The Top 100 Rock Guitar Solos of All Time--100-90

100.) "Lotus Feet" (Steve Vai)



Putting a live video of Steve Vai on here--what a great way to begin my list.  Besides being a virtuoso technician on the guitar, Steve puts on one hell of a show for his audience.  He is a theatrical showman in the vein of Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix.

This is one of Vai's more recent songs.  He has followed in the footsteps of his mentor, Frank Zappa, and pursued more classical and orchestral music in recent years.  Here Vai couples his electric guitar onslaught with the sophisticated complement of an orchestra.  This enables him to reach ecstatic heights in what I believe is his greatest climax ever on one of his "seventh songs," topping even the sexual orgasm of "Tender Surrender."  Though the melody of the song is not as majestic ("For the Love of God") or pretty ("Windows to the Soul") as some of his other ballads, this one just about tops everyone else in terms of soulfulness and haunting power.


99.) "Head-Cuttin' Duel" (Steve Vai/Ry Cooder)



I had to include this one on the list, just because it's one of the greatest YouTube clips there is. I have never seen the movie it's from (Crossroads), so I need to get on that. Plus, it has two of my favorite people ever in it: Steve Vai (as the Devil's guitarist in this clip) and Ralph Macchio of Karate Kid fame, playing on the side of good. I'm assuming, based on the title, that the movie draws from the blues legend of guitarists selling their souls at the twilight crossroads between the earth and the underworld to the Devil to attain guitar prowess. The most influential blues guitarist of all time, Robert Johnson, was said to have done this because of his otherworldly chops. He actually has a song called "Crossroads," which Eric Clapton and Cream would famously cover.

Anyways, this is just a fun clip and solo. The slide guitar parts in this are played by Ry Cooder, while Steve Vai plays any of the rock parts and Macchio's classical solo at the end. Any sort of duel, whether it be yo-yo or pistol or guitar, is awesome.

98.) "Walk This Way" (Aerosmith)



Aerosmith absolutely struck pay-dirt with this song. Opening with one of the fattest riffs of all time composed by a white man, the song is popping throughout with great lead and rhythm guitar. The solos in this are vastly underrated. This song harks back to Chuck Berry for me, because of its exuberance in adolescent horniness and its representation of this exploding sexuality in rock music (and especially the phallic symbol of the electric guitar).

97.) "Layla" (Derek and the Dominos)



A stone-cold classic, this song rides high on the desperate singing of Eric Clapton, longing for George Harrison's then-wife Pattie Boyd, and one of rock's greatest riffs, but the song is really driven to the heavens by two things: Duane Allman's shrieking, pleading slide guitar and the beautiful piano coda used for full effect in GoodFellas (see Mike's post on great film soundtrack moments here).

96.) "Orion" (Metallica)



Metallica's finest instrumental contains some bad-ass riffing, a classic bass solo from the late, great Cliff Burton, and some fine soloing from Kirk Hammett. It's pretty tough to choose between Metallica songs from the '80s golden age, because Kirk puts great solos in so many of them. The big ones up top were easy to pick, but he had a lot of other great solos too. His slower solos are very under-appreciated, and are shown to great effect in this song and several I've placed higher up.

95.) "Sympathy for the Devil" (The Rolling Stones)



As great a guitar solo as this has, the song itself is far, far better than Richards's soloing. One of the very greatest of all rock songs with perfect lyrics depicting the darkness inherent in humanity and its tendency to deny and subvert it. Keith Richards didn't solo a lot from my understanding, leaving such things to first Brian Jones, then Mick Taylor, then Ron Wood. Richards brings a sloppy, Jimmy Page-esque vibe to his solo on here, and despite the grandeur of the rest of the song, from the lyrics to the piano, somehow it works. I suppose it fits in with the Caribbean party vibe of the pulsating piano and the "hoo hoo" background vocals. Just a truly superb song.

