40Tom Morello

KMazur/WireImageTom Morello re-imagined rock guitar for the post-hip-hop world in the 1990s withRage Against the Machine. Leaning heavily on his effects pedals, he created a new sonic vocabulary the replicated turntable scratches on "Bulls on Parade," the funky laser blasts on "Killing in the Name" and the divebomber attack on "Fistful of Steel." Morello's blend of gizmos, pyrotechnic solos and thunderous chords is equal partsthe StoogesandPublic Enemy: "The Bomb Squad were hugely influential to me as a guitarist," Morello said, referring to the hip-hop crew's noiseloving production unit. "I was basically the DJ in Rage." After stepping back from guitar theatrics in the past five years with his lefty-folk alias, the Nightwatchman, Morello turned up the volume once again on his most recent album,World Wide Rebel Songs. "I figured I can play guitar like that," he toldRolling Stoneearlier this year, "so I should."Key Tracks:"Guerrilla Radio," "Killing in the Name"

41Mick Ronson

Denis O'Regan/Getty ImagesIt was an exhilarating collaboration Mick Ronson's terse phrasing and skewering distortion ignitingDavid Bowie's sexually blurred confrontation, during the latter's king-glam role as Ziggy Stardust in the early Seventies. "Mick was the perfect foil for the Ziggy character," Bowie said. "We were every bit as good as Mick and Keith or Axl and Slash... the personification of that rock & roll dualism." The historic partnership actually predated Ziggy Stardust, hitting its first peak in the long, metallic furor of Bowie's 1970 recording "The Width of a Circle." Ronson's blues-with-flair style was also a vital component on sessions forLou Reed,John MellencampandMorrissey, and during his second great partnership, in the late Seventies and early Eighties, with ex-Mott the Hooplesinger Ian Hunter. "I want people to say, 'Wow, isn't that great, and isn't it simple?'" Ronson, who died in 1993, once said. "If you get sort of fancy and cluttered, you're just baffling people with science."Key Tracks:"The Width of a Circle," "Suffragette City"

42Mike Bloomfield

Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images"He didn't get a chance to expand the mission of his soul, but those few albums he played on those are enough," saysCarlos Santana, referring to Mike Bloomfield's death in 1981, of a drug overdose at age 37, and the key recordings Bloomfield left behind. Bloomfield helpedBob Dylango electric with his work onHighway 61 Revisited(those are Bloomfield's skyward spirals on "Like a Rolling Stone") and two albums with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, including 1966's raga-blues monster,East-West. (Check out Bloomfield's winding, epic solo on the title track.) A native of Chicago, Bloomfield studied the local electric-blues legends likeMuddy WatersandHowlin' Wolfup close while he was growing up, and he packed those lessons into a piercing clean-treble tone and solos that took off with fluid, modal-jazz ecstasy. "Michael always sounded like a salmon going against the current," Santana says. "He comes fromB.B. King. But he went somewhere else."Key Tracks:"East-West," "Like a Rolling Stone," "Groovin' Is Easy"