Best Rock Guitarists of All Time, Ranked

Hey y'all, welcome to another episode of Past Times at eighties high. Got another musical one for you today. We are gonna do our top seven favorite guitarists. Personal favorites, not to be confused with best or anything else like that. Of course, the boys are here as always. Kevin. Hello! Hello, I soul, brother Mike. Hey, how's it going? Good, good, good. And dungo. Eat. What's happening? Hello, ISOL, as well. And um AJ. And what we uh, well, I just gave you the lowdown on what we're gonna be doing for the show, but as always, we like to give a few shout-outs. A couple guys uh uh I went to school with. I'd like to give a couple thank yous there to uh my buddy Chris and buddy Kevin, both very, very loyal listeners. Get uh Chris is constantly texting me, laughing at shit, especially you, Mark. But um but yeah, Kevin, yeah.

I remember being on my hockey our hockey team, the Maroons back in '85. Yeah, that was a lot of people. It was the well, hey, we won like two games, but uh we had a lot of fun. I mean, helmets were not required back then. I didn't wear a helmet, but when you took one in the head. I certainly did.

But were you smoking? That was like well, those are the best old footage of hockey players smoking butts on the bench. Um, I know.

Oh no, but anyway, thanks. I didn't mention that too. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. And Dongo, you said someone else was listening. Yes, my firstborn.

Uh my son, Kieran, would like to give a shout out to him for listening. Awesome. Thanks, Kieran. He better be.

My kids do not listen, and it angers me great. Kidding eight. Awesome. All right, Kev. Um, how about anyone else around the world? T Neck, New Jersey. T Neck.

We are in Teaneck, New Jersey. Corlett, New South Wales, on the other side of the globe there. Um, Ancaster, Ontario, and Smyrna, Georgia. Welcome, folks. Yes, thank you, thank you. Rubinneck.

Awesome. So, I mean, I guess we'll kind of do, unless anyone else has anything they want to say, um, we can just kick it off, get right to the topic, which which is our way, kind of. So, Kevin.

And Al Bundy would say, let's rock.

Yes. Okay, Al Bundy.

That's all you, Kev. All right. So, like everything else that we do, we kind of think about you know what our individual approach is to the subject and and how we're we're gonna break it down so that you know, because there's a billion guitarists out there that could be mentioned or talked about, and I probably like 99% of them. So um, I was thinking in terms of people that were that I loved but also had some kind of place in the history of of the guitar world to a degree. I did not go with the straight tiger beat, uh, I'm sorry, Rolling Stone. I get those two confused all the time now. Top 250 or whatever it is. I I I don't go with that. So spoiler alert, Jimi Hendrix is not my number one. Imagine that. Um, but I'm gonna start off with with a fella that I absolutely love to listen to, but he was he wasn't he there was blues being recorded long before Robert Johnson, but he was kind of the touchstone. Those two days in Texas that he recorded the 29 songs, not the 30th one that that Daniel was looking for in uh Crossroads. Um but it's such a great story, and he's kind of a touchstone for the blues and the musicians that we grew up with talk about finding him and being blown away. Uh Clapton talked about a few of his songs that he would never even attempt. Um, one of the great stories of Keith Richards is he had this apartment and it was like a milk crate with a turntable on it, was all that was in the apartment. And somebody brought over a Robert Johnson album and he was listening to it and he went, Who's that playing? He says Robert Johnson goes, No, who's that playing with him? No, it's Robert Johnson. And such a storied, like there's so many myths about him, and they all kind of intertwine, and there's some, you know, there's just different variations of the stories, but he was inclined to appreciate music very young, but laughable as a guitar player for the better part of his life. Um, you know, so the the the greats, the guys that he would go into the to the barrel houses and he'd try to play along, they'd laugh at him and kick him out. And then so he disappeared for about a year. Uh apparently hung out with this guy, Ike Zimmerman, used to play in the cemetery at night or whatever, and then he came back and all of a sudden he was amazing, blew everybody away. So that's where the story of Crossroads, obviously the song Crossroads, but that's but that's where that came from. He supposedly he was he was the guy that went to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil. The question is, was it literal or figurative? Did he just work that hard and and they call it selling your soul, or did he literally sign a contract with with the devil? And that's always been debated, and you know, you see that right up through all of the stuff that we grew up with. That kind of maybe he didn't really make a deal with the devil, but he certainly probably not brought Satan into rock and roll as a as a theme. Um but just an amazing player to listen to, um, the different styles, the things that he did, the way that he he kind of played the bass line while he was picking at the same time, and just just an amazing tragic figure. He was uh he he was a bit of a ladies' man. He went into this barrel house and and he was flirting with his waitress, and uh the waitress's husband was the bar owner, bartender, and and uh I think it was Sonny Boy Williamson maybe saw him um saw the bartender poison a bottle of whiskey and give it to Johnson. And so Sonny Boy knocked the bottle out of Johnson's hand, and Johnson looked at me and said, You gotta knock a bottle of whiskey out of my hand again, son. We're gonna have a fucking problem. So the same thing happened again. Johnson drank it, and three days later he was dead.

Ah, dude. Oh my god. Yeah, I mean, we just Valerie showed me something on him uh last week. Wow, yeah. So, yeah, and it means the devil came to get his stole, as legend says. So yeah, you know, legba.

That was dumb of him.

Yeah, don't fuck with the bartender's wife, man. No, Jesus. Yeah, just I mean, an amazing player, but also a lot of myth tied up in that guy as well.

How old is he again when he was basically murdered?

I I don't think he was in his 30s. He was 27. 27. He was 27. He was the beginning of the 27 club. Oh, yeah.

That's the other, I mean, a lot of times he's not counted in that, but so there's a a show that was on NBC. It was a time travel show. I don't know if you ever saw the the show Timeless. It was on NBC, and they they had a time machine they could go back in time, and the plot of the show was there was a kind of a bad entity, um, a guy that was going back and trying to change history by you know murdering people in in the past and all that kind of stuff to change history in the future. And there was a Robert Johnson episode, and it was really cool. Yeah, yeah. How old was this? Uh, it was in like 19 uh 2018. It's fairly recent.

He's a kind of like a new version of Quantum Leap.

It's kind of like that. Yeah, it was cool. It had uh Abigail Spencer, had the guy from ER, um Gorin Visnick, who was kind of like a rush. Yeah, uh our alley. It's a cool show to check out. Um, had Malky Barrett in it, but uh the the uh Robert Johnson episode was cool.

Nice.

Wow, yeah, just a little side nugget.

Very cool. Thank you very much. Awesome pick, too, Kev. Yeah, thank you. All right, well, um boy. Well, I'll wait till I get to me. So do you, brother Mark.

Oh, okay. Well, I'm going with uh Saul Hudson of Guns N' Roses, Velvet Revolver, also known as Slash, obviously. You know, this guy can make a guitar sing. I swear to God, it sounds like it's a second batch of vocals when he plays a guitar. To me, to me, him and the bass player. Duff McKagan. Yeah, Duff McKagan. And it's okay. Anyway, that those two make the friggin' band, in my opinion. But um, just the way he plays, I mean, it's like singing. And uh Kevin, you I know you famously hate this song, but if you ever hear the solo on November Rain, it's really singing the guitar.

Yeah. I mean, his challenge is incredible. There's no question about it.

And he he he just uh he seems to have his own style, really. But I mean, he's his influences are some of my influences as a guitar player. You know, it's too bad that they couldn't get got their shit together and they went their separate ways and everything, and so forth. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, that guy's ain't right in the head. I don't think he is to this day either.

You know, something something uh Eddie Trunk always talks about, Mark, they're so massive. I mean, don't get me wrong, Appetite is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, debut albums of all time. Incredible album. But um just the fact that the catalog that people even, you know, they don't even count some of it. It's basically Appetite and the Illusion albums, and bam! Like for them to be this big and selling out stadiums friggin' 40 years later, you know, off of a three basically three album catalog is it's just weird. It's they're the only band to really do that most.

Yeah, you know what? Use your illusion one and two, it should have just been use your illusion and thrown out all the filler. Yeah, it was like every other song was a friggin' classic, incredible hit, and every other song was just like what the fuck is this, you know? Right. But uh yeah, and so yeah, that's my number seven pick. Slash.

Great pick. Yes, thank you. All right, before I go to me, I was just gonna say uh you were talking about Slash and Duff. I think Adler was the sound with them. Like nobody could play, and so many people say nobody can play Guns N' Roses like Steven Adler could, you know, and yeah, just I mean, a lot of those bands, you know, it's took every one of them to create that sound together, just like kiss.

I'll make it quick, but you brought up Steven Adler. Um, you know, the story on uh Rocket Queen. Axel was banging this, uh I forgot her name, but that her sex is a good one. I'll never forget. Yeah, I was not Adler's girlfriend. It was Adler's girlfriend. Yeah. And watching the video, I mean he was up there drumming with a smile on his, you know, like I don't know. I think that would I know I I guess that's rock and roll for you, whatever. Share, right?

The only story that I ever heard that was like more kind of like hurtful than that was the one about he was I think he was an AR guy, something pudgy little dude, and he had this girlfriend, and he introduced her to Nikki Six, and right in the middle of the fucking ballroom or wherever they were, he just fucked the guy's girlfriend right in front of him and everybody else.

