Who Was the Best Guitarist of the 1990s?

The 90s were an underrated time for guitar heroes. It wasn’t like in the 70s and 80s, when you had rock titans who changed the world with their blues-infused licks, or gunslingers who outshredded their neon spandex. No, the 90s brought us several different flavours of guitarist, from grunge to britpop, alt rock to metal. Some of those talents remain with us today, and others tragically haven’t made it. For them all, though, their music exists in all of its multi-faceted colour, and generation after generation of music fans are discovering the musical magic produced in this decade.

All of the people in today’s article left a significant mark on the world of guitar playing. Today, I line them up here for celebration, and thank them for sharing their guitar gifts with us. I want to think of this article as a reinstatement of the case that the 90s was a vital and rich time for guitar heroes, just of a slightly different calibre.

Read on, to see if your own heroes made the list!

Alice in Chains always had a bleaker, rainswept element to their doomy grunge sound, and it mostly came from guitarist Jerry Cantrell. A grade-A riff writer, Cantrell was also responsible for many of AIC’s lyrics and half of the vocals. A tasteful player and one with his own lurching style, Jerry Cantrell is, in my eyes at least, the key player from the Seattle grunge era.

There are loads of good-to-very good metal players out there who’ve all contributed to the forward motion of the genre, but nobody left a mark as large or as significant as ‘Dimebag’ Darrell Abbott. Pantera were a game-changing metal band in terms of style, groove, tone and straight-up ferocity and his artistry was at the centre of it.

Dimebag’s sound is instantly recognisable, his chainsaw riffing inspired generations of guitarists and his solos were, for once, something to really look forward to and savour in any given song. He had that special thing that most players don’t: a huge streak of uniqueness amidst the wildness.

It's been about 30 years since Bernard Butler left British art-rockers Suede, but people still talk in hushed tones about the two albums he made with them. Mixing the arpeggiated textures of Johnny Marr with the off kilter fuzz and energy of Mick Ronson, Butler brought a gorgeously explosive and furious sound to Suede. His guitar parts were no mere chords ‘n’ solos either: each part was custom made for the song, in and around Brett Anderson’s vocal melodies like a second voice.

Kurt’s ‘anti guitar’ sensibility hid a fascination for gear and sound. Cobain was a dedicated player who was very deliberate about the sounds he wanted to make. His iconoclastic stance was important in breaking down the tired walls of hair metal and returning to the joys of primal noise. Most significantly, his style was accessible, and encouraged a whole generation to pick up guitars and do something similar. No matter how popular Nirvana are, Cobain is still an underrated guitarist.

Rage Against the Machine were glorious outsiders who didn’t fit into any stylistic boxes: were they metal? Rap? Funk? In reality, they were all of these and none of these, and their sound pre-empted Nu Metal by a number of years.

Central to their rebellious sound was guitarist Tom Morello, who is still a well known name as a solo artist. It’s hard to overstate just how bizarre and intriguing his guitar parts were back in the early 90s: nobody was approaching the guitar the way he was! Buzzing, shrieking, whooping and malfunctioning, Morello looked past the guitar and saw only potential with his small collection of pedals (particularly the Digitech Whammy). From that, a whole new vocabulary was born.

Radiohead’s lead guitarist is another highly influential player who fixed his creativity to the potential of guitar effects. Another Whammy pedal fan, Greenwood created guitar parts that were simultaneously deconstructed and attention-grabbing, with a collection of textures that sometimes sounded more synth-like than guitar.

Still, there was enough of the traditional guitar player in him to know the power of a good loud noise, and the first three Radiohead records in particular are a textbook on arty, noisy sci-fi guitar.

Whilst the Stone Roses made a huge splash in the 80s, their long-awaited 1994 Second Coming follow up was enough of an event to merit me classing him as a 90s player. Another ‘post Marr’ guitarist but very separate from Bernard Butler, Squire is very much a popular music fan’s guitarist. That’s no slight, either: between his Byrdsian, Marr-like 80s work and his more hard-rocking Led Zep style of the 90s, there’s a whole world of great guitar playing to enjoy.

And no, we don’t need to talk about The Seahorses.

Blur’s guitar man is either really underrated or he’s your favourite guitarist. There seems to be a consensus that he continually does very cool things with sound, but perhaps the context of Blur’s dayglo pop alters the perception of some guitar fans?

He has spent his professional career subverting his band’s music with invention, distraction and hazard, and knows the hardest trick to learn for any musician: when to make a statement and when to get out of the song’s way.

You never get a dull moment with The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan. On top of his day job, he owns a wrestling business, has a tea shop in Chicago and fronts a podcast. He’s spoken about a lot of things and has opinions about others, but there’s one thing that everybody can agree on: that guy can really play. His Pumpkins guitar sound is a constantly changing spectacle, and his commitment to being a full-on amalgamation of Brian May and Tony Iommi - whilst also being a lead singer, frontman, songwriter and keys player, is pretty flabbergasting.

To be honest, he’d deserve his place here for the Cherub Rock guitar sound on its own.

Tool’s Adam Jones has the hard rock Les Paul tone to end all Les Paul tones. Thick, chewy and metallic, it’s one of those guitar sounds that are just luxurious, no matter how hard the music itself is going. His amp blend and preference for let 70s Silverburst LP Customs is now a thing of legend.

Tool are a tricksy, progressive metal band that have somehow become enormous by creating labyrinthine epics about metaphysical esotericism. That, and welding chonky riffs to possibly the best drums in modern rock.

From prime grunge to inventively melodic classic rock, Pearl Jam’s dual guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready (a trio if you count vocalist Eddie Vedder, who often plays) have become one of those legendary pairs, like Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood for the 90s Alternative generation. In the early days, their jobs were pretty much rhythm (Gossard) and lead (McCready), but later years have seen those jobs weaving together an awful lot more, with complimentary parts contrasting off each other in inspiring ways.

Both great players, but in different ways.

Here’s another iconic 90s guitar pairing, who are quite significantly different to the two players I just mentioned. Brian ‘Head’ Welch and James ‘Munky’ Shaffer from Korn developed a collective sound that kickstarted Nu Metal, but in a way that nobody has ever really been able to copy.

Again, there’s no real distinction between a rhythm and a lead player: both are responsible for those rhinoceros riffs and serial killer textures. They brought the 7 string back from the brink of obscurity, and they’ve now become part of established metal guitar culture.

Was there a more colourful character in 90s rock & metal than Limp Bizkit’s Wes Borland? Come to think of it, has there been a more colourful character since?

Obviously he’s a visual sensation every time he steps on stage with his custom costumes and facepaint, but none of that showmanship ever outshone his skills as a musician. His brutal riffs and heavily effected textures are easily the most interesting part of the band’s sound. Not only that, he’s the kind of guy to go the extra mile, using special 4-string guitars tuned to F#, using a whopping .080 gauge string for the lowest note!

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty outstanding selection of guitarists! The predominant genres, I suppose, would be grunge, britpop and Nu Metal. You can argue amongst yourselves about who belongs where, though! The 90s were a time where guitars ruled the airwaves, and bands were what people were listening to. This continued into the 2000s, and so I’ve left some prominent players (such as Matt Bellamy and Jack White) off this 90s list because they made a bigger splash after the millennium.

So, who was the greatest guitarist of the 90s? 

All of them. What other answer could possibly apply? Everyone is unique and special, and so everyone is worth celebrating equally.

Did I include your favourite 90s guitarist? Who did I miss? Who didn’t deserve to be on this list? As usual, here’s a few honourable mentions, of players who made great work and who deserve to be included. Thanks for reading!