Two Bards: The Forum!

I saw a reddit thread discussing this and this was my answer:



If you haven't seen it, it's absolutely facemeltingly excellent. Prince was a lot of things. But one of those things was one of the best guitarists (if not THE best) to ever live. Joe Satriani is incredible. Hendrix is legend. There are some metal guitarists out there who can do 2 minute hammer on solos that are incredible. But the precision coupled with the sheer emotional depth and just the overall arrangement he put on here is, for my money (none), the GOAT.

That one's an all-timer for sure! Great solo, great performance! Here are some songs with guitar solos I love, all of which sell the emotions of the song. Gonna limit myself to one per band, and only live performances


Infinite Dreams - Dave Murray, Adrian Smith


Nightfall - André Olbrich


Light Up the Night - Shock Magnum (?)


Mr. Crowley - Randy Rhoads

And if I can cheat a bit here, Clarence Clemons' sax solo in Jungleland is another all timer. Listened to a (then) recent performance when I got news that he'd passed and it destroyed me.

In the same vein. Pain. Painvein.

Caught Springsteen and the E Street Band last night. Whole show was amazing, but the real standout solo was Tom Morello at the end of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Here's a video from the Minneapolis show on the tour

There are many, in popular music, but for a guitar solo that's really just guitar it would be something I remember from my childhood, from TV.

Rob_MacLennan wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2026 12:26 pm There are many, in popular music, but for a guitar solo that's really just guitar it would be something I remember from my childhood, from TV.

I LOVED him on The Odd Couple. When they did that out-of-character bit at the end of the episode.

If we're talking *solo* solo, this is a great piece by Don Ross. Matt introduced me to him when I introduced him to metal; as you'll hear we met in the middle