Unbelievable. Wow.

And Vince Neal did it too, didn't he? To the friggin' guy that was trying to sign him. Not to razzle, but to uh yeah, somebody literally or figuratively that was working for the record company. He was like nailing his girlfriend in the dressing room.

Yeah. Well, this was allegedly the way I heard the story. I mean, it was right in front of God and everybody. It was like, hey, here's my girlfriend, and he just like boop banged her right there.

Well, she might be a bit of a slut.

Probably not gonna be your first wife, but you're gonna be pretty dumb. But still, it's like, you know, she could have broke up with him and then done it. Right, we're done.

By the way, yeah. Awesome.

Uh rock and roll.

Great pick with Slash, brother. All right. So to me, and what I was gonna say is the fact that boy, Kev, your deepness is going to really make up for my shortness today. So keep so keep it up.

Just just like a band, we all fill in and hit the high notes.

That's yeah, we we just all have our we're all part of the puzzle. Yes, and as we said, these are favorites, and they're our favorites today, if you will. Well, my number seven is Mick Mars. Awesome. Just to to give that sound that he gave. It's only a you know, there's three of them, really. You know, Vince me Vince Neo was not playing an instrument, and the sound that came out of his guitar just dirty. I mean, grungy, and not grungy, like grunge, just like, you know, kind of just filthy kick fucking ass, especially on the first few albums. That's it, you know, just for him to it's he was just very, I don't know, dark sound. He had a dark. He wasn't sound of I mean, once again, there's three of them. Nikki six, you know. I guess he finally learned to play bass at some point a little bit. But what was that last week? Yeah, exactly.

Tommy Lee's a great drummer, but yeah, yeah, but I don't know.

I don't respect that band like I used to, you know, but just but you can't deny those first couple albums, and then and then some more on, you know, like just a few of the later ones as well. But he was a kick-ass guitarist. I I love John Five, and he does try to be true to Mick, but I just don't like the whole shitty way that went about. And I've always hated. I mean, if a band's supposed to be like a family, I don't get how people can shit on each other. And actually, publicly speaking of which, I'll be releasing an episode of Preachers of the Night soon. If anyone would like to listen, any KISS fans out there, where we'll be another bit of a bitch fest. Anyway, that's what I got.

Mick Mars. So I think I think Mick, I just saw the article. I hadn't had a chance to read it, but I think Mick is releasing some kind of tell all, and the headline was that he was accusing um the other boys in the band of maybe switching teams a few times during the um during those wild years. So not that I give a rat's ass, but that might kind of uh create a little bit of a stir, sell a few books for him, so and then turn the knife on those guys after they fucked him over. Fucking stabbed him in the back.

No pun intended with his bad back, but yeah, right.

That's exactly where I was going with that. He went through hell with that back. What's the condition? Spinal.

I think he had ankle losing spondylitis. You are correct, sir. Yeah, oh my god.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say.

No bunker on that one. Uh I think he's lineup bifidite.

But yeah, it was tough seeing them, you know, walk him on the stage a few times during that stadium tour, man. All right, Dongo. What you got? Cool.

So I went a couple routes. So um I'll have a kind of a mixture of deep cuts, but also a mixture of like that everybody likes, kind of like you. So I'm in between. And uh, I kind of went with like Kevin, like guitar players that were kind of influential, but I also kind of went with ones that along my journey, I kind of was like people would say something, and I'd be like, Oh, okay, I'll give that a listen. And then when I did, I was like, Oh, that's cool. So it was like guitar players that I normally wouldn't listen to, but I was turned on to, and then I was actually pleasantly surprised when I did that. So that's some of them, but some of them are just the Mount Rushmore types. Um, so my first one is one that when I was in, I went to Berkeley for a year, had no business being there, um, and met all kinds of awesome musicians. And a lot of them would always say, like, oh, you know who's really good? You never know it, but you know who's really good. And it was Roy Clark. Yeah, and uh he played on hee-haw. Yes, the guy was a picker. I mean, he could he could play wicked fast and clean, like he never used a stitch, a distortion. Um, and he can do do like you know rapid scales with clean, you know, it was amazing. Um, like bluegrass, fiddle, um, classical jazz, like he was everything, but did a lot of country music as well. Yeah. Um, but the the song I love is there's a clip of him on the internet of him playing with the odd couple.

Listen, now for me, play some Bach on the guitar.

No more Bach. We play my favorite Mountain Dew.

No, no, no, no. Play a nice classical thing.

I want to hear wait. Can I do something for myself? Are you happy?

You finally played box playing the guitar in front of the young couple, and it's awesome. It's just really cool.

On the TV show, yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah.

It was it was a Spanish song, wasn't it?

Yeah, he plays like uh you know, uh an acoustic uh yes, like a Latin song. It's amazing.

I can't think of the name of the song, but absolutely amazing. I can see him picking, you know.

Yeah, bluegrass is dad.

That was his that was his thing. The bluegrass is probably his number one, but but he would do classical and Latin and you know jazz.

Give you a call bluegrass runs, yeah.

Sorry, A James. It's okay. I couldn't see like I couldn't repeat an episode from the show, but I can remember it so well. Just oh yeah, yeah, he was a great entertainer too. Yeah, my father always watching it.

Yeah.

Well, there's a lot of hot girls on that show, too, so maybe that had something to do with it. But I had a lot of people throughout my time say, like, oh, you know who's awesome? You know, and then Roy Clark. Yeah, that guy can pick.

Awesome. Hee ha! Malaguena, I think is the name of the song. Oh nice, maybe we can find a clip of that and get that in there because it's it's impressive. And I want to shout out like three other names of people that were like in the same realm as him, but I'm probably not gonna walk on anybody's picks, but I don't want to take the chance. But uh there's some guys out there that you just like Roy Clark that you just don't think of, yeah, that are just masters of the fretboard.

Yes, you would not be. Walking on any of mine, that's for sure. But awesome.

You don't remember Ace Freely's uh bluegrass album?

No, I don't. Great pick, Dongo.

All right, Kev, to you. All right, my next pick, Lester William Paul Fuss, also known as the Wizard of Walkershaw. Red Hot Red, Rhubarb Red, or Les Paul.

Ah, there you go.

Because not only was he like like Roy, I mean that guy could pick. He was he was amazing. He was also an incredible innovator because we would not have the solid body guitar without him. And he just he was playing a hollow body, and he'd been he played with microphones, made his own microphones and speakers and all that stuff. And he was playing in a club, and a guy was like, I can't hear your guitar. So that just shot him off. And he was like, first thing he got was a piece of railroad track, but his mother was like, Nobody's gonna walk around slinging a railroad track and playing guitar. So he went and got a fence post and he made the famous the log, and nobody was everybody was freaked out by that. So he took the cutaways, the wings from a hollow body and glued them onto the side of it, and uh and and made that first solid body. And then eventually um Gibson was like, Okay, we're gonna start doing that, and then all you know, I mean, come on, Les Paul Gibson is like the gold standard through the 70s and 80s of you know, from Slash to the other 40 people on this list. Oh, yeah. Um but some of the things that he came up with that I mean, overdub, he did that with Mary Ford, um, tape delay, um, phasing, multi-track, all of those things he was doing back in the 40s and 50s, long before the Beatles went into the studio and started mixing stuff up. Oh, yeah. Um, and then you look at his later years and his relation with uh Van Halen and some other people. Just, I mean, absolute innovator. And if you go back and listen to the stuff that he played, it's just amazing. Whether you like that style of music or not, you can't watch him play and not be like, Holy crap, that guy is insane. I mean, his hands moved, and he was in a car accident. He had several incarnations of his career before he met Mary Ford and really took off as a solo artist. And just as that happened, they were in a car crash, they were gonna amputate his right arm. Oh my god. And he talked right and he talked to the doctor, he was like, Can you just aim my hand at my belly button? He said, just absolutely his arm like this, and and he played like that through like his and they had like 27 hits or something like that, and he just had his busted up arm propped in the right place where he could pick, and I mean, just unreal.

The guy was unbelievable in so many ways, incredible. But in around 1989, 1990, there was an HBO Les Paul special, and if you could dig it up on the internet, it's amazing. Awesome. Um, and there's a scene in there that Eddie Van Halen's talking to Les Paul, and he's thanking him for all the he's like, we couldn't do the stuff we do now without the stuff you invented back then. It's really cool.

Was that the same one where Beck Jeff Beck walked out on stage with a strat and Les and Les walked over and pulled the plug out of it?

Yeah, can't you come out here with a fucking stratocaster?

I'm Les Paul, damn it.

Too funny. I'm sure we'll be able to find that too.

Yeah, right. Oh, yeah, it's uh it sounds what a great pick, though.

I mean, it's funny because you say that, and you know what a great guitarist, and so many people shockingly forget he even played just because of the the make, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the guitar actually surpassed his yeah itself, surpassed his name as a guitarist.

Absolutely incredible.

