"Top 100 Guitarists of All Time"

Several years ago, Rolling Stone released a cover story called "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Clearly, the people from Rolling Stone and I have different definitions of what defines great. There are several problems that I personally have with this list. For one thing, it is greviously foolish to create such a list when there are so many different opinions on the subject. The whole list is based on opinion, and should never have been created in the first place. In my opinion, many of the guitarists on the list don't belong there and some of the guitarists that I think are some of the best of all the time are either near the bottom of the list or not on the list at all. For examle, I know that many people believe that the list was blasphemous to rank Van Halen as 70 and to rank Jack White as 17. Personally, I am disgusted that Keith Richards was ranked so highly and Angus Young was near 100th. To me, it seems half the people on the list got on because they won some sort of popularity contest.

Here are some examples of people I think should not have made the list. For one, I don't think ANY guitarist from a punk band belongs on the list. Because punk music is traditionally fueled EXCLUSIVELY by raw adolescent energy, it requires little to no guitar skill to be in a punk band. That eliminates such guitarists as Johnny Ramone, Ron Asheton, and Greg Ginn. Also, I don't believe Joni Mitchell should have made the list. She is primarily a singer and songwriter aside from being a decent guitarist. If they put her on the list, they might as well have put Bob Dylan on the list. Also, Trey Anastasio does not belong on the list. He was a sloppy guitarist whose primary audience consisted of stoners. The Rolling Stone people were probably smoking something when they picked him.

Here are some examples of people I think should have made the list. This may be very biased since half of these people are some of my favorite guitarists; but then again, this whole post is biased. Another reason these guitarists may not have been chosen is because they had not yet become famous by the time the original article was published in 2003. But here are my choices and why (I will only go into detail with the possible Candidates). The first person I would put on the list is Cesar Rosas, the guitarist from Los Lobos. The band is from East L.A. and they play just about anything from rock and blues to country to traditional Mexican genres. Although he isn't technically the greatest guitarist ever, I think his versatility makes him a perfect candidate for the list. Another possible candidate for the list would be Mato Nanji, a blues guitarist from and Indian reservation in South Dakota. His style is extremely passionate and intese that. Just listening him play a solo is like being smacked in the face with an iron. Then, there's always the shredder virtuosos such as Steve Vai and Joe Satriani who both took Van Halen's innovative finger-tapping and combined it with  Frank Zappa style harmony and created an explosively beautiful sound. Also Joe Bonamassa, who was a guitar prodigy who started touring at age 14. He has the speed of Vai with the soul of a bluesman.

Here is a list of guitarists who could have made the list had they been famous at the time:

-Henry Garza (Los Lonely Boys)
-Johnny Hiland
-Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriella Quintero (Rodrigo y Gabriella)
-Orianthi Panagaris

Here are some other guitarists who could have just made the list:
-Slash (Guns n Roses)
-Brian Carroll (Buckethead)
-Yngwie Malmesteem
-Eric Johnson
-Ritchie Valens
-Did I leave someone out?