10'll Getcha 20: The Guitarist Of The Decade

Guitar World’s Readers And Writers Band Together To Pinpoint Guitardom’s Most Vital Players Of The Past 10 Years.

- Richard Bienstock

WE KNOW, WE KNOW— you’re sick of polls. And they’re all rigged anyway, right? Wrong! In fact, we take them pretty damn seriously, and, well, this one is particularly important. Maybe the most important GW poll ever. Because we’re not only poised at the end of another year, but also the end of a decade. With that in mind, GW put out the call to find out who you — our readers — consider the “Guitarist of the Decade,” and we received a lot of responses. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them. Dozens of thousands of them. Seriously. All told, it was nearly 50,000 votes!

Of course, we decided we wanted to weigh in as well, so we put together a panel of 30 trusted “guitar folk,” including the entire Guitar World editorial staff; editors from our sister music magazines, including Guitarist, Total Guitar, Metal Hammer and Classic Rock; plus a legion of GW contributors including Alan Paul, Jeff Perrin, Jon Wiederhorn, Brad Tolinski, Jeff Kitts, Brad Angle, Joe Bosso, Tom Gilbert, Adam Kovac, Damon Orion, Gregory Adams, Laura B. Whitmore, Bruce Fagerstrom, Clay Marshall, Nick Bowcott, Mark McStea and more. And then we got to work!