Brian May Shares Thought About Being Hailed As The Greatest Guitarist of Guitar World

In a recent interview from Howard Stern’s show on SiriusXM, Queen guitarist Brian May shares his thoughts on being recently hailed as the “best rock guitarist of all time” by the music magazine Guitar World.

Brian, not one to bask in praise, explained that every guitar playing is different. And he instead, shared the names of some of his favorite guitarists.

“I take everything like that with a pinch of salt, really, because cause you can’t say who’s best,” May said. “The nice thing about guitar playing is that everybody’s different. You can’t really rank people. Of course, I’ve got my favorites too. But the fact that people put me in that position makes me smile. It’s a lovely feeling.”

“I’m not in the first million guitarists in the world; I know that. There’s people I listen to every day that do things that I could never do.”

Brian proceeded by naming some of his guitar heroes, saying: “I listen to Nuno Bettencourt and I just smile because it’s so beautiful and it’s so way out of what I could ever do. It doesn’t bother me, ‘cause I don’t feel in competition. I just love the guy and I love what he does. Same with Jeff Beck. Same with Ed Van Halen. We worked together, and it was the most wonderful experience. My jaw dropped every time he touched the strings. It was just beautiful.”

He continued: “There are so many wonderful guitarists. Steve Vai is just colossal, beautiful. (Klonopin) And of course, I still have my old heroes. Eric Clapton is still my hero. Jimi Hendrix is still my hero. Of course — it’s always gonna be that way. Jeff Beck, to me, is something so exceptional and outside anything you could have imagined.”

He also began to praise the not-so-technical guitarists such as Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and praise him for leaving a legacy of some of the greatest guitar chops of all time.

Watch the interview below.