In response to Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists list that came out about a month ago. I was shocked to not see one of my personal favorite guitarists on the list of 100, Alvin Lee. You mean to tell me this guy can't even make a list of 100? Then I saw Jack White on the list and it all came clear. Rolling Stone probably makes these lists all the time. It's one of many lists that is made year after year. I see them all the time, but I noticed that Alvin Lee usually doesn't make it high or in many cases........ doesn't make it at all. I personally don't understand why. So I decided to make an argument that Alvin Lee should make a top 100 list all the time. If Jimmy Page makes it in the top 3 every year, then Alvin Lee should at least make it in the top fifty every year. Yes, I know Page has done way more for the guitar than Lee, but to put things in perspective, Alvin Lee in many ways was a more fluid live guitarist. That is my main argument. If a guy like Steve Jones (from Sex Pistols) is a greater guitarist than Alvin Lee than what the hell is the criteria of being a great guitarist? I also wanted to know why is it not titled Greatest "Rock" Guitarists instead?........because most of these guitarists are rock guitarists. Are they saying that rock guitarists are the greatest of all? If not so, then why have these random picks like John Fahey? who is a finger style guitarist with free expression. Then if he is qualified to be in this list, wouldn't Django Reinhardt be number one followed by guys like Paco de Lucia? The list doesn't make sense! They also seemed to make their picks based on how big the guitarist's bands are. For example " let's put the guy from Tom Petty's band and let's put the guy from The Police." and so on and so forth. Then they would just do a random blues pick, "oh hey let's put Robert Johnson in there, he's famous n stuff, let's forget about all the other great blues guitarists pre 50's and put only the big ones on our list" and then they go... " let's just put BB King and Robert Johnson in random numbers they got to be in it, forget classifying them under a different list." Then they randomly put pioneer specialized guitarists like Chet Atkins and Les Paul in some random number of a "rock" list. The whole point is...... I understand that this is a banal mixed up pop-culture list. But still, even then, why the hell is Alvin Lee not in it?! So I made a list of reasons why Alvin Lee should for now on, make any greatest guitarist list that is mainly "rock" based.
Alvin Lee could detune so low while playing a dramatic scale and then come back in tune with the band at ease.
In Woodstock 69 Alvin Lee and Ten Years After put on arguably one the best closing performances ever. Not to mention they probably inspired some of the best camera work on the Woodstock movie.
Not only was Alvin Lee a great guitarist, but he also did it while writing great songs and singing as well.
Among many things, Lee was also cool as hell while playing some great guitar.
Last but not least, this is my favorite performance from Alvin Lee. This encompasses everything he did great. The video was shot by Wim Wenders and is a single still frame shot that goes on for about 15 minutes, but it's totally worth it. Lee does it all on this one. He mimics famous guitar licks, he travels throughout the whole neck with sizzling jazz chords, experimental feedback and even uses finger tapping techniques at some point. Absolutely brilliant performance of what is probably my favorite Ten Years After song Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes.
So there you have it. Those are seven examples of why Alvin Lee is a guitar virtuoso and why he deserves to be on any "100 greatest guitarists" list.
