Posts Tagged ‘guitar’

Prince: While My Guitar Gently Weeps (3:31)
Notice how Prince looks like the only one on the stage showing signs of life (someone put some smelling salts under Tom Petty’s nose, please)? What I am particularly attracted to is the crispness of the tele through his Mesa Boogie amps. He gets the throatiness of the neck pickup but with lots of high end and attack. Plus, his musicality shines through in that his soloing is very easy to follow and listen to, even for someone who isn’t a guitar geek.

David Gilmour: Time (3:30)
Guitarists talk to each other about the power of slow phrasing, tenor melodies and patience, but few of them understand what that really means. Gilmour is a textbook of how to play an unhurried and patient solo that builds into a crescendo. Add to that his mastery of feedback and delay and it’s pretty much my idea of perfect soloing style. And yes, I do mean above all others on this list (with the possible exception of Knopfler).

Eddie Van Halen: Beat it (2:49)
I love Eddie and I hate him. I love him for the way that he kicked rock soloing up several notches in terms of speed and articulation (thus ushering in the entire 80’s guitar style, I feel) but if it wasn’t for him the parade of guys who just don’t get it wouldn’t have come marching into public view. Never the less, the way he could play so blisteringly fast without losing the song has always been attractive to me, and this seems like the solo that best displays his skill there. I’m particularly in love with the lazy, slurred pinch harmonics that he throws out like it’s nothing.

Mark Knopfler: Calling Elvis (2:17)
Even with all the accolades, Knopfler is a very, very underrated guitarist… probably because it’s hard to measure taste and subtlety (whereas flat-out speed is easy). Even when he’s playing a brief 16th note passage like this one, his phrasing is so dead-on it feels like running water. And, as always, his tone is so perfect it should be in a textbook somewhere.

Kirk Hammet: I Disappear (3:19)
Metallica is like the Beatles of heavy metal, but I’m particularly drawn to how Hammet lets a tiny taste of blues/soul into his guitar solo for once. The single-coil neck pickup really gives him a much more organic sound, too

John Frusciante: Show Me Your Soul (3:08)
It’s interesting to list a guitar solo from a guy who spent a lot of time trash-talking guitar heroes who play guitar solos. In fact, he said his solo for Funky Monks was a mockery of the late-80’s guitar wheedling that had become something of a parody of itself. Though this isn’t the Peppers’ most popular song, the guitar solo feels like rolling thunder and with only a few notes he really makes it explode.

Adrian Belew: Elephant Talk (3:28)
I would say that Belew was my first “adult” guitar influence (after years of Alex Lifeson in my teens). His courage in creating bold, dramatic and dial-up-to-eleven guitar ideas really came across as a way to shrug off traditional rock guitar concepts. This is a really good example of how he can do something so unusual and still have it hit the “OMG ROCK OUT” pleasure center in my brain.

Steve Vai: Sisters (2:12)
Vai made a name for himself as the spiritual successor to Van Halen in the late 90’s, but I always felt that his musical sensitivity went a lot deeper than the sort of frat boy party tunes that were VH’s trademark. This solo is interesting because he borrows so heavily from Wes Montgomery (and, to a lesser extent, Jimi Hendrix) in the parallel octave movement of the melody, and the whole thing feels like it’s a relaxed improv.

Marc Ford: Sometimes Salvation (3:01)
No matter what kind of rock you’re playing, blues is always the textbook for powerful and emotive phrasing. Again, my love affair with the neck pickup is pretty obvious in the sound of this solo, but I’m a bigger fan of his guts in going for the slippery, smooth phrasing and bendy notes. It sounds effortless, but that kind of intuitive playing comes from years and years of hard practice.

Brian May: We Will Rock You (1:19)
There are some guitarists which are like “everyman” guitarist, in that the average guy on the street will recognize the name. Brain May is like that and the seminal Queen hit “We Will Rock You” is pretty deeply engrained in our culture. Even so, the guitar solo is like a feast of perfect guitar tone and note selection. It’s like a joke to consider that the whole world purses its lips and makes goofy air-guitar pantomime when they hear this, but it’s for a reason; it really hits the “rock out” nerve center. I also really like how timeless the sound is.

Randy Rhodes: I Don’t Know (3:28)
I’m a bit reluctant to post another “shredder” on the list, but I think Rhodes’ courage in his phrasing and rhythm is just amazing. Even at breakneck speed, he’s not just feeding us triplets all the time, and I’m even more crazy about how he has no fear at all of slipping into a chromatic passage for effect. Someone once said that if Rhodes hadn’t died at such a young age, people would be saying “Eddie Van Who?”

Joe Walsh & Glen Frey: Hotel California (4:20)
There’s a lot to say about this solo (particularly Joe Walsh’s amazing tone), but I’m particularly in love with the way that they build up to the triplet harmony passage at the end. It’s this slow, powerful, intense buildup and release. I’m also very fond of the mid-70’s phaser tone and how it makes each note sound like it’s talking to you. It’s subtle, but little touches like that are what guitar processors are meant for.