10 Greatest Guitar Duos In Hard Rock

At the start of the hair metal movement, you couldn't really touch Def Leppard. Off the strength of albums like High n Dry and Pyromania, these lads from Sheffield managed to make some of the most infectious pop rock of the modern age, with a sound that had as much grit as it did hooks. Once you started to look a bit deeper though, you start to see the massive guitar techniques going on underneath the surface.

Being the main guitar player in the first years of the group, Steve Clark had all of the punk spirit of Leppard in a nutshell. While you couldn't call anything he did flashy or intricate, his way with guitar parts made for some of the most essential pieces of the Leppard sound, from the intro of Gods of War to the mammoth instrumental Switch 625. Instead of just stopping there, drafting in Phil Collen in 1983 was a godsend, with Collen being a virtual technician behind his instrument.

From a technical standpoint, Collen and Clarke seemed to be polar opposites, and yet they always managed to fit in well next to each other, with Steve's AC/DC like guitar riffs blending well with the Queen like preciseness of Collen's solo runs. Though this would eventually be interrupted by Clark's death in the early '90s, the interplay between him and Collen is still being felt in legions of guitar players to this day.