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.

Guitar Solo #5 "Keep On Rocking in the Free World" by Neil Young

Today's guitar solo comes from the gnarliest Canadian I can think of (admittedly that's not saying much), Neil Young. I think it's important that we study a live clip of this song, firstly because it's a much better version, and secondly because Neil's approach seems better suited to the live setting.

On this blog I want to divide my analysis of these solos into three basic categories:

1) tone - the technology related to the way the guitar sounds. This could be achieved through effects like reverb or wah-wah pedals, or the tone could be the result of the gear, say a Les Paul plugged straight into a Marshall stack. Or it could be the result of technique: playing with the edge of the pick, or a drill, or whatever.

2) note selection - the theoretical aspects of the music. What notes are being played, how are they being played (sweep picking, tremolo picking... etc etc), the relation of the notes or rhythmic elements in the solo to the rest of the composition.

3) passion - the indefinable and innately human emotion (or lack thereof) displayed by the player during the solo. They may be passionately happy, or passionately sad, or passionately angry, but whatever they're feeling, they are feeling it intensely and communicating some sense of that feeling sonically to the listener.

Guess which element this solo is swimming in? If you guessed passion, you win some sort of prize. Congrats, you're master of the obvious. The first solo which runs in the video above from 2:51-3:20 is like a stinging bee, filling your ears with delicious, angry venom. Listen to that. Usually Neil's solo sound, as distinct as the bedraggled and chaotic way he summons the fury from his array of old amps, is built around a fiery delivery. In a weird way, it's kinda like Neil, in his solos, is celebrating every guitar solo; it's the act itself, the rebellion of it, the exuberance of the moment, the connection to the music. It doesn't matter what notes he's playing - what matters is that he's playing 'em, and that he's feeling 'em, like way down deep inside his soul or something.

For the second solo (which begins in the video above at 4:28) Neil punishes his guitar tech and tuner by applying insane vibrato by way of his Bigsby whammy bar (check out the madness at 4:55!). I'd be willing to bet somebody's gonna need to re-tune that guitar before the next song. In the second solo you can hear Neil referencing the simple melody of the verses, while kicking its ass.

Listen to how simple the song is. A player could learn this song in 15 minutes, but it'd take lifetimes to get Neil's tone and passion. In fact, unless you're a total badass, don't try. You'll never be as much of a badass as Neil. This song works because of its simplicity, the brilliance of the arrangement (pay attention to how much they accomplish with the chord change they play right before each solo 2:43 and 4:20), and because the chaos and freedom in Neil's playing resonates perfectly with the song's message about the liberating power of rock and roll madness.

Guitar Solo #4 "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes

Today's guitar solo arrives to us from the muso quadrant of 80s video rock - yep, Yes. I'm still on the solos that I really like, but I must say I don't have a single Yes song on my ipod and my only exposure to "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was on MTV when I was a teen and currently on any number of oldies radio stations I blast on my drive to work.

I kinda like this song, and, truth be told, I like it more every time I hear it. Before dissecting the solo I just want to draw your attention the variety of guitar tones going on here. There's ridiculously distorted guitar playing the main riff, but, if you listen close, you can hear the clean, rhythm guitar somewhere between scraping and thumping out a counterpoint tension. Then the nice picked bass plays a riff around the chiming guitars. Cool.

The solo starts at 2:34. What you're hearing is primarily the result of a pitch-shifting effects pedal, (I just about shift my pitch every time I hear that guitar solo!). The pedal plays notes a fifth above and one a full octave below whatever note Trevor Rabin is fretting on his guitar. This kind of sonic tomfoolelry has long been the purview of prog-rock musos like Fripp and Belew. What I like about this tone is how it's both totally unnatural sounding, while at the same time it evokes the appropriate emotion sonically. It's lyrical, sounding like laughter in places, where in other places the discordant wailing conjures Hendrix with all his pulsating toney goop. This solo sounds uncannily human in places, while machine-like and alien in others. The effect of this dichotomy heightens the tension in the rest of the song.

Too often, in prog rock, the idea or concept, the structure beneath the music is given too much emphasis. One time I was in a band that practiced at the DePaul music school. One night we were setting up as a class was finishing. I heard the teacher tell a student, regarding music, "You have to consider how it looks like on paper." I knew then and there that a music education simply wasn't for me. I'm pretty devout in my opinion that you do not need to consider how it looks on paper.

You need to do what Rabin is doing here: consider how the sound works within the emotional context of the music. This song is groovy while in many ways its alienating and unnatural sounding. To be honest, I have no idea what the lyrics are about (does someone shoot an eagle?), but I get a specific vibe from the dynamics and the tones of the instruments, the phrasing of the lyrics. This solo fits that vibe perfectly.

Guitar Solo #3 "Prelude" by Miles Davis

Today's extended guitar solo is from Miles Davis' album Agharta - I can't reccomend this album enough, people. But what you hear in the solo posted above (begins around the 11:30 mark) is the importance of tone. My gawd! The tone! I'll stick my neck and just make the claim - this is the most evocative and passionate guitar tone I have ever heard. It's like Jimi Hendrix on acid!

