Great Guitarists Who Rarely Solo

How long will the list go?

1. Pete Townshend
2. Johnny Marr
3. David Byrne

4. James Hetfield

5. Dylan

5. Kevin Shields

7. Paul Simon

8. Peter Buck

re: Marr
http://foreverill.com/interviews/post87/antihero.htm

9. Keith Richards

10. Link Wray

re: Marr
http://foreverill.com/interviews/post87/antihero.htm
― bendy

I used to have that issue of Guitar Player. Classic! I must have read that article about 1,000 times.

11. Louis Reed

Bo Diddley

He's probably not anyone's definition of great, but I'd also say John Lennon.

Freddie "Mr. Rhythm" Green is supposed to have recorded ONE solo in decades of playing with Count Basie.

Great article. I love how he always cites the most unexpected influences

Neil Young
Ron Asheton

Neil Young

wait, WAHT?!

Yeah, Neil Young is more a great guitarist who tech-musos often dismiss. But he does a lot of solos for sure.

The Edge, Duh!

That Marr article is fantastic. How in the world could he have been 23 years old when the Smiths broke up.

I'm going to throw Robert Fripp's name out there with the idea that Frippertronics and Soundscapes are a whole nother thing. In Crimson, he's never soloed a huge amount.

Geir, the Edge is not a "great" guitarist who rarely solos, he is a terrible guitarist who thankfully wouldn't solo

Neil Young
Ron Asheton
― outdoor_miner, Saturday, 18 April 2009 16:42 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Both great guitarists, but both entirely wrong here. Neil Young's electric work consists of nothing but soloing. And Asheton had a guitar solo slot in every Stooges song.

Whilst perhaps not a "great guitarist", I like Blixa Bargeld's work in the Bad Seeds, for example Your Funeral My Trial.

the Edge [...] is a terrible guitarist

RONG, RONG, RONG

Bill Harkleroad

Malcolm Young

keith levene

Paul McCartney

Robert White
Earl Chinna Smith
Bingy Bunny Lamont

Joey Santiago
Matt Bellamy
Stuart Braithwaite (arf!)

the Edge [...] is a terrible guitarist

Yeah, that's just some baiting bullshit right there.

Matt Bellamy

What?!!!??!

pls point me to where the edge is "good"--happy to change my mind

pls point me to where the edge is "good"--happy to change my mind

― iago g., Saturday, April 18, 2009 6:36 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

[sound of crickets]

Geordie K. Walker of --- WAIT FOR IT -- Killing Joke.

hahahahaha the neil young doesn't solo thing might literally be the most wrong thing ever said about music, trust me i listened to ragged glory last night

har, yeah -- do we need to define what "soloing" is here? also, lou reed is a stretch -- for some periods of his career (mainly the 70s) he might've stopped soloing, but from about 1980 on he solos plenty.

i'd agree with paul mccartney, though -- dude is responsible for the "Taxman" solo, one of the best solos ever, but he still sticks mainly to bass. He's an amazing bass player too of course.

Eddie Cochran

Muddy Waters? I guess you could list a lot of those old blues guys.

Pre-B.B: King maybe.

Yeah, I guess they are pre-B.B. King, though I'm not sure when he started exactly. Guys like Blind Lemon Jefferson or Mississippi John Hurt or Charley Patton.

pls point me to where the edge is "good"--happy to change my mind

― iago g., Saturday, April 18, 2009 6:36 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

[sound of crickets]

― iago g., Saturday, April 18, 2009 3:10 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Um, pretty much every song from the beginning of The Unforgettable Fire through the end of Achtung Baby, and then scattered all over the other records. I hear the "Edge is shit" argument from a lot of corners, especially in guitar shops. The argument: "What he's doing is so fucking easy." Well, so is painting squares, but Piet Mondrian's squares are VERY identifiable.

In the case of Edge, there's no denying that technically, he is a very limited guitar player indeed. But at the same time, he has developed a way of playing that is quite unique, or at least was at the time.

Edge solos all the time, what're you all on?

Seriously, I am shocked nobody has mentioned this guy, who may be the most obvious example, or at least completely up there with Keef and Townshend as far as great riff guitarists go:

http://mara.mysteria.cz/galery/angus_malcolm_young_09%5B1%5D.jpg

assume you're talking about the guy behind angus, who has indeed already been repped in this thread

Malcolm. His name is Malcolm.

Edge solos all the time, what're you all on?

More so recently than in the past. I don't consider most of his early-thru-mid career instrumental breaks as actual solos. Just variations on the rhythm parts in the rest of the song (with some exceptions).

