Guitar bands who don't really do guitar solos, and the how and why of not doing guitar solos

Not many solos on System of a Down albums.

Wire?

R.E.M.?

seefeel

The Fall

Our band, solo-less prog rock. www.myspace.com/gentlemenshevik

Guitar bands without solos kind of make me : (

most indie to thread. This'd be more interesting if we did it the other way round ie. post 1977 punk/alt/indie bands who still jam long solos

ramones.

Will Haven

Killing Joke

Crackout

Union Kid

gang of four
mission of burma

Rammstein

Is it a post punk hangover? You don't have to be able to play to be in a band = if you can't play you can't do guitar solos . (Obviously that doesn't work either, but I don't think we're talking about 1-note-repeated-for-32-bars guitar solos here)

^^ this is some of my favourite solos

Faith No More post Jim Martin.

movement away from blues, whether that meant extending it where we ended up with prog... or shortening it where we got punk i guess. that may be v stupid/simplistic.

either way lead and rhythm guitar merged into one thing. funk/soul music showed how a guitar can by lyrical and percussive at the same time.

blur and radiohead always come to mind when i think of bands who don't and do do guitar solos well.

i'm really struggling to think of a band that do "jam" long guitar solos, cock rock style these days. even bands that ape those sounds tend have written parts.

Ugh, I hate jam solos. If a band's to have solos, they should keep em short and melodic.

Those who do (jam solos):
Malkmus heads more toward the Grateful Dead with ever record.
Last year's Marnie Stern album was like one long horrible widdly solo.

But I guess there's not much more can be done with a run of single notes on a single guitar in (usually) 4/4 time in a rock idiom. Part of the reason solos have been unfashionable for years is because we've pretty much heard it all before. That and the punk aesthetic stuff mentioned above.

Bump.

Theories, please. Is it Cobain's fault? Slash's?

We saw Noah & The Whale the other week and it was pretty good but I could tell the fat guitarist dude just wanted to whip out a frazzled shredding psyche solo in every song, and I thought he should, because it would have made every song better. (Bar maybe the last one, where they miraculously turned into the Bar Kays.)

Oasis are doing guitar solos even though the guitarist can't.

I never really understood the point of guitar solos. But maybe that's just because of the way that I play guitar myself.

A guitar solo just seems to be such a wanky, ego-ridden thing to do. It's like you have to stop and interrupt the song for one person to show off, which just seems silly.

I just prefer songs where all of the elements are in interplay with one another, kind of like clockwork. That one bit may occasionally take the...focus. But it's a question of precedence-shifting rather than soloing.

go see ween

When done well, they're fun, and exciting. I'd add that doing them well generally either means it needs to very much fit with and add value to a song, or else it needs to show off more than just the guitarist (second Love song mentioned in title features drummer and bassist also going nuts; Rocket Reducer by The MC5 is about two guitarists interplaying). Saw Idlewild the other week too, and at one point they played a wanky 5+ minute Neil Young-esque solo which was dull as fuck; the rhythm section stayed at a very tepid constant for the duration, and the notes played were NOT exciting or fun despite there being two guitarists taking part. I nearly walked out.

From an AV Club interview with Jeff Tweedy:

AVC: We had a debate on our website recently about whether guitar solos are lame. Judging by Sky Blue Sky, you seem to be very much pro-guitar-solo.

JT: I'm pro music. Guitar solos in general aren't one way or the other. There's good ones and there's bad ones. There are reasons for them that are legitimate, and reasons that aren't legitimate. I mean, it's just some fucking dude making sound with his fucking hands. [Laughs.] I don't really see how there could be a debate. And not just guitar solos, but all solos, dating back a long, long time. It's just a way for people to express themselves with an instrument. How could I argue with it?

I endorse this.

kshighway1 in "endorsing wilco" shockah

To be fair, Wilco has Nels Cline. He's a ringer when it comes to guitar solos. You can't compare, say, Idlewile to Nels Cline.

I never saw the point of someone writing songs and singing them. It just seems to be such a wanky, ego-ridden thing to do.

