5 Great Guitar Solos to Know About

“Stairway to Heaven,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Comfortably Numb”: nearly every list of “best guitar solos” features the same songs you’ve heard 1000 times.

Below is our list of some woefully overlooked guitar solos, from some guitarists who don’t get their flowers nearly enough.

5. “Buckingham Green” by Ween: Dean Ween

The band Ween is predominantly known as a joke band, with some of their most popular songs being goofy tracks like “Ocean Man”, “Voodoo Lady”, and “Push The Little Daisies”. But fans of the New Hope heroes know that Dean Ween is secretly one of the best guitarists of the ’90s and early 2000s.

There are a lot of great solos in Ween’s discography, but the most impressive is the “Buckingham Green” solo. Almost all Ween songs are pastiches of different genres, and “Buckingham Green” is their take on the 70s prog. Dean’s solo proves that he deserves a seat among the greats.

4. “Baby’s On Fire” by Brian Eno: Robert Fripp

Before Eno invited ambient music, he released a string of off-kilter rock albums that helped define the art-rock genre. Known more for his unique lyricism, bizarre instrumental choices, and production tricks than virtuosity, Eno doesn’t include guitar solos in many of his songs. But on his debut album, Here Come the Warm Jets, there’s a big exception.

On the slick rocker “Baby’s On Fire,” King Crimson’s own Robert Fripp gets several minutes to go wild on the guitar. Fans of Crimson are used to hearing Fripp in a more structured, complex setting, and it’s a joy to hear what he can do over a simple rock backing track.

3. “The Kiss” by The Cure: Robert Smith

A key component of The Cure has always been great guitar work: the voice leading on the intro to “Just Like Heaven,” the incredible riff that opens “Boys Don’t Cry”, the jangly rhythms of “In Between Days.” Robert Smith has played enough great low-key guitar lines to make Johnny Marr blush.

But on the first track of their pop odyssey Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Smith shows a rarer side of his guitar work. The dramatic opener to the album, Smith does the last thing you’re expecting from him, he clicks on the whammy pedal and rocks. This solo goes on for minutes, starting with a roaring intro and melodic lines into an all-out shred, making it the “Freebird” for sensitive goths.

2. “Born Under Punches” by Talking Heads: Adrian Belew

Talking Heads is another great rock band that you don’t associate with guitar solos. It’s not that David Byrne isn’t a deft guitarist. Just look at those famous interlocking guitar parts on “Psycho Killer.”  But considering that the key to Talking Heads is a fusion of post-punk energy, New Wave melodies, and African dance rhythms, there’s hardly room for solos.

On their experimental dance album Remain in Light, the band found a place for it, though. David Byrne and Brian Eno (the album’s producers) made the brilliant decision to bring in Frank Zappa band alumnus Adrian Belew to lay abstract guitar solos down on some of the songs. The wildest solo is the one on “Born Under Punches,” which Belew performs by running metal objects over the strings and transforming the sounds with effects pedals.

1.  “Speakin’ Out” by Neil Young: Nils Lofgren

In 1975, Neil Yong released Tonight’s the Night, a bleak masterpiece. The dark-as-night album sees Young obsessed with the subject of drugs and addiction. In 1972 and 1973, Young lost his Crazy Horse guitarist, Danny Whitten, and roadie/personal friend Bruce Berry in 1972, to heroin overdoses, throwing his life into a period of turmoil. He’d written about heroin before on “The Needle and the Damage Done,” a song that was also about Whitten, but that was prior to Whitten and Berry’s passing. Tonight’s the Night sees Young explore the topic for the whole album.

On the second track, “Speakin’ Out,” Young sits down at the piano and hammers out a blues number about a small-time junkie that’s just as seedy as a Steely Dan song, but not nearly as fun. He lets the European blues master, Nils Lofgren, play the guitar, instructing him to play the way Whitten would have played. At 3:07, Young says, “All right, Nils,” and the solo takes off. Lofgren winds his way through the solo with jazzy deftness. He follows the traditional blues progressions as well as the more dreamy chords perfectly. At 3:16, he dispenses an impossible-sounding lick, combining natural harmonics, pinch harmonics, and hammer-ons and pull-offs over the major seventh chord to give you a take on the blues you’ve never heard before.

-Christian Flynn

Photo: Robert Fripp, 2024 (Raph_PH via Wikimedia Commons)