The Art of the Guitar Solo

Voices From the ’80s

Photo by Saroyan Humphrey.

I’ve always been fascinated by how guitarists approach soloing. My twenty years on staff at Guitar Player brought monthly opportunities to ask renowned players to express their thoughts on how they approach soloing in the studio and onstage, how they expand their musicality and avoid clichés, how their best-known solos came to be, and so on.

Here, in chronological order, are some stand-out insights revealed during my interviews from the early to mid 1980s. If you’re interested in reading what other musicians said later in the decade, drop a note in the comments section below.

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Elliot Easton: In Praise of the Short Solo

I find that the people I really loved back when I was coming up took short solos, and the way I’m doing that now [in the Cars] is sort of that format. I like saying it really fast and then getting back into the song because I’m a song freak. I love guitar playing and I listen with interest to people, but now it’s more like songs will give me goosebumps. A 13- or 14-second guitar solo can make me cry if it’s so good, something that’s well planned-out, like what George Harrison did on “Something.” It doesn’t have to be long. Anything longer would just be variations on the exact same thing.

And before I even pick up a guitar, I’ll think. It’s a lot easier that way, actually. You listen to a song and you figure out as close as you can what would sound good and what would be a nice tone. Then you pick up the proper guitar and set the amp accordingly, instead of futzing around, going from clean to dirty, throwing on a Dean guitar or a Fender Tele or Lead II or something like that. Instead, just relax with it, sit down, and think about it a little bit. I find that works.—January 1980

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Pat Thrall: Soul & Heart

To me what makes a great solo is soul, heart. You can hear the desires of individuals by the way they play, by what they’re trying to do. And chops, technical ability, tone, or any of those come into it second. First, I listen just for the soul. It’s the feeling in it, and that’s something that I think is on an unspeakable level, to a degree. You can’t define soul, but you can feel it. There is soul in the most extreme Eddie Van Halen solos to the solo in [Seals & Croft’s] “Diamond Girl,” which is beautiful and so simple. That solo is exquisite; it turns me on as much as the most extreme things that Allan Holdsworth has done, and to me, Allan Holdsworth is the most innovative guitarist to come out in a rock context since Bill Connors. —January 1980

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Mick Taylor: Another Way to Slide

It’s good to forget about the regular bottleneck tunings sometimes and just put on a slide and see what you can do in regular tuning and switch from one to the other. As soon as you put the guitar in open tuning, it’s limiting—you’re limiting yourself. But if you can try and leave it in regular tuning and you put on a slide, you can discover all sorts of things and get away from the regular kind of bottleneck cliches. —February 1980

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Herb Ellis: Sing What You Play

One of the things that I recommend highly is to sing what you play. If you’re not doing that now, start doing it when you’re practicing. Sing verbally exactly what you’re playing, and if you’ve never done it, start out in a fairly simple fashion. You’ll find that singing improves your whole concept of improvisation. It gives form and meaning to it because you may think of something really silly to play on your instrument just because you can do it, but you’re not going to sing things that are silly. You’ve heard George Benson when they’ve cranked up the microphone on him. What he sings is part of what he does. I’ve been doing that for 20 years; I just never had enough sense to record it like that! If you just start simple, you’ll find it all takes shape. Before anything, I’d recommend singing what you play. —March 1980

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Eddie Van Halen: What Do I Look for in a Solo?

Feeling. I don’t care if it’s melodic or spontaneous. If it’s melodic and has no feeling, it’s fucked. —April 1980

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Leslie West: It’s All in the Wrist

There are four things I immediately try to teach about solo construction: the entrance, tone, building the solo, and how its going to end. Keith Moon, who was the drummer for the Who, used to say, “Remember, mate, they remember your entrance and your exit. Everything in the middle don’t mean a goddamn thing; just make sure your entrance is great and your exit is great.” While this isn’t completely true, it says a lot.

There really is a thought process to soloing. Whether it’s an overdub in the studio or something onstage, playing a solo is all the same thing. It’s something. It’s a statement. It’s a song within a song. It’s not just, “Time for a solo—oops, stick in any bunch of notes.” Even if it’s a hole you’re filling between words, it should be played with the thought that after you’re finished, something else is going to happen. Try to make it so the end of the solo will help the next section along.

