7Chuck Berry

Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWhen I sawChuck Berryin "Jazz on a Summer's Day" as a teenager, what struck me was how he was playing against the grain with a bunch of jazz guys. They were brilliant guys like Jo Jones on drums and Jack Teagarden on trombone but they had that jazz attitude cats put on sometimes:"Ooh... this rock & roll..."With "Sweet Little Sixteen," Chuck took them all by storm and played against their animosity. To me, that's blues. That's the attitude and the guts it takes. That's what I wanted to be, except I was white.I listened to every lick he played and picked it up. Chuck got it from T-Bone Walker, and I got it from Chuck,Muddy Waters, Elmore James andB.B. King. We're all part of this family that goes back thousands of years. Really, we're all passing it on.Chuck was playing a slightly heated-up version of Chicago blues, that guitar boogie which all the cats were playing but he took it up to another level. He was slightly younger than the older blues guys, and his songs were more commercial without just being pop, which is a hard thing to do. Chuck had the swing. There's rock, but it's the roll that counts. And Chuck had an incredible band on those early records: Willie Dixon on bass, Johnnie Johnson on piano, Ebby Hardy or Freddy Below on drums. They understood what he was about and just swung with it. It don't get any better than that.He's not the easiest guy in the world to get along with, which was always a bit of a disappointment for me because that cat wrote songs that had so much sense of humor and so much intelligence. The old son of a bitch just turned 85. I wish him a happy birthday, and I wish I could just pop around and say, "Hey, Chuck, let's have a drink together or something." But he ain't that kind of cat. By Keith RichardsKey Tracks:"Johnny B. Goode," "Maybellene," "Roll Over Beethoven"

8Eddie Van Halen

Ebet Roberts/RedfernsWhen I was 11, I was at my guitar teachers place, and he put on "Eruption." It sounded like it came from another planet. I was just learning basic chords, stuff likeAC/DCandDeep Purple; "Eruption" really didnt make sense to me, but it was glorious, like hearing Mozart for the first time.Eddie is a master of riffs: "Unchained," "Take Your Whiskey Home," the beginning of "Ain't Talking 'Bout Love." He gets sounds that aren't necessarily guitar sounds a lot of harmonics, textures that happen just because of how he picks. There's a part in "Unchained" where it sounds like there's another instrument in the riff.A lot of it is in his hands: the way he holds his pick between his thumb and middle finger, which opens things up for his finger-tapping. (When I found out he played that way, I tried it myself, but it was too weird.) But underneath that, Eddie has soul. It's likeHendrix you can play the things he's written, but there's an X factor that you can't get.Eddie still has it. I sawVan Halenon their reunion tour two years ago, and the second he came out, I felt that same thing I did when I was a kid. When you see a master, you know it. By Mike McCready of Pearl JamKey Tracks:"Eruption," "Ain't Talking 'Bout Love," "Hot for Teacher"

9Duane Allman

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesI grew up playing slide guitar in church, and the whole idea was to imitate the human voice: After the old lady or the preacher stopped singing, we had to carry on the melody of the song just like they had sung it. Just in those terms, Duane Allman took it to a whole other level. He was so much more precise than anybody who'd ever come before. When I first heard those old-schoolAllman Brothersrecords, it was strange to me because the sound was so similar to what I had grown up listening to.Listen to "Layla" especially when it goes into that outro. Duane is sliding all over that melody. I used to put that on "repeat" when I would go to bed. All of us guitar players sit and practice, but that's one of those records where you want to put the guitar down and just listen.Eric Claptontold me he knew working with Duane was going to take guitar music to a whole new place; they had a vision, and they got there. Clapton said he was really nervous about two guys playing guitar, but Duane was the coolest cat he'd say, "Let's just get down!"Duane died young, and it's just one of those things. You could tell he was going to get 50 times better. But God works it out like that, and thats the legacy he left behind. In my iPod is everything Duane recorded. I listen to Allmans tunes every other day. By Robert RandolphKey Tracks:"Statesboro Blues," "Whipping Post," "Blue Sky"