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

It's really strange that I seem to be drawing so much flack for simply going along with the principle of this thread and its stated questions.

It's my taste to not like solos. It seems a bit odd to be questioning that taste so much in a thread about NOT HAVING SOLOS. Don't you think?

most of my favorite solos aren't about technical finesse or showing off, they're about changing the energy of the song or adding an exciting sound or shifting the song's mood

personally i'm not trying to give you flack. i'm just saying i think it's a little odd to dismiss an entire songwriting tool, seems equivalent to saying songs should never have key changes, but your tastes are your tastes

There are times and places where it's appropriate. But ... I know you're a musician, I know you've been in guitar shops - you know the whole culture and machismo associated with a certain kind of guitarist and the cult of soloing. I just find that whole thing so distasteful that it's affected my perception of all guitar solos, even the rare good ones.

That's a fair and honest response, Kate. And much less inflammatory than your initial comments in this thread.

I mean, you can't really complain about the fact that people respond to yr challops.

Oh my god, do I have to apologise now when every non-standard opinion is dismissed as a "challops"?

horn solos & drum solos > guitar solos > bass solos

No, you just have to get less snitty about yr challops.

i can't think of a bass solo i've liked

I tend to love solo-prone guitarists who are either very concise and strong in thematic commentary (D. Boon, G. Harrison) or spacious, actually improvisatory and explorative (T. Verlaine, R. Thompson). I love improvisational forms like the taqsim and the raga and love that there is occasionally rock music that brings that feeling.

Wanky shredding can also be thrilling and tons of fun in short burts of a few verses (Prince, whose soloing really evokes the word 'wanking' in a good way).

I've had an axe to grind with Louie Bellson for the last 15 years because of a 10-minute drum solo I once saw him play.

I like the bass solo in 'Mulu The Rain Forest' by Thomas Dolby.

speaking of bass soli, ORGONE ACCUMULATOR

Jon Lewis OTM

the 'how' of not doing guitar solos seems pretty straightforward tbh

Rhythm guitarists who take solos often produce my favorite ones (think of Lennon, Keef, Johnny Marr, David Byrne).

sometimes i miss solos on heavy records by bands with a hardcore background. neurosis, kylesa, etc. which is why it can be kinda satisfying to hear them on baroness and harvey milk albums. two bands who worship swans and neurosis, but who don't mind a well-placed solo. listening to so much punk and stuff like big black and swans kinda made me used to solo-less rock.

( i mean, there may be some solos on neurosis and kylesa albums, but not many, and i often think how much it would blow me away if their psychmetal included extended fuzz breaks. ya dig?)

Scott OTM, at least in that the tasty solos help make Baroness and Harvey Milk about 1000 times more appealing than Neurosis. Swans & Big Black did just fine without em.

"hey, dude, wanna make a record that's just one long friggin' guitar solo? it might piss off british kids so much that they invent a new kind of angry solo-less rock music after they hear it!"

"you know it, brah, word to sri."

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_L8uZchrDpbU/SPYWsnAH_dI/AAAAAAAAAu0/In4JYVTqmFc/s320/Santana,+Mclaughlin+-+Love+Devotion+Surrender001.jpg

I saw Godsmack open for Metallica back in 2004 and there was a whole portion of their set that consisted of the lead singer and drummer trading off interminable drum solos. Really, really unforgivable.

The back cover of that Carlos n John joint is almost as much fun as the front cover.

"look how big my boys have gotten!"

http://www.jazzsupreme.com/john.mclaughlin/img/chinmoy.jpg

I like guitar solos sometimes a lot and not in others but im ever so glad I didn't go to gigs in the 70s and 80s when a guitarist would have a solo then the bassist then the drummer. Way to spoil a show fuckwits! I bet it was impossible to get to the bogs or the bar during them too.

"Hey, Dad, can Carlos and I use the car tonight?"

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kTObUFWzaKA/SszMQ6rVG7I/AAAAAAAAFRQ/2djMfklJuBQ/s400/SantanaMcLaughlinLoveDevotionSur-2.jpg

Bassist from Tool once told me their idea of a solo is for 2/3 of the musicians to just stop playing while the other guy keeps going.

my idea of the perfect Tool solo would be if they all stopped playing.

Scott arent you gonna defend arena rock shows in the dark ages having guitar,bass & drum solos? ;)

I don't really get the turn this thread has taken. honestly, dudes, there are good guitar solos and bad guitar solos. Jeff Tweedy OTM!!!

'Hit Me With Your Best Shot' = AWESOME guitar solo of the 'thematic' variety.

I'm glad this thread has evolved into more of a discussion; I never intended it to be a list thread.

Saying that, though; name some current indie bands who still rock out a frazzled solo.

I don't watch indie too closely and have trouble naming any who do so post-Built To Spill.

