Okay, time to list the guitarists of the 90s that were influential and awesome, but since it was the 90s, by and large they probably were not that good technically speaking. =)
My list:
Jerry Cantrell: made minor harmonies cool again.
Dan/Dave (?) DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots: Lush, plush, creepy guitar reminiscent of Led Zeppelin meets Black Sabbath.
Chris Cornell/Kim Thayil: I don’t know which guy did what, but I was always under the belief that Cornell was the musical force in Soundgarden. His 12-string version of “Like a Suicide” is just chilling.
McCready & Gossard (Pearl Jam)
Billy Corgan: somehow made thin, reedy, nasally vocals AND guitar sound monstrous. Siamese Dream, all time class album.
Kurt Cobain: simple riffs anyone could play, a pure punk feel
Dave Mathews: acoustic and different
John Frusciante: Hendrixy funky.
Dave Navarro
Tom Morello: I was never a fan, but I respect his band.
Anyone who says “John Petrucci” – go away, he belongs in the other thread, he was just late to the party. So does Nuno Bettencourt, fwiw, and he’s still one of my favorite shredders (but goddamn did his solo album suck).
Killer, thanks for the thread cause I wanted to ask an opinion about a band and their influentialness (?) but I thought of them as a more early 90’s band.
Fugazi? Granted you couldn’t go into a record store in the 90’s and not get bombarded by employees telling you how much Fugazi rocked, but their sound seemed way unique and most of it came from their strange guitar sounds. I’m in NO way an ardent student of guitar methods, but it did seem to me that the Fugazi sound ( weird and pretty unique picking) seemeed to bring Alternative a couple steps forward back then (obligatory Pixies reference as well).
Of course I thought Justin Broadrick of Godflesh and his WAY crazy harmonics influenced tons of people nowadays too, so I don’t know. I wouldn’t take too much stock in me :P
There’s a certain irony that Dave Matthews in “The Dave Matthews Band” wasn’t “solo enough”, so he had to go solo and do a “Dave Matthews” album. I mean, seriously, what the hell?
I should probably also mention Trey Anastasio of Phish.
And even though Johnny Marr was an 80s guy, he is more in the spirit of the 90s.
The one that stands out for me is Dave Navarro. Does anyone remember that Led Zeppelin tribute album by a bunch of mixed artists in the mid-90s? I think it was called “Encomium”. Dave Navarro played lead guitar for the 4 Non-Blonde’s version of “Goin’ to California” and that is one of my favorite guitar tracks of the last 15 or so years. Not too many people can really cover Jimmy Page and do anything with it, but I felt Navarro was up to the challenge.
Dave Navarro played lead guitar for the 4 Non-Blonde’s version of “Goin’ to California” and that is one of my favorite guitar tracks of the last 15 or so years. Not too many people can really cover Jimmy Page and do anything with it, but I felt Navarro was up to the challenge.
CAn’t be THAT favorite, since Never the Bride did that song on the album and 4 Non-Blondes did Misty Mountain Hop =)
OK, I am going to have to say Jane’s Addiction should count as an 80s band, like the Chili Peppers and other groups that may have been bigger in the 90s but were doing their best stuff in the 80s.
And I am not sure how we are defining guitar gods in this thread…it isn’t technicality, so I assume it is influence? Style? Uniqueness? If that is what we were doing in the other thread, then I want to go back and add the guitarist for Bad Brains…I don’t feel like looking up his name right now.
For the 90s, I don’t know. I don’t really think of 90s music as producing guitar gods. I like Tom Morello myself because he does really interesting things with his guitar.
Robert Quine’s mindbending work on Matthew Sweet’s GIRLFRIEND album
Kevin Shields, My Bloody Valentine, LOVELESS
The twin fractured leads played by Grifters guitarists Dave Shouse and Scott Taylor on any album
…and if I can turn back the clock to the ‘80’s for just a sec, the two guys from that era who get zero respect despite being able to outplay and out-creative 99.99% of the rest of the guitarists of that decade: Let’s Active’s Mitch Easter and The Feelies’ Glenn Mercer.
Well, there are bands that cross-cut decades, so you just have to pick the decade where they had their most influence. And I thought 80s era Peppers was with Slovak, not Frusciante?
Since the 90s didn’t produce “guitar gods”, it’s more like a list of unique, innovative, and influential guitarists.
Wow, I always wondered why he was on the Singles soundtrack. Most of the other bands were grunge, and I could never figure out why they put two of his songs on there.
Though you’d have to give Bob Stinson the credit for the guitar playing on the early records. And they were in the 80s.
Robert Quine (and Richard Lloyd) on Girlfriend is a great choice, though Altered Beast is even more guitar wonky.
Then there’s the Steve Albini guitar sound, or Joey Santiago from the Pixies. They’re both 80s, or late 80s, but the sound really popularized in the 90s. (And what about Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo?)
But I’ll go with Sleater-Kinney in the 90s. Carrie Brownstein is my favorite guitarist right now. I saw them last week and wow, just an amazing, amazing show. They did a 20-minute version of “Let’s Call it Love” from their new CD that sounded like Mariah Carey fronting Sonic Youth.
Except that, technically speaking, he’s a pretty damn good guitar player, too. Try playing Satellite smoothly. It’s as challenging as some classical pieces.
I’d just like to point out that it’s eerie how much I agree with these choices. The Grifters were one sorely neglected band. Kevin Shields was one of the last truly brilliant noise and studio innovators, following in the Velvet Underground / Jesus & Mary Chain branch of the alt.rock tree. And Robert Quine, who provided a direct link to the Velvet’s, really outdoes himself on “Girlfriend”, which is also one of Matthew Sweet’s most coherent record as a result.
The only person I have to add the the guitar rock pantheon from the 90s is Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus who, like Robert Smith before him, simply doesn’t get enough credit about his guitar work. But his slippery leads and unerringly odd melodic sense always made him equal parts Television and Craig Scanlon from the Fall.
Well, there are bands that cross-cut decades, so you just have to pick the decade where they had their most influence. And I thought 80s era Peppers was with Slovak, not Frusciante?
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Sorry, I just meant that the Chili Peppers were around and playing great music in the 80s…I forgot you had Frusciante on your list, so it was just a coincidence. But I see your point about the decade of influence. I would just argue that many of the bands in the 90s were influenced by the work bands like Jane’s Addiction and the Chili Peppers did in the 80s.
