Guitar Solo #6 "The End" by The Beatles

 Today's guitar solo comes the biggest rock band ever - The Beatles. And this solo just happens to arrive at the end of their very last record. These guys were so big that the band's interpersonal relationships were considered news by legitimate journalists, and the news around the time this was recorded was that the guys in the band no longer liked each other.

But they wanted to go out wailing, so they rock this little gem at the end of a album-side-long medley that explores the band's (well, McCartney's) sensitive side. After they launch into the simple A7, D7 chord change *(later sampled by The Beastie Boys in "Sounds of Science") the three amigos rekindle their love for one another, right there, on two-inch tape for everybody to hear (at about the :53 mark in the video above).

In this solo, The Beatles are "trading fours" - a jazz term for alternating solos. First Paul comes in with his lightly distorted Epiphone Casino (that's the kind of guitar he's playing), then, a couple bars later George's slightly cleaner sounding Les Paul comes in, then John's gnarly sounding Epiphone Casino. I'm willing to guess that someone has already analyzed the note selection in these solos, pointing out that Paul's are sentimental, George's are meditative, and John's are rebellious, but I'm not willing to find that dissertation in the annals of music academia.

Here's a video of all the solos:

Can you spot their personalities in their note selection?

Whatever, I care less about the individual notes these guys choose to play, and want to focus instead on how the players interact in this solo. Like I said earlier, these musicians had been through a lot together, and here we can hear them finding the joy and passion they shared together through music twelve years earlier. For better or worse, rock and roll, and our interest in it, includes the musician's personalities. We imagine it's possible to know them as people, for good or ill. So here we can imagine, in the heat and fire of a scorching guitar solo, the years of animosity and bad blood evaporating for a moment, and four guys remembering, finally, why they'd come together in the first place.

And here's the thing: the guitar solo (the concept of the guitar solo, not just the solo in this song) is itself a celebration of rock and roll and the abandon that it invites. The solo is an invitation to lose yourself, either as player or listener, to destroy your ego and simply exist in the music for a moment. The Beatles know that and you can kind of hear how they give themselves over to that celebration in this solo, but, and this is the amazing part, you can also hear how the solo, the celebration, has restorative, healing properties. Just like rock and roll itself.