10 Perfect Rock Albums For Guitar Players

Most of us can only think of rock guitar before and after Jimi Hendrix. As the '60s revolution started to give way to the era of Flower Power, the lead guitar community was still pretty young, either going for the bluesy techniques coming from the underground or sticking with your traditional rock and roll lead breaks. In the era of flashy guitar players, we got paid a visit from a guitar shaman who showed us the way forward.

Starting with Are You Experienced, any of Hendrix's albums has the potential to be called a classic, with songs like All Along the Watchtower etching themselves into history from the moment they started. The reason why Are You Experienced is here though was for just how much of a shake up it was at the time. While Jimi's technique seemed to be rooted in the blues most of the time, there were too many different innovations to even count, from his deliberate use of feedback when he played something like Purple Haze to the gentle flutters of notes coming from songs like The Wind Cries Mary.

There are even songs that seem to be without genre on this record, like the hard rock take on R&B Manic Depression or the watery space rock of May This Be Love. Even with over half a century under its belt, it feels like we're still peeling back the layers of what this album was able to do, kicking down the door for a new era of rock and roll. After this record, we now had the textbook definition of guitar hero.