Buddy Guy’s Classic Rock Collaborations

If there is a name that is practically synonymous with the blues, it’s Buddy Guy.

At the time of this writing in May 2025, Guy is 88 years old and still playing live, recording music and touring the country. The list of guitarists he has influenced is a mile long — Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, etc. — hailing from all over the world. As far as Guy sees it, the blues is for everyone nowhere where you come from.

“If you love the blues, you can play it,” he told Guitar Player back in 1999. “Every interview I’ve ever had, I get asked ‘Can a white man play the blues?’ I hate that question! It’s a human being, man. If I had eight fingers on my left hand, then I would say, ‘No, a white man probably can’t play like me.'” … Look at athletes — boxers, football players, baseball players—they come in all sizes and all colors, and all those guys are great. Music is the same way. There’s no advantage or disadvantage. If you want to learn this thing, man, and you love it the way I love it, you can do it.”

Some of those aforementioned guitarists have collaborated with Guy over the years and the result is typically a wonderful marriage of blues and rock, old and young. Below are 14 examples of this.

Eric Clapton

Guy and Clapton have been rubbing shoulders since the late ’60s, occasionally sharing stages — here’s a clip of them trading licks in 1969. Guy participated in Clapton’s 24 Nights all-star blues guitar lineup in London in the early ’90s, which was made into a live album, as well as Clapton’s 1991 soundtrack album for the movie Rush. Of course, Guy has also been a guest several times at Clapton’s Crossroads Festival. “No matter how great the song, or performance, my ear would always find him out,” Clapton said when he inducted Guy into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. “He stood out in the mix, simply by virtue of the originality and vitality of his playing.”

The Rolling Stones

Guy has been around long enough to remember when there was no Rolling Stones. Many years ago, in 1964, fellow bluesmen Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon brought the Stones to Chess Records where Guy was making a record. “I got pissed off: ‘Who in the hell are these guys?'” Guy recalled in 2015 to Rolling Stone. “I had never seen a white man with hair that long and high-heeled boots before. They had come to do an audition for Chess Records.” Eventually, those long-haired musicians would more than prove themselves. “I found out later when they were bigger than bubblegum that they were the Rolling Stones, the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band I’d ever play with,” Guy continued to Rolling Stone. “Nobody matches that sound that the Rolling Stones get. Playing with them is like playing with a machine.” Guy has opened for them on tour several times. Below, you can watch Guy perform with the Stones in 2008 at their Shine a Light concert.

Keith Richards and Mick Jagger

We’re going to stick with the Rolling Stones theme for a moment here and note that Guy has also collaborated specifically with two of their members: Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. They both appeared on Guy’s 2018 album The Blues Is Alive and Well — Richards played guitar on “Cognac” (as did Jeff Beck, but more on him shortly), while Jagger contributed harmonica to “You Did the Crime.” “Buddy Guy brought Chicago blues to its pinnacle,” Richards once told Pollstar. “His phrasing, originality and style topped it all. Not only that, but he’s a great guy.”

Jeff Beck

As mentioned, Jeff Beck was part of the above song with Guy and Richards, but he also worked with Guy on several other occasions. In 1991, Beck played guitar on “Mustang Sally,” which Guy recorded for his album Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues. They also played live together a number of times — here’s a clip of them performing “Let Me Love You” at the Hollywood Bowl in 2016. “Buddy Guy just hit the spot for me,” Beck said to Blues Blast Magazine in 2017. “He has a lot of very exquisite timing and is delightfully out of key sometimes. That’s what I find so charming. It’s just a hair sharp. It wouldn’t be right, had it been dead on the note.”

Mark Knopfler

Speaking of Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits also played on that album. His contribution was to a song by John Hiatt called “Where Is the Next One Coming From?”

