Longest recorded guitar solo?

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Is it even possible to answer this question? Here are a few guitar solos: 1. Joe Bonamassa Live, "If Heartaches Were Nickles", 2:36 2. Jonny Winter "Mean Town Blues", 4:00 3. Peter Frampton, "Do You Feel Like We Do", about 7:00 minutes. I am sure there are longer ones out there.
 
Henry Vestine, Canned Heat's Refried Boogie Pts. 1 + 2?

 
ocnor said:
The longest solo that I've personally witnessed was at an Outlaws concert back in the 70s. They played "Green Grass And High Tides" for like 25 minutes.
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That is an utterly fantastic song, love it to bits. It's a great song to swim to. The "Bring it back alive" version lasts for the whole side of the record and really stretches and there's not one boring moment except maybe the drum solo, which is mercifully short.
The Outlaws were interesting because they bypassed the fashion for bands having twin lead guitars by having three lead guitarists ! I think on the record at least two of them solo on the song.
There's a double live LP by Mountain that wasn't released in Britain called "Twin peaks". On it, theres a version of 'Nantucket sleighride' that goes on for more than two actual sides of the record; it actually goes into the third side ! I bet there's long soloing on that !
 
NO idea really, but in reply to what Greg_L said
Every guitar solo is too long.
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I disagree. I think if there's just a guitar solo going over a backing track playing the same 4 chords for like a minute then it is too long, but if you actually mix it up a lot then it adds a whole different thing to a song
 
Greg_L said:
Every guitar solo is too long.
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By the late 60s and into the heavy metal/progressive 70s, the solos were longer than entire songs of the early 60s !
But however long guitar solos may have gotten, they're a bedtime story to a 2 year old compared to some of those humongous jazz horn solos. Some of those cats would blow all night !

ollie99 said:
in reply to what Greg_L said I disagree. I think if there's just a guitar solo going over a backing track playing the same 4 chords for like a minute then it is too long, but if you actually mix it up a lot then it adds a whole different thing to a song
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Ollie, that's just Greg being Greg. Believe it or not, there actually exist solos that he likes ! :D
 
So glad that no one has used google find the answer ... for the guesses has brought back a lot of memories.

I was thinking *In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida* but realized that it was just a 17+ minute song of the late 60's.
 
grimtraveller said:
Ollie, that's just Greg being Greg. Believe it or not, there actually exist solos that he likes ! :D
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Haha, yeah there's many solos I like. And they're almost always more riffy than rapid fire wankery. Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran played awesome solos. Scotty Moore did it right. Johnny Thunders' sloppy bends are a big influence on me. Ace Frehley and Angus Young play riffy leads that are easy to understand and they're accessible to a technical know-nothing like me, and I appreciate that. Plus they sound good. I despise scale exercise leads that have nothing to do with the song. What most guitarists consider impressive or inspirational, I think of it as fucking show-off shit. Sweeping, shredding, all dumb. Basically everything pre-Hendrix was okay with me. Hendrix was like the birth of Christ in the guitar world. Not to be blasphemous, but he is ground zero. The mark, to me, in which guitar playing stopped being part of the band, and really took off as a lead instrument. His style and the birth of very powerful amps coincided to change guitar forever. He inspired a lot of good playing but unfortunately also inspired decades of shitty music that revolved around one thing - the fucking wanky guitar solo.
 
I love pretty much every Brian May solo, apart from the solo ones, if that makes sense.

I've never heard him do anything other than serve the song beautifully.
Stuff like Play the Game, Killer Queen, These are the days of our lives etc.
 
I've been listening to a lot of AIC lately. Cantrell gets it.
 
Greg_L said:
Haha, yeah there's many solos I like. And they're almost always more riffy than rapid fire wankery. Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran played awesome solos. Scotty Moore did it right. Johnny Thunders' sloppy bends are a big influence on me. Ace Frehley and Angus Young play riffy leads that are easy to understand and they're accessible to a technical know-nothing like me, and I appreciate that. Plus they sound good. I despise scale exercise leads that have nothing to do with the song. What most guitarists consider impressive or inspirational, I think of it as fucking show-off shit. Sweeping, shredding, all dumb. Basically everything pre-Hendrix was okay with me. Hendrix was like the birth of Christ in the guitar world. Not to be blasphemous, but he is ground zero. The mark, to me, in which guitar playing stopped being part of the band, and really took off as a lead instrument. His style and the birth of very powerful amps coincided to change guitar forever. He inspired a lot of good playing but unfortunately also inspired decades of shitty music that revolved around one thing - the fucking wanky guitar solo.
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Not to mention a whole new world of wammy bar usage!
 
