Author Archives: Tim Hall

A followup to my earlier worst guitar solos of all time, here are another five:

Child in Time by Deep Purple, solo by Ritchie Blackmore. No, not the well-known live version from Made in Japan, or the equally good original studio version. The one I’m talking about is the dire solo from the Man in Black’s very last album with Purple, the thoroughly mediocre live set Come Hell or High Water. By this time it was clear Blackmore’s heart just wasn’t in it any more; there’s none of the fireworks from axe-shredding 70s classics like California Jamming or Rainbow On Stage. Instead we get a couple of minutes of directionless tuneless strumming, until keyboard player Jon Lord puts it out of it’s misery by taking over on the Mighty Hammond. At this stage in his career, Blackmore’s tantrums were much more interesting than his guitar playing.

Sting of the Bumblebee by Manowar, solo by Joey Di Maio. The token bass solo in the list. The Flight of the Bumblebee played on a bass guitar. Is there really anything else you need to know?

Soldier of the Line by Magnum, solo by Tony Clarkin. OK, Tony Clarkin isn’t the world’s greatest guitar player; most of his solos are repetitive and clumsily structured. But what makes the guitar break section of the song so dire is the the way it exposes Magnum’s rhythm section of the time as complete waste of space. During the rest of the song Clarkin’s powerchords drive the music. But the moment he plays a solo, the bottom completely drops out of the song. Any when the solo isn’t up to much in the first place, the end result is just embarrassing.

Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, solo by Kurt Cobain. For some inexplicable reason the late Kurt Cobain often appears on lists of great guitarists. While he undoubtedly was skilled at writing memorable songs and expressing White Wolf Games levels of angst, a great guitarist he was not. Not for nothing are Nirvana credited with killing off the guitar solo. While there is a ‘solo’ of sorts here, it’s just a few bars of tuneless nothing. I’d much rather listen to Neil Schon.

Burning Rope by Genesis, solo my Mike Rutherford. From the album that marked the beginning of their descent from sublime progressive rock to bland corporate pabulum. Rutherford might be a decent melodic bass player, but his lead guitar never rises above the banal. Steve Hackett he ain’t.

Pitchfork Media have compilied a list of the 50 Worst Guitar Solos. A few of them are on target, many more are not. (Blue Öyster Cult ‘Awful musicians’? You must be joking). But they have the guts to put an overrated icon at number one. (Link from Dodgeblogium)

Anyway, here are my list of bad solos. There’s only five of them, but I’m probably treading on sacred cows too…

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath by Black Sabbath, solo by Tony Iommi. This song contains three of Iommi’s monster riffs, but the solo is the weak spot in what’s otherwise a classic song. It’s a thin, weedy thing. Although Iommi is known for his riffs rather than his solos, he’s still capable of doing far better than this.

Everything by Vardis, solos by Steve Zodiac. I’m not naming any individual songs, because I can’t remember any titles. But Vardis were one of those bands that only really had one song, and played it over and over again. I remember a review of a live album of theirs, that described it as sounding like “A thirty second excerpt of Dave Edmund’s ‘Sabre Dance’ in a continuous loop for forty minutes”. And that’s exactly what they sounded like.

Paranoid Android by Radiohead, solo by Johnny Greenwood. This is an album which would have really benefitted from some proper solos. But all we get is one note strummed really fast going “EeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEe”. Was that supposed to be a solo, Johnny?

Champagne Supernova by Oasis, solos by Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller. Noel seems to think that Paul Weller is a great guitarist. He’s not. And Noel himself is an order of magnitude worse. Anyone who thinks Noel Gallagher is a good guitar player simply does not have a record collection that goes into double figures.

The live solo spot by Nigel Tufnel of Spïnal Tap. I’m old enough to remember the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the early 80s. Every band gave their guitarist a solo spot where the rest of the band walked off stage leaving the axeman to go Weeeeeeeee widdlywiddly widdlywiddly widdlywiddly eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ngngngngngngngngngngngngng for a few minutes. And the audiences went wild! Well except for the people who hadn’t already gone to the loo during the drum solo.