All right, Mark. All right, I'm going with Aerosmith's Joe Perry, nice, um, who was a huge influence on my prior pick, slash. When I think of Aerosmith, as you guys know, it's it's 70s and early 80s, and his guitar style is very blues, groovy, just uh funk. Just incredible. It comes from so many different places, and it's just filthy, and just you know, he never plays it, he plays it similar every time, but it's it's almost beautifully sloppy. Absolutely. You know what I'm saying? And his solos back in the 70s were just a thing of beauty. A thing of beauty. Yes, and uh it's funny because uh I was looking at you know top ten guitarists from Joe Perry, and like two of them were songs from my Aerosmith era.

You know, oh, and then they went to the 80s shit.

Oh, oh god, no, they they mostly from ballads and stuff.

Go listen to uh oh god, how did it just leave me? God, it's like one of the bootleg, Aerosmith bootleg. Just yeah, incredible talk about filthy.

Like it's just yeah, I don't think anybody can do those walks like he did. You know what I mean? Just just the that the the the baseline kind of things that he did that would whether it's walk this way or whatever else. I mean, he he just he grooved.

Yes, indeed.

So I just I just wanted to say that I think a great concert to watch would be from Houston, Texas, back in I you know, I think it's like 1977. This is really them at their top of their game, but uh I really would check that out, you know. It's and the back in the saddle was incredible on that one. Awesome. So nice, yeah.

Did they did they stop after their residency? Because I there was the whole thing about uh Kramer not being able to do it anymore, and they kind of pushed him out of the band. Um, but they had a Vegas residency. But I thought they kind of retired after that.

Well, they actually had a a whole tour planned and Tyler's voice, he had some vocal cord issue that and you know, a lot of talk was like, are they gonna come back and tour again after they saw him sing at the Aussie thing, you know, the Aussie Sabbath thing, and because he did great, but that was you know a song or two, and I don't think he'd be able to pull off a full show right now, so they're they're not making any decisions, but that's why their latest tour was called off.

But you know what? At least he's not up there lip syncing like somebody else we know.

Yes, of course, which that's what you do. You can't cut it anymore, you retire. Right exactly. Damn it. Damn right. All right, Dongo, I apologize. It is to me, and I'm going with Mr. Jake E. Lee. I'm not gonna go into too much depth about it, but I just loved his kind of crunchiness and his attitude. My first uh kiss connection here, too, is um that him playing with Eric Singer and Badlands. I love that. I love Badlands, they were awesome. And he, I mean, I think he started out playing with like Mickey Rat and Rat. And but then those Aussie albums are where I really clicked with his sound. And between Bark and Ultimate Sin is still one of my favorite albums. I mean, I it I would definitely like them to, you know, do a remix because that was the Ron Nevison age where everyone wanted that sound for radio, you know what I mean? And so his guitar kind of got a little pulled out, if you will, or not quite as in the front of things, but fucking incredible guitarist, and it's too bad that he didn't want to play for a while, you know, and now can't really play that well because of a lot of problems with his hands, but it was great to see him at the Sabbath thing as well, and he was invited to that, and after all the you know, how bad we know he got porked with royalties and songwriting, and at least they had the decency to invite him to that, and he got out there and played, and another guitarist who I will not mention because he's he could come up um and should, but at the Aussie event, I keep saying Aussie, but it's it was a damn Sabbath event event to begin with, and just when they I think it was shot in the dark, you know, they wanted this other guitarist to kind of take the front and center, and he he stopped and wouldn't do it and gave it to Jake. So that was really cool, but great sound. Um, yeah, cool dude, had the look. He did have the look. I mean, there's so many tie-ins here that I can't say because of other guitarists, but yeah, you know, he got the role over someone that was already hired with Ozzy because he had the look they were looking for. So anyway, that is all I shall say. And go to you, Don.

Cool. Right before the cast, I was down at New Hampshire Vintage Vinyl, and uh I saw a Charvel, a nice Charvel, and it was actually pretty cheap. And uh, I thought uh Jake E. Lee because that's what he liked to play, and it was a cool guitar, so I'm gonna maybe go back down there and all right. So for my number, was this number six? Yes, is gonna be uh this is a guy that was I was turned on to in at Berkeley um for jazz fusion, the jazz fusion, not the jazz flute. To be confused, but no, it's uh he this guy's a studio musician. Uh many of you might know his sound from the theme song to Hill Street Blues, and it's Larry Carlton.

Ah, nice. Larry Carlton.

Yeah, so he's he's played with Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell, um, but he's done a lot of solo stuff. And I the album I bought at the time was Larry Carlton Collection, which is probably a uh you know, combination of a lot of his work. And I would just play it over and over again. There's a lot of just instrumental guitar work, and it's just you'd have to listen to him. He's just clean and he's he's got a beautiful sound, and the guy can spin spin the guitar like no problem. I loved it. Yeah, so Larry Carlton. But yeah, he did the theme song to Hill Street Blues. Oh, what a great show to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. That was like the one of the first nitty gritty television shows, you know. Awesome. All right, Kevin.

All right.

Number five.

Next up, Chuck Barry. Number five. Of course. Chuck Berry was again, talk about Touchstone. He was, if you talk to any of the bands in the 60s, they all picked up a guitar because of Chuck Barry. He was playing in a house band that did all kinds of different styles, and country got really big at that time. So he actually incorporated country licks into his own style, and that's kind of where like Johnny Be Good and Maybelline came from. He just he had some personal problems. He was a little hard to work with. Uh, he never he didn't tour with a band, he'd pick up a band wherever he played and was not very nice to them. Um, there's a great documentary from I think the early 80s where he had just got out of prison and and um Keith Richards was trying to help him out, and he's Keith said that you know he was worse than working with Mick. Wow. Chuck was like he was yeah, he was tough. He didn't take any shit from anybody. Um, but he also had a little bit of darkness to him. I think later in life there was a probably at a restaurant, and I guess they found cameras or something in the ladies' room. Um yeah, he he uh he definitely uh liked the ladies. Um one of my all-time favorites is a live version of Reeling and Rockin', and there's a line that just because he ad libs some lines and he says, uh, we boogieed in the kitchen, we boogied in the hall. I got some on my finger, so I wiped it on the wall and we reeled. Reeling and rocking. I mean, he definitely he had the dirty mind of the rock and roller, and uh it certainly came through, but just an innovator, and like you said, just the the starting point. Um, and for you, Donnie, Johnny B Good was actually sampled on the Voyager one. Um remember the album that they sent out on that, so they had Johnny B good on that. So he's he's out in outer space.

Okay, yeah, that's cool. So that's gonna count for something tied into the time travel shit shit, too. Uh it was Marty McFly. Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Who uh gave the idea to Chuck Berry. No, that's interesting where my head went.

It's your cousin. You gotta hear this guy.

Oh, too funny. Awesome.

Nice. All right, Mark. All right, well, let's just keep it rolling. Uh I have Chuck Barry as well. Um you you talked about all of his uh uh downsides, and one of them was uh he always demanded to be paid before he played. Which is I mean, I can understand that. I can actually understand, but uh yeah, I I he doesn't sound like the nicest guy to the house band, if you will, and everything, but his songs they told stories. They told stories, they were friggin' fun. But the reason I'm picking him is I absolutely love his guitar style. That's it, that is a huge influence on my plan. I love all the blues double stops. The double stops are just they're so fun to play, and he he is the master of them.

And uh he's the master influencer, right?

Yes, and he actually wrote Johnny Be Good. I mean, 18,000 bands did that song, as I know.

A lot of people say that that's the the tipping point for rock and roll kind of thing. Yeah. It's the the crux or the impetus of it.

Yeah, crux of the biscuit, is Kevin would say. That's a fragment. Yes.

That being said, uh, just an incredible innovator on that friggin' six string. And oh my god, I implement that in my guitar playing constantly.

Do you do the duck walk?

Oh god. That's pretty cool. He does, yeah, and then he does the other thing where he jumps forward while he's closing his leg. It's kind of fun. But yeah, I strongly yeah, I strongly suggest watching some of this. I don't know. It was kind of a Pete Townsend movie. Oh so yeah, Kevin I when he was. Chuck Berry movies the Pete Townsend took it. Exactly.

Leave me a little bit. I'm sorry, I no, no, I honestly think that was perfect. I didn't expect you to go that route. So awesome. Are you kidding me? Have you heard some of my songs? Uh yes.

All right, yes. Well, I mean, I have a song I wrote about my granddaughter that really illustrates my in fact, I was I was telling Fiona, go tell everyone Jid does Chuck Berry. You know, and uh yeah, it's uh the Kaya Blues. Oh brother Kaya Eaton, Kaya Eaton. Yeah, it's uh you love the chorus. Hey, I but in fairness to me, every lyric on that song was w sung off the cuff. I just started playing and it just was pretty funny. So I kept it.

It is funny, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But anyway, that's my five pick. Great pick. I knew he'd be on here without question. All right, another one to me and Donnie. Maybe I'm not gonna be stealing from you all day. Uh, you may be going a different route. But my number five is Steve Vai, an absolute beast. Oh, yeah. But for me, it was I didn't, you know, know a lot about music at all. You know, the kiss rabbit hole I was forced into. But for me, it's when he started out with you weren't forced into anything.

You have your own brain and mind.

