The greatest British guitarists, according to Billy Gibbons
The speed at which some guitarists play is truly astonishing, and it leaves its mark on any who is privy to it, with one of the most famous guitarists who introduced this style being Eddie Van Halen, who pioneered a new tapping technique, allowing him to reach speeds previously unheard of or seen.
When he toured with Van Halen as the supporting act for Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi became a big fan of Eddie’s, blown away by his unique playing style. “I just don’t know how he could play like that,” he said, discussing his favourite guitar player, “Nobody can play like him”.
Of course, the style that Eddie used to champion is incredibly impressive, but it isn’t the only way to play guitar. Some people are so blinded by things like speed that they don’t allow other more subtle techniques to even cross their mind. Billy Gibbons was always adamant that sometimes, the simple approach is the best approach, as a lot can be done in the pocket of a couple notes, so long as you have the right fingers behind them.
“There’s a secret language to the blues,” he said, “You need to say it without saying it! There is a mystique in the poetry and in those simple three chords that have been stretched every which way.”
He spoke fondly of BB King and remembered a story that Jimmie Vaughan told him when the two of them jammed together. Vaughan played his solo, and then BB King went after him, delivering something that was unlike anything he had seen. “He took his solo and turned it over to BB after which he said he ‘Woke up in a daze’,” recalled Gibbons, “He didn’t think BB played more than two notes throughout the solo, but that’s all that was required. Sometimes those spare, skinny moments make the most sense.”
Then, in between BB King and Eddie Van Halen, you have a range of other great guitarists who adopt various styles when working on their style of musicianship. A lot of these were British artists, who developed a hard-rock-mixed-with-blues style of playing throughout the 1960s, a style which Gibbons was a huge fan of. He has previously spoken about his favourite British artists and highlighted a number of big names in the process.
“There’s the collection of great guitar players from Britain,” he said, “Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Mick Taylor, Peter Green, Mick Abraham. I’d call all of this the British block in my list”.
There are plenty of excellent guitar players in that list, some focus more on the blues style of playing, meanwhile others lean towards a style more akin to shredding. Both are very commendable ways of performing, but there is one guitarist in that list Gibbons had a particular soft spot for, and that was the formidable Jimmy Page.
“Jimmy Page is one of the greatest. I would invite all of you readers to go check out the nightclub scene from the 1966 movie Blowup, where The Yardbirds are playing. They had Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the same time! Listening to the band doing ‘Train Kept a-Rollin’…it’s just ferocious. Both of those guys had tone for days.”