Usually the point of having prominent vocals in songs is to get some kind of lyric across.

If not, there's no reason that said vocals should be any more prominent in the mix, or have a "solo" bit. I really like all the elements of a song working together.

Unless you're conflating the idea of guitar playing leads and guitar playing solos.

I'm fine with guitars playing leads, and contributing melodic elements to the general mix. It's the whole "take a solo now" where the guitarist has a wank that offends me. Unless you're prepared to give every instrument in the band a "solo" then it's really quite unnecessary.

Communist!

BTW Kate, have you heard the Fuck Buttons album? I think you might like it.

Solos are justified in that they are kickass.

Sometimes they are kickass.

Johnny Marr never seemed to solo much in the Smiths.

Kickass has many faces. x-post

I don't follow your logic, Kate. Why demand that solos be portioned out equally or not at all? Do you think that everyone in a band should be given a verse of any song being played?

Yeah, to me, the best guitarists are the ones who can make their kickassness plainly (under)stated without having to resort to a solo every three minutes and 20 seconds.

I don't accept the idea that during a solo, the clockwork interrelationship of musical elements is sacrificed. A good solo, in my mind, doesn't interrupt the flow of the song, but rather extends it. Popular/folk music often consists of little more than a long "vocal solo" in which the singer and lyrics are presented as a musical centerpiece, with the rest of the music merely highlighting that element. Don't see how brief or occasional guitar solos are any more egregiously egocentric.

Best thing about guitar solos, in my mind, is that they free the rock format from a rather rigid riffs & lyrics delivery system, allowing it a more abstract and intuitive means of musical communication. Guitar solos grant rock a degree of non-linguistic fluidity in its "speech", and when they're done right, they can be incredibly affecting. See Eddie Hazel's epic "Maggot Brain" solo.

Plus, yeah, they're kickass.

or can be

Jesus Lizard being another solo-averse guitar band

No, I think that Maggot Brain involves an extended and protracted burst of lead-playing. It's certainly NOT a solo because the guitar playing is the entire melodic basis of the song.

My biggest problem with solo-ing is its intrusive nature. That it interrupts the flow of the song to have this little show-off moment.

There are exceptions to this - there are certainly songs where the whole song seems to be building up to a giant - SOMETHING - where a massive riffing solo provides a release or a peak to the experience.

But in most cases, they're not. They're just an intrusive interruption because someone couldn't be bothered to write a proper middle 8, and someone else wanted a place to show off.

Solo can be nothing but a solo (i.e., Maggot Brane). Solo = alone, so...

Solo you can't get under it

an "intrusive interruption" is a valid songwriting tool
so is a "little show-off moment"
these are things that are sometimes appropriate in making a song stronger, better, more interesting, etc.

And then there's High Rise...

Also, "music" =/= "songs", necessarily. And "couldn't be bothered to write a proper middle 8" sounds just like a Hongroism

xposts

those two videos=fuck yeah

My favorite three piece that manages to work in guitar solos really, really well. An obvious choice, but: Dinosaur Jr.

Which is also a great example of how the live three piece will fall to pieces during solo time. At last it was during the 90s.

Nabisco has a point about the shift from cooperative jamming-as-writing and curious/indulgent (stoned) listening in the 60s & 70s to auteurist writing/arranging and efficiency-minded listening in the punk/post-bunk era. Throw in the quasi-political objections Kate & Lostandfound mention, and that seems like as good a postmortem as yr gonna get. Plus it's arguable that the 70s just ran the well dry. By the time the early 80s rolled around, there just weren't many fresh-sounding approaches left -- in a pop context, anyway. The people who were leaning hard on solos in the 80s (bloat-rock outfits like Boston and Journey, hair metal bands, ZZ Top) often seemed to be applying an expected and predictable finishing touch, rather than "blowing minds" or whatever.

Lots of people totally OTM about how certain 3-piece approaches make guitar solos awful damn difficult to pull off -- especially true in punk-influenced music. If verse/chorus rhythm gtr playing is dense and fast, when it drops out, the resulting emptiness is jarring, especially if the solo isn't extremely loud, thick, and propulsive. Solos work better in music that's more spacious and dynamically flexible to begin with, one of the reasons that the Minutemen were able to integrate them than most of their punk peers.

