The perfect guitar solo.

[fasteddie]

Is there such a thing? What is it? A solo that takes a mundane song and elevates it. A guitarist that you thought didn't have it in them, comes out with a blinder. A solo, perhaps, with many guitaring techniques showing off the capabilities of the player, but still able to be melodic and tuneful. Marillion's Jigsaw and Gary Moore's Rock n Roll are crackers for me, Tornado of Souls by Megadeth also is a great "building up" solo. Que dire vous?

[fasteddie]

26 minutes ago, cynic said:

Typical is right.  Comfortably Numb has become cliche it's so freaking perfect, but Gilmour offers many to choose from..  For me, he is the perfect soloist. 

Oooooooh not sure about that bro. Slow and melodic is all well and good, but if slow is your top speed I don't think you can ever be called the best.

[Biz Prof]

7 hours ago, fasteddie said:

Anyone fancy Freebird?

Certainly....Thousands of air guitarists sitting on the tailgates of their pickup trucks in Walmart parking lots.

[Biz Prof]

4 hours ago, fasteddie said:

Oooooooh not sure about that bro. Slow and melodic is all well and good, but if slow is your top speed I don't think you can ever be called the best.

OK, well, here's an example of speed, phrasing, and melody. 2:48.

Another one...forward to 2:10. 

 

 

[diablo175]

1 hour ago, Biz Prof said:

OK, well, here's an example of speed, phrasing, and melody.

In the same vein: @ 3:04

 

[Disturber]

Any solo by Neil Young.....  😄

 

The perfect pop guitar solo is the solo in Tears for Fears Everybody wants to rule the world. Solo played by Neil Martin Taylor. 
So is Robert Quines playing and soloing with Lloyd Cole: examples: Don't look back, No blue skies, What do you know about love etc

I don't know who plays the solos on Big stars No#1 record, Chris Bell or Alex Chilton, but a lot of pretty damn great solos on that album. 

Weird but great solos, always, by Televisions Tom Verlaine and Richard Loyd. I think they often lift the songs.

And, for us Hamer guys, let us not forget Steve Stevens. A lot of his solos on the first three Billy Idol albums are just on it, to build the song.

Hard rock solos: almost any Warren De Martini solo on Out of the Cellar and Invasion...

[tbonesullivan]

Pretty much any of EVH's solos from the early days, but especially anything on 1984. In many ways the entire songs are almost solos with his style of playing.

As others have said, BRIAN MAY.  His solos from songs like It's Late, Brighton Rock,  and many other songs defy classification. He played with finger tapping for a while, but mixed it with bending at the same time, in a way that my teacher and I have been trying to replicate, and keep failing.

Also, in terms of sound, phrasing, melody, etc, Billy Gibbons is my hero.

[polara]

On 5/4/2019 at 10:07 AM, cmatthes said:

Gorch - there are SO MANY Brian May solos that are flat out perfect.  Technically flawless, musically brilliant, and highly emotive.  His playing is the guitar version of Freddie’s voice.

Agreed, but to me the one in "It's Late" stands out. The bits where he's doing the bend uuuup, then taps a couple notes higher up and lets them drop off. Perfect.

[gorch]

34 minutes ago, polara said:

Agreed, but to me the one in "It's Late" stands out. The bits where he's doing the bend uuuup, then taps a couple notes higher up and lets them drop off. Perfect.

It's Late is a fantastic song throughout. Wonderfully crisp at the beginning.

Not to forget the trem as Brian keeps employing it as a fake bending here and there.

[Jakeboy]

On 5/6/2019 at 10:34 AM, fasteddie said:

Anyone fancy Freebird?

I do. The live version of One More From The Road. 14 minutes. Collins And Gaines rippin’ on the outtro.  On the studio version Allen Collins played the outtro solo in one take, boom.

For all the grief it gets now, that song was beloved in the 70s and the slash and flash solo was considered to be exceptional. As was Rossington’s slide work. I don’t get the hate for the song. 

[Jakeboy]

I will also suggest two wildly different yet awesome guitar solos...to me anyway...

1. EVH On So This Is Love?—-Singable melodic,restrained yet cool as hell. I love how he transitions back to the pre-chorus with those bends at the end.

2. Keith Richards On Honky Tonk Woman—-singable, meshes with the rhythm PERFECTLY, complements the horns, does exactly what it should do as it builds in intensity climbing up the neck in open G.

ok...one more

3. Clapton on Key to Love from the Bluesbreakers album with Mayall—-short, nasty, aggressive, flashy, and angry. You can hear the emotion in the bends. Besides it was one of the first solos  featuring a Les Paul into a Marshall. That’s almost enough right there for any song on that album to make the list. 

‘I cannot stop..

4. Jeff Beck’s intro solo on Truth’s Let Me Love You Baby—-goosebumps every single time. Flash, emotion, and technique. 

[Biz Prof]

4 hours ago, Jakeboy said:

I do. The live version of One More From The Road. 14 minutes. Collins And Gaines rippin’ on the outtro.  On the studio version Allen Collins played the outtro solo in one take, boom.

For all the grief it gets now, that song was beloved in the 70s and the slash and flash solo was considered to be exceptional. As was Rossington’s slide work. I don’t get the hate for the song. 

Agree with your choice of version. I don't hate that song, at all. I simply don't find that solo to be anywhere close to Allen's best work, even though a lot of non-players from my neck of the woods consider it virtuosic. It fits the end of the song, stylistically speaking, yet I hear too much repetition of phrases and not nearly enough dynamic range for such an epic finale. The definitive Skynyrd solo(s), IMHO, can be found on "That Smell." You can tell that the former was largely improvised, recorded in a single take and then doubled, while the latter was thought out and composed. 

