(Credits: Far Out / Daryl Hannah / Neil Young)
Fri 19 December 2025 19:25, UK
Though he’s far more considered as one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, Neil Young‘s prowess as a guitarist should also be regarded as a focal point of his brilliance. Crafting lyrical masterpieces is something Young has always been able to achieve, but his abilities with his instrument should never be discounted.
Famously, Young has always been very mobile in the reasons he loves the guitar. “It would give you a rather sad view of your future, wouldn’t it? First off, nobody cares if you know how to play scales,” he said. “Nobody gives a shit if you have good technique or not. It’s whether you have feelings that you want to express with music, that’s what counts, really. When you are able to express yourself and feel good, then you know why you’re playing.”
Across his catalogue, Young has delivered impressive moments of heavenly guitar. ‘On The Beach’ is a uniquely delicate record, gilded with Young’s six-string prowess, while ‘Hey Hey, My My’ shows off his more ferocious side. However, ‘Down By The River’ is perhaps Young’s most impressive piece, with the nine-minute murder ballad reminiscent of the greatest guitarists of the day. Like any true player, Young has never been afraid to share his inspirations and be honest about the influence the guitarists who came before him had on his work. One such man was Bert Jansch.
One of London’s finest folkies, Bert Jansch, traversed the streets of the capital’s coffee houses to become an icon for an entire generation of performers. Providing a melancholy to his music that became synonymous with his sound and a rock scene that leapt out from his songbook, Jansch’s unique folk style, before he became a part of the band Pentangle.
Perhaps gaining his talent through busking – Jansch once allegedly busked his way from Morrocco back into Europe – the guitarist rarely dabbled with the electrified version of the instrument. Despite being gifted with the banjo, Appalachian dulcimer, recorder and concertina, Jansch’s love of the acoustic guitar would stay with him forever and provide a blueprint for a generation of players to hail his genius, including the likes of Joan Armatrading, Jimmy Page and Johnny Marr.
Like any truly gifted musician of the decade, Jansch was, soon enough, a huge influence on the world of rock. His idiosyncratic sonic structures would not stay singular for too long, and soon enough, he was influencing some of the rock world’s finest guitarists. Neil Young is one performer Jansch clearly influenced with his playing, and he took the gifted musician on tour in 2010. But, a few decades earlier, he made a bolder claim of his preference for the guitarist.
“Bert Jansch is on the same level as Jimi Hendrix,” shared Young in 1992, making a seriously strong statement. “That first record of his is epic. It came from England, and I was especially taken by ‘The Needle of Death,’ such a beautiful and angry song. That guy was so good… And years later, on On the Beach, I wrote the melody of ‘Ambulance Blues’ by styling the guitar part completely on ‘Needle of Death’. I wasn’t even aware of it, and someone else drew my attention to it.”
Considering Young would label Hendrix as “the greatest electric guitar player who ever lived“, it’s no small feat that he considers Jansch on a par with him.
During his induction speech for taking Hendrix into Rock Hall, Young spoke from the heart and said of Hendrix’s peerless skillset: “The guitar, you can play it, or you can transcend, and there are no boundaries for as far as you can go with your own body and mind when you’re playing it. I learnt that from Jimi, he was at one with his instrument. Truly one thing was happening, no technique you could take note of, no chords that I could recognise, and I didn’t know what any of it was. I just heard it and felt it.”
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