New Espers record is filled with fuzzy lead guitar action, interestingly enough.

i didn't think soloing really needed defending. i'm a jazz fan. i like rock soloing of all kinds. just saying that i got used to post-punk no solo rules in a lot of rock that i like(d). i was listening to godflesh earlier today and damned if i could think of any good places to put guitar solos. music works all kinds of ways.

when i was a little kid the loooooong drum solos on 70's rock records used to tire me out. i remember live derek & the dominos album as one example. i grew to enjoy them over the years. even bad ones!

x-post

i mean, a lot of punk-era/post-punk-era/indie/whatever bands just CAN'T (or couldn't) credibly solo on an instrument. and if they did it was of the one note variety. which could be cool too.

Comets on Fire did some soloing iirc.

yo la tengo solos. they are not exactly post-built to spill tho

Live drum solos were of a stage-business utility weren't they? A break for the singer to refresh his throat and/or nose and the guitarist to fix whatever tech issue has been bothering him the whole set.

listening to this on cd over and over and over and over and over and over again the last month or two and so help me gob i don't care if any of the solos ever end and i kinda wish i lived in a majikal land where they went on forever in an infinite loop of beautyness

http://www.waykoolrecords.com/pics/Ohio/number1.jpg

i don't know what a "frazzled solo" is but there are lots of indie bands with solos

are high rise considered an indie band?

my guess is people are defining indie as "doesn't have solos" or some belle & sebastien bullshit, otherwise i don't really understand that assertion

what is indie rock again?

What makes a band indie?

im always freaked out by the size of john mclaughlin's badge/decal on the front of that alb w/santana

It's not legal for that decal to be removed; it shows his sell-by date.

Apollo Sunshine are my favorite current indie band that does great guitar solos (although less on their last album than on the earlier stuff)

Best thematic guitar solo is, of course, "The Marshall Plan" by Blue Oyster Cult.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQqfegOZ_X0

I must admit that's the one song on Cultosaurus I can't take.

nice "Little Johnny Jewel" reference there.

You know, I think the punk and post-punk eras reduced the number of solos not because of some philosophical anti-solo ethos, but because they wound the music up in this very regimented and composed way that just doesn't allow for quite as many of them; they stick out more. There was a whole 60s-and-forward period where guitar bands mostly had a sort of looseness about them, the looseness of musicians playing together in a sort of on-stage way (one that has stuff to do with jazz and blues and American roots music and the performance of them), and in that style -- just for instance -- you can get solos (guitar or otherwise) out of three-pieces. Punk ran things back toward more regimented rock'n'roll, and one effect now is rock bands don't often function with that looseness; that kind of looseness still reads as really retro and dated and 70s/60s. These days four-piece rock bands often have one guitar player who's so pinned down to playing chords that he can't even contribute to arrangements -- or bands who actually have to hire a third guitar player to tour with, someone to stand in back handling the chords so the main players can do lead work! Things get arranged much more vertically, in a really composed and multi-track way: not so much of the loose dynamics of an organized band in a room, but the single-songwriter type that uses building blocks -- here are the chords, this line is arpeggios, here are the lead breaks, etc. And you can do solos in that for sure, but they stick out a bit differently, or feels like boxy "breaks" in the song, because we don't really listen anymore in the same way as before. We don't listen as if we're listening to a performance on a theoretical stage, where if someone's playing it's just cool to hear them step up and play something neat, and we've got all night to hear something else later, because we're just filling time -- now we listen with this knowledge that everything's composed and we like it to be composed densely and packed with meaning, so no loose rambling of the sort that supports solos.

^^ that's a thought/theory, anyway

sorry, forgot to unpack one thing -- you used to be able to get a solo out of a three-piece, but in modern guitar-band styles you really don't see that much, do you? haha okay there is someone posting to this very thread who does it well, but still -- I feel like a lot of bands/players would feel like someone needed to be playing a rhythm part underneath it, because that's the way it usually is on records. solos overdubbed. there's a bunch of stuff about guitar playing and multi-track recording that figures in here, especially the way guitar players have taken up more and more space and responsibility; you don't hear nearly as much guitar music these days where the rhythm section can propel the song on its own and leave one guitar to just do top-level lead and mood and atmospheric stuff. probably because more and more songs are written entirely by guitar players.

NB re: Built to Spill, a lot of the time he doesn't solo as much as he arranges with lead sounds, so there are long breaks that maybe have four separate lines acting almost like a string quartet -- and re: Johnny Marr, I think I remember hearing him say, someplace, that on the last album he decided that since he'd never done a solo with the Smiths, he wanted to try, but he figured it should be a really melodic solo, the kind you could sing: hence the solo on "Paint a Vulgar Picture, which really is very singable. (he also says he learned to play the way he did by trying to suggest the entire arrangements of Motown songs on one guitar -- hence all that arpeggiated stuff that suggests the chords and lead melodies and harmonies at the same time, though he had to drag a second guitarist around on tour too catch it all too!)

