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I for one, welcome the death of the guitar solo. I say this as a guitarist of more than three decades, and as a lover of great guitar playing. Rock and roll gu

I for one, welcome the death of the guitar solo. I say this as a guitarist of more than three decades, and as a lover of great guitar playing. Rock and roll guitar solos are, by and large, the wankiest and most pointless waste of notes I can imagine. If we never get another, say Eruption, in exchange for no more awful weedly-deedly musical maelstroms I believe it is a more than fair trade. Even the good rock and roll guitar solos often aren't all that good compared to the song that surrounds them. (There are exceptions, and there are moments where the only thing that could have possibly worked was a wailing guitar...I'm thinking of something like the ending of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac...but that's not really a solo so much as a real and vital part of the song).

KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
If that moment in Sweet Child O' Mine when Slash kicks on the wah and runs up the fretboard doesn't give you chills... well...
- Applejinx 9y ago
  But that's a real PART. It's kind of like the Jay Graydon solo in Steely Dan's 'Peg'. Yes, you can have a bunch of exciting notes doing things, but it can't be just any bunch of notes: fast or slow, content matters.
  - KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
    Absolutely, content matters, and so does context. Take the solo in Living Colour's "Cult of Personality", a gibberish mess of seemingly random notes; he abuses that instrument like it owes him a lot of money! It works perfectly in the song however, so I suppose it's all a matter of taste. p.s. Aja is an absolute classic :)
    - SwellJoe 9y ago
      Here's the problem with talking about guitar solos, especially saying, "I hate guitar solos, in the general case": Everyone immediately thinks of their favorite guitar solo, and gets defensive. How am I supposed to argue against a Vernon Reid solo? Vernon Reid is a brilliant musician. I've loved his playing since I was a kid. He was one of my earliest musical heroes, and unlike a lot of musicians I liked when I was a kid, his playing (and the music of Living Colour) holds up extremely well to adulthood listening, even as someone that's got years of musical training since the first time I heard it and loved it. I might even enjoy some of their songs more today because I understand the depth of it. If we could have the geniuses without the wankers, I'd have a lot less disdain for guitar solos (though even the Vernon Reids of the world usually have a few pointless rambling solos on record out there). But, we don't. Every wanker who ever picked up a guitar has shared their gifts with anyone who'd listen...sometimes, the world has been unlucky enough for it to have been recorded and somehow become a hit, and now we all have to hear that goddamned Freebird solo every now and then, no matter how hard we might try to avoid it. Wankers outnumber geniuses by orders of magnitude. The sheer weight of guitar solo mediocrity in this world is staggering.
      - ThomPete 9y ago
        But thats true about almost anything that the people who know how to do something are miniscule compared to those who doesn't. Whether it's design, UX, business, entrepreneurship, football, tennis etc. Hardly an argument for anything. So you are really back to what you like not an actual argument against guitar solos.
        SwellJoe 9y ago
        Sure, I've never said this is objective. I hate bad guitar solos and most guitar solos are bad. So, I said I welcome the death of the guitar solo as a medium of transmission of shitty ideas into my brain by mediocre musicians. But, I disagree with your comparison to "design, UX, business, entrepreneurship, football, tennis, etc." Those are the thing. You can't have design without design. You can have design without the blink tag. You can't have UX without UX, but you can have UX without mystery meat navigation. You can't have business without business, but you can have business without telesales. You can't have entrepreneurship without entrepreneurship, but you can have entrepreneurship without "Why should a programmer get so much equity? It's my idea." You can't have football without football, but you can have football without that John 3:14 guy (who is in prison for multiple kidnapping charges, BTW). You can't have tennis without tennis, but you can have tennis without the tennis community's infuriating refusal to acknowledge Serena as the GOAT. You can't have etc without etc, but you can have etc without people who misspell it "ect". There are things that make UX bad; mystery meat navigation is one of them. There are things that make songs bad; guitar solos are often one of them. What I'm saying is that guitar solos are the unnecessary, usually unwanted, but too often present, part of an otherwise potentially good thing. They make songs worse in a lot of cases.
Zarath 9y ago
Totally agree, I find nearly no guitar solos that add anything to the song. A few exceptions I can think of are Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and Maudlin of the Well.
ekianjo 9y ago
Thats because most guitar solos are completely mediocre. Most of Brian May's solos in Queen songs are brilliant.
ThomPete 9y ago
There are many types of solos there are many types of music that uses it as an integral part and where it makes sense. Those might be types of music you don't like but that does not make solos pointless. So each to their own of course but a very weird comment.
flavio81 9y ago
Yes, but most solos by Brian May are hugely musical and compliment the music. Also, Jeff Beck's records are really interesting, good, entertaining, innovative solo guitar.
- mcv 9y ago
  That's what a good solo does. It shouldn't be a true solo, but part of the music. Maybe the name "solo" is wrong. A good solo doesn't stand on its own, but it's a break in the music that brings you to the next piece. Too many guitar players think the solo is their time to show off how quick their fingers are without being hampered by the rest of the song. It may be impressive guitar skills, but it's crappy music. That doesn't mean that all solos should die, just that they shouldn't be entirely solo.

