| It should come as no surprise to anyone who has known me for any length of time that I am a huge fan of Rush, and I can name no other band that has had as enormous of an impact on my guitar playing. I spent more time trying to learn songs from Rush's albums than from any other band or artist in my lifetime, and my guitar skills improved dramatically as direct result of all that effort. Learning Alex Lifeson's complex chord phrasing and mastering the skills of shaping my sound by playing through dozens of guitar effects profoundly changed me as a guitarist. In addition, Alex's tone on songs like "Limelight" was next to perfect; I spent dozens of hours trying to dial in a sound that was close to his. In fact, the most difficult part for me was choosing which album from Rush to show on this list, because several of their albums would easily foot the bill for having some of the greatest influence in my life. With that in mind, the following albums easily bubble to the top: 2112, Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, and Moving Pictures. That's not to say that I wasn't influenced or didn't love other albums by Rush; this list simply had the greatest impact. With that in mind, it was tough to choose which album to pick as having the greatest degree of influence on my life, with the two frontrunners being Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures. I have played the song "Spirit of Radio" from Permanent Waves more than any other song in my lifetime, but in the end, listening to Moving Pictures and watching Rush perform it live on their subsequent tour had the greatest impact on me. |
| As with some of these bands/artists, I could name several albums from Yes that have had an impact on me, but Fragile is by far the most influential. When I first heard the opening notes of Roundabout in the early 1970s, I was amazed by both the clarity of the instruments and the adventurous complexity of the ensemble. Here was a band where every member was playing to their utmost ability, yet not competing with each other; instead, they blended into a wall of sound that was greater than the sum of their individual parts. I undoubtedly spent as much time trying to master Steve Howe's guitar parts as I did for Alex Lifeson or Eddie Van Halen. When I first started playing guitar, the music of Yes seemed untouchable; but as I improved as a musician, I eventually began to learn some of Yes' songs. Howe eventually left Yes for a decade or so, during which time he was replaced by Trevor Rabin (who hates being referred to as "Steve Howe's Replacement"). Nevertheless, Trevor Rabin quickly emerged as one of my favorite members of Yes; there are times when I prefer Trevor Rabin playing some of Steve Howe's parts more than I like Steve Howe's personal interpretation. However, it should remain in everyone's mind that Steve Howe originally wrote all of those amazing parts, and Trevor Rabin just made a few improvements here and there. But at the end of the day, Steve Howe had a great deal of influence on my foundation as a musician, and Trevor Rabin came along many years later. |
| Like many guitarists in my day, Van Halen's eponymously-named first album blew me away. Eddie Van Halen's guitar work was unparalleled, and I spent more time than I would care to admit trying to learn how to do the amazing things that he was doing. It is by no stretch of the imagination that I can honestly say that something from Van Halen probably shows up every time I play the guitar, although this is more about how I phrase or arpeggiate chords than mad lead guitar skillz. That being said, I spent dozens of hours trying to learn the various sections of "Eruption" on the guitar; that's still a killer piece to play. There were several other albums from Van Halen that also impacted my playing, but hands down it's the first album from them for the greatest influence. (See Rick Beato's great lecture called "The Van Halen Effect" for more about that. For that matter, you should simply watch any video from Rick Beato. They're all worth it.) |
| While I love several albums by Pink Floyd, there is only one album that had a great deal of influence on me, and that is easily Floyd's Magnum Opus The Wall. Trying to learn David Gilmour's guitar parts were difficult enough, but trying to match his sound was even more difficult. There was a point in my development as a guitarist where a great deal of what I was playing through echo units resembled David Gilmour. There are songs off The Wall - like "Comfortably Numb" - which remain in multiple lists of my favorites. |
| Yeah, I know... AC/DC... I've got to be kidding, right? Well, the truth is - when I first started out on the guitar, I was a big fan of AC/DC, and the first album that I owned from them was Back in Black. I spent a lot of time trying to learn the songs off that album, and in so doing I learned how to play barre chords, a lot of solos, integrate arpeggios in chord phrasings, etc. I learned a lot from that album, but then a few years later I sat down and learned everything that AC/DC had ever written in one weekend. Yup... Every. Single. Song. It was all too easy, and I realized that music had to be much harder. So I abandoned AC/DC for good, and I began to focus on Progressive Rock bands like Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, etc. That being said, to this day I still credit AC/DC as having made me a better guitar player, if for nothing else than to teach me that music can be much, much better than what AC/DC writes. |
| In the early 1980s, the older brother of the keyboard player for one of the bands I was in introduced me to Leo Kottke's "Morning is the Long Way Home," which is the opening track off Leo's 1971-1976 (Did You Hear Me?) album. I was completely blown away by what I heard; I had seen and heard amazing classical guitarists before, but I had never heard anything like the pyrotechnical fingerstyle prowess of Leo Kottke before. I have spent a lot of time over the past 40 years trying to learn various pieces by Leo Kottke, and I should be ashamed that I can only count two songs of his in my repertoire. Nevertheless, Leo Kottke's 1971-1976 (Did You Hear Me?) album had a profound impact on me, and made me want to seriously study fingerstyle guitar. |
