A guitar solo so good that it makes you.......

Metallica - One

Also, I dont need to air guitar that solo

Originally posted by yeahright
Alvin Lee of 10 Years After. Snag a version of "I'm Goin' Home" and you'll see what the current crop owes to him. Just incredible.

Good call, his Woodstock performance was awesome!

Besides much of the stuff listed here, I would add Steve Vai's Paganini #5 and Tender Surrender, Suicidal Tendencies' Institutionalized (Rocky George basically soloes throughout the whole song. Great player.) Basically anything SRV ever did, deadhorse - Cod Piece Face, Janis Joplin - Summertime (DAMN DAMN DAMN good song)...

And, of course, half of my own guitar playing does indeed make me air guitar it. So I'll list "Zipdot's Theme" here too.

Zip

When I was giving lessons, I made all my more advanced students study and analyze -- then play -- the outtro in the Eagles' "Hotel California". That album was the first one with Joe Walsh in the band, and he certainly showed his worth. There wasn't a note missing -- nor an extraneous one, for that matter. Every note in the right place.

And, as Benevolent Heretic has mentioned, just about every solo by Mark Knopfler is superb.

My own favorite guitar picker is Tony Rice. Some of his solos with Ricky Skaggs on mandolin are incredible.

Play with Me by Extreme

Such an amazing neo-classical solo! Proberbly Nuno's greatest.

Super Heros by Racer X

Just insane....... Crazy.....

Anything with a latin beat, such as Carlos Santana or the Gypsy Kings set my soul on fire and i do dance around the house like a fool.

The Rolling Stones make me wild!

"Good time Rock and Roll"- (thats when i put a big shirt on, socks, and let lose! LOL......

Of course i also mess up my hair for the effects.

Dr. Love would like it.

My all-time favorite - the guitar intro of "I'm A Believer" on the first(?) GIANT album. If not mistaken, played by Dann Huff.

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The solo in Nevermore's "The River Dragon Has Come" crushes ALL!

www.youtube.com...

Originally posted by toeragpunk
rage against the machine - wake up
slipknot - pulse of the maggots
slipknot - opium of the people
ozzy - suicide solution
dimmu borgir - metal heart
metalica - nothing else matters
dead kennedys - holiday in cambodia
mc5 - american ruse

oh god there are so many more i cant be bothered nameing...if i said ill my fav solos im afraid id be here forever and a day

Metal Heart is technically an Accept song. I haven't heard the Dimmu version so I don't know if they changed the solo or not. But credit for that should go to Wolf Hoffman & Co.

I don't think any thread about guitar should leave out .......

Django Reinhardt

almost beyond description.....

ill agree with the "play with me"


but JASON BECKER is the one true god... go to his website and download the little mp3 of him destroying Eddie Van halens "hot for teacher"

The Wicked End by Avenged Sevenfold, Have you heard the sweep picking on that solo? It's friggin' awesome!

Dwayne Allman on the Allman Brothers Band's,"Whipping Post"

Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin's,"Since I've been loving you"~Awsome!!

Jeff Lynne's guest solo on Tom Petty & the Heartbreaker's, "Running down a dream."

Moody Blues,(Paul Bliss) "Ride my seesaw."

Michael Schenker's work on UFO's,"Lights out"

Denny Dias' sitar-like solo on Steely Dan's,"Do it again."

Some tasty morsels there, boys and girls!


[edit on 12/1/2006 by Stormrider]

Hi There,

For guitar solos unique to one particular musician try these...phenomenal!

Shoot Out The Lights
Hard On Me
Can't Win

All by Richard Thompson. This fellow is jaw-dropping!

Ill add Dont fear the Reaper and Harvest Moon by Blue Oyster Cult... perhaps not the most technical, but very likeable

Okay, well, I'll be honest, I'm not reading through this entire thread before I post.
(yeah, I'm guilty of it, so what of it?)
But here's a few of my favorites:

"Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner" - Iron Maiden

"I'm Alive" - Helloween

"Angel of Death" - Slayer

"If I Could Be That" - GWAR

the last fifteen minutes of the movie "Crossroads" with the duel between Ralph Machio's character, and Steve Vai (that's such a cool scene!)

"Dead Skin Mask" - Slayer (actually, the whole double guitar thing throughout the whole song is just awesome!)

"The Claravoiant" - Iron Maiden

that's all I can think of for now

the guitar solo that 'speaks' to me?

the solo on the cult's album LOVE, called "hollow man".
the guitar just flat out sings! one of the good ones for sure.

Originally posted by wu kung
...the last fifteen minutes of the movie "Crossroads" with the duel between Ralph Machio's character, and Steve Vai (that's such a cool scene!)

One of my favorite movie scenes, for sure; many people do not know that the guitar player doing the playing for Machio was actually Joe Satriani.

Yeah, I was wrong about one of my picks:

"I Want Out" - Helloween

there, I feel better now.

Hey thanx Stormrider for the above, I actually didn't think too many people would know what I was talking about.
Yeah, that duel is awesome, you can watch it in it's entirety here:

video.google.com...


