Is a List of Greatest Guitarists Without Jimi Hendrix Worth Talking About?

Yes. Not that it'd stop anyone from talking about it if it weren't.

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Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitarist to ever play rock and roll. He exploded the instrument to the point of reinvention, and no one after him has escaped his influence. The second-greatest guitarist is Prince, the most versatile player the music has ever heard, a man who had mastered entire traditions ranging from disco to heavy metal by his late teens. The third-greatest is Duane Allman, a musician of such expressive depth that every note he played in his too-brief career seemed to contain miracles.

Which brings us to Spin's most glaring omission, where fun counter-intuition gives way to straight trolling: Jimi Hendrix. If you're going to rank one hundred guitar players and not rank Hendrix first, that's your prerogative. Leave him out of the Top 10, even, if you want to make some weird and mildly psychotic point. But leaving him off entirely is just dumb, particularly when two members of your Top Ten—Prince (6) and Eddie Hazel (9)—practically owe him royalty checks. I have no quarrel with Spin's omission of Clapton, Jeff Beck, or Stevie Ray Vaughan, all of whom are fine players and none of whom are remotely underappreciated. But to dismiss Hendrix is to dismiss the one person who connects Jimmy Nolen to Thurston Moore, Frank Zappa to Kurt Cobain—in other words, the one person who might make this list start to make sense.