I was forced. Anyway, um was when he started up with David Lee Roth. I find him obviously very classical, right? In his training. Am I mistaken there or no? He's got that, yeah. But just he was always so clean, I thought. Like he was a very clean player, but could be messy if he needed to. And anyone ever watched Generation Axe? Um, check that out sometimes, just to Generation Axe? It's it's a band, it's it's a group of guitarists who I will not name because so many of them could be on this list, right? But uh where they they play great, you know, well-known songs with and the guitar is the vocalist, the guitar is everything, you know what I mean? It's yeah, it's really fucking cool. But just I don't know, he was just super cool to me, and he was always one of my favorites to watch, and that's why I took him, and that will be that and I keep looking at the wrong board, so I'm my favorite scene.

My favorite scene in in a movie is the crossroads guitar duel with Steve I that he wins, he's so awesome.

He won that damn right he did.

Who is he again?

It's like the devil went down to Georgia. The devil's part was way better than Johnny's, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Son of a bitch. Charlie's the best he's ever been.

That's great.

Yeah. That was a good a duel that will live in infamy. Indeed.

Yeah, but you're right. Vi kind of walked that line of being a technician, but without losing the soul to it. Yeah, you know what I mean? He definitely was a soulful player, but he he didn't make mistakes. And and I think a lot of that had to do with not just who he was, but the time he spent with Zappa. Yeah, you don't make mistakes in Zappa's band. Like I think I told the story before when he auditioned for Zappa, Zappa, you know, play it this, play it reggae, play it in 1412, play it in this, play it in that. And he went, I can't do that. When he finally gave him something that was literally impossible. And Frank was like, Yeah, I think Linda Ronsatt's looking for a guitarist.

Ow. Oh my god. Oh my goodness.

Okay, do you don't go? All right, so this pick is another one that's a little uh left field kind of thing, and it's uh Steve Morse. Steve Morse. His band is the Dixie Dregs, but he's also played with Deep Purple and he's played with Kansas. Um, but I love his studio album, High Tension Wires. If you ever want to scan for That it's an instrumental uh album, and uh he's got a song uh off of that that that is amazing. Um uh Ghost Wind. So he's got a song on that on that album called Ghost Wind that is just awesome. It's it's amazing. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. He's kind of a jazz fusion guy too, but rock and roll as well.

What exactly is jazz fusion? What do you think?

Um it's it's you know, it's jazz kind of um like jazz is mostly improv improvisation, but it's also like 32 bars, but the fusion is it's more like modernized. Uh it's yeah, mixed. Amplified, yeah.

Yeah. Because jazz wasn't obtuse enough of a definition that we had to add something else to it. Yeah, yeah.

It'd be more like jazz with synthesizers and and electric guitars and distortion and that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Okay. Awesome. All right. Uh that's to you, Cav, right? Leading off number four.

Number four. All right. This is gonna be um my step into the mainstream, and I just think he is a god on guitar, and it's Jimmy Page. Jimmy Page is just absolutely amazing. And he was one of those guys. I mean, you talk about Vi being a technician. I mean, Page started out as a studio guy. Uh, he wasn't healthy enough to tour, uh, but he played on everybody from the Kinks to the Who to um Van Morrison, um and Patula Clark and Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger. I mean, there's so it's like we talked about uh Lukather uh on the last episode. There are just hundreds and hundreds of recordings that he was on, and and when he's asked, he's like, you know, I really don't I don't remember. There was so much of it for that spell. Um that he just he doesn't remember what songs he played on. And there was so much so much of that to I mean to think that I mean you just gotta wonder he came in and played acoustic guitar on I Can't Explain by the Who. And you just think like why does why does Pete Townsend have somebody else? I mean, he's Pete Townsend. Um but anyway, it just you know, so I mean gee, he just he did the work. And then when, you know, I think it was what Clapton left, and then they wanted him to join the Yardbirds, and he didn't, you know, he didn't feel well enough to tour, and then he recommended Beck, and then Beck left, and he came in, and then everybody quit. And so instead of calling it the new Yardbirds, they called it Led Zeppelin and pretty much changed rock and roll. I mean, talk about just I mean, steeped in blues, but just became something else. Yeah. Um with his with his playing style and his recording, it just became theatrical and and arena filling picturesque music.

Just unbelievable. Can you imagine being a young adult, like a 20-year-old in like late 60s, early 70s London, and just you know, going to like pub shows and and the music scene around there must have been amazing.

Yeah, right. Seeing some of that shit.

Yeah, like Clapton Beck and and Paige on the same stage. Yeah.

Unbelievable.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I saw that. Really? Fuck me. Because that's a $20,000 ticket now.

Yeah, no shit, right? And that's the nosebleeds.

Yeah, right. Was he a studio musician for during and after Led Zeppelin? Before. All before, all before.

Yeah, by the time Zeppelin, but by the time the Yardbirds turned it into Zeppelin, it was specifically a super group. Um, it was designed as that, and it just became like, well, we're gonna do this, and the record company was like, we're gonna put everything, everything behind it. Because Bonham was was a pretty big deal at the time. Um John Paul Jones was a killer studio musician as well. So it was kind of I don't think anybody nobody was surprised when Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin. So I don't think he really went back too much after that and did he wasn't playing on any Merry and Faithful songs after that. Okay.

Awesome pick.

All right, brother Mark. Okay, well, I'm going with Randy Rhodes um from Quiet Riot and Black Sabbath. I know he's gonna come up again, but his guitar playing was I mean, it was technical, it was um fast. To me, the whole thing was obviously coming out. I mean, with Randy Rhodes, that put him over the top, in my opinion. I mean, his guitar playing was just up and down that you know, those two albums until unfortunately the plane crash. But uh I don't know, and I mean the song I don't know. I mean I just incredible, but I'm gonna not talk about him much because I know there's other people that really, really like him, and you know, he could have been anywhere up to number one, but so we shall see.

Maybe he's you gotta wonder what Ozzy's yeah, you gotta wonder what Ozzy's debut solo would have been if Randy wasn't part of the equation.

Yeah, or and some amazing guitarist watching.

Right, but I mean who else was there at that time that that was doing the things that Randy was, but whatever. So it was a beautiful fit. It was absolutely amazing.

There was one out there, maybe, but they weren't going there. Awesome pick with Randy, Mark. I knew that was obviously gonna come up at some point today. I'm sure. So number four to me, this dude is just badass and talking about Generation X before was Steve Vi. Uh, this is another Aussie guitarist, not Randy, and it's Zach Wilde. I think he may be my favorite of them. I mean, Randy is Randy of is Randy, obviously, but I don't know. I like the crunchiness of Zach. Everything about your sound, I I wish I could explain it better than I'm going to, but it was it's just powerful. So we said about it. Gosh, now the name left me. Black Label Society. Yeah. I need to start I need to get out there and start buying some of the CDs and listening to them in its entirety rather than just perusing Apple music once in a while and listening to some of that shit. But it's amazing too to hear him do a lot of the Aussie stuff like the Zack Sabbath. And I think they might be coming this this summer um up here. It would be awesome if we could all go to that. It might be Hampton Beach. To steal a term from you, Zach Wilde is very battle axe.

Yes, indeed.

He is. That's Ajax word. You did have yeah, you better steal it because that's the only way you're gonna get to eat. He's ballsy. You know, he's he's definitely in your face, you know, no, yeah.

And actually, you know, I did see him, um, which I will say was a tribute to Pantera, because it's not technically Pantera, but I saw them in Guilford a couple years ago, and he was actually Kev, did you go to that one with me? I can't remember.

No, that was right after Ozzy passed. That one got canceled.

No, but no, the previous year I saw them.

Oh no, I didn't go to that one.

No, he was awesome, and you know, the the head shake with the hair, he's just never stops that. He's kick ass. Yeah, but yeah, last year, exactly, it got cancelled because it was right right at Ozzy's death when they were supposed to play here and he had to be present for the funeral and whatnot. So I should be able to have tickets for that. Um, the guy that gave them to me said when they come back this year, they're mine. So hopefully one of you donkeys will go with me this year for the love of Pete.

To you, Dongo. All right. So now I'm transitioning from the kind of the deeper cuts to the the everybody knows, but the middle one. So the middle guy is kind of a trans. No, he's a musician, and he's not someone people would think of as a guitarist more than a front man in the band, and it's Rick Emmett. Because I've picked him for my favorite vocalist, but I'm also picking him for one of my favorite guitar players because I think it's it's hard to sing and play guitar. I think we can all agree to do that. He does both the lead vocals and the lead guitar, and he plays some pretty kick-ass rhythm guitar. He's a good writer. Um, I think he's awesome. I think he's an awesome musician. Absolutely. And I love the um, he's got an instrumental. It's called Midsummer's Night's Dream. I tried to play that a lot when I was in high school, and I like it. So Rick Emmett.

Awesome. Aren't they touring?

I think so. He's having trouble union. Like he can't go a long schedule, he's gonna take long pauses in between and all that kind of stuff. But you know, he's still he can sing still awesome.

But yeah, I mean all of these musicians that that we love just getting up there and some of them to still at their age be able to pull it off, yeah, gracefully, if you will. Yeah. But it's it's kind of heartbreaking because I think about like ten years from now. I mean, God willing, we'll all still be here, and you know, who's gonna be gone then? And it's it's frightening.