| Like many young guitarists in 1980, I was hooked on Randy Rhoads' guitar skills from the moment I first heard the song "Crazy Train." Randy was daring, imaginative, skilled, and an amazing song writer. I had the privilege of seeing Randy Rhoads twice in concert with Ozzy before his untimely death, and I have to say that each time was amazing; Randy seemed like he could do just about anything on the guitar. (He reminded me of Ritchie Blackmore in that respect, but I digress.) I learned a lot of techniques from seeing Randy in concert, and I learned a lot about the guitar while learning songs off this album. To this day I wonder what would have happened to Randy Rhoads if he hadn't died so young. With that in mind, once Randy Rhoads was killed, I stopped listening to Ozzy completely - because the only reason I listened to him at all was because of Randy Rhoads. |
| This was the first album which - for me - proved that a guitar could own an entire album. No vocals - just guitar. Joe Satriani's songwriting was amazing, but his technical prowess was off the charts. I spent a lot of time struggling to learn a lot of Joe's signature pieces off that album, with varying degrees of success. (Primarily "Satch Boogie" and "Always with Me, Always with You"). But in the end, the entire experience made me a better guitar player. I love several other shredders like Paul Gilbert, Steve Morse, Tony MacApline, Gary Hoey, Yngwie Malmsteen, Neil Zaza, etc., but Joe Satriani's ground-breaking foray into guitar-oriented instrumentals is the album that had the most impact on me. |
| When I was first starting out on the guitar in the 1970s, Ted Nugent was at (or near) the height of his popularity. I played several songs by "Uncle Ted" in my first few rock bands, and it was a struggle for me to learn those parts at the time. This live album was a great compilation of all the Ted Nugent songs that I wanted to learn, so it's the only album of his that I purchased. By the early 1980s I had moved on, and I didn't really listen to Ted Nugent anymore. (He's far too crude... which was amusing when I was a teenage boy, but now it's just annoying.) That being said, every once in a while I might find myself playing a groove that owes its origin to "Uncle Ted." |
| I learned a lot of Lynyrd Skynyrd songs when I was starting out in the 1970s; for example: "Gimme Three Steps," "Simple Man," "Tuesday's Gone," "Sweet Home Alabama," "Call Me the Breeze," "Saturday Night Special," etc. However, there was one song that every guitarist at my high school had to know before they were taken seriously: "Free Bird." Not just the rhythm parts, you had to know how to play the lead parts, and often you would play those live with another guitarist with whom you were in competition; sort of a "last man standing/trial by fire" contest. So if I have to pick just one Lynyrd Skynyrd album, I have to pick the album that introduced "Free Bird" to the world. |
| Like I mentioned about Lynyrd Skynyrd, I learned a lot of Led Zeppelin's tracks when I was first learning to play the guitar back in the 1970s. And much like Lynyrd Skynyrd's song "Free Bird," the famous/infamous "Stairway to Heaven" was a song that every guitarist at my high school had to know how to play before they could be taken seriously as an up and coming axe slinger. That being said, that album also produced other memorable pieces that I learned back the day: "Black Dog," "Rock and Roll," "Going to California," and "When the Levee Breaks." While I owned several other albums by Led Zeppelin, this album stands out above the rest. That being said, I stopped listening to Led Zeppelin in the mid-1980s, and now I would go so far as to say that I have developed a serious dislike for the band. (For lots of reasons, although their unabashed plagiarism of other people's music is the primary reason.) |
| This may seem a bit out of place for die-hard U2 fans who flock to albums like The Joshua Tree, but U2's second album - October - is when I first learned about the band, and their post-punk, melodic rawness was kind of cool. That being said, like many of my fellow guitarists - I was particularly enamored by the Edge's sound. "Gloria" was the song that got me hooked at first, and other songs like "I Threw a Brick Through a Window" followed thereafter, but I have to say, if it hadn't been for "Gloria" off the October album, I'm not sure when (or if) I would have decided to like U2. (OK, yeah, sure - I would have loved "Where the Streets Have No Name" when it came out. And who doesn't love that song?) |
| Boston's first two albums - the eponymously-named Boston and Don't Look Back - were both enormous hits. But still, it was their first album that put Boston on the map, spawning such hits as "More Than a Feeling," "Peace of Mind," "Foreplay/Long Time," "Rock & Roll Band," "Smokin'," and "Hitch a Ride." For a young guitarist as I was at the time of its release, Tom Scholz's guitar sound was amazing. His distortion, tone, echo, etc., everything was spot-on perfect. I used to have a setting on the Electro-Harmonix graphic EQ that I used when playing live that would work in combination with my Rat distortion unit to recreate Tom Scholz's guitar sound from that first Boston album. |
