The most renowned guitar solos in rock history are soaring and highly melodic, like David Gilmour's ethereal passages in "Comfortably Numb," or the epic guitar duel between Don Felder and Joe Walsh at the end of "Hotel California". These eight solos listed here are way too strange to ever get such recognition, but they're definitely worth checking out anyway.
1. Pavement - "Embassy Row" (1997)
Pavement didn't really do anything the way you're supposed to, whether it came to singing, lyrics, or guitar playing. The solo on "Embassy Row" sounds like it was played by a novice guitarist, but then sped up in post-production to give it a quirky twang. It even sounds like a wrong string was hit at one point, but it's pure Pavement.
2. The Dead Milkmen - "Punk Rock Girl" (1988)
The Dead Milkmen treated every song they wrote like a joke, and that reached beyond the lyrical content, as evidenced by the strange, out-of-tune solo in "Punk Rock Girl". Hearing it on record is funny enough, but watching Joe Genaro play it in the music video is even funnier.
3. Tom Waits - "Clap Hands" (1985)
The atonal guitar playing throughout Tom Waits' classic album Rain Dogs is one of its defining characteristics, and the best solo on the album goes to no wave guitarist Marc Ribot, who noodles over a few bars of the doomy folk number "Clap Hands"
4. Talking Heads - "The Great Curve" (1980)
When recording 1980's Remain in Light, Talking Heads recruited a number of outside musicians to contribute to the songs, including King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew, who performed the soaring noise solo on "The Great Curve."
5. Neil Young - "Southern Man" (1970)
Neil Young is one of my favorite guitarists of all time, and the main reason is because of solos like the one from "Southern Man." The wildly expressionist solo he plays in the song's middle section goes from darkly melodic to explosively emotional, as if he simply can't play enough notes fast enough.
6. Led Zeppelin - "Heartbreaker" (1969)
The guitar solo in "Heartbreaker" wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that it's literally a guitar solo, with the band dropping out for about 45-seconds while Jimmy Page plays a blinding torrent of blues riff on his own.
7. The Flaming Lips - "Powerless" (2009)
Ever since Steven Drozd starting playing guitar (and pretty much everything else) for the Flaming Lips, frontman Wayne Coyne has shifted his focus to singing and showmanship. However, Coyne granted us with a rare guitar solo on the dirgey "Powerless" from 2009's Embryonic. Though it sounds as if it could take off into a soaring Tom Verlaine-type performance, the solo remains off-kilter and pensive, with a skeletal guitar tone that suits the song's atmosphere.
8. Pixies - "Vamos" (1988)
Joey Santiago is one of the most idiosyncratic guitarists in American indie rock, playing in a surreal, discordant style that perfectly suits the Pixies' lyrics and songwriting. The biggest canvas Santiago ever got was on the Pixies jam "Vamos," in which he shrieks and sputters his way through an almost suffocating stomp from the rhythm section.
What are your favorite weird guitar solos? Let us know in the comments section!
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