THE GREATEST GUITAR ALBUMS OF ALL TIME - THE 80S

Stevie Ray Vaughan reignited the blues. AC/DC delivered the biggest selling rock album of all time. New guitar heroes rose up - Slash and Joe Satriani among them. But if one guitarist owned the 80s, it was Eddie Van Halen...

- Jenna Scaramanga

10 THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST IRON MAIDEN (1982)

Some critics and S industry bods genuinely thought metal was over by the early 80s, and guitars were outdated. The Number Of The Beast definitively proved it was only just getting started. The giants of the 70s were one-guitar bands, but in Maiden, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray's Thin Lizzy-inspired harmonies made it compulsory for metallers to have two guitarists. Their tone, powered by DiMarzio Super Distortion pickups into Marshalls boosted with overdrive pedals, was the metal recipe for most of the decade. Murray and Smith's fluid soloing kept one foot in the blues but nodded to Ritchie Blackmore, upping the tempo for the new decade.

09 PURPLE RAIN PRINCE (1984)

Steve Vai once said Prince had no right to play guitar so well on top of his other talents. Purple Rain distilled that genius. On opener Let's Go Crazy, a better rock/RnB crossover than Beat It (yeah, we said it), Prince riffs with the best, lays down soaring bends, and closes with an outrageous burst of wah-soaked shred worthy of an Ozzy album. An octaver-aided shred frenzy opens When Doves Cry, and Darling Nikki's guitars and lyrics are almost equally filthy. The matchless title track unites Wendy Melvoin's gorgeous but finger-breaking add9 chords with Prince's rapturous final solo.

08 BROTHERS IN ARMS DIRE STRAITS (1985)

Mark Knopfler's guitar sound on Money For Nothing was actually an accident. Having set up the session the night before, producer Neil Dorfsman found an SM57 mic pointing at the floor when he arrived. Before he could fix it, Knopfler's tech Ron Eve came on the talk-back mic insisting they left it because the tone was amazing. Despite drawing detailed diagrams, Dorfsman could never repeat the effect.