If I'm not mistaken, the karate kid wins by playing a version of a Beethoven piece.
so f'n cool!...


(and for the record, I always admired good guitarists. I never had the digital dexterity to play guitar. That's why I played the drums instead, hey, at least I was good at that...)



[edit on 12/3/2006 by wu kung]

[edit on 12/3/2006 by wu kung]

Thanks for posting the link to the guitar duel... it's been a long time since I've seen that movie and it's one of my favourites despite Ralph Macchio's unfortunate case of "slap me face". And I have to concede that he did a good job going from beginner grade to miming fairly well, all things considered.

No. It wasn't Joe Satriani. I'm glad that Wikipedia remembers it the way I do:

The infamous climax cutting head battle scene has been widely popularized over the internet by guitarists who are fans of Steve Vai. [1] Most of the battle is played by Vai, except for Eugene's blues parts at the beginning of the duel which are played by Ry Cooder and can be heard on Vai's album "The Elusive Light and Sound"

Steve Vai steps in to play the classical piece at the end, which I think was a Mozart piece, and is thus dueling against himself. He also reaches notes on Macchio's part that are too high for the limited fretboard of a Telecaster without some string-bending that would put Albert King to shame!

Ry Cooder was actually a bit annoyed about the end of the duel, because he took a purist view, which is that the kid wanted to be a blues player, and yet it's a classical piece that he learned by rote that saves the day. I kind of agree with this. It's also a bit unfair that Vai got to double-track his guitar parts (he's such an awesome player that he can do that in one or two passes for an entire solo), which beefs his sound up somewhat. However, it's all for good dramatic effect.

I'm pretty sure the classical piece concerned is a Mozart etude of some sort, but a few minutes' searching has proved inadequate to narrow it down, and I can't be bothered to go through all my back issues of Guitar Player to find it.

Anyway... what was the question? Oh, yeah...

My ultimate air guitar moment is not a solo, actually. It's the opening riff from Van Halen's Unchained... something about the drop-D tuning (and slightly below that, 'cos they always used to tune to between E and E flat in the Dave Lee days) and the sheer ballsiness of the rhythm.

I also adore Prince's rhythm/lead flourishes on Sign o' the Times. I don't like all of his guitar playing, but this is wicked. And his guitar work generally is just a monument to what can be done with guitar sounds that, out of context, you'd think of as just ugly... like the beginning of 3121, for just one example.

But favourite solos I have a-plenty. Actually, there's one tune that gets me playing air trumpet... since I learned to actually play the guitar, the urge to play air guitar has faded... but Medina by French band Nu Jazz has a wicked trumpet solo... the track is a kind of Arabic/jazz/electronica/funk fusion, and after the tune (which is, itself, a minor masterpiece) has played through, there's a breakdown and the trumpet carries the rhythm entirely on its own for about 16 bars of extremely funky playing. I have this on a compilation CD for when I'm driving and when this comes on, my hand comes up, thumb to my lips, and my fingers wiggle. I'm also dancing in my seat.

Tragic but fun.

Solos that I have to sing along to, though... loads...

Sorry to Lose You by Michel Cusson, from Michel Cusson and the Wild Unit. He's an excellent and inventive player, kind of like Scott Henderson but with a world-music side to him. Well worth checking out. His guitar tone on this is really cool, because there's a good rock tone with a bit of guitar synth mixed in, and the slinky way he gets into the first few bars is just beautiful.

The Sixteen Men of Tain by Allan Holdsworth. Eddie Van Halen's guitar hero. If you haven't heard of him, you should check him out. He wipes the floor with Frank Gambale on Truth in Shredding, too. And unlike your shredders and sweep pickers, Holdsworth plays really long, musical lines that actually go somewhere: he's not just running scales and arpeggios at warp speed. Without doubt one of the finest electric players on the planet. Many try to emulate, and no-one comes close. Just getting this guy's guitar tone is beyond anyone else: it's taken him decades of refining, and the tone on this tune is beyond description - a butter-smooth sustaining distortion, almost no reverb... and played with a fun, swinging feel that for me tops any of his incredible repertoire to date.

For Django with Jeff Beck, from a John McLaughlin record I can't remember the title of. Apparently McLaughlin (no slouch) used Beck's worst take on this because he was just too embarrassed. This guy started off with Page and Clapton, is far less well-known... and is way better than either of them. Every note has a separate vibrato, and he's one of the few guys that when I listen to him, I think, "now how the hell did he make that noise? I learned Eddie Van Halen's tricks years ago, but Beck is still a mystery. Some old dogs keep learning new tricks forever.

[edit on 3-12-2006 by rich23]

One of my favorite guitar solos that just takes me off the planet for a couple of seconds is in Faithfully by Journey. I know its not fast or anything, it's slow and powerful.

Comfortably Numb by Pink Flyod is a good one.



I always think If I could just learn that solo then I would know how to play but you never stop learning do you?