Beck, Clapton, Page - Your pick?

Were these rock's greatest guitarists?

Happened to stumble into a brief online discussion with a musical aficionado the other day. He was a kind gentleman but misguided, in my view. He had thrown together a list of his personal Top Ten guitarists of all-time. Blasphemously in my eyes, he omitted possibly the greatest and most influential of all — Eric Clapton.

When I questioned him on his apparent oversight, he said it was intentional. Intentionally wrong, if you ask me.

This would be like discussing favorite Christmas personages and leaving off Santa Claus. In my eyes and to my ears, Clapton was the one who spearheaded the rock and roll riff brigade, starting with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, through Cream and then Derek and the Dominoes, establishing a standard for all rock guitarists to try to equal.

Eric Clapton’s work with Derek and the Dominos was exceptional

His influence almost can’t be measured. While his peers Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were certainly very important and perhaps essential in some other ways of demonstrating what you could do with an electric guitar, to me, there’s really not much of an argument. Clapton’s scalding guitar work in those early days forged a path for future guitar slingers. Ask pretty much anybody who picked up a guitar afterwards, Clapton was the guy.

You might not like him, his politics or his later work, where he has certainly mellowed/softened/eased up over time. And how incredible is it that the three of them grew up within a few miles of one another. But to deny Clapton’s impact, I say you ain’t listening.

The late great Jeff Beck was able to create stunning new sounds from the electric guitar.

Of course, ranking musicians is somewhat of a fool’s game. If record sales are a factor, it’s Clapton by a landslide. A singer, unlike the other two, the Internet says he’s sold 280 million records to Zep’s 111.5 million. Beck sold about half of that.

As a pure instrumentalist, Beck probably is the most innovative and unpredictable of the bunch. His style is so distinctive, you can almost always pick out a Beck solo because he’ll almost always guarantee to go somewhere note-wise that you wouldn’t have anticipated.

Listen to the attached live version of Prince’s “Purple Rain.” I can’t think of another guitarist who could have matched the sonic delights of that brief but brilliant solo. He had so many of those.

But other than “Beck’s Bolero” on the Jeff Beck Group’s first album (Rod Stewart on vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass), it’s hard for me to think of an across-the-board classic guitar piece that everybody knows and loves. He was an incredible talent but even devoted rock fans would be hard pressed to name a single Beck song. He never really had a hit.

Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page came up as a studio musician, playing hot licks on songs by The Kinks and The Who, giving him a mastery of the studio. When it came to recording Zep, Page came up with matchless soundscape on records that still sound dynamic and fresh all these years later. Last year, during a visit to Connecticut, we saw a cover band do a number of Zeppelin numbers. And in a live setting, those songs are still stunning.

This studio mastery helped Page create some dynamic, undeniable recordings and no Zeppelin track better demonstrates the brilliant dark and light that Page could bring to a song than the studio version of “Stairway To Heaven.” It is as if Page knows this track will be a killer so he makes sure his closing solo is for all-time. And it is.

Now there will be those who will throw out Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John McLaughlin or Allan Holdsworth or Joe Bonamassa or Eddie Van Halen or Duane Allman. All were/are wonderful, note-shattering guitar pickers. And there are many more, too many to name. Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Brian May…

But at least to my ears, so many of Clapton’s solos with Mayall, Cream and with Derek and the Dominoes were almost mini-compositions, instantly memorable guitar solos that, once you heard them, you could almost sing them yourself.

There was an almost effortless elegance to much of Clapton’s work in those days. If you remember the solo in “The Last Waltz” where his guitar strap comes off, The Band’s Robbie Robertson, himself a crackerjack guitarist, pitches in with a solo, grunting and grimacing and eeking notes out of his Stratocaster and working up a sweat before Clapton takes over without a hitch, calmly letting his fingers effortlessly fly over the fretboard. Clapton was legendary for those silvery smooth runs that brilliantly darted or referenced the song’s chord structure, often a mini-composition with a beginning, middle and end, yet another brilliant improvisation.

There’s no better example of that than the live version of “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad” from the Derek and the Dominoes double album that the record company foolishly replaced with a different live version on the CD release. The one on vinyl is Clapton’s compositional masterpiece and that’s the one attached here. Give it a listen.

Who was the greatest of the three? My vote is for Clapton, he’s been my long-time favorite, but let’s face it, they all had their moments and enriched the field of rock and roll guitar in their own way. When you look back at their collective body of work, they all were truly six-string explorers. Thanks for rocking out, fellas.

SOME GREAT GUITAR WORK - Give them a listen

Jeff Beck offers a live version of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

A stunning version of Derek and The Dominos “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad.”

Led Zeppelin’s classic “Stairway To Heaven” with a magical Jimmy Page solo.