Your Cart is empty
Subtotal£0.00
Your order details
Solos; yes those moments when the rest of the band walks off stage and leaves one musician for ten minutes to do their thing. Not as prevalent now as it once was, it used to very much divide opinion between those who sat it out and the 80% remainder who went to the bar.
Then there were those who put the solo onto their live record, surely aware of their unpopularity with some punters. The most unpopular was surely the drum solo. I wanted to like them, honestly, but from an early age I skipped them. The first I didn’t listen to beyond the riff was The Mule on Made In Japan. I bow to no one in my love of Paicy’s drumming, but not on its own. Then came Moby Dick. No thanks. I don’t care if you’re hitting the drums with your hands, Bonzo.
The thing is, bands can feature drums in a song, the way Genesis do on Seconds Out in the Dance On A Volcano / Los Endos piece with the Phil Collins/ Chester Thompson drum off. That’s surely a better way to do it than the one Carl Palmer did on his legendary stainless steel kit.
But it wasn’t always a drum solo, horror of horrors, here’s the bass player. Less common than the drummer’s turn, this was reserved for bass players who fancied themselves as lead guitarists. I saw John Wetton do one with Uriah Heep. I wish I hadn’t. Sometimes they’d sneak one in, accompanied by the drummer, which is more acceptable. The best I ever saw was Chris Squire playing The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) from Fragile, which as you’ll know, is a full song but undoubtedly bass orientated, which he played out of Long Distance Runaround. Jaco Pastorious’ solo on Weather Report’s 8.30 live album is something else.
I’ve also seen Billy Sheehan performing gymnastics on bass. Perhaps the best example of the lead guitarist bassmeister. And Cream’s live shows often featured Jack Bruce’s solo bass. Then occasionally the keyboards took a turn in the spotlight on songs like Space Truckin’ On Made In Japan. Of course, it was usually in a live setting and there are plenty of examples of Keith Emerson wrestling a Hammond organ, sticking knives in it and generally abusing it for entertainment.
But of course the classic rock era wouldn’t have been anything without worship of lead guitar and examples of a solo guitar wailing away are legendary. I loved them of course. It was pretty much all I ever wanted. Perhaps the most gloriously self-indulgent is Leslie West’s on Twin Peaks stretched over two sides incorporating Nantucket Sleighride for a splendid total of 36-minutes. On Flowers Of Evil, the second side’s Dream Sequence had been a long guitar workout. But Johnny Winter did an equally great solo piece on Recorded Live on ‘Sweet Papa John’ and didn’t Rory do a solo piece on Live Taste called Catfish?
There was always a prog guitarist who wanted to show how good they were like Steve Howe on The Clap from The Yes Album but on Song Remains The Same, Jimmy Page reached extraordinary heights on the half hour Dazed And Confused work out, including the whole violin bow thing. Then of course there is Hendrix’s extraordinary Machine Gun which is more like a sonic theatre piece.
These are just a few, there are many, many examples of that moment when the band shuffles off and the lights dim and you say to your pal, ‘Shall we go to the bar?’