[Jakeboy]

24 minutes ago, Biz Prof said:

Agree with your choice of version. I don't hate that song, at all. I simply don't find that solo to be anywhere close to Allen's best work, even though a lot of non-players from my neck of the woods consider it virtuosic. It fits the end of the song, stylistically speaking, yet I hear too much repetition of phrases and not nearly enough dynamic range for such an epic finale. The definitive Skynyrd solo(s), IMHO, can be found on "That Smell." You can tell that the former was largely improvised, recorded in a single take and then doubled, while the latter was thought out and composed. 

I concur with your assessment of That Smell. I also love the guitar interplay found in You Got That Right.  Steve Gaines made a HUGE difference in that band. One only wonders what the next album would have sounded like had the airplane not crashed...

[Biz Prof]

Had he (and RVZ) survived, I think Gaines' name would ended up on a lot of "Top #" and "# Greatest" lists and the band might have sustained itself as a viable entity rather than the pathetic tribute act it became. He was just that damn good and barely got a chance to show it before he died. Incredible musician by any measure. His recorded work speaks for itself (esp those mentioned, plus "I Know a Little") and his contributions to Skynyrd are what I prescribe to non-fans when they suggest that their anthology is little more than redneck blues rock.

ETA: Ed King was a monster player in his own right and his solos on "Sweet Home Alabama" are both technically strong and musical. 

[gorch]

What do you think? Satriani is one single solo. Although, he’s got some great lines in between.

[fasteddie]

A pretty crap band, oddly, produced in my opinion a bloody great guitar solo. Krokus, the song Head hunter, has a lovely fluid solo, slowly building up and seeming to go up in stages. The song isn't that well produced/engineered so the solo doesn't really cut through enough, but if you can hear it, it's worth hearing.

[Jakeboy]

I saw Krokus open for the Nuge in 1981 or 1982....they were just meh.....they didn’t fit. Ted was still in full on 70s mode and the Krokers were in full on hair metal mode...

[crunchee]

Now that I think about it, how about the full guitar solo from My Sharona?  Definitely NOT the single version which is way too short, it starts with a short intro at 2:38:

 

[gorch]

7 hours ago, Jakeboy said:

I saw Krokus open for the Nuge in 1981 or 1982....they were just meh.....they didn’t fit. Ted was still in full on 70s mode and the Krokers were in full on hair metal mode...

Krokus was one of my favorites at the time. They had been quite AC/DC with a better voice.

[fasteddie]

An interesting observation, no one on this thread has mentioned a classical guitar (or at least nylon strung) or acoustic guitar or even bass solo. Are we hard wired to think only in terms of rock sounds and types of distortion which equal sustain which equal purity of the rock sound we are after or is it that it the rock players that get all the attention, Van Halen vs John Williams, Slash vs Tommy Emanuel?

[Sugartune]

River's Cuomo's solo on Say it Ain't So is the perfect solo to me - simple but still cool and to the point. 

My favourites are a bunch of Elliot Easton's, but Just What I Needed was the first solo I really attempted. Love that one. 

Tons of Brian May stuff is killer. 

Billy Corgan's solo on Quiet from Siamese Dream left me slack-jawed the first time I heard it.

The solo(s) on Radiohead's Paranoid Android are mint too. So much love for Jonny Greenwood. 

 

[JohnnyB]

I like Eddie Van Halen on Michael Jackson's "Beat It."

It's got blinding speed and tapping, pinch harmonics, tone that howls like an air raid siren, and resolves quickly and hands the song back to the writer/artist.

And he rearranged the song to fit the solo he conceived and did it all at no charge and without credit. Back story here.

[crunchee]

This solo's even simpler than Cinnamon Girl...more notes, but the phrasing/timing isn't as tricky, starts at 0:56:

 

[gtrdaddy]

On 6/13/2019 at 2:49 AM, fasteddie said:

An interesting observation, no one on this thread has mentioned a classical guitar (or at least nylon strung) or acoustic guitar or even bass solo. Are we hard wired to think only in terms of rock sounds and types of distortion which equal sustain which equal purity of the rock sound we are after or is it that it the rock players that get all the attention, Van Halen vs John Williams, Slash vs Tommy Emanuel?

I did mention a number of non-rock players whose catalogs offer a wealth of choices 🙂  Five of the twelve I mentioned are jazz players and two of the twelve are blues and jazz-blues players.

On 5/15/2019 at 6:05 PM, gtrdaddy said:

Anything played by Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, The Reverend Gibbons, Barney Kessel, Chet Atkins, Kenny Burrell, Carl Verheyen, Jeff Beck, Eric Gales, SRV, Robben Ford and Greg Koch. There IS more of course LOL!

Classical, I can pick one that is my favorite of them all I think, Andrés Segovia, performing Bach's Prelude BWV 1007. Segovia is a MASTER of acoustic classical.

Bass Solo, John Entwistle on My Generation. Almost anything he played on could damn near be a bass solo on its own. Just listen to his bass runs throughout 5:15, Won't get fooled again or anything really. Those stand out for me.

 

[a.bandini]

I'll nominate Bill Nelson, in his 1977 version of Be Bop Deluxe's "Shine", from Live! in the Air Age.  Here's a you tube version of all 9:22 of it:  

 

If you like that, check out Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape, from the same album.   

[Greg G]

On 5/6/2019 at 3:04 PM, cynic said:

Typical is right.  Comfortably Numb has become cliche it's so freaking perfect, but Gilmour offers many to choose from..  For me, he is the perfect soloist. 

The solo from Time on Dark Side of the Moon is one of my all time favorites.  Perfect for the song and that Strat tone...  damn.