The most famous gig Clapton held before Cream was as guitar foil to John Mayall in the supremely influential British band the Bluesbreakers. It was there that Clapton was tagged “god” and played his role in the canonization of the Gibson Les Paul Standard. But everybody knows about the Bluesbreakers and their famous eponymous “Beano” album, right?

Here are 10 top guitarists, from blues to metal, pop to rock, from stellar riffs to intense soloing. Add your own favorites in the comments!

At first the only real pedal that was available was the fuzz - usually a Gibson Maestro - because effects like reverb and tremolo were taken care of onboard the amp itself, or maybe as an outboard reverb unit. You plugged these reverb boxes in between your guitar and amp, but they weren't exactly pedal-like in their operation.

For a while there, two-handed tapping had quite the stigma about it. Although players like Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Genesis’ Steve Hackett had all experimented with prototypical forms of tapping in the ’60s and ’70s, Eddie Van Halen really developed the style into a phenomenon, starting with “Eruption” in 1978. And then the imitators came. Once guitarists figured out what Eddie was doing, tapping became another flash trick, like pinch harmonics and whammy bar wiggling, that could be used to sound cool when you couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Buckcherry make the kind of rock ‘n’ roll that makes you want to party “All Night Long.” The Los Angeles-based group spits out pure, raw rock with sneering guitars, raspy vocals and swinging rhythms.

I’ve taught a lot of people to play guitar over the years – at one point I had more than 50 students per week – and the following lesson is the result of hundreds of hours of teaching, as well as thousands of hours of riffing. This is really for the beginners, but it never hurts to brush up on the basics, even if you’ve been playing for a while.

It’s quite ironic that he wonderful Gibson “Firebird” Guitar is celebrating its 50th Birthday, especially since I just started doing my new “Slide Guitar Summit” album, and the first sessions were cutting a tune with none other than JOHNNY WINTER!

Few bands are more worthy of a prime spot in the pantheon of rock and roll pioneers than Fanny is. As the first all-female rock group signed to a major label, Fanny blazed a hard-won trail at the dawn of the ‘70s, through which the likes of The Runaways, The Go-Go’s and The Bangles could follow.

Four decades and a couple generations later, the Beatles’ 1967 opus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has only grown in stature. At the BBC, where one of the album’s signature tracks, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” was once banned during the time of the album’s release, an ensemble representing the elite of contemporary Brit pop now pays tribute to its enduring influence. Stateside, Cheap Trick, friends and orchestra performed the album in its entirety at two sold-out Hollywood Bowl shows, and the album is cited by artists of all genres and backgrounds—from the Flaming Lips to the Beach Boys—as a definitive influence...

Bernie Marsden is something of an unsung legend of British rock guitar. He’s played with U.F.O, Paice Ashton and Lord, written/collaborated with Joe Bonamassa, and famously played with Whitesnake 1978-’82.