Guitar World's list of 50 greatest guitar solos

SinisterMinisterX

SinisterMinisterX

Illuminatus
Staff member
http://www.guitarworld.com/50_greatest_solos

1. Stairway To Heaven
2. Eruption
3. Free Bird
4. Comfortably Numb
5. All Along The Watchtower
6. November Rain
7. One
8. Hotel California
9. Crazy Train
10. Crossroads

I'm not posting this so we can argue about how good or bad the list is ... we've done that plenty on this forum. But I thought the article was great even if you disagree with the list, because every entry has a bit of an interview with the soloist, telling how the solo was written and recorded.

A sample - Jimmy Page talking about the Stairway To Heaven solo:
The beautifully constructed guitar solo that Guitar World readers rated the “best ever” was, believe it or not, improvised. “I winged it,” says Page with a touch of pride. “I had prepared the overall structure of the guitar parts, but not the actual notes. When it came time to record the solo I warmed up and recorded three of them They were all quite different from each other. All three are still on the master tape, but the one we used was the best solo, I can tell you that.”
 
Wouldn't it be great to hear the 'master tape'?  I know that most of what we get is the polished, finished product, but I'd love to hear some of what it took to get there.
 
Wasted155 said:
Wouldn't it be great to hear the 'master tape'?  I know that most of what we get is the polished, finished product, but I'd love to hear some of what it took to get there.
Click to expand...

Watch some episodes of the "Classic Albums" series. In all but one I've seen, they pull out the original masters and do exactly that. The one with no master tape was the episode for Queen's A Night At The Opera. However, that particular master tape is famously fragile, so I can't blame them.

In fact, the story about that Queen master tape is in the article somewhere - I recall that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is on the list.
 
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