Sadly, this you can’t watch, because there’s no video footage.
But you can certainly listen to it.
And please do. Eat it up. Enjoy it. Get it. Live it. Love it. The guitar solo starts at 2:07 and ends at 6:50.
This solo is one of the reasons Jimmy Page is my all-time favorite guitarist.
It is:
-Sloppy
-Meandering
-Unorganized
And absolutely. Fucking. Epic.
This solo highlights everything that makes Page amazing: light and shade. Fast and slow. Brilliant improv. Great riffs. Jaw-dropping wonder.
Page is, to me, the quintessential guitarist. He was, is, and always will be the guitarist to which all guitarists must measure up to. He’s not the most technically proficient, no, but you already know where I stand on technique, as I’ve written about it already, specifically in Anatomy of a Guitar Solo.
His work with Led Zeppelin, and before, is unparalleled. And you can bet Page (mainly with Zeppelin) will show up in this series quite often.
Please enjoy. I know you will.
(Obviously, everything written here, and in all my Great Guitar Solos posts, are my opinions. You may disagree, and that’s totally cool. Music is subjective, after all.)
I’m enjoying this series. I’m assuming that you’re going to get around to the Usual Suspects at some point: Hendrix, Van Halen, Slash etc. Just wondering if Buckethead makes the list, and if so, which one? Soothsayer? Whitewash? Something I’ve not heard? Interested to see where this goes next.
I do have EVH’s Eruption in the pipeline, but that’s really it. I hate the band in large part because of the consistently terrible choices in vocalists/lyricists.
Hendrix is, of course, in the pipeline as well. There’s a decent amount of Hendrix, in fact. He’s my third all-time favorite guitarist after Page and Gilmour.
Slash is also in the pipeline, though he’s a bit harder because some of his best solos are with Guns N’ Roses, on songs with some… let’s say… problematic lyrics…
As for Buckethead… I have a lot of his music, but I really need to start actually listening to him. He’ll probably end up in the series in the future, once I’ve really started listening to his stuff.
Ah yes, I should have more clearly specified I meant EVH in particular rather than the eponymous band.
Can’t see what lyrics have got to do with the quality or otherwise of a guitar solo. Worrying about problematic lyrics in this context seems to me comparable to disliking the music of Wagner because of his politics or who else liked it -- the music is the music, first and foremost. The words or other meanings others tack on to them or surround them with are their problem, I think.
Oh I’m not completely worried about lyrics in this case. It just means the inclusion of a disclaimer about lyrics when I do post a GnR song…
But because I’m unimpressed with VH lyrics in general (not problematic so much as just plain bad) I don’t have enough VH in my collection.