The control of the vibrato is the most important thing. Forget about tone, taste, and what notes to play for the time being—the vibrato is still the most misunderstood part about playing rock guitar, especially among younger players. A lot of kids think it comes from their third finger; most if it comes from the wrist. I try to show them how to use all three fingers at once—index, middle, and third—to push the strings up, because that’s where the power and control are. The fingers behind the note aren’t going to affect the sound anyway. The vibrato in the left hand is like the tremolo in an opera singer’s voice. Singers don’t use vibrato with every note; they let it come in gradually. —August 1980

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Jeff Beck: “Ten-Minute Rubbish Solos”

I’ve got no particular desire to play ten-minute solos. Those were never valid anyway in my book—never. It was just a cheap way of building up tension in the audience. I remember in the days of Ten Years After and several other groups, the people were clapping in a sense of relief of tension when you’d finish the solo—not because it was amazing or anything. Maybe some nights there was a valid long solo. Once one group got away with it, a lot of groups started following by doing ten-minute rubbish solos, and started to make people clap. And that’s wrong because it’s misleading the people. They don’t know what’s going on, and they can only hear so much. A solo should do something. It shouldn’t just be there as a cosmetic. It should have some aim, take the tune somewhere. I’m not saying I can do it, but I try and take the tune somewhere. —October 1980

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Pete Sears: On Bass

The funny thing with a bass solo is if it’s too short, you’re not going to build the audience up. You’ve almost got to do a long one—go through different movements and a lot of light and shade. It’s either got to be a very short or a very long solo to get the crowd off. —October 1980

Jeff Baxter: What Should a Solo Do?

First, it must complement the vocal. You’ve got to take in consideration the singer and the part of the tune where his melody makes the strongest statement, and complement that. You don’t necessarily have to play the melody—there are alternative melodies—but as you go through the solo, keep in mind that you’re connecting a guy’s vocal performance. A guy is stopping to make room for a musical interjection, so that must be as painless and fluid as possible. It’s much like running a relay. As the vocalist comes up behind you, you get a running start and take it from him.

The next prerogative is taking the song a step further. It might not necessarily mean making it more exciting; it might be putting the breaks on an intense melodic situation. It could be opening up the song for the first time. It could be your job to create the feeling of a 64-piece orchestra when your guitar comes in with this note out of nowhere, goes down to the tonic, to the dominant note, and then begins a long vibrato—you know, God has spoken. And then the idea is to get out of it in such a way as to leave the listener with an up note and comfortable with the vocal again. That sometimes takes a little bit of a twist, depending on who the vocalist is. Now, if it’s an instrumental, sometimes they’ll say, “Here, have a good time—play.” A three-day weekend at Rancho Bebop—that’s what we call it when you get to play whatever you want. —December 1980

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Michael Schenker: Use Something New

After all these years, I just pick up the guitar and practice, and all of a sudden I’ll play a little line. I try to remember this line and repeat it. I often try to make this a bit longer by using it over all six strings instead of only playing it for like five seconds. I go all over the place. I keep practicing it every day until it sticks in my head. I ultimately use it in a lead break when I think it would fit.

Sometimes I look for nice melodies—just mess around and try to play a bit weird, but stay in kind of a melodic way. Then I connect it by trying it out faster and slower and seeing what works best. Then once in a while I use it in the middle of a lead break. And by doing this, I find other nice little lines, and that’s how you develop your own style. You use your taste to put the parts together. A good solo is catchy and doesn’t get boring. It has got the right length and build-up. And I try to use something new, like some original kind of vibrato.—January 1981

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James Honeyman-Scott: Great Pretender

I hate soloing, really. I like to do something that you’d end up whistling, something short. In [the Pretender’s] “Private Life” there’s a long solo, and I really don’t like doing that. I think long solos are a pain in the ass unless you can play them. I simply cannot do it, but I like watching Albert Lee and people like him play them. They can solo for a long time and not get boring. There’s a real long run in our song “Lovers of Today,” and that was influenced by George Harrison, if anybody. I probably pinched it off a Beatles albums. –April 1981

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Bob Mothersbaugh: The Devo Philosophy

It’s just say it and shut up—whatever. I get bored of long solos. —July 1981

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Ernie Isley: “Yeah, I’m Here!”

