(Credits: Far Out / Public Domain / Jim Summaria)
Mon 22 December 2025 18:00, UK
It’s unfortunate that many of the lists that people compile of the greatest guitarists of all time tend to cover the same handful of guitarists, such as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, because, despite their brilliance, there are so many more who are deserving of the same levels of praise.
Of course, it would be hard to deny Hendrix a high placing on such a list, given how influential and innovative he was, but at the same time, given how short his career ended up being, is there an argument to be made that he didn’t spend enough time in the spotlight to show what he was truly capable of? Following the same line of reasoning, was he, in fact, so good that he managed to eclipse the talents of others in just a few short years?
Everyone will have their own rogue selections for the greatest guitarists of all time, and often they’ll be specific to a certain area of expertise or a preferred genre, but it’s very infrequent that these slightly alternative suggestions find their way into the upper echelons of these lists, and a great shame that this is the case.
Even someone of the calibre of Eagles’ guitarist Joe Walsh tends not to get a sniff at these higher positions, despite having been an integral addition to the band’s sound on their most successful records and helping to transform them into a legendary band. Whether or not he’s deserving of greater recognition in the eyes of a large number of people is open for debate, but to not see him climb these rankings on a more frequent basis is perhaps unjust given his raw talent.
However, if there’s one thing that does link both Hendrix and Walsh despite the perceived gulf in quality according to these arbitrary listings, it’s the fact that they see eye to eye on the player who they both believe is sorely overlooked in the pantheon of great guitarists, and who ought to have been considered as one of the greatest to have ever lived.
Both players have previously hailed Chicago’s original guitarist, Terry Kath, as one of the most unique and innovative guitar players of all time, and given how the band’s sound was often rich with horns and ornate arrangements, one of the reasons why Kath is so frequently overlooked is because of the fact that his playing was drowned out by the additional instrumentation.
If you were to pay closer attention, however, you’d notice that there are a number of features that Kath holds in common with Hendrix, such as the heavy utilisation of pedals and an aggressive, attacking style that could be used for both intricate lead playing and crunching riffs. Hendrix famously once paid a visit to a Chicago show just to meet the guitarist, where he would later confide to another member of the band that he believed Kath was “the greatest guitarist in the universe”.
As for Walsh, he also claimed that Kath was “one of the most underrated guitar legends of the ’70s,” and was constantly perplexed by how he managed to pull off some of his trickier moves. “I had no idea how he was getting his guitar to sound like that,” Walsh later confessed.
Tragically, Kath would leave this earth at the age of 31 courtesy of an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, but in the same manner as Hendrix, it could be argued that had he survived, he could have had more opportunity to make an impression on the world and prove that he was worthy of holding a place at the top with the usual suspects.
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