bring up Nancy Wilson without talking about her powerhouse singing sister, Anne. Together they make the badass rock band, Heart. How messed up is it being a woman in the music industry? Well, they wrote their biggest hit, Barracuda, about their anger towards their record company who, as a publicity stunt, released a made up story of an incestuous affair between Anne and Nancy.
Heart has been a staple on radio (and what used to be MTV) for a very, very long time. You have 1000% heard either/or Barracuda, Crazy On You and Magic Man. Most likely all three. Barracuda, in particular, is a lasting hit. The irony is that Barracuda’s famous opening was “borrowed” by Nancy from the band Nazareth’s cover of the Joni Mitchell song “This Flight Tonight”. Well, good artists borrow, great artists steal, as Picasso used to say.
But she is more than that. She is a kick-ass guitarist who, self-taught, has fused classical, folk, and rock into one seamless package. When opening for Van Halen she introduced Eddie Van Halen to the classical guitar which led to the masterpiece that is “Little Guitars”. She even gave him one of hers.
Besides dominating part of the 70s, Heart had big hits in the 1980s with “These Dreams”, “Alone”, “What About Love”, “Never”, and “Nothing At All”, which was on MTV and the radio all the time.
You gotta be tough to make a living in music. You gotta be really tough to make a living in rock music. You gotta be unbelievably tough to be a woman making a living in rock music. And you have to be a LEGEND to be a woman making a living for 40 years in rock music.
For her skills, amazing songs, and balls, Nancy Wilson absolutely belongs on this list.
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Robert Johnson
Bon Scott, former frontman of AC/DC wrote in the song "Let There Be Rock":
"The white man had the schmaltz. The black man had the blues.” Well, Robert Johnson had the blues, and he shaped them into what we understand to be Rock and Roll. Without his contributions it’s very possible that Rock and Roll would not exist. Rock and Roll changed the world. Not just America…the whole world. He was THAT important.
As far as his guitar skills go, he wasn’t all that great. Yes, he was decent for the crappy equipment he had. And he was really just playing the primitive version of the blues. He couldn’t have imagined how far people would push that instrument in the years to come, but that is not why he is on this list.
Of course, Johnson would most closely become associated with the crossroads and the devil and the whole “sell my soul for rock and roll” thing. Have you heard some of them in relation to Rock and Roll? But it’s unfair to take any stock in that crap. Johnson was a man with a lot of problems. One might say he had issues with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but, since he basically invented it, he only had problems with sex and drugs. But, he was a man with something to say, something that resonated with the rest of the world, turning so-called “black music” into “world music”.
Rock and Roll played a very heavy role in the fall of segregation. It’s just a sweet layer of justice for me to know that a man who suffered under that evil helped to end it. Even if he didn’t know it, we do, and THAT is why he is an honorable mention on this list.
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