Imagine if guitar solos never existed in the old songs.
Why don't they exist in the new ones?
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Thank-you, Dave.
I recently watched a video from Rick Beato entitled: "Top 10 Rock songs of 2023". When I first saw the tag for this video, I was intrigued. I really do try to keep an open-mind when it comes to learning about and understanding today's music. As a guitar instructor, I think that I am somewhat obligated to practice being open-minded; in hopes that one day, someone will actually play a guitar solo in a song. This was the hope I had at the beginning of this video. Well, hope springs eternal.
I have been following Rick Beato for about four years. He and I are close in age, which means we grew up with a lot of the same music. In this video, I kept waiting for Rick to play one of the songs on this list, and have it actually qualify as a "rock" song. Each song that he reviewed, I waited for the guitar solo.
Not one song had a guitar solo in it. Why?
Try to imagine "Do you feel like we do" without the guitar solo. Now, try to imagine "Eruption", but without Eddie playing the guitar. Imagine "Layla" without any of Clapton's guitar solos. Imagine "Stairway to heaven" without Jimmy Page's iconic guitar solo. Imagine "Hotel California" without the dual guitar solos from Walsh and Felder. Imagine "Comfortably numb" with no David Gilmour guitar solos. Imagine "Headed for a heartbreak" without Reb Beach's guitar solo.
You see my point.
The very definition of "classic" rock music requires those legendary guitar solos we've all heard thousands of times. For the past 50-60 years, guitar players have been practicing these iconic solos, note for note, hammering away for hundreds of hours, trying desperately to interpret them as close as possible to the original.
It hasn't just been rock songs. Nearly every genre of music that uses the guitar, almost always has some sort of melodic guitar piece in the song. Even if it's a simple lick that takes a few notes. At least it's there. How can anyone call this music that is out there today, as rock music? In my book, without some kind of an effort to create some sort of melodic guitar riff or phrase, it is simply not worthy of being called a rock music.
I have had an issue with Foo Fighters music for years. Almost every song they have ever done, lacks any tangible rock guitar solo. This has to be a conscious choice by Dave Grohl. That's the part that boggles my mind. Of all the people out there still playing rock music to huge audiences, how can you not put guitar solos in those songs?
When did this all stop? When did having a guitar solo in a rock song become something considered antiquated or debatable? If you grew up in the 1970's, almost everything you ever heard on the radio had some kind of a melodic solo in it. Pianos, keyboards, saxophones, flutes, trumpets and of course, the guitar. Okay, so maybe disco didn't have a whole lot of soloing it - but disco was about dancing. Rock, jazz, country and especially the blues, all had instrumental improvisations in them.Â
Yes, there might be traces of rock formulas in today's music, but music like this never would have lasted in the mainstream pop-rock eras 40 or 50 years ago. At least in the 1990's, during the grunge era, rock bands tried to coax some kind of effort in keeping guitar solos alive in those rock songs.
I was thinking and wondering earlier, "What would Boston's first album sound like without any guitar solos?" There would have been a whole lot of empty spaces in those songs.
We grew up with the best music that has ever been written and recorded. We had guitar heroes as far back as Jimmy Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. We had Peter Frampton and Eddie van Halen, Joe Satriani and Steve Via. We had Steve Morse, Joe Perry, Jeff Beck, Tom Scholz, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Howe, Tommy Emmanuel, Nuno Bettencourt, Allan Holdsworth, David Gilmour, Prince, Emily Remler, Steve Lukather, John Petrucci, Ted Nugent, Alex Lifeson, Neal Schon, Joe Walsh, Don Felder, Lindsey Buckingham, Eric Johnson, Larry Carlton, Lita Ford, Richie Kotzen, Jeff Baxter, Al Di Meola, Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert and hundreds more.
Today's music has zero guitar gawds in mainstream music. The younger generations today are being completely ripped off, and they don't even know it. Why are there no guitar monsters out there making names for themselves? Well, it is my understanding that much of it has to do with the simple fact that the music industry of yesteryear, died about twenty years ago. Part of that industry incorporated management in the form of A&R (artists and repertoire) people who conditioned and prepared new talent for the giant record labels in order to sign a contract to record albums. Those musicians had to be good in order to survive such a cut-throat industry. Those artists and bands survived because we voted for them with our hard-earned money when we purchased record albums and tapes and eventually CD's. If the music we heard on the radio sucked, it didn't stick around for very long.
None of those dynamics exist today - and that is why today's music sucks. I have no idea why guitar solos (or any instrumental solos) aren't an expectation in music anymore. It's very disappointing, especially for someone like me - a guitarist who grew up learning how to play the guitar by listening to legendary rock guitar solos.