Guitar World’s 50 Greatest Guitar Solos
Guitar World has published a list of the 50 Greatest Guitar Solos. While we believe this may just be an attempt to incite mass interweb arguments in guitar forums everywhere, the list does contain some great quotes and excerpts from the guitar players themselves as they describe the genesis and inspiration for the solos. It’s a list only a magazine like Guitar World could bring – it looks like a lot of the interview excerpts are taken from the extensive back catalog of magazine published over the years.
Spoiler Alert! – We list the top 10 greatest guitar solos from the Guitar World list after the jump. Full Story…
The Top 10 of the Top 50 Greatest Guitar Solos:
| Song | Guitarist | Band | Skinny |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10. Crossroads | Eric Clapton | Cream | A fantastic solo that Mr. Clapton claims was all on the wrong beat. |
| 9. Crazy Train | Randy Rhoads | Ozzy Osbourne | The classically trained virtuoso would spend hours developing his solos before tracking 3 or 4 versions that were woven together. |
| 8. Hotel California | Don Felder, Joe Walsh | Eagles | Felder gets most of the credit on this epic 70's classic rock masterpiece. |
| 7. One | Kirk Hammett | Metallica | Under a recording deadline, Kirk nails 3 completely awesome solos in one song. |
| 6. November Rain | Slash | Guns N' Roses | This one seems to come out of nowhere for Slash, just a Gibson Les Paul into a Marshall 2555 Jubilee head. |
| 5. All Along The Watchtower | Jimi Hendrix | Jimi Hendrix | Hendrix. Need we say more? Oh yeah, he used a cigarette lighter for the slide guitar section of the solo... |
| 4. Comfortably Numb | David Gilmour | Pink Floyd | Gilmour can say more with 3 notes than most of can with 12 bars worth of notes. |
| 3. Freebird | Allen Collins, Gary Rossington | Lynyrd Skynyrd | An incredible classic rock guitar solo that requires 3 guitarists to pull off live |
| 2. Eruption | Eddie Van Halen | Van Halen | The song that kicked-off a million 1980's finger-tapping solos. |
| 1. Stairway to Heaven | Jimmy Page | Led Zeppelin | Page likes to record his solos alone in the studio. For the Stairway solo though, he winged it. Sometimes the best stuff is the sponteneous stuff. |
Tags: greatest guitar solos, guitar world
Crazy Train has to make the top 5 – that solo rocks. Ozzy is getting robbed!
It’s Don Felder not “Ben Felder” as in the article above for Hotel California. Jeez at least get the name right of the guy who played on one of the greatest solos. Where do you get your “facts”?
Thank God for people like you John. Not sure where the internet would be today without indignant factual corrections like yours
Btw – you should contact Guitar World as well – they have Ben Felder too…