Any good musician knows that trying to compare a guitarist with another in order to eventually establish an all time best guitarist ranking it is not only practically impossible but musically wrong as well. Any musician, in this case any guitarist, is simply unique in the way he plays and in the way he is able express his soul by mean of the instrument. Not to talk about the way he is able to engage with audience or the way he writes his solos or not too rarely his whole own songs.
Anyway it is so evident to anyone that there some musicians so great in what they do and the way they do that are unanimously revered as the greatest of all time. Very different is trying to identify the best of all, and any attempt in order to do that would end in resulting utopic and silly at the same time. Very different instead, it is trying to establish the best live performance ever recorded or the best solo ever written. It still is a pretty personal and debatable thing to do, after all talking about music is in a big part a matter of personal taste, but thanks to videos and recordings we at least have the chance to base our analysis on something concrete.
But when we talk about finger-style, and in particular finger-style on an electric guitar, the quest for the best live performance ever can end even before starting. Well, that performance was perfectly recorded during the Alchemy Tour from Dire Straits, the years were 84/85, the song was “Sultans of swing” and the man is Mark Knopfler. I am not going to spend any words about it, it is simply useless, the video of the performance speaks for itself. If you want to have some extra fun go on the Youtube page and read some of the comments on the video… even from this you can understand how much a song or a musician can impact on people’s life.
Federico Chianucci
