10 Most Underrated Guitarists In Rock Music History
Unsung Ax-Wielders.
Whenever you talk about the greatest players in the rock scene, it always comes back to the guitarist. Even if you have some god like monster behind the drum kit, most of the attention goes to the guy playing a mile a minute on his six string, making sounds that no one truly understood at the time. For every good guitar player though, there are always a few that go slightly under the radar as well.
As much as these guitarists might have their place in rock history, their real contribution to the genre tends to get overshadowed when looking at the big picture. If anything, these guitarists are actually a lot weirder than you realize when you look under the hood of some of these songs, either playing things you would never have thought of or taking the song in a new direction based on one different effect.
There are even a few of these musicians that tend to not get the credit for the best part of the song, either giving the credit to someone else in the band or just glossed over entirely. There are no rules in rock and roll most of the time, but if there was any justice in the world, each of these guitarists would have been solidified in rock legend a lot sooner.
10. Brad Whitford - Aerosmith
Once Aerosmith hit the charts in the early '70s, there were more than a few critics that felt like they were watching a discount version of the Rolling Stones all over again. It's not like they didn't have a point either, with the bands' emphasis on blues and a healthy dose of boogie putting them well in the same spot as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards a few years before. While Joe Perry may have been trying to channel Keith Richards though, Brad Whitford's style seemed to be more in line with what Jeff Beck was doing.
Going through Aerosmith's glory years, some of the best licks to come from their songs tend to be from Brad, only to be credited to Joe after the fact. Compared to Joe's fast and loose style, there's a certain precision to Brad's playing that seems one notch above almost everyone else in the band, bringing a gnarly edge to a song like Nobody's Fault and even delivering some of the most groove-centric riffs like the solo of Last Child.
Aside from just the raw performance aspect, Brad always seemed to be more in tune with the song, always willing to lay back when the song calls for it and playing just the right foil to Joe Perry, filling in the gaps whenever he goes off on his own tangents. Joe may be considered the rock star of the group, but if you listen to the back half of a song like One Way Street, you're missing the six string blues monster that Aerosmith have been keeping in the back all these years.