I love nabisco.

i kind of like guitar as a kind of counter tune to the main vocal line, little jagged bits at the ends of the lines. if you do that - and a lot of postpunk bands and beyond (like marr) did - a guitar solo could sound like an anticlimax. But some guitar solos are obviously lovely.

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 thought you were a psych fan kate! but I guess dronerock is a different ballgame when it comes to guitar solos. anyway guitar solos are just like any other solo to me. music by its very nature is wanky. there's a difference in form and intent between "Cliffs of Dover" style guitar solos and "Mother Sky" style guitar solos - are Can less wanky than Eric Johnson? I doubt it. Maybe they're a bit more humble/intellectual in their wankiness.

nabisco is pretty OTM as is to be expected

My favourite garage/psych solos are the two-note ones!

I don't know, that's all pretty poorly thought-out, but the more I consider it, I do think the idea of a solo is really intimate connected to (especially) dancing and performance -- not just as a way of extending a song so it can be danced to, but giving it an ebb and flow (that feeling where the text of it vanishes and then returns in bursts, etc.), and also allowing for a nice variety of sounds to come from the same band/combo/whatever (like in jazz: you don't just want to listen to a sax for an hour, your focus gets shifted to piano, bass, drums, trumpet, etc.) All of which are concerns we just don't much have anymore with recorded rock music. We like it really, really condensed to just the functional stuff: do really dense, composed stuff and then move on. We have other stuff to listen to, we're not in the room marveling at your playing, we don't want stuff to last longer, etc.

also, you know, songs used to be 8 to 32 bars long. what next? you can't have a thirty second song, so everyone takes a solo on the form.

kate, don't tell me you hate "beat it"

i wonder if those who hate solos also hate jazz?

you used to be able to get a solo out of a three-piece, but in modern guitar-band styles you really don't see that much, do you? haha okay there is someone posting to this very thread who does it well, but still -- I feel like a lot of bands/players would feel like someone needed to be playing a rhythm part underneath it, because that's the way it usually is on records.

haw. for me, this fear was alleviated by silkworm. i remember when i first heard them i thought it was really weird that andy cohen would just bust into a solo out of the rhythm part with no overdubs, eventually i loved it - it's like the ultimate f.u. "i can play an awesome solo without being all nitpicky and doing a ton of takes to get it totally perfect" attitude

how many people know scott walker's "climate of hunter" lp? for an aesthetic approach that in many respects would seem hostile to soloing, there are all kinds of elaborate solos on there, some by ray russell if i'm not mistaken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w36iYgU2zus

guitar solos are awesome and i miss them in modern music

n/a - I think Galaxie 500 were kinda remarkable about that, too -- Wareham could slip from playing chords to playing leads/solos and the switch wouldn't even seem noticeable. It probably has more to do with the rhythm section than the guitar player: like say Wareham could do it because Damon would start splashing cymbals and Naomi would start running up chords. (Also something about dynamics involved: if your drummer and bass player are ALWAYS playing at 100% full bore, they can't ramp up to fill in around your solo)

You know, I think the punk and post-punk eras reduced the number of solos not because of some philosophical anti-solo ethos, but because they wound the music up in this very regimented and composed way that just doesn't allow for quite as many of them; they stick out more.

This would have been completely, unassailably OTM, nabisco, if you'd added the word "necessarily" between "not" and "because"! Accompanying the punk DIY ethos and extending into and alongside a lot of post-punk music in the '80s was a definite sense of guitar solos being "dodgy". It was almost a political stance, more aligned with Kate's opinions - that solos are wanky and macho and retrograde and boring.

Personally, I'm with Jeff Tweedy and most posters here -- solos can sometimes be good, sometimes bad; it's all about context.

Wow. This is the first thread I've been inclined to read somewhat carefully in a dog's age. Full marks to all involved.

there should be a companion youtube thread with examples of good solos.

it is no lie one of my goals in life to learn how to solo. I am nowhere near there, have only learned how to play scales over the last four years or so but one day I will bust out an awesome Chuck Schuldiner solo.

^ i'm in the same boat, been playing guitar for about 15 years and still just mostly halfass my way through solos with some preplanned stuff and cool noises

dudes just mash up your face and think of hot chicks and GO FOR IT

^ this will be the post to finally convince kate she likes guitar solos btw

one of my favorite solo machines is phil keaggy. shaggy, self-indulgent, and completely anti-punk, but i can listen to him all day long. i just dig the sounds of a guitar so much. you know? i like exploration on an instrument. and lots of people explore in very different ways. and, duh, are after different sounds. anyway, he's a good example of the 70's guitar solo dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJgdNCYt_tA

man, i still can't get over his crochet tank top sweater worn over a shortsleeved dress shirt in the '72 video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeizNK4JWNU

okay, carry on. it's a hypnotic look in a strange way. the t.v. audience looks mesmerized.

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