94.) "Junkie" (Steve Vai)



Steve Vai's work on his first album Flexable (1984) is very different from his later stuff. His next solo album, Passion and Warfare, wouldn't come out till 1990, after he spent some time in David Lee Roth's solo band and Whitesnake. His guitar playing on this album has such a raw, overdriven tone that can seem harsh, but I love it. His playing is also still very heavily influenced by his time with Frank Zappa, and is very abstract and odd, lacking the melody of his later career. He did so many strange things with the whammy bar to bring together seemingly disparate musical notes, but there's a sense of adventure and freedom here that is lacking in any of his other records. Though Flexable lacks the beautiful brilliance of his later records and guitar solos, there's still some great stuff on here. Steve Vai took a long time to grow on me, because most of his music (other than something like "For the Love of God") seems so weird at first, but with time you get used to him and his signature flourishes, and you grow to appreciate them and his vast musical talents.

93.) "Purple Haze" (The Jimi Hendrix Experience)



A greater riff than solo, Jimi Hendrix's classic still has scintillating lead guitar in it. Easily the most influential rock guitarist of all time (Eddie Van Halen I would say comes in at #2), Hendrix has never been one of my favorites, for whatever reason. He's got some great solos, no doubt, but perhaps something about his songwriting never hooked me as much as Jimmy Page's or whoever else. I think his rhythm guitar work is vastly underrated, however, and I would make the case that it's even greater than his lead work. There is a lot of crazy stuff going on in his rhythm playing that is incredibly unique to him. He did serve as an inspiration for generations of rock guitarists, however, and that should not be discounted, and his attitude and legend did a lot to define what rock and roll music is.

92.) "Spanish Fly" (Van Halen)



This is basically "Eruption #2"--this time on acoustic guitar! Following the success of his instrumental on the first Van Halen album (it actually might be the single most influential guitar solo of all time), Eddie released this diamond in the rough on Van Halen II. While its finger-tapping part is quite reminiscent of "Eruption," his patented guitar attack sounds very different on an acoustic. His use of harmonics, whether natural ones (as in here) or shrieking artificial ones dive-bombed by his ever-present whammy bar, is something that is not talked about very often with him (along with his impeccable rhythm playing), but it is one of his many facets that defined him as a player. And what the hell is with the groan at the beginning of this?

91.) "Dazed and Confused" (Led Zeppelin)



Jimmy Page has always been one of my favorite guitarists. What he lacks in formal technique he makes up for in pure attitude. He was perhaps the top player to make his guitar become an extension of his libido, embodying the sexual swagger and sometimes overt misogyny inherent in rock music. While Jimi Hendrix is often depicted as using his guitar as an extension of his penis, I think Jimmy Page is really the highest artist in this field. Hendrix uses his guitar as an extension of his abstract, psychedelic thought process that seemed to have no roots in anything so simple and straightforward as wanting to fuck. It was about love and connection and the beauty (and occasional darkness) of the universe to him. For Jimmy Page, it was about big riffs and fucking bitches. Sure, Zeppelin occasionally veered into mysticism, but nothing so overpowered like the hard, bluesy rock of their first two albums. This song is no fucking exception. Everything about this band in its early stages was sex, from Bonham's wild drumming to Plant's not-exactly-subtle lyrics drawn from the bluesmen of the past (see "Whole Lotta Love"). The only thing subtle really was John Paul Jones's bass work, which was the anchor of the band. The bassist seems to always get this role, don't they? There is already some mysticism on this track, with the violin-bow-on-guitar-strings work of Jimmy Page, but the moment they bring it back to rock mode at 3:30 you forget about anything else other than wanting to bang your head and have sex. That's what this band was all about. That is why, as Chuck Klosterman wrote, every single male goes through a Led Zeppelin stage at some point in their life. Anyone who doesn't is lacking something known as virility.

90.) "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (The Beatles)



I've already raved about this song enough on my Abbey Roads post, but the point of this entry is to highlight George's absolutely sexy solo in this song. He had never played anything so jazzy before, and I'm not sure where he pulled this baby out of, but it only adds to the clash between sex and death in this song. This song is very Freudian in its focus on these two elements, and I would have to agree that these are the two strongest influences pulling human life inevitably towards the abyss. As great as George's solo is, it is the doom of the infernal guitar arpeggios that win in this song, only to be cut off abruptly at the end like a candle winking out in the night or a human life vanishing forever. But then, after "I Want You," George's innocent, beautiful "Here Comes the Sun" follows on Abbey Road, most likely showing George's hopefulness in the immortality of the soul in comparison to Lennon's bleak nihilism of "I Want You."

--Edward