One more word on that subject: once I finally got around to seeing Sleepy Labeef, famous for his seeming knowledge of every song ever written, I couldn't get past the fact that his (pickup?) rhythm section would look at each other in panic and start screwing up every time he took a solo.

I saw Keaggy in concert once in the 80's ( I had a friend whose parents were hardcore religious and it was at a church) and he was jaw-droppingly awesome. I couldnt believe it.

Lots of people totally OTM about how certain 3-piece approaches make guitar solos awful damn difficult to pull off

Alex Lifeson or Van Halen to thread - they seem to make it work fine, no doubt because they constantly toe the line between rhythm and lead (like D. Boon, too). Speaking of trios, not too many solos in Police songs, come to think of it.

I could listen to Richard Thompson solo all day - and he likely could solo all day, but thankfully doesn't. Generally I'm not a an of blues-based solos, but even some of them are tons of fun (SRV, for example). It's all a matter of taste and restraint, isn't it?

D. Boon is the king of the three piece band awesome guitar solo

Could not find the text "surf"

:o

Watt's "lead bass" approach helped a lot there.

xp

yeah they kind of all share the lead in that band--one reason they are such a righteous force

The only thing in common between the Minutemen and Rush?

There is some actual shared musical DNA between Minutemen and Rush if you listen past the way different sound palettes and vaaaaaast political diff.

While we were listening to a Rush compilation several years ago my wife said "Rush and the Minutemen are kind of similar." I immediately achieved enlightenment, just as surely as if she'd hit me with a frying pan.

nabisco: you've blown my theory that Johnny Marr was doing African Highlife as filtered through/by guitarist Arthur Kadmon of fellow Mancunians Ludus (a Morrissey fave).

As to the tabled question, I find orgies are more entertaining to watch than masturbation.

So yr favorite song is Blue Oyster Cult's '5 Guitars' then?

i always thought that johnny marr was just ripping off the monochrome set but that he lacked their chops so he had to make do with creating memorable riffs. which worked out well for the band. the edge is another one. not a great guitar player, but a great maker of riffs. and sounds.

it's telling that two of my very fave post-punk bands in the 80's, monochrome set and felt, were two bands with some of the trickiest and moast accomplished guitar sounds. and they also liked guitar solos.

Yeah, I didn't see that It Might Get Loud doc, but the trailer shows the Edge playing this really sweet-sounding reverby riff and then pressing off the effects pedal and it's the most idiotically simple two-chord pattern.

i always thought it was cool how a band like buzzcocks (one of my fave rock bands/guitar bands) could create these amazing guitar arrangements and not solo. i dig that. i've been listening to old love tractor albums this year and i love their instrumental approach. i'd never listened to their albums before! here i thought they were one of those twangy cowpoke bands and it turns out they were the american durutti column.

actually, the love tractor stuff, guitar-wise anyway, reminds me of the go-betweens. i don't know if go-betweens guitar sound is underrated or what or if everyone realizes how great it was, but, um, it was really great!

nabisco: you've blown my theory that Johnny Marr was doing African Highlife as filtered through/by guitarist Arthur Kadmon of fellow Mancunians Ludus (a Morrissey fave).

Marr more recently did sit in with Malians Amadou & Mariam so at some point some sort of African influence may have found its way in.

"Lots of people totally OTM about how certain 3-piece approaches make guitar solos awful damn difficult to pull off"

What about Silkworm though?

i know it really helped nirvana when theey added harpo marx to the group. kurt always looked really confused whenever he had to go from jangle to fuzzbuster before that.

i love how most van halen guitar solos are over just the bass.

yeah but a lot of Silkworm's solos leave you wishing there was somebody playing rhythm guitar imo - the trick to solo'ing in a three-piece band is playing your solo in such a way that it feels like a natural extension of what you were already doing before you got to the solo. vide Jimi Hendrix obv.

yeah -- the 33 1/3 about Electric Ladyland has some great explanations of how he'd manage to play solos without it sounding like the rhythm guitar totally dropped out

I disagree with this thread. It's like reading a 1989 issue of Guitar Player.

http://gonostalgia.com/images/gp_1989jul.JPG

don't you just melt when satch gives you "the look"?

http://www.ibanez87.it/foto/cataloghi/covers/scan/satriani-cover-2.jpg

i always thought it was cool how a band like buzzcocks (one of my fave rock bands/guitar bands) could create these amazing guitar arrangements and not solo.

