The Top 100 Rock Guitar Solos of All Time--29-20

And here is the long-awaited return of my patented "The Top 100 Rock Guitar Solos of All Time" series.  I'm sorry for the long delay, but things came up (see: my Road to Recovery series; also, I felt quite a bit of alienation towards the blog, which I think is best left alone).

Without further adieu, here are the next ten:

29.) "Burning Rain" (Steve Vai)



Another classic off of Vai's live album Alive in an Ultra World, this is I believe his song for Japan. This is a solo of buildup (my favorite kind?), and has the feeling of oriental murkiness and opium languor that I find especially sexy. The second half of the song is basically just one long voyage into the steamy streets of Bangcok or Calcutta or some other exotic place. At 3:50, Vai brings us back to the more familiar world of his shredding, but it's hard to shake the sense of unease from the exotic musical quality of what came before. The backdrop of sitar is a nice touch. There is something so sexy about the vacant-eyed quality of his playing on here--he seems eternally a fraction of a second behind the beat. Perhaps that is what some of us find sexy about heroin or Kristen Stewart.

28.) "Paradise City" (Guns N' Roses)



Ah, this wouldn't be a guitar solos list without Slash on it. I have a hard time picking between the three GNR songs on this list, because they all bring something completely different to the table. I don't think there had been a song that rocked as hard as "Paradise" in a good decade when Appetite for Destruction came out in '87. This song is all about the band meshing together, its parts forming a much greater whole when they managed to keep their self-destructive tendencies and egos in check. The weak link for GNR was always (of course) Axl to me, and this is just one of many examples of him shrieking over Slash's solo. The man can fucking play guitar--why is there a need to scream over his solos? Ugh. The end of this song is probably the greatest '80s hard rock moment there is. Please don't listen to this song on laptop speakers. Slash absolutely fucking goes for it.

27.) "Beat It" (Michael Jackson)



Eddie Van Halen turns in the greatest guest solo ever on this classic MJ track from Thriller (Dave Chapelle: "The man made Thriller...Thriller). Eddie again proves that he reigns supreme over his ragtag group of shred-army followers by delivering a solo just as catchy as Michael's song. Full of his signature movies--finger-tapping, artificial harmonics, and a buzz-saw tone--this solo has a concise sense of composition to it, like Vai's in "Ladies Nite in Buffalo" and Randy Rhoads's in "Flying High Again." Best part: the first note--a chainsaw starting up.

26.) "Satch Boogie" (Joe Satriani)
 


Like Joe's other signature tune, "Surfing with the Alien," "Satch Boogie" combines old-school rock 'n' roll with lightning-fast licks, throwing in an otherworldly, alien feel that befits an album called Surfing with the Alien.  Joe careens through the first half of the song, driven by his drummer's blistering tempo.  Amateurs would have trouble just trying to keep up with a tempo over 200BPM, but Joe allows his honed sense of craft to carry him throughout, delivering an almost impossible set of bluesy licks and runs (although these are only "bluesy" in the loosest sense, since they range from hand-crippling to just insane).  It's an interesting song, because the actual solo is so unlike the rest of it.  After hanging on through almost two minutes of Satch's deranged version of a boogie, we are dropped into the most otherworldly moment on an album that brims with them: a completely finger-tapped solo using an effect that makes it seem like you are inside of a glass cube at the bottom of the ocean.  Now that I think of it, that intense echo and distortion reminds me of what an IV cocaine bellringer sounds like.  I love how the solo exudes a completely different vibe than the rest of the song.  It is groovy where the rest is chaotic.  It lounges in its scalar haunts, unlike the rest of the song, which careens from melody to melody and scale to scale, only occasionally repeating its main theme.  The solo is jaw-dropping in its absurd sense of technique, but especially in its ability to create its own universe through tonal effects and the uniqueness of Joe's writing.  This idea that solos do not always have to mirror the mood of the rest of the song--that they can be their own separate entities, full of atmosphere and character--is something Joe began to explore in this song and continued throughout the rest of his career.

25.) "Kid Charlemagne" (Steely Dan)



Steely Dan was not known for being a guitar-driven rock band.  Instead, they were a sophisticated songwriting duo that were able to match their insightful, cutting lyrics with equally sophisticated songscapes, by cherry-picking the best talent from LA's studio musician community.  Here jazz-fusion guitarist Larry Carlton rises to the occasion on a song about about a famous LSD chemist who grew reclusive and paranoid as the hippie era ended, transforming into the bitter hangover that we now know as the 1970's.  Like many great guitar songs, this has two equally staggering solos.  The first is a clinic on phrasing, as Carlton knows instinctively just where to place each lick, and the end result is a hopelessly beautiful solo which I find impossible not to sing along with.

The second, fade-out solo is comes at just the right moment in the song.  It has such an optimistic tone to it that I can't help waiting the entire song just to hear it.  I believe this one was largely improvised.  The two solos in this stand as some of the brightest solos in rock history (up there with George Harrison's in "Nowhere Man").  It's interesting that both of these songs have rather depressing and cynical lyrics, yet have such sparkling solos.