A solo should make the listener feel involved, and it should be an integral part. At its best, it’s like a taste or a color, like the way a painter uses shadow and light or blends red and yellow together to get a certain kind of effect. Sound-wise, I think that’s what you should do. Even the so-called classic records, like Chuck Berry’s original “Johnny B. Goode”—which in physical reality for guitarists is not that hard to play—there is the expression and emotion that says, “Yeah, I’m here!”

Even before we get to the solo, the song has to be a good vehicle. It’s got to be set up with that idea in mind. The whole attitude of a song like [the Isley Brothers’] “That Lady” is deliberately set up for a solo. “Say You Will” was sort of put together with the same thing in mind. If it’s a good idea to begin with, the lead guitar in top of it would only give it more of an identity.

In terms of how I would approach the solo, I try to think in terms of the melody and phrasing. I guess the speed takes care of itself if you have the right kind of phrasing. —Ernie Isley, September 1981

Craig Chaquico: The 10% Flash Factor

First of all, I try to get solos to be an emotional event, to create a climax. It’s kind of an ego thing, but I also try to flash guitar players out a little bit. But I don’t think that the whole solo can do that. Take the solo in [Jefferson Starship’s] “Jane.” The beginning was real emotional. I wanted to reach girls with it—real simple, repetitive, gut feeling. It wasn’t supposed to be technical, or, “Wow! How’s he doing that?” It was just a crunchy, grindy type of thing. Then about three-quarters of the way through the solo I went crazy and then went right back into the crunchy part. So about 10% of that solo is real flashy, just a lot of well-articulated notes. But it’s the emotional stuff that most people relate to.

I try to combine emotion, rhythm that everybody can relate to, and also throw some flash in there if it will fit. When I have a place to do something flashy, I don’t think about it. I just jump off and do it, rather than trying to be analytical.

I try to approach the melodic, emotional stuff from a singer’s point of view. First, I’ll hum or sing things to find out what fits melodically, and then learn them on the guitar instead of sitting down and looking at chord charts and using formulas. I just use my emotions and inspiration. —January 1982

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Barney Kessel: Charlie Christian Was the First

There have been very few people on any instrument since Charlie Christian that have had his sense of time, his spacing of notes. He was years ahead of most of his contemporaries in terms of the lines he was playing, which involved certain chord changes that were non-existent until then. If you listen to any of the blues he played, for example, you will hear in the line that he has spelled out harmonic changes that none of the others on the records are playing, not even in the background. And yet they’re refreshing, and they fit.

Charlie Christian was the first guitarist, to my way of thinking, who could sit down with a bunch or horn players and have a content in his music that was on as high a level as theirs—if not higher, in certain cases. Before Charlie, any time I’d hear someone play the guitar in the company of horn players like Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, or Tommy Dorsey, I’d feel like, “He’s the best of what’s around, but it isn’t as good as what the horn players are doing.” Charlie was the first one to play single lines like a horn, without being part of the tradition that preceded him. —March 1982

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Steve Morse: Give ’Em Something to Focus On

A solo should divert attention away from the repetition of the melodies. That is, it’s got to be a new section, but I like to use familiar underlying chord changes. In other words, it gives you something to focus on. In the Dregs, we keep a lot of our solos short for the same reason you keep your eyes moving on the road: It keeps you from falling asleep. In your mind’s eye, when you’re listening to a record, it’s good to keep it moving too. As a listener, I appreciate it when I don’t hear too much of one thing.

In the studio, my approach to soloing is just to play naturally and take takes. When you get one that sounds good, keep it. Go ahead and get another one that sounds good, and keep that. Sort of figure out what it is about it that sounds good—why does it feel good? If there’s a way to make it better by changing it a little bit more, do it. Otherwise, just keep one of the good ones. As most people will probably agree, your best solos generally come out of your first five to ten takes. A lot of times the very first ones will be some of the best.—August 1982.

