The greatest living guitarist, according to Brian May: “He’s one of the greats”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that Brian May is frequently listed in rundowns of the greatest guitarists of all time, and throughout his career with Queen and as an occasional guest musician, he’s proven that he’s worthy of such praise.
However, one thing that is also true about such lists is that they rarely ever acknowledge modern guitarists to the same degree as they do those who were prominent years or even decades before. It doesn’t have to be compiled by someone who was alive to witness said guitarists at the peak of their abilities, because younger audiences tend to also follow this same selection process, regurgitating the same logic and reasoning behind their picks.
Of course, many, if not most of the people who find their way into these lists are deserving of their place, but the fact that they haven’t been altered for the best part of 40 years isn’t reflective of a decline; it’s a reflection of people’s refusal to question a previously established canon. Great guitarists have continued to emerge over the past four decades, they’re just sidelined in favour of those who were fortunate enough to have established themselves in the earlier years of popular music.
While May has always been grateful for the continued adulation that he receives, there have always been other younger players who he had been floored by the ability of, and who he personally believes ought to be recognised in the pantheon of great guitarists.
During a 2020 interview with Total Guitar, whose readers had just nominated him as one of their favourite guitarists of all time, he questioned this approach and why there aren’t as many guitarists who are younger than him who are cited as being among the greatest to ever live, and even offered up a suggestion of his own as to which more contemporary player ought to have more recognition than he was ever afforded.
May firmly believed that Portuguese guitarist Nuno Bettencourt was one of the best players he’d ever heard, and that he had been sorely overlooked by critics due to the fact that his band, Extreme, never extended their mainstream success much further beyond their sole Billboard-topping hit in 1992.
“They had that massive hit with ‘More Than Words’ and then I think unfortunately it was difficult for their audience to appreciate what they really were as a band,” May argued. “It was one of those strange moments where you get a hit but it doesn’t define you in the way you want to be defined. That’s the way I see it, because they’re a magnificent group.”
He continued, praising Bettencourt’s ability on the instrument. “Nuno’s really very underrated I would say. He’s one of the greats. One of the greatest living guitarists.”
While he has since found his way into lists by other sources, although admittedly at much lower levels than the usual suspects, it’s still remarkable that few people talk about modern players in the same way as they can endlessly be flattering about the likes of May and his contemporaries.
Even in the case of Bettencourt, who was at his peak during the 1990s, there aren’t many of his competitors who break into the upper echelons of such lists, and given how guitar-led music hasn’t disappeared, it ought to be evident that good guitarists are still out there waiting to be included in the same breath as the ‘greats’.
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