The guitarist Steve Vai thought was sorely overlooked: “He’s like guitar a soldier”
When asked to name the best guitarist of all time, a lot of people would reach for players like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour or Brian May, while others who prefer the real deal might opt for someone like BB King or Albert King, or else Elmore James, Blind Willie McTell, Memphis Minnie or Elizabeth Cotton. For many, although not for enough, Michael Bloomfield is the greatest ever guitar god.
Anyone who can be trusted on the subject would have to talk about the great Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and it would be remiss not to mention any of the great leading ladies from her lineage, like Bonnie Raitt or Celeste Henderson, as well. Then there were the soul singers and sidemen like Steve Cropper, Clarence Carter, Barbara Lynn and Eddie Hinton or jazzmen like Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhart.
Maybe you grew up with Hendrix or Keith Richards and George Harrison or Dave Davies. For anyone raised later on a steady diet of MTV, it would be hard to look beyond Mark Knopfler, Prince, Nile Rodgers, Johnny Marr or Eddie Van Halen, or the top-hat-wearing Slash as the top axemen of all time. Maybe you’re more modern, and so prefer the sounds of Albert Hammond Jr, Courtney Barnett or St. Vincent.
Some people might even tell you that it’s Steve Vai, and indeed, he has been consistently voted among the very best whenever such polls arise, mainly for his work with Frank Zappa, Alcatrazz and Whitesnake, but when asked himself who a guitarist that he particularly admired was, Vai had quite a surprising response.
“Pete Thorn, I’ve admired him for quite a while. He’s like a soldier, you know? He’s like a guitar soldier”, he said. “I first started hearing him when he was demoing gear, and I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s a great tone. Wow. This guy.’ I’m checking the boxes, you know? And his lead playing is beautiful. His intonation is great. He’s just like a real soldier. And so, it’s gotta be nice to have that underneath everything.”
If the name isn’t immediately familiar to you, that’s because you won’t find him tearing it up on any seminal works from the 1960s and ’70s, or elevating any power ballads in the eighties. Whilst Thorn has found himself on stage or in the studio with artists like Don Henley, Chris Cornell and Melissa Etheridge, he is perhaps best known for his YouTube channel, where he demos guitars, pedals, techniques and “all things guitar”. With over 275k subscribers, Steve Vai is evidently far from his only fan, although he may just be the biggest.
“There’s a way that some people hit the strings—they just explode and resonate beautifully, like Angus [Young, AC/DC guitarist], or even, oddly enough, Kurt Cobain”, Vai said in a recent interview. “They were different, but when you add more gain, it’s harder to make chords and playing sound really good. And Pete? He’s a master at it.”
With over 1.3k videos uploaded to his channel, Thorn has produced an enormous body of work to show off his guitar prowess, and, with that many videos, he is undoubtedly living up to his channel tagline of “all guitars, all the time”.
