14. Van Halen - (Self-Titled)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI7XiJgt0vY Little introduction needs to be made for one Eddie Van Halen; such is his finger-scorched mark on the world that every single person who has ever taken the time to learn the guitar will have at some point attempted one of his tapping techniques. Some have succeeded whilst many more continue to fail, but the fact remains that on Van Halen's debut album as soon as the second half of Eruption kicked in and the world heard the first studio-recorded, distorted version of what was previously relegated to jazz guitar i.e. two-handed tapping, it was off to the races with the last entry in The Essential Guitar Licks handbook. Van Halen continues to be more a force of nature than a mere mortal on this album, but that's not to mention this debut being one of the pillars of rock music's elite, holding aloft the band (and the genre itself) high above everyone else, mostly thanks to one slickly-reworked version of The Kinks' track You Really Got Me, which was given a requisite coat of sleazy attitude that permeated the 80's so perfectly. It's impossible to get sick of: Eruption. To this day few human beings on this earth can play the last 47 seconds of this song perfectly - so gorgeous is its tone and so inimitable is Eddie's feel on the guitar it remains one of the finest pieces of rock music ever written.