Neil Young - Guitarist

I own 12 guitars and taught for years which doesn’t mean my opinion is more valid but it does mean I know a thing or two about guitar playing.

He is easily in the top 100 not because he has amazing technical acrobatics that dazzles (he doesn’t) but because his tone, his understated nuanced touch and increadibly musical playing. His playing is literally genius. I can see how many listeners don’t notice these things. Think of the subtle complexity of a Rothko painting: a lot of people don’t see it. 

Okay, so they had him ranked around #15 I think.  If you look at the list of people he is in front of you'll see how ridiculous this is.  He's good, he's interesting but top 100 he ain't.  I would list some people who I don't listen to as much as I listen to Neil, but I recognize that they are the greater talent on the instrument.  And as much as I enjoy Mark Rothko's chapel in Houston, I don't know if it would even occur to me to list him as one of the top 100 visual artists.  In short, these things shouldn't be mere popularity contests.  Some evaluation of talent and skill should figure in, don't you think?

You can’t rank one’s own emotions against that of others.

And it pretty well comes down to that.

Trying to get logical on an emotional subject is a generally a recipe for disaster.

Audio forums are full of attack and vitriol partially due to this very human aspect of the subject at hand.

You know they have classical music competitions--the Cliburn piano competition being among the best-known.  I think it's generally accepted that a great deal of both technique and musicality are required to do well.  I don't see why a list such as this one of Rolling Stone's shouldn't be the same.  It's not all about emotion and neither is it all about technique.