10 Guitarists That Changed Rock Music Forever

If Pink Floyd had been able to stay the course for the rest of their career, there's a good chance that we would have never known who David Gilmour was. As the band were making their first steps into psychedelic rock with Syd Barrett though, his descent into madness led to them kicking him out of the band, with David originally coming on just to fill out his guitar parts. The next version of the band would be defined by that pain, and you can hear it in almost every single solo that Gilmour ever played.

Throughout every one of Floyd's classic works, Gilmour practically channeled every emotion that he could into his guitar, making every single bend sound like it was crying whenever he took a solo. This wasn't all about just shredding though, and David had always been a craftsman about what made a great solo work in the right context. If you listen to his main feature in a song like Money, there are practically different movements that the guitar goes through in every version of the song, starting off snarling and angry before coming back down to Earth which a much thinner sound than before.

When he really wanted to go for the throat though, some of the bends had the potential to make you cry, like Mother or Comfortably Numb off of the Wall, where you can hear the storyline being told without any words being said. And why should they anyway? David was already speaking through his guitar, so just let the story write itself.