| In my early days as a Prog Rocker, one of the bands that I was in for a few months had a few songs by Kansas in their setlist. I already liked Kansas, and I had seen them in concert a few years earlier, but apart from learning the song "Dust in the Wind" as a fingerpicking exercise, I had never taken the time to learn anything else from them. The songs that I had to learn were: "Portrait," "Point of Know Return," and "Carry On Wayward Son." All three of those songs were a difficult challenge to master; Kerry Livgren's guitar parts were so unlike anything else that I was currently playing. Two of the songs that I learned were from Point of Know Return, with the remaining song from Leftoverture. However, "Dust in the Wind" is the only song that I still play to this day, and that one song had a greater impact on my finger-picking than almost any other song. With that in mind, Leftoverture beats out Point of Know Return for having a greater influence on me. |
| I have to admit, Genesis probably wouldn't have made this list if it had not been for an audition that I had in the mid-1980s. Here's the story: there was a band in town that featured a couple of really talented musicians that I knew from another group that had recently disbanded, and they were looking for a new guitarist. Through one way or another, I was given the chance to audition, and the bulk of the songs that they gave me were from the Abacab album by Genesis. I had listened to Genesis before, and I even might have had one or two of their albums, but I hadn't taken the time to learn anything from them, and as such - I had zero appreciation for them. But as I struggled my way through the parts that I had to learn, and by the time that I passed my audition, I had a newfound appreciation for the band, but I also was stretched in a different direction from the other Progressive Rock bands that I had been focusing on. |
| I have a confession to make: I first heard "Cliffs of Dover" from Eric Johnson's Ah Via Musicom album on the military's AFN radio network when I was driving through Germany in 1990. I was headed into the mountains, where I knew that I was going to lose radio reception, so I pulled my car off the road so I wouldn't miss any of that piece. Like my initial reaction to hearing "Eruption" by Van Halen and "Satch Boogie" by Joe Satriani, I was blown away by Eric Johnson's musicianship. Even more than that, when I began to learn "Cliffs of Dover," I was amazed at how deceptively difficult it was to play. To this day, however, there are a few tricks here and there from Eric Johnson's style that show up in my playing. |
| I was a big fan of the Canadian power trio Triumph in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the first album that I bought by them was 1980's Progressions of Power. There were a few things that stand out as having impacted my playing: - First of all, Rik Emmett's "Fingertalking" solo was an amazing flamenco/fingerstyle piece that I had mastered at one time or other, but it was quite a struggle for me to do so. In learning that one piece, I perfected my rasgueado picking style, (only to learn a few years later that I was doing it backwards when I studied classical guitar).
- The second piece off this album that got my attention was "I Live For The Weekend," which was a straight-ahead rock piece. That song had little to speak for it - it was actually rather simple, but it was important in my development as a guitarist, because I learned the minor pentatonic scale from all of Rik Emmett's solos on that piece.
I eventually purchased several of Triumph's albums and learned a bunch of their music, but I would have to say that Progressions of Power had the most-lasting impact. |
| Most people have probably never heard of this album, but it was where I first heard Rich Mullins play the Hammered Dulcimer on the song "Creed." I instantly fell in love with the instrument, which led to my wife buying a dulcimer for me for Christmas, which led to meeting with a whole host of absolutely wonderful dulcimer people throughout the Mid-American and Eastern regions of the United States at various dulcimer festivals. (See HammerOn for some of those folks.) I eventually realized one of my musical bucket list items by playing Rich Mullins's "Creed" live with an orchestra several years ago. So, yeah - in terms of a single album having a profound effect, I think Rich Mullins' A Liturgy, a Legacy, & a Ragamuffin Band has got to be on my list, because it literally changed the course of my life. |
| I wasn't quite sure if I would leave this album on my list; I would add it to my list, then bump it off when I added something else. Nevertheless, it managed to survive the cut. I was introduced to Queensrÿche by the same two friends who challenged me to create this list, and Queensrÿche was my initial foray into the heavier world of Progressive Metal. (Which I would also consider King's X a member, but more about them later.) I would have to say that at one time or other I learned to play nearly all the songs off this album on the guitar, and giving credit where it's due, this album helped shape some of my songwriting for a season. That being said, I haven't really listened to Queensrÿche in decades. |
| This was the album where I was first introduced to Jimi Hendrix, whom everyone I knew hailed as the greatest guitar player who ever lived when I was first learning to play the guitar. Depending on whether you had the US or the UK version of this album, you received different songs, but I managed to learn "Purple Haze," "Manic Depression," Foxy Lady," and "Are You Experienced?" from this album, and I spent a lot of time trying to perfect Jimi's tone and his dizzying array of odd guitar sounds. Nevertheless, as I purchased more albums from Hendrix, my interest in his style waned, and I eventually gave away all my albums of his. To be honest, I almost entered the Woodstock Soundtrack for Jimi Hendrix, although the only reason why I bought the Woodstock Soundtrack was because I wanted to own Jimi Hendrix's amazing performances of the "Star Spangled Banner" and "Purple Haze" from that album. That being said, almost all of the rest of the Woodstock Soundtrack album is crap. Seriously. While I realize that a lot of the musicians were probably drunk or stoned, that doesn't mean that I have to forgive them for some really, really bad performances. (And of course, you can read about what I think of hippies.) |