The 10 most annoying guitarists of all time
The only thing that any musician can ask for is to inspire people. As much as some people dream about the millions that they would spend when they reach the big time, the payoff moment normally comes when someone takes what they had built and starts to build a legacy of their own. While that comes from hearing the first note that comes out of a guitar, six-stringers like Ted Nugent would elicit everything from annoyance to outright revulsion, depending on who you talk to.
However, it’s hard to really get to that point when one’s only job is to play a cool lick and look cool while the singer is selling every tune. Anyone is bound to feel overshadowed whenever they are at the side of the stage, so normally, any guitarist either gets their notoriety from being insanely good at their instrument or because they have something to say in between every one of their tunes.
Even when they don’t open their mouths, it’s not like every one of their solos was going to give Eddie Van Halen a run for his money or anything. There might even be some tasty stuff in their playing, but when everything from their trash musical opinions to their insistence on being treated like a king is overshadowing the actual playing, it gets more than a little bit exhausting to listen to before a note is even played.
While not every one of them is downright insufferable, the idea of all of them pretending to be gods among men because they happen to play the guitar is a much grosser offence than letting the fame go to someone’s head a little bit. This is the kind of behaviour that makes a potentially good band sound awful by association, and if there’s one thing worse than an outright terrible group, it’s wasted potential.
The 10 most irritating guitarists:
10. Keith Nelson – Buckcherry
By the time the 2000s started, any type of hair metal act didn’t really have a prayer in the mainstream. Even the remnants of grunge were dead by that point, and the garage rock revival had no time for the second or third generation of Winger wannabes clogging up the charts. Although Buckcherry didn’t make for a fairly decent butt-rock act during their time in the limelight, it’s disheartening to see someone with as much flair as Keith Nelson be so wasted in the group.
Because listening back to a lot of their celebrated material, Nelson is easily the best part of every single track. Even when something is a little too on the nose and sounds like something that should be blaring out of a bar that hasn’t passed a health inspection, hearing his bluesy solo is like watching ZZ Top sit in on a track by Puddle of Mudd and somehow managing to hold his own.
So, while Nelson does have a fair bit of chops and could easily be considered one of the better guitarists of his generation, the fact that he hung on to Josh Todd for so long made him an annoying musician by accessory. He still reached the mainstream in one way or another, but you can’t help but listen to some of his leads and think he deserves so much better than what he settled for.
9. Henry Kaiser
Rock and roll has never been afraid to switch things up every now and again. Even though no one was ready for a band like The Velvet Underground, most can admit nowadays that their debut album was a game-changer, even if it sounded like it was recorded out of a trash can in places. In the case of Henry Kaiser, though, mankind as a species might be a little too primitive to the kind of alien sounds that he’s getting out of his guitar.
Granted, it’s not like he hasn’t tried to make people see what he’s trying to do. Looking through various instructional videos, Kaiser has been known for trying to expand the limits of what guitar can do, but unlike someone like, say, Robert Fripp moving things in different directions, hearing this man play sounds like someone getting into a street fight with their guitar and barely winning throughout every second of it.
There’s a lot of effort which anyone can appreciate out of this kind of work, but it’s also fair to say that there is no way that anyone would go out of their way to put one of Kaiser’s songs on shuffle. Then again, if someone is in the mood for something that could stand alongside the likes of Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart in terms of raw batshit insanity, Kaiser’s still not bad. Hopefully, one day, us casual music fans will understand what he was trying to say.
8. Machine Gun Kelly
The entire concept of rock was about being an antithesis to the “safe” forms of pop music on the airwaves. No one knew what they wanted until someone like Elvis Presley came along, and once he did, going back to someone like Bing Crosby felt a little bit too saccharine for most people. In the case of Machine Gun Kelly, though, he’s made it a habit to make sure that everyone knows that he represents rock in all its forms. Or does he?