But anyway, every every time that I go to a show that's like real musicians and no tracks, no sampling, or whatever else, I think to myself, is this gonna be the last one?

Exactly.

Is this gonna be the last time I go and see like original lineup? I saw Chicago last summer. There was one guy, one guy from the original band. At what point does it stop being Chicago? Chicago at that point. Well, let's see.

Foreigner's been doing it for years, you know, with no original members. At least uh Lou Graham's been doing a few tunes for it.

Lou Graham's gone, but it's uh um I want to say Mick Ralph's, but it's not. I can't think of it. But anyway, he's he's been with them, but yeah, the rest of it is.

Yeah, but Lou Graham's been doing some vocals for them this year, is what I was saying. Just a few, yeah, just a few songs, because but you know, at least there's one original member, but Foreigner, you know, it's kind of like a Boston and not to go off on a you know down a rabbit hole, but Foreigner, Boston, it's bands that like you know, I mean how some so many of the bands we've talked about in the recent past just have that, you know, one or two key member. Mick Ralph's uh big big producer.

That's I was I was I didn't want to say McRalphs, but it was. I don't know why I didn't want to say it.

But just you know, where a a foreigner didn't have like you know, they were all important and all not I mean, look at Boston, same thing, like Yeah, the vocals are key, they're signatures.

Yeah, is that what you're saying?

Well, I'm saying that there wasn't I mean they're all replaced now pretty much, and people are still going because they just want to hear the music. Like you you couldn't do that with an aerosmith without Perry and Tyler. Do you see what I mean?

Like, I mean they weren't big when they when Perry was out of the band, but you get my point though, Mark.

I'm saying without both of them, like if Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were not there, then people wouldn't go see it, probably. Where a foreigner they do. And right now, that's why they'll I'm agreeing with you, Kevin, saying that they should end or they should say tribute. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's it's funny too because I mean you can you can get a rig and and people are so talented at guitar and you can sound exactly like Joe Perry, but you're not gonna come out on stage and sound exactly like Steve Tyler. Oh, you know, or Lou Graham or Brad Delp, or and I know they all say it with the I can't think of his name. The little fellow that took over for Steve Perry, but um I mean he's the one that's with him now, the the Malaysian fellow there. He does a good job, but it's not it's people say he sounds just like him. It's like eh, he sounds enough like him, but he doesn't sound just like you know, some you want to talk about Steve Perry for a second.

He has a voice that for some reason a lot of people seem to be able to come close to. I mean, like the guy that the little short dumpy guy on a AGT that won uh he won the whole thing.

And he's I was just gonna say the exact opposite that nobody can touch him.

There was I'm just saying people try to imitate him all the time and they at least work get around it a little bit.

Right. They can to some degree, but to actually be like he was back in the day. Like I would say, people people like what is it? Um, Don't Stop Believing's like the number one karaoke song. And I'm like, you know, Steve Perry can't sing Steve Perry anymore. What makes you think you can? Exactly. Please stop.

Well, you know, we might agree to disagree, I guess, but I'm just saying a lot of people seem to be able to at least uh come close to it, and maybe not in the in the range or whatever, but right, right.

But my my original point, which I think was AJ's point, was that the vocals are so signature when you talk about somebody like you know, like a Steve Perry or or a or a Brad Delp or something like that. It's such a distinct sound. Whereas you can get the gear and get the effects pedals and whatever else, and you know, it's like Nuno Betancourt talking about picking up Eddie Van Halen's guitar. Yeah. I sounded like it sounded like Eddie Van Halen, because he had it set up to sound like Eddie Van Halen. So that's all.

That's all right.

That's all right.

A little dissension here in the group breakout. We can work past it all together now, right?

Yes, I do. And now, a short commercial break.

Welcome to Halftime at 80s high. Want to just get a little info out there for you folks, including our website, which is past times at 80shigh.com, and that is 80s for 80s, past times at 80shigh.com. Shoot us an email at pta80h at gmail.com, PTA80H at gmail.com. Love the feedback you've been sending. We can't appreciate it more. Check us out on all the socials, including our new Facebook, which is past times at 80s high. And then for interaction, past timers at 80s high. Find us on all the major podcast platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And please remember that those five-star reviews and the comments go a long way helping us move up that chain. So thank you so much. We couldn't appreciate it more. And back to the podcast, folks. All right, Dongo, wrapping up number four, and that's three to you, Kev.

All right. I am going to um, I don't feel like I'm gonna have a lot of support in this group for my number three pick, but there are reasons and Soviet. Yes. Um, my number three pick is Jerry Garcia. Nice. That guy is absolutely amazing. Is mind blowing. And I love the fact that I mean, he admits, he says, the reason that the Grateful Dead never played a song the same way twice is because we can't.

Yeah, right.

We can't. That's a D I only got to see them once, and it was not a good night for them. Um, so it's not really that live, you know. I don't have that. Um, but it's amazing to go through and listen to the recordings, and there's so many really great ones, and see what they do with different songs and the style, the way that they change it, and the different things that they bring in is just uh amazing. Um, there's an interview with John Mayer, who's kind of filling in for him with the Dead and Company, who is, I mean, I mean, outside of our our era, but that kid is a pretty amazing guitarist for for a youngster.

But there was an interview with him, and I don't fully understand it because I don't get but he's like, yeah, because Jerry does this in Mixelodia, and then he moves to Dorian, and then he and it's like some things some things I have to learn them to be able to explain them in a way to myself that I wish other people would have just been like, so that's what it is, but I my brain doesn't understand modes based on well, it's a major scale, but you would start on the third third note. It sounds like a crazy puzzle to me. Um but what I do know is that certain modes sound like certain things. So if you say Lydian, I know that it will sound like this, you know, and I so I can figure it out. And then some things like Dorian are like just major with an extra note in it or mixed Lydian, I don't know. But you can feel it out. You'll begin to create your own uh theory.

I I I Know, I just think I think he's playing some cool stuff. That's all I know. I I don't know what you know, pentatonic scale this and that, and the other. I don't I don't know what he's doing. And I'm guessing that Jerry didn't really probably did, but he wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about this is what I feel, and just uh an amazing story career. They're like nobody else, and it's too bad because I had a little bit of that feeling in the first place, and I think a lot of people shy away from them because of their fans, right? Like the whole I mean, there's nobody who I'm gonna give up my life for and follow them around, especially if everybody stinks like sweat and patchouli. Yeah, I'm just not hanging out with that crowd.

I can't do it a thing.

Yeah, it became a thing, and it was like and this, you know, we were talking about tribute bands, and I wonder because the Grateful Dead never stopped. Right. When did they stop touring and start becoming touring as a tribute band? When did it become a nostalgia show? Because they went from the 60s right through. Um, but at one point it it's they were there was one night they played as a fading out sixties band, and another, and the next night they played as a kind of nostalgia, right? Kind of nostalgia three ring three ring circus kind of thing. Um but just an amazing guitarist, um, his own style. I mean, he just brings something to it that that nobody else did. Yeah, it's it's it's wild the stuff that he does, and you listen to it and you're like, What was he the lead singer too?

Talking about jazz in the world. Of course, kind of stuff, same thing, you know. Okay, I'm not a big champions are just well, you know, Jerry Garcia's the lead singer of the Grateful Dead.

I well, I always him and Bob Weir traded off. Okay, Kevin. Yeah. Weir is no slouch either. He doesn't get the credit. What he does as a rhythm guitarist to offset the crazy shit that that uh that Jerry was doing is amazing in and of itself as well. But yeah, they had uh, I think uh most of the keyboard players sang a couple songs here and there too. Um Vince Wellnick, who was with the tubes and the grateful dead. That's kind of an odd musical career, right? To go from the tubes to the grateful dead. That's kind of a bizarre.

Their fans are called deadheads, right?

That is correct.

Okay, I got a question. Do parrot heads follow uh Jimmy Buffett around.

That's correct until he died, yes. They don't so much follow him now that he's dead.

I had a fun time. That might be true. Now Kenny Chesney kind of took over. Well fishing they encompassed them, you know.

Like, one of the hockey teams we used to beat was the parrot heads. There weren't too many of them, but we we did beat them.

But I like how you brought in John Mayer because he is he's a good example. Um, you know, people he does his like poppy stuff to to pay the bills, and then he does his like talent musical musicianship stuff with the the Dead and Company. Yeah, because he is a good guitar player. People do see him as a good player.

Yeah, I I I think so. And like I said, uh who I don't think there's too many other people out there. I mean, there's you know, like you say, Fish and Trey Anastasio, and there's that band Goose that's out there now that's kind of that kind of psychedelic touring kind of stuff, but to actually walk in with with the rest of the band and do some kind of tribute to what Jerry did. Yeah, Mayer is he's got the knowledge and the skill.

For Jerry, Jerry was a good player. I mean, for sure. His improv stuff, yeah.

And the exact improv is what makes them a jam band. And absolutely a jam band.

You can think that is a term for them.

Yeah, and this is a fact that they recorded every show, like professionally. So that's pretty fucking incredible.

