1.) Ricky Wilson (B-52s): A wrist that slinks and skanks out riffs that sound like the entire Top 10 for the year 1962. Criminally overlooked.
2.) James Honeyman-Scott (The Pretenders): I’m currently writing an essay on the Pretenders and, wow! what a loss to the world of music. Johnny Marr lists him early and often in his own pantheon of the gods. He jangled, he ripped, he shot space lasers out of his guitar. The 80s really missed out on his presence.
3.) Adrian Belew (Bowie, Talking Heads…others I enjoy less): I’m a really shallow music fan at certain points and it always shoots me in the foot. If somebody’s got an awful album cover or they use a horrible effect on their voice, I may tune them out for decades and malign them as unlistenable. In the late 80s and early 90s Adrian Belew had some awful suits and a look on his face that conveyed a less than austere aesthetic. And thus it was that wrote Adrian Belew off until 2021 when I read a Brian Eno biography that illuminated Belew’s contributions to Bowie and the Talking Heads. The guitar solo in “Born Under Punches (the Heat Goes On)” is a lightning bolt showing what could be done in the early 80s and if someone recorded it today for the first time, it would be just as astoundingly entertaining so far removed from its debut era.
4.) David Byrne (Talking Heads): A writing guitarist makes decisions throughout their career to commit to doing certain things and not doing other things. Some people make the most of power chords and it sounds just fine. But David Byrne appears to have made at least one decision to play little things, short, noodly lines and tiny ditties that build up and serve a higher, more robust whole. It’s not unlike the 18 musicians from the titular Steve Reich piece where each performer plays a little something in their own way, in their own time over and over until the entire piece begins metamorphosing into a shifting, organic monolith of sound and, of course, pulse.
5.) Eddie Hazel (Parliament/ Funkadelic): Nirvana/ Kurt Cobain introduced me to a lot of great artists that I have spent almost 30 years enjoying. Conversely, the Red Hot Chili Peppers/ Anthony Kiedis have/ has made me roll my eyes at more great artists than most. To whit— I am only now discovering that all of the corny George Clinton-lite-isms of the non-musical aspect of the Chili Peppers blinded me to “Super Stoopid” and “Cosmic Slop” as well as Eddie Hazel.