John Mayer

One could certainly argue that John Mayer is not classic rock and therefore does not belong on this list, but he has been a member of Dead and Company for a decade now and has also collaborated with a host of rock ‘n’ roll greats, so we feel he’s deserving here. He and Guy have played live together several times over the years. Below you’ll see them performing at Farm Aid in 2005. “Any time he’s in town and wants to play, I’ll be there,” Mayer said to The Guardian in 2010. “I learn from him all the time and I’ve never taken it for granted. Every time I’m on stage with him I travel back in my mind to the 16-year-old kid who wrote a letter saying, ‘Can I please be on your guest list some night, because I’m too young to get into a bar but I really need to hear you play?’ I did that! So the wow factor never leaves.”

John Mayall

In 1993, John Mayall called up some friends to play on his album Wake Up Call. Guy was one of them, along with the likes of Mick Taylor, Mavis Staples and more. Guy joined Mayall on a song called “I Could Cry,” both on guitar and vocals. Of course, they’ve played live together, too — here’s a clip of Guy, Mayall and Junior Wells, another iconic bluesman, performing “Messin’ With the Kid.”

Paul Rodgers

Guy is a talented vocalist on his own, but it can’t hurt sometimes to throw in another exceptional singer, such as Paul Rodgers. The Bad Company frontman helped out on a cover of “Some Kind of Wonderful” which appeared on Guy’s 1993 album Feels Like Rain. Guy returned the favor that same year when he played on one of Rodgers’ albums, Muddy Water Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters, joining him on a Rodgers original called “Muddy Water Blues.”

Bonnie Raitt

Hold on because we’re not quite done with Feels Like Rain. That album also featured another guitar legend, Bonnie Raitt. She added vocals and slide guitar on the album’s title track. Not that that was the first time they’d crossed paths — Guy and Junior Wells were her support act back in 1975. “They thought her interest in the blues was some kind of freakish quirk,” Dick Waterman, a leader of what was then a blues revival movement, told Rolling Stone in 1975, “but she’s proud that Buddy and Muddy [Waters] and Junior and [Howlin’] Wolf now regard her as a genuine peer. Not ‘she plays good for a white person or a girl,’ but ‘she plays good.'”

Carlos Santana

Carlos Santana and Guy have played live together multiple times over the years — below you’ll see them at the 2004 Montreux Festival performing T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday.” Note how intently Santana watches Guy’s guitar skills. Santana was also a guest on Guy’s Grammy-winning 2010 album Living Proof, on a song titled “Where the Blues Begins.”

Peter Green

As far as blues rock musicians go, Peter Green was one of the very best. He was a member of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers for a short time before he went on to found a little band called Fleetwood Mac — more on them later. Green left Fleetwood Mac in 1970 and he struggled for some time with his mental health, but he never quit making blues music. In the late ’90s, he formed the Peter Green Splinter Group, and in 2000 they released an album titled Hot Foot Powder. It featured several notable guests, including but not limited to Otis Rush, Joe Louis Walker, Dr. John and, of course, Guy, who played on “Cross Road Blues.”

Jerry Lee Lewis

In 2006, Jerry Lee Lewis made an album called Last Man Standing, for which he invited a host of fellow rock ‘n’ rollers to contribute to. That included Jimmy Page, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Rod Stewart and Don Henley, to name a few. Guy was also a part of it, playing on a song called “Hadacol Boogie.” There’s a live version below.

George Thorogood and the Destroyers

George Thorogood has also shared stages with Guy. Plus, Guy was a guest on a Destroyers album called 2120 South Michigan Ave. in 2011. That’s him on lead guitar on the cover of Tommy Tucker’s “Hi-Heel Sneakers.”

Fleetwood Mac

Many years before Guy contributed to Peter Green’s album, he played with Green’s band Fleetwood Mac back in 1969. A recording session was held then at Chicago’s Chess Records that, in addition to Fleetwood Mac, included various local blues musicians: Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Shakey Horton, J.T. Brown, Honeyboy Edwards, S.P. Leary and, finally, Guy. The resulting album was Fleetwood Mac in Chicago.