At lunch one day years ago, a co-worker asked me if I'd rather be an A-list actor, a director (one who could direct any movie he wanted) or a rock star. Kind of a rock paper scissors approach to winning the fame lottery.

I chose, of course, rock star and a few months later formed Old Beans with a couple of friends. And we became, well, guys in a rock band, if not actual rock stars. But we had our moments.

With everyone wanting to be guitar heroes (not with a real guitar, but with a controller), and politicians being called rock stars (uh, they are political stars, but they don't "rock" at all), I thought I'd wax a bit about real rock stars and guitar heroes.

By the way, amazing guitarists aren't heroes. They don't save anything, and, if they're really good, they can totally destroy a great song with their noodling. That being said, I do love guitar rock.

A few weeks back, Rolling Stone did another list issue, this one covering the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time." This kind of gives them an out when they want to celebrate a guitarist who isn't much of a soloist, but anchors a big band (like The Edge of U2). And so the list isn't necessarily about songs with amazing solos (except when they are--most notably "Eruption" by Van Halen, which is almost entirely a guitar solo). And it's not a poll or done by scientific method--it's probably put together by ten people sitting around a table in a Manhattan high rise.

Which is so not rock star-ish.

The list is heavy on 60s and 70s, pretty much ignores the late 80s guitar heroics of hundreds of "hair bands" (when having an amazing axeman or two was mandatory), and then tries to throw in a few bones to new millennium rockers. There is, however, only one great guitarist of the 00s--and his name is Jack White. One might even say all this recent talk about guitar heroes is pretty much because of Mr. White.

But they are absolutely correct about one thing: "Johnny B. Goode" is the best guitar song ever. Hell, it's a story about the best guitarist in the world and how good he plays that thing. And it was introduced to my generation in the mid-80s by Marty McFly.

Having said that, I wonder why everyone seems to turn their nose up at the late 80s. Everyone is in love with the early 80s keyboard-heavy new wave (not to mention some of the horrible fashion--leg warmers, are you fucking serious?), but after Van Halen broke up, apparently the rest of the decade had nothing to offer (except Slash).

Right off the top of my head, I have to put forth "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour. This song got everyone headbanging when it came on, and the guitar is heavy, strange and amazing. But not on the list. How about "Modern Day Cowboy" by Tesla, with its dueling guitarists? And a little off the radar, there's "Big Trouble" from David Lee Roth's first solo effort. It's the best Steve Vai solo and song you'll find anywhere.

But my point (actually, I have no real point this week, but let's go with it) is that ever since 1991, the "importance" (put in quotes because we are talking about rock songs here--probably not important the same way gas prices are these days) of the late 80s rockers has been placed just above a gutter drain.

Sure, there was buffoonery (but wasn't David Bowie rather ridiculous in the 70s?). There was extreme excess of drugs, women, booze and pyrotechnics (but, again, this was nothing new). And, yeah, some of those bands were, at best, crap-tacular. Fun for how bad they were. You can, by the way, find these crappy, but popular, bands in pretty much every year since the Beatles hit the scene.

But if you're mastering level 146 of Guitar Hero, you aren't learning guitar. And even in the worst of those worst bands (and y'know what, there's a list of those bands, too), there was a guy who spent years learning how to play scales really freakin' fast on his six-string. So stop watching flashing lights on your TV, pick up a guitar and play a game that will take your entire life to get good at.

Matt Worley has mastered level 3 on his acoustic guitar: play whole chords while singing and only looking at his hands every once in a while.