Because if we face the facts here, the supposed king of pop-punk only got there due to his connection to Travis Barker and the fact that he got laughed out of another genre when Eminem clowned him in ‘Killshot’. So now that he claims to be one of the biggest rockstars in the world, it’s laughable seeing him don a guitar and claim to be the next Tom DeLonge, especially when he starts picking fights with actual rockstars with better things to do like Corey Taylor.
It’s also strange to see Kelly rep so hard as a guitarist when the instrument could easily be swapped out with a toy guitar mindset, and hardly anyone would have been able to tell the difference. There are many ways that people can try to break into the industry, but if you come out guns blazing as Mr Kelly has, don’t be surprised when someone knocks you on your ass for saying something out of order.
7. CC Deville – Poison
There tends to be a common misconception when it comes to hair metal. Even though many people still feel that it was one of the worst atrocities to hit the music industry, you can’t deny that everyone tangential to the scene, like Eddie Van Halen, Slash, and even Richie Sambora, had some tasty licks in their discographies, when they wanted to. Outside of the knockout choruses, though, there was no real reason for CC Deville to be considered a guitar god of Poison.
It’s not like the band didn’t try, either. Looking through their discography, there are moments where their pop hits sound great, but whenever Deville tries to take a solo, his technique isn’t nearly as finessed as some of his peers. When playing a solo like ‘Talk Dirty To Me’, he seems to be going for a cross between Mick Ronson and Van Halen, but since he doesn’t have the dexterity, he seems to bury a lot of his moments in guitar effects instead.
Look no further than when the band performed tunes like ‘Unskinny Bop’ live, featuring Deville hardly playing any of the solo on record and making his whammy bar squeal, instead playing runs of notes that go nowhere and eventually crashing out as if nothing happened. Countless bands may have been trying to cut their teeth on Sunset Strip back in the day, but after one listen through that solo, Deville seemed to be someone more focused on the lipstick than the guitar riffs.
6. Ted Nugent
Getting a spot on a list like this always comes with doing something more than simply having an annoying guitar solo. Most six-stringers do have some egos on them, but it’s easy to keep most of them in check when they have an entire band to whip them into shape. After Ted Nugent freed himself from the confines of the Amboy Dukes, he found out that his ego was all that needed to be in the room every single time he took to the stage.
While rockstars behaving like assholes is nothing new, ‘Uncle Ted’ has taken things to nuclear levels throughout his solo career. Even though tunes like ‘Cat Scratch Fever’ or ‘Stranglehold’ still hold up as phenomenal pieces of work, hearing him force his politics and love of guns down everyone’s throat in every one of his songs, is more than a little tiring, especially nowadays when he sounds like the uncle that comes to a family reunion to tell a few offensive jokes and walk out early.
But the real clincher comes from his elicit behaviour in the past, including going out with a teenager and then legally adopting her so they could get married. While slimy doesn’t even begin to cover those kinds of actions, this is a case where the guitarist ends up wrecking his musical goodwill by association.
5. John Mayer
For a decade as devoid of guitar as the 2000s, most of us should be happy that John Mayer managed to break into the industry. It’s not often that someone is able to play the kind of blues licks that he can and still get tunes on the radio, but the fact that Continuum gained a foothold is a strange miracle for anyone wanting to hear something tasty on the charts. Unfortunately, Mayer also has a mouth on him, and that’s been a source of contention for fans for years.
When he was first hitting the scene, hearing him talk about some of the messy sides of his relationships became more and more off-putting. While he has since mellowed out, any casual look at his previous interviews has seen him come off as either a jaded ex or someone who thinks that they are God’s gift to women, which may or may not have been a comedic bit, depending on who you talk to.
Either way, hearing him talk about his escapades during this time made listening back to some of his classics a chore. ‘Your Body Is A Wonderland’ was already suspect when he first released it, but for anyone who has fond memories of songs like ‘Daughters’, it’s easy to see that the tender-hearted singer-songwriter he portrayed sounded more and more chauvinistic half the time.
4. Lindsey Buckingham
When it comes to the greatest artists of all time, talent doesn’t always equate to having the greatest personality. Even though Eric Clapton has made some of the biggest and best rock guitar solos of all time, it’s not hard to see some of the questionable things that he has said in the past. While Lindsey Buckingham did have the distinction of being a resident genius in Fleetwood Mac, seeing his dark side has painted his relationship with the entire band in a different light.
