BRAND NEW NOISE

IN THE EARLY ‘80S, ALTERNATIVE ROCK BROKE THROUGH THE MAINSTREAM FASTER THAN ANY OTHER GENRE, SURGING ITS WAY UP THE CHARTS EVERYWHERE FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS TO TAMWORTH, AUSTRALIA. HERE ARE 25 GUITARISTS WHO FORGED THE SHAPE AND SOUND OF ALT-ROCK, FROM ITS PROTEAN BEGINNINGS TO THE PRESENT.

The first urgent stirrings of alternative rock aren’t hard to find. Just look for the loudest, noisiest or most iconoclastic bands making a scene in the underground of rock and roll’s early years. Long before the term “alternative rock” came into popular use, there existed a strain of guitar groups united in their disregard for convention and commercial acceptance.

The earliest prototypes can be found in 1960s garage rock acts like The Seeds and The Standells, whose use of feedback, distortion and inexpert playing laid the groundwork for rock’s anticonventional future genres. A few, like The Velvet Underground and The Stooges, took the music to experimental extremes on albums that remain touchstones for guitarists who have followed.

By the late 1970s, New York City’s art rock scene brought us Television, Patti Smith and Talking Heads, proto-alt-rockers who were incorrectly swept into the punk dustpile. Meanwhile, the life force for the future alt-rock movement was underground and growing. It began to emerge in the early 1980s, simultaneously, via R.E.M. in the US and The Smiths in the UK. Both group’s commercial successes opened the door to alt-rock’s viability and led directly to the rise of the early ’90s alternative explosion.

With the arrival of Nirvana, alt-rock came to the popular music’s forefront. The genre dominated for much of the 1990s, but like all movements, it splintered and lost its potency. As the decade faded and the genre fractured further, a few guitarists – Jack White and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, namely – emerged as leading lights. Over these next pages, we explore the histories and contributions of these and other guitarists who fueled and continue to power the alternative rock scene.