So the answer is, yes, The Edge does instead suck, although it has nothing to do with ability--it is the aural holocaust of his echo-laden 1-4-5 progressions (leaving the third out for that added "spirituality and depth") that makes him and their music so execrable

robbie robertson

(at least on the band studio albs)

haha, i was actually thinking about robbie robertson in regard to this question, but there's a lot of stuff he's been involved with that i haven't (yet) heard.

Robbie Robertson OTM! He always claimed he didn't solo much in the Band because he soloed so much on tour with Dylan.

Oh please. You may not like U2, but the Edge doesn't suck. He doesn't ejaculate all over his fretboard like Yngwie Malmsteen or Clapton, but you can't take away the fact that he has a distinctive style (however unduly cribbed from Andy Gill and Keith Levene, but whatever).

Bill Bailey's Edge routine says it all. Bailey plays an anthemic, epic sounding riff. Then he turns the delay pedal off and it's revealed to be Mary Had A Little Lamb.

Ha.

Gypie Mayo
Wilko Johnson

steve cropper?

(might be wrong on this cuz i haven't heard but a slice of the man's recorded output)

Carrie Brownstein

Bill Bailey's Edge routine says it all. Bailey plays an anthemic, epic sounding riff. Then he turns the delay pedal off and it's revealed to be Mary Had A Little Lamb.

Checked in to say Steve Cropper but looks like M@tt got there already.

Bill Bailey's Edge routine says it all. Bailey plays an anthemic, epic sounding riff. Then he turns the delay pedal off and it's revealed to be Mary Had A Little Lamb.

― Stew, Sunday, April 19, 2009 5:48 AM

Says nothing, really. Influences and collaborators aside, dude effectively invented a new way to make music with the electric guitar.

Bill Bailey's Edge routine says it all. Bailey plays an anthemic, epic sounding riff. Then he turns the delay pedal off and it's revealed to be Mary Had A Little Lamb.

http://www.youtube.com/v/8EDuK46ZqFM&hl=en

― chap, Sunday, April 19, 2009 10:39 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dont get why this is such a burn on the edge--basically what theyre saying here is "the way the edge plays guitar even mary had a little lamb sounds awesome"

Ah, it's Jingle Bells in that clip. Same difference. I hear what you're saying, but BB does say "without these effects they're nothing!" Which is possibly a bit of a luddite position.
Edge isn't a terrible guitarist or anything, but he is quite derivative, and like many a non-U2 fan, I can never understand why people think of him as some kinda guitar hero.

PJ Harvey tends not to take any solos, but her rhythm work is properly gutsy.

Carrie Brownstein a good call. She does take a sort of solo in You're No Rock N Roll Fun, but it's very brief and it really just expands on her lead part.

Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donolly have an almost telepathic quality to their playing in Throwing Muses. Plenty of inspired angular riffs, country licks and weird chordings, but very few solos if I recall.

Ricky Wilson - B-52s. Great riffs and rhythm work.

Jimmy Page is "quite derivative" too.

Also derivative: Keef, Slash, Billy F Gibbons... pretty much everyone except Chuck Berry and Adrian Belew, really...

Matt Bellamy

What?!!!??!

Do feel free to present a list of Muse songs with solos in them (as opposed to bridges). Yeah, "Plug In Baby", but that's an intro.

Edge is terrible

I'm out

Alan Sparhawk.

wow so much edge dicklicking on this thread

he's a better guitarist than me, fwiw

sparhawk is a good call

I sold my guitarist his first effect pedal, a Behringer delay. He can imitate the Edge pretty well now. I don't think he's ever soloed.

Says nothing, really. Influences and collaborators aside, dude effectively invented a new way to make music with the electric guitar.

Except he ripped it all off Echo and the Bunnymen anyway.

relative timelines make that seem dubious

plus jesus h christ as above it's fucking rock'n'roll nothing is sui generis

but yeah timeline of history sez you're supposed to say he ripped it all from comsat angels... shit, you can hear it in flock of seagulls but dude gets the credit because he made it his and they didn't]

like the man said, good poets borrow; great poets steal

Did anyone say "Sterling Morrison" yet?

(A solo in "Rock and Roll" and that's about it, isntit?)

I pretty much hate U2 aside from Achtung Baby, but boy does The Edge make some fucking awesome guitar noises on that album.