It’s already well-documented that Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were never on the same page again after they broke up, but looking at some of his behaviour during the making of Rumours already triggered some alarm bells. Outside of insisting that everything had to be perfect, Buckingham had managed to become the ultimate perfectionist, which wasn’t limited to him strangling a producer when he erased part of the guitar solo that he was being told to record over.
And considering that he has spent most of his time saying that he would be happy to return to Fleetwood Mac at some point, Nicks seems to have severed ties with him in all aspects of her life. It’s a shame that the same hands who played ‘Big Love’ would never recreate the tune live with the band, but considering how their final stand in the 1980s resulted in Buckingham and Nicks getting into a fistfight, maybe it’s best that they all keep to themselves.
3. Richard Benson
Every musician can only work with the hand they have been dealt. No one can claim to have the odds stacked in their favour all the time, and the best way of becoming stronger is to take all those shortcomings and turn them into pure magic when you have that guitar in your hands. While Richard Benson had turned himself into one of the tasty shredders in the business in his prime, the rest of his life saw him turning the guitar into a glorified toy whenever he tried to play it again.
Then again, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Benson. His unique approach to guitar came after a series of injuries, including arthritis and being unable to hit all of the notes he could in his prime. Once he started to take on a character, the world was introduced by what can only be described as a man assaulting the instrument with moves that would likely impress some unaware 13-year-old.
The only accurate way to describe his playing style by the end of his life is someone attempting to play fast without having any lessons about what guitar playing is, but it’s not like it isn’t entertaining for a little bit. Benson’s legacy might come back to the man who beat up a guitar every time he played, but there’s a strange respect that comes with being able to make something this cacophonous with that much confidence.
2. Yngwie Malmsteen
During the early 1980s, the idea of the super-shredder had flipped the entire guitar world on its head. Everyone was willing to be the next Eddie Van Halen no matter what the cost, and no matter how much Eddie complained about it, there was no one who didn’t pick up on those tapping licks whenever he played live. But there was another route in terms of classical shredding, and Yngwie Malmsteen decided to find his one trick and run with it for as long as he possibly could.
That’s not to say that he doesn’t have talent, though. Most of Malmsteen’s work with his band Rising Force is some of the most technically proficient playing in the world. Once people start to get around the sheer spectacle of it, the more they realise it takes away from his songwriting, often using his tunes as a vehicle for his solos rather than making too many melodies to latch onto.
While other guitar virtuosos like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani have come up in his wake, Malmsteen seems to be 100% unaware of how little staying power his gimmick has had over the years, often looking down on other popular bands for their comparatively little talent. It takes a lot for anyone to be halfway decent at guitar, but being a guitarist is also about innovation, and judging by what Malmsteen has done, he’d probably be surprised at how many people don’t give a shit about whether he can play that fast.
1. Ike Turner
Most record labels can only hope to find someone who is the all-around musical wunderkind that Ike Turner was. He may have been a bandleader and helped to launch the career of his wife, Tina, but the fact that he could play some of the best rock guitar right out of the gate was a game-changer for anyone picking up the instrument. When looking at how he behaved towards Turner, everything about his music will forever be tainted by his abusive tendencies.
While it would have been easy to rehash the story of their volatile relationship here, Ike’s history as an abuser goes far greater than Tina’s living hell. Outside of having to deal with the sexual aggression against his wife, Ike’s massive rule over his band felt more like a dictator than anything else, even one time demanding that Tina and the Ikettes be taken off the credits of a Frank Zappa album because of how much they were being paid over him.
And that’s only scratching the surface, too, with most anyone who worked with him realising that collaborating with him meant going his way or no way at all. It’s one thing for an artist to be a bit more demanding of their craft than others, but looking at everything that he had done to both Tina and his collaborators, Ike Turner was one of the few artists who made the craft of making music feel like a nightmare.