24.) "Stairway to Heaven" (Led Zeppelin)



When a lot of us think of guitar solos, our minds immediately go to Jimmy Page's foundational work in "Stairway to Heaven."  His ending solo is like the icing on top of a cake: what would already be great is turned legendary by Page's divine sense of phrasing and composition.  Frankly, that is what sets the higher solos on this list apart from those behind them.  A truly great guitarist can paint a picture using his solos.  He can create a towering entity within itself, encapsulated inside the rest of the song.  While there are plenty of great one-dimensional solos out there, those that have incredibly fast or complex playing or a great-sounding tone, the truly great solos have a sense of their own self, independent from the rest of the song.  "Stairway" is such a majestic solo that it is often ranked as the number one greatest of all time.  It releases all of the energy which has been building up throughout the previous six minutes of the song in the astonishing cavalcade of Page's guitar.  What I think of when I hear this solo is the maturity of age and experience--when one has enough experience to know that less is more, and to be able to proceed gracefully through all of the trials and tribulations of each day of existence in this old world.

23.) "Sultans of Swing" (Dire Straits)

 

Mark Knopfler is an unsung guitar hero.  I've already paid him some tribute by putting "Brothers in Arms" on this list, but wow, why doesn't the guitarist of "Sultans of Swing" get more credit?  Famous for his finger-picking style and the groovy headbands which he seemed to never shed, "Sultans" will always go down as his masterpiece, both in terms of songwriting and for its spectacularly clean and precise guitar work.  Every single vocal line is followed by just the right guitar phrase.  I think what makes a great guitarist is not necessarily his technical ability, but his ability to craft memorable musical phrases.  It doesn't really matter how fast you can play if you can't make a hummable phrase to save your life.  "Sultans of Swing" is like a compendium of great blues licks.  And that's to speak nothing of the two solos (two-solo songs FTW!), which are dazzling displays of absolute clarity (I'm guessing this is because he doesn't use a pick on them) and purpose.  The two solos in this actually remind me somewhat of "Kid Charlemagne."  The first one is a model of elegant restraint, while on the second, improvised-sounding one, Knopfler lets loose and goes for it (well, at least "goes for it" as much as a perfectionist like him can...I can't imagine Knopfler ever letting go too much, for fear of making a mistake or creating a sloppy-sounding line).

22.) "Highway Star" (Deep Purple)



There's nothing to say that a great guitar solo has to reside in a particularly original or fabulous song.  Make no mistake, "Highway Star" is completely driven by the keyboard and guitar solos in it.  Otherwise, it's a pretty stupid song about cars.  Who are you--the Beach Boys?  Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore is able to top Jon Lord's fabulous keyboard/organ solo, astonishingly.  The solo opens with something that I can't really describe accurately--something which I've seen before in "Black Dog."  It's a particular kind of electrified guitar twang that sounds like a European version of honky-tonk music.  Blackmore tops even the legendary Jimmy Page (one of my top five guitarists) in this strange domain, and then firmly cements his dominance with an astonishing set of closing legato licks that provide counterpoint to the previous keyboard solo.  The licks sound to be double- or triple-tracked, which adds to the their crushing power.

21.) "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" (Jeff Beck) 

 

This is the guitar solo that I've heard come closest to Steve Vai's ballads.  It is an entire song composed of a slowly building, elegant, and utterly beautiful guitar solo.  Perhaps the finest feature of Jeff Beck (the third of the British Holy Trinity, alongside Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton) is his ability to manipulate the tone and sound of his guitar using just his hands.  He has such an amazing ability to control his instrument in a way that is almost unsurpassed.  He showcases this intimacy with his instrument in this song, written by Steve Wonder (here's the original--I like it even more; its delicacy is absolutely unparalleled in pop music history), which allows him to build from the saxophone-like moans from the darkness that open the song to a blistering, cathartic shriek against a lost lover (and, indeed, love itself) at the climax.  The song/solo isn't necessarily about these two extremes, but it's about the journey there.  This is the spiritual brethren of "Tender Surrender" by Steve Vai.  Although they are about two different phases of love, they both exemplify that life is about the journey we make unknowingly toward whatever irrelevant goals we make for ourselves.  After all, fate plays such a large part in our lives that it is at the very least questionable to say that we have much control over our own fate.  To quote John Lennon (and thanks, Bethany, for mentioning this), "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."  What I get out of "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" is an appreciation for the little details in both music and life.  The high, wavering note at the end is like angels crying.


20.) "Crazy Train" (Ozzy Osbourne)

 

My apologies for the live video, but YouTube seems to have cracked down hard on Ozzy videos (I hope to God I can find a studio one for "Mr. Crowley," or at least the Tribute version, which is just as good).  Also, what the fuck's up with the new YouTube format?  I don't like it, but I guess that's what we think every time a popular site changes it's format (I'm looking at you, Blogger.com...didn't you used to be fucking Blogspot or something?!).

What a pristine gem this solo is!  Not in this live version, mind you, where we miss the triple-tracked glean of Rhoads's studio version, but I can't think of a more exciting and dazzling solo delivered in as short a time as Randy's in "Crazy Train."  This song already has one of the all-time great guitar riffs, but that solo is what pushes it over the edge into a metal classic.  Fuck Ozzy.  His solo years were about his guitarists as far as I'm concerned.  Not that I hate him, but really, why is his name always on the CD when he probably isn't even writing any of the songs?  "Crazy Train"'s solo has the sense of concise structure that Rhoads was known for.  Every note is as it should be, and the solo begins and ends just precisely where it musically should.  He utilizes the studio technique of triple-tracking to make the tapping licks and trills sound even faster than they are.  This shows Randy's determination to nail just the right sound on each of his solos.  He had an eye for composition that ranks him up there with the best guitarists of all time.  Along with Yngwie Malmsteen and Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore, Randy Rhoads brought the classical tradition of symmetrical and mathematical composition into heavy metal.

PS: I found a link if you want to listen to Randy's guitar track in the original (sans everything else in the song): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nC0wepBfog&feature=fvsr.  Enjoy the solo!

--Edward