But they were they were also the antithesis of your boys because if you walked into a Kish show with a tape recorder, Gene would come down and take it from you and take your wallet, whereas The Grateful Dead were like, Okay, you're taping, you you're in this section over here. Yeah, so your microphones aren't blocking people's view.

They actually encourage it. And you get a better picture, exactly.

They encouraged it. That's my because they were getting their money from touring, they they weren't getting money from record sales.

So it was a machine, their tours were a machine. There were however many tractor trailer trucks, hundreds of people employed by them. I mean, it was it was a long, strange trip, as they say.

Well, Kevin, you bring up Gene Simmons, he might have stolen your wallet, but he would have let you come home and clean his toilets for stealing your wallet.

Well, if you gave him 10 grand, he'd let you walk. Exactly.

You'd have to pay him more. Depends how much money you had in your wallet.

You'd have to pay him more to clean his toilet. Unbelievable. All right. Good pick, Kev. All right, Mark, we're off to you. Number three.

Okay, well, my number three pick is a very obscure guitar player named Edward Van Halen. Who? And it just oh, you never heard of it. There was a band back in the 70s called Van Halen. Speaking of Gene Simmons, he kind of discovered them.

Van Yeah.

So he yeah. He likes to take that credit, but of course he does.

But anyway, uh the fans of Southern California discovered that.

Yeah.

But I mean, what a innovator. What a innovator. I mean, my goodness. And the one of the funniest things about Eddie Van Halen was he just tuned his guitar until it was in tune. And you had to tune to him. He didn't, you know, he didn't use a guitar tuner or anything like that. So you if you ever try to play his music, you gotta find the exact spot. You know, and uh but his finger tapping, I mean, he revolutionized the uh finger taps with the uh with his right hand. I mean, Donnie, you you know what I'm talking about, right? Oh yeah. Go on and uh I saw a video once. He's uh doing Mean Street. I mean, they only show that you know his intro to Mean Street and that ban on bam and nano no bamboo. He's like playing it like a freaking piano. It's incredible. You know, I when uh Sammy Hagar came into the band, it it he he got more into the synth and everything, but uh I mean what an absolutely just original guitar player. I mean, Eddie Van Halen had his style, and it was never I mean he was the original.

I mean he's without question one of the greatest of all time. Still is still haven't done a tribute to him, mind you, which infuriates me.

He was like a COVID, he was COVID time, wasn't he? Roughly, yeah.

Yeah, but but it's more an Alex, Dave, and Sammy thing where they just can't get their heads out of their asses, they're fucking assholes. Let's let's put it that way. Because Dave was on board, Alex was doing it with Wolf, and Dave was on board at first, but not if it was a tribute to Eddie. He literally, I think, even said once it should be a tribute to me, too. Like, you know, Dave is fucked up, but that they still can't get that in line. There was a big discussion about it online the other day, actually, that they still can't get it to work, and I think that's just shitty personally, but is David Lee Roth is he a sociopath or is he a narcissist or both or all of the above.

All of the above eccentric. He's he's he's also a paramedic and a mountain climber.

Yeah, I know, and a martial arts expert and everything. Right. But but yeah, he was not a good talk show host. I brought that up before, was terrible at it.

Well, Mark, just to uh continue your excellent pick because I'm after you, and I have Eddie down there at 3-2, surprisingly, because you'd think he'd be higher. He's just incredible. I mean, he's the one guitarist where I actually I mean, some of his solos, if you go online and watch, were like 25 minutes long. Like and I am a person who when I go to a concert, I hate solos. I think they should be thrown out and there should be five other songs put in there. But with Eddie mesmerized, was incredible. I just to watch him play everything he did differently on a guitar. Like you said, he was an innovator, and I'll leave it at that and go to you, Dongo.

Well, surprisingly, I number three, I also had Eddie Van Halen.

All right, so there's his favorites.

Because my top three is, you know, they're favorites, but there is also my Mount Rushmore types. Right. So he's one that has to be up there on the Mount Rushmore.

Yeah, right.

Um because he he was an innovator, he was an entertainer, he he was, you know, he was fun to watch, you know, he enjoyed what he did. He was a tradesman of his craft, so that's why I picked him. But um he said there's a clip out there going around the internet where he his hammer-ons were from Jimmy Page. Yeah, he was watching Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page doing his, you know, he had one, he said he had his right hand up in the air while he was doing a with his left hand. And and Eddie's like, oh, I gotta do that. So that that was his influence for the hammer-ons.

So you know, before the internet, nobody could search things and whatever, but you know, lately everybody's going, oh, Eddie Van Halen didn't invent tapping and and pull hammer ons and pull-offs and this and that. And I never claimed that I did, but I do know how and when I figured out how to do it. And on top of that, I never really heard anybody do with it what I did, which is actual pieces of music. But I'll never forget Alex and I used to go to every concert um at the at the forum in LA, and uh Led Zeppelin's playing, and and Jimmy Page is going like this. He's going, okay, so he's got his hand up in the air in the air, and I'm going, so basically, I just move the nut. Okay, this part right here is the nut. But then I I instead of using this hand, I use this hand. So like right now, if I go like this, you can't tell which finger I'm using. This hand or that hand? You tell me, right hand or left hand? Use them both. Okay. So no, so my my point being, my point being is it's basically this finger or these two or however many you want to use, is just an extension of this hand.

Okay, so if I'm playing an A, obviously, he was doing if he had his right hand in the air, of course it was his left hand. Yeah, it's good guy. He wasn't using his middle one. Okay, but no, so he got it from Jimmy Page, but the way he did that with his right hand, I just can't. Yeah, there's more than how we did it. There's more to come.

So probably probably not where he got it from, but there was a jazz guitarist back in the 30s or 40s that actually did the right-handed tapping as well.

Yeah. Duke Ellington's drummer Sonny Greer said of Django, that cat could take a guitar and make it talk. Nobody played like him. Reinhardt is regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time, and the first important European jazz musician to make a major contribution with jazz guitar.

So, I mean, yeah, did did pre-internet did Eddie know that? Fuck no. No, he had no idea, but but it it actually the the concept was well before him, but he used to turn it into a signature.

Yeah. He used to turn around on stage when he did it, too, Kev.

Like in the early days, yeah, so people couldn't see what he was doing. But it's funny now because you see the videos, and it's great that these young kids are talented, but there's such a huge difference from a seven-year-old girl playing Eruption and being the guy that wrote Eruption.

Yes, exactly.

There's a big difference there. It's you know, from a kid to sit and play it, yeah, that's great. I'd be proud of the kid, and that's nice, but yeah, you didn't create anything, you just mimicked it. Right.

Kevin, I I'm glad you brought that up because that was one of the points I was gonna make. Is that one you go into a uh music store, a guitar store, you know, instrument store, and people that's one of the things they play. They play eruption, you know. What look at me, you know? Right, and careful.

Hey, no stairway denied. Absolutely no stairway to heaven.

So you have to play eruption instead. All right. I go in a music store and I I freeze. I can't play in there. I mean, I'm not I just I I can't. I I I'm not the I have zero ego when it comes to guitar playing.

I can't play at home. Can I take can I take this guitar and amp with me and bring it back tomorrow and trade it for a different one? I don't want to play in front of people.

You go on TikTok, right? And there's hot the thing is there's hot girls playing note for note solos, and I won't say a guitar player because it might come up, but they're playing it note for note, one of the best solos ever, and there's like 20,000 videos of people playing it note for note. And it means nothing to me because like they didn't write that solo, you know? Um they can practice it and and get it perfect for the video, but did they did they create that solo?

Yeah, if you're sitting in your living room and I want to play Eruption, that's that's great, but there's no need to do it in public unless you're in a tribute band, and there's no need to put it on the internet.

Exactly.

Right, right.

Dear Lord. Awesome. All right, agreed, Kev, we're gonna go to you here to uh kick off number two, and then we'll go to Mark so he can have the same two and one as me.

Yes, we're gonna have three, two, and one. I know it. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

I know Mark and I are gonna have the same two and one, probably.

Well, I I mean Kev. Yeah.

Okay, okay. All right, so at number two, Prince Rogers Nelson. Yep. This is a guy that was just, I mean, underrated because he was a pop star. Um, I don't really think he ever in his life got the um accolades that he deserved as a guitarist. I mean, if somebody told him you can never play pop or funk or soul ever again, he probably could have been one of the best heavy metal guitarists of of the era as well. He just had that much skill. I mean, we've talked about it before. Um the the while my guitar gently weeps at the rock and roll hall of fame. I mean, he had been shunned. Now, Jan Hammer was was the um editor of Rolling Stone and had left him off the year before it left him off the top 100 guitarist for Tiger Beat. Sorry, Rolling Stone. I keep getting those confused. Satine beat, tiger beat, rolling stone. I gotta show you, hold on, I gotta show you a picture here because this is the exact moment that I canceled my Tiger Beat Rolling Stone subscription.

Oh, you told me this one right there.

