10 Rock Guitarists Who Were In Two Amazing Bands

It's always harder to become a solo superstar as a guitar player. Even though you may tear up the fretboard when you hit it big with your respective band, you have an uphill battle to climb when you try to work outside of your wheelhouse. Unless you have the singing chops to pull it off, most out of work guitarists tend to fade into obscurity outside of their main gigs...usually.

In the rare instances of a career revival, these guitarists were able to take on new life as a six-stringer for a completely different band. Even though the regular characteristics that you know them for are still here, the best of these musicians are able to reinvent their playing style from the ground up to turn in something entirely new.

Hell, some of them work out so well that they tend to even overshadow the previous band they were in. Leaving the side projects where they are, these are acts that were able to nab spots on the chart for something that was more than just name recognition. From bitter breakups to fun experiments, these second success stories were enough to build an entirely different career out of. Even when some of these acts were expected to fail, these are examples of the guitarists that refused to go quietly.

Towards the end of the '80s, the sounds of rock were starting to get a lot funkier. With hair metal still in full swing, the alternative sounds from the underground were incorporating melodies that was as much indebted to James Brown as they were to AC/DC. Even though Jane's Addiction were at the forefront of the movement, Dave Navarro has the distinction of being in two of the most legendary funk rock acts of all time.

Without question, Jane's Addiction's work is where Navarro first cut his chops, but the constant creative differences and drug abuse amongst the members led them to breakup shortly after their album Ritual de Habitual. For a while, Navarro remained a free agent on the LA rock scene, with one brief stint where he was in talks to be one of the next guitarists in Guns N Roses. Just before he could settle into the hair metal groove, Navarro found another home in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who picked him up for their album One Hot Minute after losing foundational guitarist John Frusciante.

Though this is looked at as one of the low points in the Peppers' career, it's not at the expense of Navarro, whose wailing style gave the group a shot in the arm. While Jane's Addiction do pop up on occasion nowadays, Dave Navarro has remained one of the most eccentric free agents in the world of rock and roll.