The Best BRITISH Rock GUITARISTS!

Rock music is international. It knows no flags or boundaries. Rock is universal, but I tell you what: us Brits are pretty damn good at it! From the days of the British Invasion to today, the UK has made rock music one of its most eagerly anticipated exports.

Today, I want to celebrate some of the greatest players to come from the British Isles. It’s true that many of these will be from rock’s ‘old guard’, but that’s because the barriers they broke back in their day are still relevant today, and teenage music fans everywhere are still feeling the thrill about that music, so it’s all evergreen as far as I’m concerned.

I’ll try to stick to ‘rock’, and by that I mean I’ll lean away from more overtly blues players, even though the two genres are entwined. I have to draw a line somewhere! That also means that guitar pioneer Hank Marvin isn’t really eligible, since his polite, clean melodic style was hardly ‘rock’ was it? But what an influence, and what a musician! So please consider this his special mention. 

Anyway: we’ll see some metal players, some prog folk, and some classic rockers today, all homegrown and all absolute legends.

Will you disagree with some of my choices? Sure. But I reckon you’ll love all of the music…

Eric Clapton is inarguably one of the greats. He’s known for his electric blues style, but what he really did - with Cream anyway - was take that blues style and marry it with jazz, volume and attitude, creating a rock guitar blueprint that has been used and copied in every generation since. Think about it: how many times have you heard of some new upstart being labelled ‘the new Clapton’? That kinda says it all. 

A guitarist so great that other pros would jokingly wish ill luck upon his fingers, Jeff Beck was too busy playing to feel the envy. Whether igniting the flame of the British Invasion with the Yardbirds, or exploring the outer limits of whammy bar and fingerstyle Strat playing in his solo career, Beck was a restless genius, who seemed to be most happy when he let the guitar do the talking.

From session ace to occult master, the Led Zeppelin mainman is easily one of the instrument’s defining characters. Influential equally as a writer, producer and performer, Page pretty much created the sound of mainstream 70s hard rock.

He is probably more responsible for Sunburst Les Paul guitar sales than any one guitarist in history, and every generation seems to find something of substance in his work.

Possibly the only British guitarist to out-cool Jimmy Page, Keith Richards is a legend as much for his overall attitude as anything else. He pretty much defines the term ‘British Rock Star’ to the point where other adult rock stars copy his behaviour note for note. Keef has proven time and again that you needn’t be the fastest nor the loudest: you just need to walk right, dress right and be absolutely sure of yourself. Even Mick Jagger knows that he’s only the second best guy in his band.

The original rifflord and master of metal, Tony Iommi is perhaps a more influential musician than even Jimmy Page. Fighting talk? Well, it’s a toughie: he’s a seriously underrated writer and arranger, and he probably has - pound for pound - more top riffs than any other rock guitarist. 

Let’s also remember that his fingers got sliced off in an industrial machine, and instead of giving up on music, he built fake fingertips, downtuned his guitar and wrote the blueprint for heavy metal. How can anyone possibly beat that?

Ritchie Blackmore is a name that is revered across the planet, for his gamechanging lead guitar style that borrowed from classical violin years before Yngwie Malmsteen took the style to its zenith. Blackmore’s immortality is assured thanks to Smoke on the Water being the most popular guitar riff in existence, but there’s a whole lot more to his creativity than just that. And that’s before we get to his mediaeval folk group, Blackmore’s Night! I admire the guts and resolve it takes to make such an about-turn on what one is best known for. Hats off!

Steve Howe is in some ways a very traditional guitarist (loves solos, extremely proficient, likes Chet Atkins) and in other ways is very unorthodox: his sound is most often clean, not distorted; he plays some VERY unusual notes whilst remaining melodic and accessible; and he allows keyboardists and even bassists to have solos in the songs!

He’s the pre-eminent Prog wizard, emerging from the dry ice with his hollow body Gibson ES-175 and a whole galaxy’s worth of outer-limit guitar playing. The Yes guitar great is a hero from a more mystical age, and he sounds resolutely unlike anybody else on this list.

Talking about unorthodox, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp has made an entire career out of avoiding the more frequently-trod paths. In addition to his genre-pushing (and redefining) work with KC, Fripp is arguably the most listened-to avant-garde noise guitarist out there, thanks to his pioneering fretboard work on not only Bowie’s Heroes and Scary Monsters albums, but his collaborations with Brian Eno.

 Eschewing the blues-based paradigms of his contemporaries, Fripp instead looked to European classical music for his muse, and even created an entirely new tuning (the not-inhumourously named New Standard Tuning) to better express his sonic explorations. Cerebral and calculated, he’s the diametric opposite of a jam-night improvisation, and all the better for it.

I often think of Brian May as ‘the People’s Guitar hero’. Maybe it’s because Queen were so massive and ubiquitous, or maybe it's because everyone can hum his Bohemian Rhapsody solo? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that Bri has managed to combine a whole stadium’s worth of guitar histrionics with some very accessible music, and he’s accomplished that trick of being very present as a player whilst allowing everyone in the band their own space.

