Jimi Hendrix

"I don't have nothing to regret at all in the past, except that I might've unintentionally hurt somebody else or something."
Jimi Hendrix

Guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Born Johnny Allen Hendrix (later changed to James Marshall) on November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington. Learning to play guitar as a teenager, Hendrix grew up to become a rock guitar legend. He had a difficult childhood, sometimes living in the care of relatives and even acquaintances at times. Hendrix had two brothers, Leon and Joseph, and two sisters, Kathy and Pamela. Joseph was born with physical difficulties and was placed in foster care at age three. His two sisters were also both placed in foster care at a young age. Kathy was born blind and Pamela suffered lesser physical difficulties.

Nuno Bettencourt

Nuno Bettencourt was born on September 20, 1966 in Praia da Vitória, Terceira, Azores, Portugal, to Ezequiel Mendes Bettencourt and wife Aureolina da Cunha Gil de Ávila. Bettencourt's family, parents and two brothers Luís and Roberto Carlos, along with a sister Helena, moved to Hudson, Massachusetts when he was four. Bettencourt lived on Main Street in Hudson for 21 years. Initially, Bettencourt had little interest in music, preferring to spend his time playing hockey and soccer. His first instrument was the drums and he played them exclusively until his brother, Luis, began to teach him how to play guitar.

Wes Borland

Wes Borland (born Wesley Louden Borland February 7, 1975 in Richmond, Virginia) is a musician, best known as the former guitarist in the band Limp Bizkit. He has been in several other bands as well, such as The Damning Well, Goatslayer, Big Dumb Face, From First to Last and currently Black Light Burns. Borland's family moved from Virginia to Jacksonville, Florida where his father took a pastoral job at a Presbyterian Church. In Florida, Borland met bassist Sam Rivers, but the two did not get along due to rivalries between local bands. He went to school with John Otto. He spent his summers in Montreat, North Carolina, working in the sound booth for Montreat conference center, a Presbyterian Church institution.

Paul Brandon Gilbert

Paul Brandon Gilbert (born November 6, 1966 in Illinois, USA) is an American guitarist. He started guitar at the age of 5, but gave up soon after being frustrated just learning nursery rhymes. Around the age of 11 he took up the instrument again, but with a totally naïve knowledge of technique he played with only upstrokes, and fretted notes with only his middle finger. Frustrated after trying to play metal songs and failing, he decided to get a teacher which did correct his errors. Now with his technique corrected he continued to practise excessively, and, by the age of 15 he was not only touring local clubs with his band ‘’Tau Zero’’ but was even spotlighted in guitar player magazine alongside fellow up-and-comer Yngwie J Malmsteen.

John Petrucci

John Petrucci was born on July 12, 1967 in Kings Park New York to an Italian American family. He picked up the guitar at the early age of 8 because his older sister was allowed to go to bed later in order to practice the piano. However he decided to quit the guitar when his attempts to stay up late were unsuccessful. He would later pick up the guitar again at the age of 12 when his childhood friend and future Dream Theater keyboardist Kevin Moore invited John to join his

Steve Vai

Six-string wizard Steve Vai, along with his one-time teacher Joe Satriani, set the standard for rock guitar virtuosity in the '80s. Born on June 6, 1960, and raised in Carle Place, New York, Vai became interested in the guitar via such legendary artists as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Alice Cooper as a teenager and, upon starting high school, took lessons with an older player from the school, Joe Satriani. Playing in several local bands, Vai quickly picked up on the instrument, and by the age of 18 was attending the renowned Berklee School of Music in Boston. As a student there, Vai transcribed several of Frank Zappa's most technically demanding compositions for guitar, and even sent a copy of one such transcription, "Black Page," to Zappa himself. Zappa was so impressed with the young guitarist that upon meeting

Joe Satriani

Storming onto the music scene nearly a decade ago, Joe Satriani has been widely recognized as the archetypal post-modern hero. Since his emergence in 1986 with a self-released, self-titled debut album, Joe has become the most recognizable guitar voice of his time, earning his place alongside the great masters of rock guitar. As an instrumental artist in a pop-dominated field, Satriani's accomplishments are even more remarkable: He is perhaps the most successful rock instrumentalist in recent history, selling millions of records and consistently packing concert halls - yet always preserving a strong musical vision, as well as the respect of fellow musicians and forward-thinking music fans worldwide.

Satriani's gift is creating highly evolved instrumental music, using the structure of popular standard songs that allows listeners to latch onto tuneful melodies before being dazzled by his acclaimed musicianship. His hallmarks are a warm, bluesy tone and delicate phrasing, combined with the bursts of superhuman technical facility which upped the ante well beyond the standards set by generations of great rock musicians before him.

Satriani's latest disc, Crystal Planet - his first studio album for Epic Records - reunites the guitarist with G3 Live in Concert producer Mike Fraser, and finds the artist at a new peak of inspiration. From the pounding crunch and sizzling harmonics of "Up in the Sky," to the delicate strains of the solo closer "ZZ's Song," Crystal Planet ranks with Satriani's most adventurous and accessible discs.