Because they're not too far off from The Who. Everyone in the band is soloing and not-soloing at once.

the 33 1/3 about Electric Ladyland has some great explanations of how he'd manage to play solos without it sounding like the rhythm guitar totally dropped out

Although sometimes he does, and it's great. In Voodoo Child, when the solo comes in around 1:53, it's like when Wile E Coyote runs off a cliff.

P.S. I am staunchly pro-solos.

Also, I was thinking about the whole anti-solo thing, and I feel some of it comes from the privileging of concept over execution in art that has been gaining steam over the last hundred years, i.e. less respect for the idea of art-as-craft. In this context, a big flashy power ballad solo comes across as an aural Thomas Kincade painting, signed in big letters.

Also also, the demographics of the sort of people who make guitar music have totally changed since the 60's, especially in age and level of education. We've gone from Foghat to The Shins (feel free to insert your own pointlessly inflammatory examples here), and priorities have changed.

i agree with concept over execution, not so much with "changing demographics"

King Crimson needs at least a brief mention here. There are some solos, but a lot of songs without.

I do not want to live in the universe where Buzzcocks records don't have guitar solos.

no don't get me wrong they had great solos! they did everything great if you ask me. but i loved those amazing riff constructions they would build and how ambitious they were. the solo-less ones. like fiction romance and other stuff.

hell, all their songs were amazing riff constructions. but it was the repetitive wall of riff/guitar that made me fall in love with them. i could listen to them play one note for hours. cuzza their sound. (and the amazing drumming)

Yeah, it's true. They're probably my favorite punk-type band in terms of everybody doing cool shit at the same time without ever sounding wanky about it. And circa AMinnaDK the riffs are just fucking unstoppable -- I'd be happy with 20-minute instrumental versions of about half the songs on that album.

Well, okay, favorite 77-era UK punk-type band...

over time i've developed a distaste for guitar solos, most solos are derivative, unoriginal and unneeded.

greatest guitar solo of all time: Talking Heads - The Great Curve

prove me wrong

Yeah, I didn't see that It Might Get Loud doc, but the trailer shows the Edge playing this really sweet-sounding reverby riff and then pressing off the effects pedal and it's the most idiotically simple two-chord pattern.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u6Eeb0YrKY

solo in the beatles version of Long Tall Sally has me on the edge of my seat

i wonder if those who hate solos also hate jazz?

They are also into duo guitar. If you give one jazz guitar player a regular weekly restaurant gig, then pretty soon he will be doing duets with a varying roster of guest jazz guitar players, and soon after that you will have to elbow your way in past the other jazz guitar players at the bar waiting to sit in when the featured guest guitar player takes a break.

In that second paragraph, I'm mainly talking about this gig: http://www.jackwilkins.com/gigs/upcoming

umm, it's still a guitar solo even if they use chords. I mean are piano solos all single note lines?

Yeah, I know that. No they are not. It's a question of emphasis. That's part of the point. There are some people who think that the other guys in a rock band are monkeys just playing the same thing over and over every time whereas the lead guitarist is the true artist because he is improvising. Whereas in jazz, everyone is officially an improviser, and instead the guitar player is thinking "Anybody can play single note solos, even the bass player. The piano player can play ten notes at a time, all at his disposal in a logically arranged format, whereas I can play at most six at a time, all the while having to play fretboard twister to get from one night to the next, how the heck can I catchup to that damned pianist?" [Obviously I am overgeneralizing, creating strawmen, lots of exceptions, boilerplate blah blah blah.]

deerhoof. excellent guitar players, no solos that come to mind