When I got that in the mail, this is not a music magazine anymore. That was July of '97. I canceled my subscription. That's that's not a rock magazine. So, anyway, so Jan Hammer had had um had kind of shunned him on the top 100 guitarists, and that was kind of Hammer, Jan Werner. I'm sorry, I was talking about the keyboard player. Um, but he was also one of the heads of the Hall of Fame. So when Prince walks out on that stage with Jeff Lynn and Donnie Harrison and uh was it Mike Campbell and Tom Petty and whatever else, and proceeds to kick everybody's ass. That was like him looking at Jan Werner going, suck it. Exactly. Who's the top 100 guitarist now? Yeah. Yeah. Joni Mitchell, who's who's on the Tiger Beat list, apparently. And I'm like, I don't have a problem with that.

Rolling Stone.

Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones, Tiger Beat. I get him confused. Like I said, they got the bright pink cover. And then the anyway, Joni Mitchell was on that list. And I'm like, nothing against Joni Mitchell, but really, and high up.

And I'm thinking to myself, she was a singer-songwriter, played guitar, but not their argument, their argument was that her chord structure and whatever else.

I'm like, okay, yeah, but no. So yeah, Prince just a god on the guitar. And um one of the one of the top guys that I'm sorry that I never saw.

Yeah, absolutely. I saw him in purple rain, but that doesn't count.

Just to um one thing that, you know, you always bring that up, Kevin, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I can't remember who I saw just saying this a week or two ago, but I believe it was one of the people playing with him that night.

He's just sort of strumming along with us. And he gets to to his solo, and he started to play that solo off over to the to the left and and then he moved to the center of the stage, you know. And and he was wailing. Sounded great, you know. So we're all up there and we're all playing along. All of a sudden Prince turns his back to the audience and he's looking at us and he's playing and he falls off the stage, you know? And we were like Princess fell off the same stage. And he had this guy in the audience, a great big bright big black guy. The audience grabbed him and pushed him back up onto the stage. It was it was a show for he put on a show for us. It wasn't really for the audience, it was a show for us. And then he just played this blistering solo, and uh it was basically up to Tom that he was gonna cue me to to start the ending, you know. He turned around and he cue me to start the ending. I started in we finished the song, and then Prince walked off to the side of the stage, and he just threw his guitar up in the air and turned around and walked off with this little sort of swagger, shaking his head the other. And then uh and then everybody sort of realized like where'd that guitar go?

And saying the same exact fucking thing you do. He just he blew everyone off the stage. Incredible. Yeah, awesome.

Maybe one of the finest performances.

Yes, yes, um indeed him.

Like you were saying with guitar solos wasting time, if it doesn't have a point, then yes, I agree. Yeah, but every once in a while you get that Eddie Van Halen solo that blows you away, or the Prince one that's just like special. Alright, yeah, I'll give you I'll give you a I'll give you a pass on that one for a guitar solo.

Awesome.

Glue my ears back on.

Alright, Mark.

Alright, well, my number two, Hunter, just above Fred uh coming in second to Fred Bear, would be Oh, this is guitar player. Ted Nugent. Uncle Fucking Ted. Okay. He's fed so many impoverished people with all his venison and everything. But do his guitar work. Right now, I'm gonna tell you, he did not even make the top 250. And my number one pick did not make the top 250 on Tiger Beach. I don't know what control magazine. And uh this guy, I'm telling you, right when he uh was in the Amboy Dukes, and it became Ted Nugent and Amboy Dukes, right through Ted Gay. Me and AJ saw him down in Hampton Beach, was it like three years ago? Incredible show. He still friggin is playing friggin' immensely incredible.

Okay, the energy, incredible. And I just I'm just but I'm just talking with you, Mike, because you know it's my two as well. So we'll just blend this together. How's that going?

Okay. Sounds good. AJ's number two pick, Ted New Jim.

So yeah, that was an incredible show.

We're a great man!

Nothing but great killer American shit kicker guitar mix just for you, motherfuckers. Alright, wait a minute. Nothing but the best killer fucking freedom drinks guitar mix in the world. You want? You came here tonight because you want the number one killer fucking shit kicker freedom drinks guitar mix in the world. That's what you want, isn't it?

That's what you demand, isn't it?

Only I unleashed this motherfucker.

And he's in his seventies as well, and he still has that cocaine energy for a sober man that has been sober his whole life. He's high strong. Incredible, incredible musician with that singing bird land with its fucking feedback. It's so good. And speaking of Chuck Berry, Kevin, and you guys, and Mark and Bo Diddley. He loves Chuck Barry, Bo Diddley.

He's hugely imbued by Motown. Rhythm and Blues.

The most underrated guitarist in my world, is my opinion. I don't care what anyone else has to say about it, but he his politics shun him, which is unfortunate because absolutely ridiculous. Looks bes you know beyond that. You know, you gotta separate the artist from the person, from the, you know, you know what I'm saying, boys. And you said this last time.

Now I do think that he was shunned even before any, you know, we've only been truly divided politically for about 15 years-ish, 20, maybe 20. And he was kind of underrated before that, and I don't know why. Yeah, um, he should have been out there more. He might have just slipped through the cracks kind of.

Because he was selling out stadiums, selling out not arenas, boys, stadiums. Stadiums. Yes.

And um, I I like to finish uh my point. Go ahead, brother. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, I one concert at Donnie and all of you I would like you to look at is the uh one in Germany. And look at Great White Buffalo or listen to it and look watch it.

Thank you, thank you. Yes, I do believe it's true. Donkey Shane. We thank you very much, yes, we do.

Let's see what I gotta say.

Um Derek Saint Holmes actually does the first part of the guitar solo. Derek Street Holmes. Okay, David. Oh, God love you, David. But anyway, uh yeah, and then Nugent comes in. It was the most tasteful and just effortless, and we're gonna be able to do that. It's unreal. And my God, just listen to that. And oh nice. And he and he still plays great. And uh the other thing I wanted to mention, and I've talked about this before. When you AJ AJ, I and David went to this is gonna be Springfield.

I knew it.

Go on. Okay, I'll let you talk about it. I'll let you talk about it.

No, because this was one of my great joys and one of your great fears. So I'll let you know.

Oh, it was Yeah, but we were about to be stamped, AJ!

And I always went to the front of said stampede. Go on.

Okay, well, congratulations. I would get want to die at 22 years old.

Are you gonna say it or not?

I didn't want to die at twenty-two, and they blew Aerosmith, he blew Aerosmith away. Yeah. So this was go ahead.

This was the Aerosmith, and Mark always argues this as well, but it was the Aerosmith Back in the Saddle tour. Now it was not when Back in the Saddle came out as a song.

Now I understand.

It's what they named the tour later because Joe Perry's back and they're back on tour together. Um we go to Springfield Mass and Ted Nugent is opening, which you know we're probably more excited about anyway, but excited to see everything. And we're up on the floor, general admission, like the good old days always was, and the lights went out, and you know how the crowd rushes to the front. That was Mark's death fear. And of course, yeah, David wasn't told about it either way, and I went to the wall and leaned on the wall up front.

Well, me and David went, yeah, he went with me too. He wasn't into death that day either.

But I enjoyed being crunched at the front wall because I had the puke scenario that we've spoken about on the show before. I would just turn around and prevent to pretend to vomit, and everyone would get out of my way. So I was never trapped. Brilliant. It's it was brilliant. Nobody wants to be puked on. I don't care how tight it is. Nope. Not to mention the joints that you got to smoke while you were up there. They're just passing them around. I got a story about that, but Ted Nugent, boys. Nice Ted Nugent.

Uncle Tedunga. He's on the list just for strangleholds. Yeah, even without the rest of the catalog. Just that.

He is a badass too. For sure. Battle axe. That's right. That's your word. All right. So I got I gotta do it. He's on the he's on the tiger beat.

I mean the roast stone.

He's on top 100. He's he's my I love the guy. It's Jimi Hendrix. I I gotta put him up there. I love his playing, I love his innovation, I love his vibe. The dude was mellow. But he can play play the guitar, and I love it. I have to do I have to do like a one-two, and I you guys are gonna hate me, but so uh Jimi Hendrix wrote Little Wing. But there's another guitar player that also played Little Wing. Stevie Ravon. I gotta do a one-two. Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ravon. Jimi Hendrix wrote the tune.

Well she's walking through the ground. With the circuit's mind.

That's funny with a flies and the tune is amazing from Jimi Hendrix, but Stevie Ray Vaughn played the shit out of it. I love the Stevie Ray Vaughn version. Uh I I would have put him, you know, so they're my one-two, the two guys. Um, I think Jimmy was more of a an artist, a creator, and and Steve Ray was just a you know, awesome guitar player. But um, so that's why I got Jimi Hendrix up there. Um, just because of his creativity, you know, his creativity. Um I wasn't a fan of the the Star Spangled Banner like everybody is. Like to me, that was just like man, whatever. I didn't like it either. But no, it's like Little Wing and all the stuff.

Yeah, that's a great one.

Yeah, purple.

I think there's a lot of similarities between Hendrix and Stevie Ray, and I don't think there'd be a Stevie Ray without Hendrix, but if I'm going to the record collection, I'm still grabbing Stevie Ray before I'm grabbing Jimmy. Nothing against him.

I just I probably would lean to Stevie Ray, but I I put Jimmy first because I think he just he was the the OG. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

He took it somewhere where it had not been for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Incredible, undeniable. Woodstock, baby. Woodstock.

We get to number one, we get to see squeezed in it.

I squeezed in two. I'm sorry, I had to. Yeah, but that's two.