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Andy Summers: “A Solo Should Be Like a Song”

Ideally, it should carry a person. It should have peaks and valleys and highs and lows, and it should have a real climax. It should be organic, and it should be like a song. In its most ideal form, it should really be like someone singing. When I make a statement like that, it sounds like it’s a really flowing kind of thing, which it doesn’t have to be. One chord held ten bars could be a solo statement. I’m certainly into doing that. That’s a lot of what I do with the Police. When we get into the free areas where we improvise, it’s like we’re all soloing totally all the time.

One song—“Shadows in the Rain”—is all chordal. At the end we have a long passage where Sting basically drones around an Am and Stewart plays various rhythms around him. I play everything I can think of, really. I’ll go anywhere. It’s all chordal, clouds of sound and feedback, and harmonies that are totally against what he’s doing. I find it really exciting. —September 1982

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Producer Max Norman: Randy Rhoads’s Blizzard of Ozz

Randy would rip one down, and there would be a couple of little mistakes there. So instead of going back and patching those, he would go back and do the whole thing again once he knew what he was doing. He was extraordinary. He would know exactly what he played. I was really blown away by a lot of the stuff that he did. He’d play something, and I’d say, “Well, you want to try again?,” not really meaning it, and he’d go, “Yeah, I’ll do again.” And he’d play the same thing, but a little bit better! He was a very astute player like that.

In fact, a lot of the outro solos were first take – you know, the things going out on long fades. As I remember, most of those were pretty much first takes. A lot of the other ones were quite well written beforehand. He would work on them for a long time to get them right. Some of his solos were perfected over a few days. He’d fire a few, listen to them, and then he’d say, “Oh, yeah, okay. I see what’s going on.” Then I’d make a tape loop for him, and he’d sit down and run the loop around maybe 20 times. He would forget about it for a day, and then come back and try another one. By the time we got close to recording the solos, he would play the whole thing straight through. —November 1982

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Brian May: Queen’s Way

It’s different in every case, of course. Mostly the guideline that I’ve worked under [in Queen] is that the best solos are something which you can sing as well as the melody line. The kinds of solos I enjoy are where there’s a line which reflects the melody line but subtlety changes it in some way which adds to the song. It opens up another little window in the song. It should also have some freedom; there should be some spontaneity there. It shouldn’t be planned out.

Generally in the studio, when we’ve played the backing track a lot of times—there’s a guide vocal there—I usually get something in my head. When it comes to solo time, I go in there and we do two or three takes straight off. Very often the first take has a lot of what goes on the record. There may be just a couple of notes we don’t like, and we’ll change them. That’s one of the advantages of the multi-track system. You can do a couple more solos alongside and button little things in and out. So very often I like the feel of the first thing I do, which is spontaneous, but there will be a couple of notes in there which I think didn’t work, and so I’ll change them. —January 1983

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Robby Krieger: Tell a Story

A good solo should start somewhere and end somewhere else, and hopefully tell a story. It’s hard for me to describe my approach [with the Doors] in musical terms, because each situation is different. You can’t just point to a formula: “Well, you should start out with slower, legato stuff, work up to the fast stuff, and then end up in medium tempo.” That would be silly. One situation might start off with something real fast and end up with one note that lasts for 20 bars. It’s not always best to play repetitious things in solos, but the only way to avoid that is by making sure you know enough licks to where you’re not going to be repeating yourself. —February 1983

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Lita Ford: “It’s Like a Good Set”

A Lita Ford solo should start from something that isn’t too fast or technically complicated and then build. Some guitar players start their solos from the most complicated thing they know: “We’ll start right here from ten.” You don’t start from ten; you start from five and work your way up. So by the time you reach the end of the solo, you’ve crescendoed. It’s like a good set: You don’t come on and do all your heavy metal songs immediately and then leave the ballads for last. —August 1983

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Brian Setzer: Struttin’ With the Stray Cats

I just do what pops in my head. I really can’t try to define it. If it’s a swinging thing, I usually try to base it around a scale. If it’s a bopping thing, I mix it all up. “Built for Speed” is more like a picking thing where chord blocks fit in better than single notes, whereas in “Double Talkin’ Baby” you’ve got room to stretch out and play a single-string solo. You try different things. Some of them fit, some of them don’t. —September 1983

