Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix compressed an entire era of electric guitar development into four years of recording. Before him, feedback, distortion and studio manipulation were problems to be minimised. After him, they were instruments in their own right — and every rock guitarist since has worked inside a vocabulary he assembled between 1966 and 1970.

What separates Hendrix from the imitators is that the noise was never the point. Underneath the Fuzz Face and the burning guitars sat a deeply schooled rhythm player who had spent years on the American chitlin' circuit backing Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. His comping — thumb-fretted bass notes, embellished chord shapes, sliding double stops — is arguably more influential than his lead playing, and it is what makes 'Little Wing' and 'The Wind Cries Mary' impossible to copy convincingly.

He died at 27 with three studio albums to his name. The catalogue is small, endlessly reissued, and still not fully absorbed.