Punk Rock's 10 Mightiest Guitar Gods

  1. Fawkes
    Fawkes
    http://music.ign.com/articles/895/895015p1.html
    What do you guys think of this list? It focuses almost entirely on proto-punk, except for Johnny Ramone and Steve and Mick Jones. It's a pretty good list, but it doesn't talk enough about guitarists that helped the original sound of punk to evolve like East Bay Ray from the Dead Kennedys, who was one of the most experimental hardcore guitarists, and Lars Frederiksen and Tim Armstrong from Rancid, who played a big role in putting a strong ska influence into a harder punk sound than most people had done before. It also doesn't give any credit to Sylvain Sylvain, who is really underrated. His rhythm playing is as much of an influence on my guitar playing as Johnny Thunder's lead stuff.

    Edit: If the link doesn't work, here's the list:
    Lou Reed
    Johnny Thunders
    Lenny Kaye
    Johnny Ramone
    Steve Jones
    Mick Jones
    Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd
    Robert Quine
    Ricky Wilson
    Bill Zoom
  2. Pirate Utopian
    Pirate Utopian
    Ron Asheton?, Fred Smith?, Keith Levine?, Cheeta Chrome?
  3. Riot11
    Riot11
    Mine would be:
    Joe Strummer-The Clash
    Tim Armstrong-op ivy, rancid, transplants
    Whitetrash Rob-blood for blood, sinners and saints, ramallha
    Tom Gable-against me!
    Vinny Stigma-ag nostic front
    Ian McKaye-fugazi
    Chris Clavin- captain chaos, ghost mice
    Billy Bragg-solo
    Tom Morello-the nightwatchman
    Elvis Costello-solo
  4. communard resolution
    communard resolution
    Johnny Thunders
    Mick Jones
    Poison Ivy
    and the old jazzy guy of the Voidoids whose name I can never remember.... Robert Quine?
  5. Bandito
    Bandito
    I don't really like the band,but who can despute that Olga from Toy Dolls is a guitar-master?
    And where is he on the list?
  6. Ztrain
    Ztrain
    Ben Weasels a pretty solid guitarist
  7. revogirl
    revogirl
    One of my fave guitarists for true entertainment value not mentioned is
    Captain Sensible when he originally played with The Damned.
  8. Doflamingo
    Doflamingo
    Johnny Ramone isn't even that good. A lot of punk guitarists are better than him. Not sure why everyone wanks him so much.
  9. newdayrising
    newdayrising
    Johnny Ramone isn't even that good. A lot of punk guitarists are better than him. Not sure why everyone wanks him so much.
    Because his style of playing changed music as we know it. Each downstroke he ever did had more cultural significance than entire discographies of 99,99% of the people who were "better" than him.
    The list is not about who's more proficient technically. If that was the criteria it wouldn't even make sense to make a list of punk guitarists.

    Anyway, some other amazing punk guitarists would be:
    Greg Ginn - Black Flag
    Brian Baker - Minor Threat/Dag Nasty
    Greg Sage - The Wipers
    Captain Sensible - The Damned
    Paul Fox - The Ruts
    Bones - Discharge
    Dr. Know - Bad Brains
    D. Boon - Minutmen
    Bob Andrews - Generation X/Empire
    Stuart Adamson - Skids
    Rikk Agnew - Adolescents/Christian Death

    And many others.
  10. FarewellToKings
    FarewellToKings
    Lou Reed was an amazing lyricist and songwriter, but he wasn't a great guitar player. Also, I think Robert Quine should have been on the list.