So, first, how does he do it? Well the "he" in this case is Pete Cosey, and he does it with the help of a very expensive boutique guitar effects system called the EMS Synthi A. It's become clear to me after decades of deciphering this solo that Cosey is using at least two expression pedals. An example of an expression pedal is the wah-wah, (listen to the beginning of Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile" that's a wah-wah) which adjusts the guitar signal's tonal content, emphasizing treble frequencies when pushed toe down, and cutting the treble and boosting the bass with the heel pushed down. Moving the foot on the pedal makes for very expressive, vocal-like sounds (much of the variety in the sound of our voice is created by opening and closing our mouths as we speak). So Cosey has a wah pedal he's employing here, but he's also got something which seems to affect the phase of his guitar signal.

Listen to 14:37-14:40! OMFG! This is one of those rare instances where his tone is so locked in that it sounds good no matter what's he's doing. Here's the important part to take away from all this: Pete Cosey has this INSANE tone but he's not just masturbating with it, he's adding something musically to the entire collaboration. Too often, when guitarists get a bunch of effects, they just start making noises, oblivious to whether or not it adds to the music. Cosey's too clever to fall into that trap. He finds a way to make the form and content of his guitar solo feed off of each other. The tone inspires notes which inspire tones - until everyone paying any attention is covered with chicken skin!

Now, there are some drawbacks to Cosey's system: namely since you're manipulating two expression pedals at the same time, you need to be sitting down. In fact all the Miles Davis videos of performances from this era, feature Cosey sitting down. For years I listened to this solo. Blindly imagining the man and the gear that produced it. Now in the digital age of instant access to history through YouTube, I've come to realize how inaccurately I imagined all this. But it doesn't take away from this, my favorite guitar solo.

Guitar Solo #2 "Meet Ze Monsta" by PJ Harvey

The guitar solo (which runs from 2:33-2:53 above) in PJ Harvey's "Meet Ze Monsta" is a master class in minimalism.  In the rapid fire delivery of the single note we can hear, in their most basic form, the two elements that comprise the guitar solo: passion and note selection. In future posts we can examine how note selection can evoke different types of moods. But what's key to look at here, is how much can be accomplished with the passionate delivery of a single note, which makes the rest of the band: the bass, the vocals and drums, much more distinct. As Ezra Pound said, it's not the thing that's interesting, but the thing's relationship to other things - I'm paraphrasing.

If there's anything to learn from this guitar solo, it's the importance of arrangement. Listen to how the rest of the band sets up the dynamic shift into the solo: they pull back for a bit at 2:12, right after the whistle (is that a dj scratching a record at 2:23?), just bass and drums, and then - is that a keyboard? or an organ tone that comes in at 2:27? then - BOOM! - the whole band is back, in perfect unison, pummeling the shit out of this riff. And on top of it is this dentist drill of a guitar note, filling your cavities. Really it's the power of the two tones together: the organ and the guitar, but the juxtaposition is awesome, the rapid-fire staccato of the guitar over the single, sustained tone on the organ. All of which serves to emphasize the power of the rest of the band.

The best guitar solos make the song better. They are mistakenly thought of as personal vehicles to rock and roll glory, and in that regard the guitar solo is one of the most egotistical aspects of rock and roll (and that's saying something!). In this song we see the power of the guitar solo turned inward - or something - so it's not about exulting the guitar hero's orgiastic and masturbatory energies, at least it doesn't have to be. A good solo sometimes emphasizes the power of the entire collaboration. Sometimes, with a little restraint you can end up rocking even harder. Those are just two of the mysteries that haunt rock and roll.

Guitar Solo #1 - "Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol

So here's my new blog, where I'll be analyzing a guitar solo every day, or almost every day - telling you what makes a solo good, or bad, or prophetic, or just face-melting. Today we'll start with the guitar solo in Billy Idol's ode to sexual excess, "Rebel Yell" (runs in video from 2:31-2:54). This solo seems like a good place to start as it weds two disparate elements in guitar soloing: joining fretboard shredding with emotive noise techniques.

See, there are guitar soloists like Eddie Van Halen: virtuosic spazzes, who play very simple fretboard patterns incredibly fast. Generally their solos lack the harmonic content of a player like Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, whose solos are often memorable enough that they can be sung note for note.  These solos are burning with intensity, and dexterity, but the soul, the emotional content of the solo is sometimes absent, or, in some cases, emotionally stunted. On the other hand you have guys like Thurston Moore and Robert Fripp who create walls of sound with unorthodox playing techniques, and what makes these guys good is that even their most out, skronking solo, is still laden with emotion, passion.

In Steve Steven's solo from "Rebel Yell" we hear the spazzing fretboard wizardry, but, and this is what makes the solo kick ass for me, there are these intense emotional moments in the solo created by unorthodox playing techniques. At 2:41 and 2:53 we get some whammy bar action - I heard one of the guys in Night Ranger call it a "wang bar" which is a better name for it than I could ever come up with. Anyway these wang bar dives are not only musical (while still being spazzy); they're also passionate and communicative as musical elements. Idol wisely uses these dives as musical transitions dynamically from wall of sound to soloed drum fills.

"Rebel Yell" is a classic radio rock song, turning up on countless oldies stations. But, if you look closely, you can see the way the song reveals the conditions of late capitalism, in which the media-saturated populace becomes a kind of over-stimulated nymphet aroused to such a state of ecstasy and desire that she can only articulate her desire for "more, more, more" as she writhes seductively on the floor. She is desire personified, and, in America. in late capitalism, desire is sacred.