My continuing effort to learn and play guitar world magazine's top 100 guitar solos of all time.


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The first thing that I have to say is that this one confused me to no end. I'm going to call out Guitar World at this point to say that they are wrong about this one. They have the right song (Sweet Jane) listed at number 81, but the wrong artist, wrong album, and the wrong solo. They have Lou Reed as the soloist and the version of Sweet Jane from The Velvet Underground's Loaded album. There is NO SOLO in Sweet Jane from the Loaded album. None. Not even a short one.

What it does have is this weird little effects laden, 14 second, three (four?) guitar loop before the song starts. You can listen to it here [ Ссылка ] THIS IS NOT a solo by any stretch of the imagination. I think the clue is in the word "solo" first of all. If you personally think that this noise qualifies as a solo, good on ya, but I don't.

Second of all, there actually is a second and very famous version of Sweet Jane from Lou Reed's Rock and Roll Animal album from 1973. This one has an equally famous and absolute killer 3 1/2 minute solo intro by Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner. Gibson guitars top 50 solos of all time has this solo at number 25 of all time and rightly so. It's 3 1/2 minutes of 70's rock guitar bliss. No tricks, no tapping, no shredding, etc... just amazing playing from two of the seventies greatest unsung guitar players. They went on to form the guitar core of some of Alice Cooper's most popular albums, Billion Dollar Babies and Welcome to my Nightmare and Hunter went on to play with Peter Gabriel.

THIS is the solo that I will play. Not the loopy one (though I had figured it out and was ready to go with it before I had a change of heart). I'll repeat, 4 guitars looping on top of one another with heavy effects is not a solo in my books.

Though I just mentioned above that this solo is quite famous (mostly in guitar circles), it's apparently not famous enough and it may be new to many of you. When I first started to learn it, I looked for some tutorials. There are none. Despite my hate for tabs, I looked for tabs as well. None. Covers on Youtube? Only ONE that I could find, where the guys only plays the first half of the solo. This one will be a first for me I think. The ONLY full Youtube cover of this solo. Weird.

WHY?? This solo is fucking amazing! It starts with a bit of a southern rock vibe with elements of prog rock thrown in the middle. It's as if The Allman Brothers teamed up with Yes to produce an instrumental. It's really well written and interesting to listen to. It actually sounds nothing like Lou Reed, nor should it. It was a shelved instrumental written by Steve Hunter that they pulled out as a bombastic live intro to Sweet Jane to open each show.

I had my issues with this solo. Number one being that, as well as no tutorials or tabs, there is also NO backing tracks to this one anywhere. Zero. Looked everywhere. So I went old school as I often do and learned the whole thing by ear. I had to play along with the original track which presents a whole new set of challenges. Especially timing. Though I panned the original guitar out of the mix as much as I could, and increased my volume, you can still here it, so I had to be pretty exact with the notes and the timing or it would sound off. I did my best and I think it sounds alright considering. Lots of key changes in this one as well. Really great stuff.

Also, this is two guitar players playing off of one another for 3 minutes. I could have recorded both guitars separately but I thought that I would take a different approach. I like to do one take for these solos and not video edit shit in. So, I imagined myself in my band days as the only guitar player (As I often was) and my band wanted to cover this song (I actually did cover this song in one of my bands, but not this version). What would I do? I would blend the two solos into one as best I could, and that's what I did here. Fairly happy with this one despite the lack of a backing track.

Well, that's it for today. Hope you like this one. I sure as hell do. This solo deserves to be much higher on the list IMO, and If I'm wrong about my assessment of Guitar World's pick here, and they really feel that this solo shouldn't even be on the list and that weird little loopy thing should, they they need their collective heads examined.

Cheers!

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