Most under-rate/under-exposed guitarist...

+1 for Marc Ribot. I love his work with Tom Waits. Harrison is great too, gotta love those hummable guitar solos.

I was lucky enough to see David Byrne (ex-Talking Heads) on his tour last year, and I was really impressed with his playing, and how close he came to sounding like the records. Dude can funk it up.

There's plenty of great guitarists from the 80's punk scene (Bob Mould from Husker Du, Curt Kirkwood from Meat Puppets, D. Boon from Minutemen, J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr, Greg Ginn from Black Flag, and so on and so on) that never really got the respect they deserved. I've seen Curt and J live, and they blew me away.
 
+1 for Neil Zaza. Great tone, great melodies, great speed when he wants, and for some reason, most people in his own home town (which happens to be just minutes from my home :D) don't even seem to know about him.
 
Me.


...I'm serious.


For me, any kind of judgement on how "good" a guitarist is based on their level of technique is flawed. Look at jimi hendrix, many consider him the best ever (i strongly disagree) but blatantly, technically speaking he was just awful.

I respect someone like Steve Vai who has a complete mastery over his instrument and uses it to create music. Most of his stuff i can't listen to even though i do consider him the "best in the world". As its been said, there will be some japanese kid who's been playing guitar from inside the womb who can play twice as fast as Vai. But as long as he's inside his bedroom, for me this is like learning how to paint, then never painting.

The guys from protest the hero are my pick. Amazing young musicians with an attitude.
 
Still don't think Knopfler gets the props he deserves. He should be up there with Gilmore. Neil Young too, he's pretty fantastic in his own way.

Also, Rory Gallagher is very rarely mentioned in the same breath as Clapton, Beck or SRV - stylistically, I think he's a hybrid of all three styles and then some.
 
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Neil Young????!!!!!!! I get the song writing part, but handing him a guitar is akin to handing a loaded gun to a 3 year old. Which begs the question: What criteria are we using to determine the 'quality' of a guitar player and/or the players 'under-rated status.
 
Farview said:
Neil Young????!!!!!!! I get the song writing part, but handing him a guitar is akin to handing a loaded gun to a 3 year old. Which begs the question: What criteria are we using to determine the 'quality' of a guitar player and/or the players 'under-rated status.
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Well as far as criteria goes: I'm sure we're all familiar with the oft-stated guitar gods - Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Beck, SRV, Eric Johnson, Vai, Satriani, Gilmour, Slash, EVH, The Edge etc. I guess determining quality is contingent on personal rational, while under-rated status is established by a guitarist not being present in the afore-mentioned list.

In so far as personal rational goes, Neil Young crafts fantastic acoustic melodies - Harvest Moon, The Needle and The Damage Done, Old Man, I am a Child, Sugar Mountain - all excellent compositions IMO. As for electric, he can make a two-note solo sound like the most exciting, expressive piece you've ever heard. He might only play a handful of notes but he plays the right handful of notes. I also think he has come up with some fantastic riffs too - Ohio is instantly memorable, and so are Like A Hurricane, Winterlong and Cinnamon Girl. I think Cinnamon Girl could've been a Soundgarden or Alice in Chains riff, was way ahead of his time. And the fact that he can go from one extreme to the other in the space of a single album is testament to his versatility.
 
What I love about Neil Young is he isn't into nostalgia, he just keeps on growing.

Two historic guitarists that aren't household names are James Burton, who played with Elvis and others and Tommy Tedesco, who played on tons of stuff from the Monkees to the Bonanza theme.

You know what's funny is that when Paul McCartney left the Beatles and put out his first solo album, "McCartney", he played all the instruments, and the drums sound like Ringo and the guitar sounds like George.

I love Randy Jacobs' guitar playing on this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPgDQGxUaCQ
Those sessions with Sweet Pea Atkinson, produced by Don Was, are some of the best recorded and played stuff I've found. I'm not sure I've ever heard a better bass player than Reggie McBride.
 
TelePaul said:
Well as far as criteria goes: I'm sure we're all familiar with the oft-stated guitar gods - Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Beck, SRV, Eric Johnson, Vai, Satriani, Gilmour, Slash, EVH, The Edge etc. I guess determining quality is contingent on personal rational, while under-rated status is established by a guitarist not being present in the afore-mentioned list.

In so far as personal rational goes, Neil Young crafts fantastic acoustic melodies - Harvest Moon, The Needle and The Damage Done, Old Man, I am a Child, Sugar Mountain - all excellent compositions IMO. As for electric, he can make a two-note solo sound like the most exciting, expressive piece you've ever heard. He might only play a handful of notes but he plays the right handful of notes. I also think he has come up with some fantastic riffs too - Ohio is instantly memorable, and so are Like A Hurricane, Winterlong and Cinnamon Girl. I think Cinnamon Girl could've been a Soundgarden or Alice in Chains riff, was way ahead of his time. And the fact that he can go from one extreme to the other in the space of a single album is testament to his versatility.
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While I grant you this makes him a good "songwriter," I don't necessarily agree that this makes him a good "guitarist."

