Who is the most underrated guitarist of all time?
Not the names on every list. The players whose work everyone has heard without knowing whose hands were on it. Two at a time, one pick each, and the order belongs to whoever votes.
1Mick RonsonDavid Bowie's guitarist on Ziggy Stardust and the arranger behind Lou Reed's Transformer. Neither record sounds the way it does without him.
2Steve JonesThe Sex Pistols' guitarist, whose layered overdubs on Never Mind the Bollocks are far more careful than punk's reputation allows.
3Malcolm YoungAC/DC's rhythm player. The riffs everyone can hum are his, and almost nobody plays them right.
4Mike CampbellForty years with Tom Petty, then Fleetwood Mac, playing only what the song actually needs.
5Billy DuffyThe Cult's guitarist, economical to a fault, every note placed where it counts.
6Link WrayRecorded Rumble in 1958, an instrumental banned from radio for supposedly inciting riots, and invented the power chord doing it.
7Johnny MarrWrote the guitar parts that carried The Smiths, then kept reinventing the job with Modest Mouse and The The.
8Mick TaylorThe Rolling Stones between Brian Jones and Ron Wood, across Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St. and Goats Head Soup.
9Kevin ShieldsMy Bloody Valentine's guitarist, who turned the instrument into a texture machine and spent years perfecting Loveless.
10Brian SetzerBrought rockabilly guitar back with the Stray Cats, then did it again fronting an eighteen-piece orchestra.
11Robert QuinePlayed on Richard Hell's Blank Generation and Lou Reed's The Blue Mask, and almost nobody outside the credits knows the name.
12Hubert SumlinHowlin' Wolf's guitarist, whose lines on Smokestack Lightnin' got borrowed by every British band that followed.
13Bernard ButlerSuede's guitarist for two albums, and the reason those two albums still sound unlike anything else from the era.
14Nile RodgersChic, Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk. The most recognisable rhythm guitar on earth, credited far less often than it is heard.
15Ry CooderSlide player on hundreds of records, from the Rolling Stones to Paris, Texas, and rarely under his own name.
16James BurtonPlayed behind Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and Gram Parsons, and invented much of what country guitar became.
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