He’s an endlessly innovative guitarist (the multi-harmonies, the stacked delays…) but it has always been in the service of exciting rock songs that every generation can find a way into.

Is it fair to count three different human beings as one choice? Normally not, but Iron Maiden are enormously important to British rock music, and how could I pick just one of its guitarists? Die hard fans will have their favourite (I do, though I won’t name him!) but each player is hugely skilled, and all three play in service to the magnificence that is Iron Maiden. It’s a band that NEEDS three players, and each holds his own. It’s their 50th anniversary this year, so grab your souped up superstrat and get those galloping riffs going!

So yes, they all count equally as one!

Have you ever met a guitar fan who doesn’t love Mark Knopfler? I mean, what’s not to love? He frequently shows up with the best tones in the business, he has a bit of flash, but beyond all that, he is able to connect via his guitar on a deep level. Of all the excellent guitar moments we love from the Dire Straits man (Money For Nothing, Sultans of Swing etc), the one I’ll always return to is the exquisitely mournful Les Paul tones of Brothers in Arms. A masterpiece in lyrical melodicism, great timing and even better restraint. What a guy!

A traditional rock guitarist in the classic mould, Slash is like a walking, talking icon. I actually forgot that he’s British too, given that Guns ‘n’ Roses are such a Californian proposition!

But yes, he’s a Brit, and he’s one of those totemistic guitar-playing living legends that is recognised across the world as an ambassador for all things rock. Every year, a new set of kids look up to him when they begin playing, and he sets them on the correct path.

Do his friends call him ‘Edge’? Can they drop the ‘The’ part? Or is he plain old Dave to his pals? So many questions.

Wait a minute: Edge is British? Weeeeeell, he was born in Barking, Essex to Welsh parents. He only actually took Irish citizenship a few months ago at the age of 63, so I’m hoping you’ll let him be British for the sake of this article!

If Slash is a traditional guitar hero, then The Edge is a very atypical one. We all know he’s great, but it’s for very different reasons. The U2 noisemaker has spent most of his career ignoring the moves of traditional rock guitar, instead finding a semi-rhythmic/melodic style that makes the most of atmosphere and drama. He’s not often one for the normal box shapes, but his style isn’t too edgy (sorry) either: he’s very accessible, just in a different flavour than your common guitar hero. 

The Edge flat-out owns a type of sound, and the amount of people who borrow it is testament to how widely spread his influence has been.

It’s not all classic guitar hero histrionics here. The post punk scene brought a number of great players, and I had a tough time deciding between Daniel Ash, John McGeoch and Geordie Walker. However, for longevity, supreme tone and unadulterated attitude, the late, great Killing Joke axeman wins. We all knew he could rip out solos if he wanted to, he just declined to do so; in fact, he turned down a collaboration with no less than Jimmy Page, because he didn’t want the Led Zep great’s ‘fiddly bits’ all over his writing!

That’s what I’m talking about! He also made his 1950s hollow Gibson ES295 sound like three people when he played, and practically never broke a sweat. Actual legend material right here.

Handiest player out? Potentially so! Marr can do a bit of everything, from twang to noise, and bearing the influence of all of the world’s major guitar capitals. That said, he’s still very much a unique talent, and his preference for serving the song is something that some players will just never learn.

We mostly celebrate his few years with Morrissey in The Smiths (rightly so), but that’s just one arrow in his quiver: he has collaborated with The Cribs, Modest Mouse, and Hans Zimmer to name but a few. A restless soul, this searching comes through in his music, which is always moving and never staying still.

The Stone Roses recently lost their iconic bassist Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, an underrated musician who provided a great deal of that band’s sound and attitude. Guitarist John Squire, though, has at least been properly acknowledged for his greatness.

A guitar hero for people who aren’t overly into such a notion, John Squire has that magic touch that transforms ‘nice’ into ‘gorgeous’, and with the extra ability to make it seem effortless. There’s definitely a touch of Johnny Marr about Squire’s sound, but there’s just as much Hendrix too, and a uniqueness that hasn’t been found anywhere else.

Muse’s Matt Bellamy brought classical music to rock in a way that was entirely unlike either Genesis or Yngwie. A committed rocker, Bellamy always seems to be threatening to go all-out into metal, but is restrained by his own songwriting tendencies. It’s a thrilling mid-way place to be though, without doubt: how many British guitarists in the last two decades are as noticeably ‘going for it’ as Matt? The custom guitars with extra technology, the screeching, sky-scraping solos and the bone-crunching riffs…the guy’s got it all.

There you have my list! I bet you were annoyed at a few, weren’t you? Are you sick of hearing about certain players? In truth, there’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to British rock guitarists. We have so many great ones to choose from that I’m going to have to add a list of honourable mentions…

Who did I miss? Let me know and I’ll no doubt add them in next time. Unless I disagree! Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed that one, here’s some more below!