by MrMattDiehl on Thu Apr 19, 2012 5:29 pm
Funny poll. I would break down my response as such:
#3: Alex Chilton. Superficially, doesn't seem like a wildly obvious choice - his guitar tone is all over the place, sometimes shitty, sometimes amazing. But it usually, in a quite artful and subtle way, fits the song regardless in the perfect way; also, you can pretty much always tell it's Chilton - his tone seems to be less dependent on gear choices and more just on his musical personality. It always sounds like him no matter what you put in his hands to play, and that's cool.
#2: Brian May. Obviously, the tone god. His achievement is impressive because he actually invented shit to make his tone, it didn't really sound like anything else, and had an ambition to it that was both kinda OCD and unhinged simultaneously. That said...
#1: I have to go with Mick Ronson - maybe because he's sorta the underdog (well, okay, Chilton's the underdog) but also because his shit was so exacting. Sorta like Keith Richards, Ronson played shit that seemed easy and effortless, but was in fact quite complex in what he did - even down to his tone. I read some amazing thing about how he used the wah pedal to dial in tone in this freaky way; a lot of people that have worked with Ronson said he was just insanely innovative at getting something that you wanted to listen to, and might even seem familiar, but was actually from another planet. And while May managed to do more with more, Ronson could do the overdubbed thing, but also be quite subtle. I suppose May's subtle shit is cool/great too, but Ronson always managed to do something cool without sounding like he's overplaying, even if he was...
