The Most Successful Guitarist

The Notes Heard Around The World

If greatness is defined by success, then we might say that the greatest guitarist is the person who composed the most successful—that is, the most well-known or most widely-heard—piece of guitar music in history.

(Warning: the statistics in this chapter are based purely on probably-pretty-much-right figures, but I don’t think there’s any doubt about the actual outcome.)

Straight away you’re probably thinking of the opening of “Smoke on the Water,” or “Purple Haze,” but you’re thinking way, way too locally.

Here’s the breaking news, or at least a very oblique hint: this title has recently changed hands.

From the mid 1960s until the mid 1990s the composer of the most widely-heard piece of guitar music on the planet was Vic Flick. He was the sessions musician who, with no idea of his pending place in history, made up the guitar lick in the James Bond theme. (This wonderful story is told in full Technicolor in my bookGuitar: An American Life.)

In the last decade or so, roughly, Vic has fallen back to second place thanks to a piece of music even shorter than the James Bond theme, a piece that almost nobody knows is even guitar music.

Roll of the drums…

Winner in this category, hands down, is the great Spanish guitarist and composer Francisco Tarrega.

“Huh?” you ask, eloquently, mouth a little agape, brow creased.

The story goes like this: in 1993 Anssi Vanjoki, Executive VP of Nokia, bought the rights to Tarrega’s composition “Gran Vals” (1902). He and Lauri Kivinen selected a passage from measures 14-17 and turned it into the first identifiable musical ringtone. (They also trademarked it and renamed it “Nokia Tune” or simply “Nokia.”)

As such, Tarrega probably beats out Vick Flick as the composer of the world’s most frequently and widely heard guitar tune, though Vick would probably point out that the excerpt from “Gran Vals” is usually heard not as played by a guitar, but some tinny synthesizer doohicky.

At this chapter goes to press Tarrega was unavailable for comment, having died in 1909, but his agent claimed that just because Nokia had purchased the rights to the musical fragment, that wouldn’t stop his client having the right to include “Gran Vals” in live performance, were he still alive. It was a matter of principle, he said.

The agent also claimed that Blackberry had expressed interest in the maestro’s famous composition “Lagrima,” Motorola had entered into discussions over the use of “Recuerdos de la Alhambra,” Samsung intended to bid on the “Estudio en Forma de Minuetto,” Palm was thinking about “Sueno Tremolo” and iPhone was pretty darn certain they’d be buying the rights to “El Pobre Valbuena Polka Japonesa.”

“We’ve got to be looking at six figures,” he said. “After all, my client is the world’s premier ringtone guitarist, not just any John, Paul or George.”

Don’t forget: post your own vote for Greatest Guitarist in the History of the World here in the response/comment section. And while you’re at it, subscribe to this blog so you’ll know ahead of time when my alleged next book, The Greatest Guitarist in the History of the World, is approaching publication.