Then again, perversely, maybe you're onto something. I've always said that much as I love him for his blues playing, Jimi's overrated because not even Jimi could live up to the hype of what it means to be Jimi. Maybe Young's the same way - not even Neil Young can live up to Neil Young's reputation for sucking. :p
 
Another guy I've always really dug and considered a huge influence is, don't laugh, whoever the lead guitarist was on Sarah McLachlan's "Surfacing." There's some GREAT textural guitar on that album - one track in particular, "Witness," has what I consider a really awesome solo, which is pretty much just a collection of random guitar noise, with the occasional note thrown in. It conveys all the sound of a "guitar solo" without actually really being one, and it's a pretty cool use of the sound of a guitar, just this really dissonant, jagged, bizarre thing in the middle of a very sedate ballad.
 
Well, Neil Young's solos are almost entirely improvised. He's always pushing the boundaries of what a tube amp can do without catching on fire. His tech said that ther is always a fan blowing on the backs of his amps. He's also been an innovator in guitar gear. This is a cool blurb out of a Guitar World magazine describing Young's stage setup:

Guitar World said:
Young derives his distortion entirely from the Deluxe's output-tube saturation. He coaxes various gain stages from the amp using a device called the Whizzer, a custom-made switching system he and his late amp tech, Sal Trentino, developed around the time of the Rust Never Sleeps tour in 1978. A high-tech concept housed in a rudimentary box, the Whizzer boasts four preset buttons, each corresponding to one volume/tone configuration on the Deluxe. Young accesses the presets through footswitches on his pedal board, which, in turn, command the Whizzer to mechanically twist the Deluxe's tone and volue controls to the progremmed positions.

All four of the Whizzer's presets dial in distorted tones on the Deluxe. "The first one," says Cragg, "is still clean enough that Neil can get really nice dynamics, depending on the way he picks. The second setting is the one he uses on songs like 'Hey ey, My My', and the third one is really distorted." The final setting, which moves the Deluxe's main vlume and tone knobs to 12 and the second volume control to roughly 9.9, produces a sound that, says Cragg, "is basically a wooooaaarrr type of thing."
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I think tha his improv soloing is definitely underrated. I've heard some pretty terrible solos from Young, but I've heard some pretty terrible solos from almost everyone mentioned in this thread. But when you're making up solos on the spot, they can't all be winners. That's the beauty of improv. If you don't go out on any limbs, you end up with improv that sounds like elevator music or Phish's last few tours (don't get me wrong, I love me some Phish but the improv solos on those last few tours were so uninspired and boring that they totally lost me as a fan). But Young will jump out there on a limb and sometimes he gets stranded out there the way that Art Tatum would get rhythmically stranded on piano. But there are those times when going out on a limb enables him to make a very exciting dismount.

Plus I like Young's interaction between himself, his guitar, and his amp. He really plays the whole rig as one big instrument and I like that. And he has such a rapport and history with his current bandmates that his jams are very comfortable, yet he has such a ragged vintage setup that it adds a dimension of instability to it, like it could all go up in a huge bonfire at any moment.
 
Hey, I improvise all my solos too, man, and I'm also not afraid of taking chances. The difference is I'm also not afraid of 8th notes. ;)
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
While I grant you this makes him a good "songwriter," I don't necessarily agree that this makes him a good "guitarist."
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This reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend. He was pretty drunk and I was driving him home. I guess we were listening to the doors because he started going on about how bad a singer Jim Morrison was:

"Sure, he can hit the notes. His melody lines are great. And sure, he has alot of soul to his voice. It really suits the band's style. And I know he's got great stage presence. But he's no singer"

- In short, what more do you want? :D
 
TelePaul said:
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend. He was pretty drunk and I was driving him home. I guess we were listening to the doors because he started going on about how bad a singer Jim Morrison was:

"Sure, he can hit the notes. His melody lines are great. And sure, he has alot of soul to his voice. It really suits the band's style. And I know he's got great stage presence. But he's no singer"

- In short, what more do you want? :D
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Let me rephrase, then, in the voice of your friend.

"Sure, he can't hit the notes, and might not know an in-tune solo if it hit him over the head. He does write good melody lines, though. On a good night, sometimes he can even sound soulful, though he's pretty inconsistent. Occasionally his solos fit the band's style, though sometimes I really wish he'd ease up on the feedback. (I actually have no idea what his stage presence is like, so skipping that one). He's a good enough musician, all in all, but he's really not much of a guitarist."

In short, when talking about underrated guitarists, I sort of assume that we're talking about guys who can actually play. ;)
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
Let me rephrase, then, in the voice of your friend.

"Sure, he can't hit the notes, and might not know an in-tune solo if it hit him over the head. He does write good melody lines, though. On a good night, sometimes he can even sound soulful, though he's pretty inconsistent. Occasionally his solos fit the band's style, though sometimes I really wish he'd ease up on the feedback. (I actually have no idea what his stage presence is like, so skipping that one). He's a good enough musician, all in all, but he's really not much of a guitarist."

In short, when talking about underrated guitarists, I sort of assume that we're talking about guys who can actually play. ;)
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I don't think he solos out of tune. His bends are a little wild but I've noticed that with other guitarists who really bring it when it comes to performing live (Springsteen for instance). I've seen Neil live with Crazy Horse. It's quite the spectacle. Although you seem to be focusing on Neil with Old Black. Put a D45 in his hands and it's a different story.
 
TelePaul said:
James Burton's playing on 'Black and White Night' is something to behold!
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James Burton playing on just about everything he's done is something to behold. There aren't many players out there that haven't got a few of his licks in their locker whether they know it or not.
 
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