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AC/DC’s Young Brothers

I look at it this way: That’s the easiest part, the solos. There’s no great thing to being a soloist. I think the hardest thing is to play together with a lot of people, and do it right. I mean when four guys hit the one note at the same time—very few people can do that. It’s mainly the songs that we worry about. I won’t sit there and spend 12 hours on a guitar solo. I couldn’t. That’s pointless. I like to go in and just go, bang away at it. —Angus Young, February 1984

Learning an instrument is like learning how to speak. It’s got to be natural. If you stop and think about playing, then the feeling goes. —Malcolm Young, February 1984

Alcatrazz-era Yngwie Malmsteen

My solos were totally improvised. Everything was first take [on Alcatrazz’s No Parole From Rock ’N’ Roll]. It’s really live. To psyche myself up, I just played along with the track, and by the time I came to the solo part, I was excited enough to put feeling into it. Feeling is the most important, at least for me, because I’m improvising all the time. The song has to have a good feeling, or I wouldn’t be able to pull off a good solo. And it doesn’t matter if it’s fast or slow—a solo has to be melodic. Even when it’s flashy, it should never lose the melodic touch. —March 1984

Steve Lukather: “The More I Think About It, The Worse I Play”

Usually I play my best stuff when I plug in and play right away, when it doesn’t become so labored that I start getting into my own cliches. When I get to the fifth take, I start repeating myself and getting hung up. That’s the advantage—and disadvantage, I suppose—of being in a band, because you can take the time to pick yourself completely apart.

Like on some of my solos on Toto records, you’ll hear basically a melodic play off the vocal melody. I’ll work a little bit out at the end, like a climb kind of thing to get out of it. It’s more like a part rather than a solo. But as for just going for it, I never think about it. The more I think about it, the worse I play.

I don’t go, “Well, I’ll use a pentatonic here to a Dorian there.” You start thinking like that, and everything is going to start sounding stiff and sterile, as far as I’m concerned. If I have any stylistic approach at all, I think I basically mix up little jazz influences into rock and heavy metal technique and sounds. I don’t consciously think about it. —April 1984

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Alex Lifeson: Edit Your Playing

I’ve gone through a period of editing my playing [in Rush]. My solos probably show that more than anything. I’ve gotten away from trying to play as fast as I can. To me, there is just no point to it anymore. I don’t enjoy doing it or listening to it. I can’t listen to a record like that. Eddie Van Halen, for instance. You can’t say enough about what a superb guitarist he is, but a whole Van Halen record of faster-than-lightning guitar playing is too much. I’m impressed, but it doesn’t have longevity to me, whereas the most soul-wrenching kind of note, harmonic, or melodic solo passage that really moves and feels—that lives forever.

Some of my solos go outside the normal blues-rock scales. That’s to be different, I suppose, more than anything else. I’ve always done solos spontaneously. “Okay, tomorrow is solo day,” so I go in, get set up, work on the sound, and do the solo—maybe spend two days on it. After a few hours, I sometimes lose direction, take a break, and then have one spark of an idea and build from there. We do a lot of composites—taking bits of solos and putting them together. Then I relearn it or if it slides in nicely from one section to another, we keep it. —August 1984

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Triumph’s Rik Emmet: You Have to Make a Statement

A solo should tell a story and move places. It should provide a color that has not previously been in the song, but it shouldn’t be far away from the tune. Solos depend upon that artistic moment more than anything else. When you solo on record, you’re trying to capture a wonderful moment in time. You try to put something together that you are going to be proud of years after the fact.

I didn’t have this point of view when I started out; I was just trying to get hot licks down. I used to play in a band called Zon with a very talented drummer named Denton Young. He used to say, “Look, I don’t care what you do when we get to the solo, but I want you to start with a really good note. I want you to grab my attention right off the top of the solo. You can do whatever you like after that.” That had a big effect on me. You have to make a statement, so you might as well start with something that really gets people’s attention.—January 1985

Note to readers: Complete transcriptions and/or the full-length original audio for many of the interviews quoted above are available elsewhere in my Talking Guitar Substack magazine and my “Talking Guitar” YouTube channel.

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