Donnie still has a number one, brother. That took a whole album side last cast. Yeah, exactly. That's true. But Mark was thinking that you didn't have a number one now. Which by the way, Mark and Mark and my number one will be able to tie into that one too, Donnie.

But because I I am again I morph those two, even though they're to two totally different individuals and different styles. We make exceptions here at Paris Time Connected to the Little Wing.

Nice.

Yeah.

All right, Kev. Okay, number one, definitely a personal choice here. I think this guy is just an amazing, amazing guitarist, no matter how you slice it. Um, he's predominantly known for money for nothing, but that's not that's not why I love him. It's and I think it was an intersection of my taste and what he started doing with his solo work. It just kind of intersected perfectly. He started doing what I wanted to listen to at that time, and I'm talking probably late 90s, early 2000s up till now. Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits has just always been an amazing guitarist. I mean, you go back to Saltons of Swing and I'm telling you. The solo stuff that that he's got out, he's just such has such a command of the instrument, and he's got that picking with the thumb and two fingers.

A pick is actually the biggest amplifier that there is. But then uh after a few years of doing that. I learned to finger pick because I started playing in folk places. You start doing this slow thumb and finger thing, and you start and you're dribbling about trying to trying to make sense of it. The breakthrough really comes when you can get your thumb to play four beats to the bar on the bottom strings like this. And then your fingers are supposed to fit in with that. Which is a clever trick if you can do it. It's like learning to water ski. I'm up, I'm up, I'm down. You know, and uh but once you start to be able to pick a little tune out in a chord, get the rhythm going, and you can just hold a chord with the left hand, like a C chord there, and you can go. Which sounds quite a lot, really. It's kind of impressive considering the fact your left hand's not doing anything, it's just holding this chord. And then the idea is that you can go on developing that and then maybe pick out a little. Bit of a tune at the same time. So you're accompanying yourself. You know.

And just doing so many amazing things and making such a sound. You started off with Roy Clark Dongo, and and I wanted to say, I think I'm safe at this point. Um, Chet Atkins. Yeah. I've got an album of the two of them together, neck and neck. But also like the Paul, um, the Les Paul, where there was just they they just had this dancing on the fretboard with their fingers. And it was you know Chet Atkins was your number one.

AJ is throwing a funny in there.

I'll buy that for a dollar. I'll buy that for one dollar. Um, yeah, he's just got so many great albums, and his lyrics are are amazing, and yeah, it's just he is just an amazing talent. And I saw him a couple years back down at the waterfront in Boston. Just a legend, just an absolute legend, and and I can listen to him all day long.

I was tossing around with people at work, you know, and his name came up, and I'm like, oh, I can't take that's Kevin's. I can't thank you.

Kevin's dating. Yeah, yeah. Well, you knew mine and Mark's. So you never won the Donnie.

It was between Knopfler and Nugent for my number one because I knew nobody else was gonna pick Nugent.

Yeah. All right, Mark, wrap it up for this pick up well, you know what I mean. Wrap our pickup.

Well, I'm obviously going with Steve Miller and uh yeah. I'm going the sound of kiss, Mr. Paul Freely, also known as Ace Freely. When his guitar solo comes on, it ties the kiss sound together and all his guitar fills. And the way they treated, I I'm just I I I don't want to get we already have a cast coming out about that. He, you know, his aloof style just in the back, and you know, he made it 11 out of minor pentatonic scales, but you know what? He knew how to do it. And I mean he influenced Slash, he influenced so many guitar players. I I just I wish he would have played on Creatures to the Night and everything. I get so excited about the players. What was the album? Say it again. I wish that Okay, after music from the Elder, which he was so against correctly.

You wish he played on what album?

Say what?

I wanted you to repeat the album, you said it wrong. So Creatures from the Elder.

Creatures! He wanted to play on he would have played on Creatures if they never went to music from the Elder.

I know, brother. You said creatures to the night, and I was just trying to.

See how why wound up I get about this whole situation? But man, flashy. Flashy.

Guitarist wanted with flashing balls. And I will continue because you know what's my number one, everyone. As I will always say, well, we've said from the beginning of the show today, this is our favorite, not the best, because Ace Freely would be the first to tell you that he was not a virtuoso, he never took a lesson when people would ask him on documentaries and guitar shows to show him he'd laugh with his fucking hilarious cackle. But you're kind of like a spaceman.

No, actually, I'm a plumber.

Listen, I got a little piece of pipe next to higher, I'd like to have you work on. And say, I couldn't tell you, I never took a lesson, I just do it. You know, and that's exactly who he was. As every KISS fan knows, Ace Freely's solos were a song within a song. Exactly. Um themselves, you can sing them, and they were the sound to kiss, like you said, Mike. Well, all four of them were the sound to kiss, but him and Peter completed that sound. It's f he's fucking incredible. And like Sonny said, with his bracelets and everything banging off the strings and just the sloppiness of it, he was pure beautiful and sloppy. He made a sound that was so influential, a look that was so influential as well. When people say influence, I'm not joking when I say this. Obviously, there's Jimmy Page, who obviously was a huge Ace influence, if not the biggest. Ace might be in that top five, if not, you know, top three of most influential guitar players of all time, just because he made more people pick that instrument up. Period. Blah, blah, blah. Anything else, Mark? Or I'll go to Dongo to wrap her up.

I I just it's really sad that we lost him this year. I mean, I just it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. So that's all I got.

All right, dongo number one to you, buddy. Very cool. And this is going back to Mark. I'd already grabbed him, but I had to go with my favorite guitar player, and that's Randy Rhodes. Yes. I had to take him at number one because he's the my favorite. He's my favorite guitar player because he was one who could, you know, for me, he was one that could play a metal song but have a melodic solo and have it fit seamlessly. You know, to have a melody that's sweet and and amazing, but also kick-ass in a metal song. And you know, his rhythms were excellent. Um, his classical influence. Um, I played D in a recital and I fucked it all up. But I mean easy to do. But uh, you know, I loved it, it was great. But that Randy Rhodes tribute album, I got that, and I was just like, I'm in love, you know, and he was lost so tragically and so young. He was who knows what he could have done. Um it was amazing what he did in such a short period of time. And you know, you hear an artist gets killed in the plane crash, and a lot of people sadly get killed in plane crashes, but his was like that was a stupid plane crash. Like they were just like joy riding, you know, like a bus driver was like, Hey, let's go and steal a plane and you know, do strife the Aussie's tour bus.

Oh, the weight was in idiots.

Yes, yeah, they're being idiots and you know, taken way too early. Um, who knows what it is. Taken from us, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he's my number one.

Was anybody else doing the classical that he did? I mean, I just that's where I became aware of that time, that marriage, and and and it became you know a part of what the rock that we listened to growing up. It it was a lot of people kind of jumped on that um uh later on. But I don't know of anybody in that popular music doing that prior to him.

Right.

Really, not the way that he did it.

Yeah. Because his solos are are great because he'll start with a melodic kind of run, a scale, but then he'll throw in a little blues, you know, he'll throw in a little shredding kind of thing, you know. Like he mixes. He would do kind of hit a lot of things in in one solo.

I hear a lot of people doggone, I know a lot of Aussie fans, I should say, would kind of dog on Diary a little bit. Not the album, the song itself, and to me, that is one of the greatest works of art ever. That song. I love it.

My favorite solo from him is Mr. Crowley, probably. Um, but I love Diary, is is probably my number two. Amazing. And then I don't know is is right up there as far as the rhythm and his fills. I love his fills. He'd write at the live, live playing. He just loves to throw in a fill. Yeah, and I love it, you know.

The doubling that he used on a lot of stuff too is pretty just fleshed out the sound. Yeah, um, I remember reading that his his mother had a music school, and so when he picked up the guitar, he started playing. She sent him to one of her, you know, one of the one of the teachers.

You're go, you're stealing my story, but go on, Kevin.

You beat me to it. Oh, I thought you had your pick. No, on this one. He was like, What was it, AJ? Like a month into it, and the teacher was like, Yeah, I can't teach him anything else. Exactly. I'm learning from him now.

Yeah, he said, like, for the he said, I can't teach your son anymore. Sorry, Kev, I was gonna let you run with it and go with it. But he's like, What do you mean you can't teach him? He's like, Because the last three weeks I've been learning from him. I can't take your money anymore. The teacher became the student. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fucking incredible. Awesome, though. I knew that'd be your one, Dongo. I think we all didn't. I did too. I didn't talk a lot about it. Yeah. Well, that wraps it up, boys. Another great one, as always. Um, a few things I like to always get out there is our email, which is pta80H at gmail.com. Always twice. PTA80H at gmail.com. Give us some feedback on this stuff. Who's your favorite guitarist? We'd love to hear that from you guys. Uh, Kevin, thank you so much. What a blast. Thank you, AJ. Donald, rock on, man. Thanks. Yes, brother Mark.

That was absolutely fun.

It was fun, man. I love this shit. That was just a blast, like you said.

I was gonna say it was a blast, and you stole the blast. So, but anyway, I had a I had a blast.

Everyone out there, thank you so much for listening. We can't appreciate it more. And we are out.

Somewhere, some winners will move to the toss too.