Buckethead

Brian Patrick Carroll (born May 13, 1969), known professionally as Buckethead, is an American guitarist.

Buckethead's extensive solo discography currently includes 31 studio albums. In 2011, Buckethead began releasing albums in the "Pike" series, mini-albums usually around 30 minutes in length, each with a sequential number similar to a comic book. As of July 2026, Buckethead has released 810 Pike albums, including almost 300 live recordings.

Buckethead has also released seven studio albums under the alias Death Cube K (an anagram of Buckethead). He has released collaborative albums with Brain, Travis Dickerson, Melissa Reese, Viggo Mortensen, Shin Terai, DJ Disk, Bootsy Collins, That 1 Guy and albums with the bands Praxis, Cornbugs, Science Faxtion, Guns N' Roses, Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains, and Deli Creeps, in addition to many other collaborations with bands and artists. Between 2000 and 2004, Buckethead was a lead guitarist of Guns N' Roses, recording on the long-delayed Chinese Democracy (2008) album. He also performed with the band on the first legs of the album's accompanying tour.

Buckethead performs wearing a KFC bucket on his head, sometimes emblazoned with an orange bumper sticker reading FUNERAL in block letters. This is accompanied by an expressionless plain white mask inspired by the 1988 slasher film Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. He also incorporates nunchaku and robot dancing into his stage performances. Buckethead stays in character in performances and interviews, and does not appear without some sort of mask.

Buckethead was credited by Guitar World as "ushering in new era of virtuosity" while ranking the release of his 1992 debut album Bucketheadland the 45th greatest moment in electric guitar history. The magazine has also listed him among the "25 all-time weirdest guitarists" and the "50 fastest guitarists of all time".

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.