Gypie Mayo
Wilko Johnson

Whaat? Wilko solos on at least half the Dr. Feelgood songs that he's on! From memory on Down By The Jetty (one of my absolute favourite albums) there are solos in: She Does It Right/The More I Give/One Weekend/Oyeh/Bony MaronieAll Through The City/Cheque Book and possibly Twenty Yards Behind.

As for the Edge, I can't be very arsed either way - he does sound pretty impressive in short buerts with the delay-heavy stuff, but for me it gets pretty boring. I think he sounds much better on on more riffy stuff like Vertigo and even Get On Your Boots!

Can I add Ed Kuepper to the list? There are not many solos on the Saints/Laughing Clowns or Solos work, but he always sounds great.

It's Dr C !!!

I love the Edge and all talk about him being derivative is irrelevant BS; nobody he's supposed to have copied ever made a record a hundredth as good as his

I can't think of more examples that haven't been mentioned

but Stevie Jackson didn't solo much in early B&S, he could be an example. other 1960s soul guitarists also.

did you talk about Blondie already?

Nick Drake

just thought, could Dr C be an answer to the question?

short buerts = short bursts!

I don't think there's much mileage in the 'did The Edge rip off his sound from anyone' question. Maybe Dave Gilmour and John Martyn's tape-echo sounds in the 70's were a positive influence? But I think the key point is that when the first inexpensive digital delays came out in the late 70's various guitarists started using them at roughly the same time - The Edge, Stuart Adamson, Steve Fellows (Comsats), Robert Smith, Clive Timperley (The Passions)....

just thought, could Dr C be an answer to the question?

Nah. I do lots of solos (badly!)

re: The Edge

After 30 years of playing guitar for a living, he's almost surely capable of reproducing a Hendrix solo or a Django run. U2 seem to be very self-aware of their chemistry, and that their attempts to branch out into rootsier forms on Rattle and Hum didn't suit them very well. I bet he knows that we know that he's bald, too.

"Whaat? Wilko solos on at least half the Dr. Feelgood songs that he's on! From memory on Down By The Jetty (one of my absolute favourite albums) there are solos in: She Does It Right/The More I Give/One Weekend/Oyeh/Bony MaronieAll Through The City/Cheque Book and possibly Twenty Yards Behind."
Dr.C, Friday, April 24, 2009 8:38 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

pwned!!! You're right, after I posted that I pulled out those old Feelgood LPs and Wilko let's it rip a lot more than I remembered. His rhythm work is so good though, that I tend to remember it more than the solos. And talk about influences, Gang of Four stole a lot from them. Feelgood don't get nearly enough love on this board.

Joni Mitchell

Britt Daniel.

ian williams.

Black Francis

pwned!!! You're right, after I posted that I pulled out those old Feelgood LPs and Wilko let's it rip a lot more than I remembered. His rhythm work is so good though, that I tend to remember it more than the solos. And talk about influences, Gang of Four stole a lot from them. Feelgood don't get nearly enough love on this board.

Agreed, Feelgood were fantastic. I think a lot of postpunk guitarists picked up on his choppy style, not just Andy Gill.

This is v.interesting:
I don't know how he gets that tone using his fingers - unless you crank up the treble to unbearable levels I just find that it sounds muffled. Some of his stuff is pretty difficult to get *exactly* right with a pick, but I've found that you can get close.

Wilko/Tom Verlaine/Richard Lloyd/Pete Townshend would have to be my favourite guitarists.

i just want to say that wilko rules. listened to down by the jetty the other week there

Early Bob Weir was definitely some amazing stuff, till he decided that he was a crooner instead.

Wilko's sound owes a lot to his Telecaster, which is great for that sort of thin but aggressive style.

I think you need a Fender Twin amp or Hiwatt or similar too if you're going to use your fingers instead of a pick. Agreed about the Tele.

Britt Daniel.

― Sickamous Mouthall (Scik Mouthy), Friday, April 24, 2009

love the solo on "my mathematical mind"

Me too, but it's not really what I think of as a "solo"; it's more of a break. Kind of random and totally unshowy. He's just making noise rather than expressing technical ability.

Gonna try some Wilko style on my guitar when I get home :)

Down By The Jetty = pub rock classic

xpost

;-)

brit daniel may, in many important technical ways, be a less capable guitarist than I am. but he's a much better player. the MMM... let's just call it the outro... is kind of a clinic in how much time and phrasing matter vs the right notes

I think you need a Fender Twin amp or Hiwatt or similar too if you're going to use your fingers instead of a pick. Agreed about the Tele.

'cept Wilko's using a H|H 100W transistor amp...

I'd nominate Shawn Phillips (who taught Joni some guitar).

An what about Curtis?