KhanMahGretsch 9y ago

If that moment in Sweet Child O' Mine when Slash kicks on the wah and runs up the fretboard doesn't give you chills... well...

Applejinx 9y ago
But that's a real PART. It's kind of like the Jay Graydon solo in Steely Dan's 'Peg'. Yes, you can have a bunch of exciting notes doing things, but it can't be just any bunch of notes: fast or slow, content matters.
- KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
  Absolutely, content matters, and so does context. Take the solo in Living Colour's "Cult of Personality", a gibberish mess of seemingly random notes; he abuses that instrument like it owes him a lot of money! It works perfectly in the song however, so I suppose it's all a matter of taste. p.s. Aja is an absolute classic :)
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    Here's the problem with talking about guitar solos, especially saying, "I hate guitar solos, in the general case": Everyone immediately thinks of their favorite guitar solo, and gets defensive. How am I supposed to argue against a Vernon Reid solo? Vernon Reid is a brilliant musician. I've loved his playing since I was a kid. He was one of my earliest musical heroes, and unlike a lot of musicians I liked when I was a kid, his playing (and the music of Living Colour) holds up extremely well to adulthood listening, even as someone that's got years of musical training since the first time I heard it and loved it. I might even enjoy some of their songs more today because I understand the depth of it. If we could have the geniuses without the wankers, I'd have a lot less disdain for guitar solos (though even the Vernon Reids of the world usually have a few pointless rambling solos on record out there). But, we don't. Every wanker who ever picked up a guitar has shared their gifts with anyone who'd listen...sometimes, the world has been unlucky enough for it to have been recorded and somehow become a hit, and now we all have to hear that goddamned Freebird solo every now and then, no matter how hard we might try to avoid it. Wankers outnumber geniuses by orders of magnitude. The sheer weight of guitar solo mediocrity in this world is staggering.
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      But thats true about almost anything that the people who know how to do something are miniscule compared to those who doesn't. Whether it's design, UX, business, entrepreneurship, football, tennis etc. Hardly an argument for anything. So you are really back to what you like not an actual argument against guitar solos.
      - SwellJoe 9y ago
        Sure, I've never said this is objective. I hate bad guitar solos and most guitar solos are bad. So, I said I welcome the death of the guitar solo as a medium of transmission of shitty ideas into my brain by mediocre musicians. But, I disagree with your comparison to "design, UX, business, entrepreneurship, football, tennis, etc." Those are the thing. You can't have design without design. You can have design without the blink tag. You can't have UX without UX, but you can have UX without mystery meat navigation. You can't have business without business, but you can have business without telesales. You can't have entrepreneurship without entrepreneurship, but you can have entrepreneurship without "Why should a programmer get so much equity? It's my idea." You can't have football without football, but you can have football without that John 3:14 guy (who is in prison for multiple kidnapping charges, BTW). You can't have tennis without tennis, but you can have tennis without the tennis community's infuriating refusal to acknowledge Serena as the GOAT. You can't have etc without etc, but you can have etc without people who misspell it "ect". There are things that make UX bad; mystery meat navigation is one of them. There are things that make songs bad; guitar solos are often one of them. What I'm saying is that guitar solos are the unnecessary, usually unwanted, but too often present, part of an otherwise potentially good thing. They make songs worse in a lot of cases.

Zarath 9y ago

Totally agree, I find nearly no guitar solos that add anything to the song. A few exceptions I can think of are Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and Maudlin of the Well.

ekianjo 9y ago

Thats because most guitar solos are completely mediocre. Most of Brian May's solos in Queen songs are brilliant.

ThomPete 9y ago

There are many types of solos there are many types of music that uses it as an integral part and where it makes sense. Those might be types of music you don't like but that does not make solos pointless. So each to their own of course but a very weird comment.

flavio81 9y ago

Yes, but most solos by Brian May are hugely musical and compliment the music. Also, Jeff Beck's records are really interesting, good, entertaining, innovative solo guitar.

mcv 9y ago
That's what a good solo does. It shouldn't be a true solo, but part of the music. Maybe the name "solo" is wrong. A good solo doesn't stand on its own, but it's a break in the music that brings you to the next piece. Too many guitar players think the solo is their time to show off how quick their fingers are without being hampered by the rest of the song. It may be impressive guitar skills, but it's crappy music. That doesn't mean that all solos should die, just that they shouldn't be entirely solo.