I pretty much agree with Greg's choices...

But where is B.B. King?

And IMHO...the line between a great solo (any instrument) and self-indulgence is a very thin one...
 
Greg_L said:
I despise scale exercise leads that have nothing to do with the song.
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I dig any solo that I happen to dig.
I find that while there are zillions of solos that I like, of varying lengths, varying dexterities, on varying instruments, some of which are very much variations on the melody or chord progression of the song or totally left field in relation to it, the solo in itself is kind of irrelevant if I don't like the song. And it's only the liking of the song that will mean I notice the solo or the drum pattern or what the bassist is doing or whatever. Similarly, though I may dig the song, I may not particularly like the solo or may see it just as a part of the general wash of sound. So in a way, I have no valid opinion on it because a good solo in my mind has little to do with anything if I think the song is rubbish, regardless of what is played. And exactly the same solo could turn up in a song I dig and I'll think it's marvelous !
Greg_L said:
The mark, to me, in which guitar playing stopped being part of the band, and really took off as a lead instrument.
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Very important point.
When rock'n'roll was in it's 50s infancy, the dominant instruments were the piano and saxophone, partly because many of the early players were jazzers who kind of looked down on the music. And the double bass took care of the low end ~ such as it was. Alot of the bass lines are the same one.The drumming was very jazz inflected. But if you listen to much of the rock'n'roll of the 50s, the music and more importantly, the instruments used are very cohesive. Sounds like piano and sax {and on the odd occasion, guitar} stand out sonically, but they rarely lead. The notion of leading instruments was still pretty much a jazz thing.
And that carries on through the blues, pop, folk and rock stuff of the early to mid 60s. It was really with the arrival of young English guys who really began trying to emulate either old blues guitarists or freer jazz sax horn players that this notion of 'guitar hero' came into being and lead singers were shunted aside a little.
That's when you start to get songs more and more that are 'riffs extended' rather than 'songs that have a riff incorporated'. It's also interesting that more bands took on the mantle of the one guitarist around the mid 60s rather than two, which had been pretty much the norm for four or five years. Bands like the Who, Cream and the Hendrix experience were very different live than on record.
Greg_L said:
Ace Frehley and Angus Young play riffy leads that are easy to understand and they're accessible. Plus they sound good.
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I love different guitarists for different reasons. I always thought Ace Frehley was not taken seriously because he was the lead guitarist in KISS but his solos were damn tuneful and inventive.
As for Angus, along with Status Quo's Francis Rossi, I think he's a criminally underrated guitarist. His lead playing is full of fizz and volume which, I think, causes many to overlook just how inventive his playing has been. He could easilly have been in one of the heavier jazz rock bands of the late 60s and early 70s when the genre was still in it's highly creative and directionless/experimental infancy, before it became known as 'fusion' and got fluffy and predictable.
Funny thing about Angus, I'd been listening to AC/DC for a couple of years when I saw the band live in '82. Apart from "The jack", I knew every song they deafened me with that night {literally; I couldn't hear for 36 hours after} and although they extended the songs, he pretty much kept to the solos as they were on record. I appreciated that. Last weekend, I happened to catch the last half hour of a gig they did in Argentina in 2009 and it was pretty much the same set list that they had done when I saw them in '82. And Angus still played the solos from the "Dirty deeds..."/"Let there be rock"/"Powerage"/"Highway to..."/"Back in black" songs as they were on the record, obviously with the odd embellishment. I thought that said alot about him and the band. They gave value for money and wanted the punters to enjoy a memorable show.
 
Steenamaroo said:
I love pretty much every Brian May solo, apart from the solo ones, if that makes sense.

I've never heard him do anything other than serve the song beautifully.
Stuff like Play the Game, Killer Queen, These are the days of our lives etc.
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I agree. I think his solos are so part of many of the songs. When I hum songs like 'Killer Queen' or 'Bohemian Rhapsody' the solos are as much a part of the humming as the melody anjd even his solo solos like "Brighton rock" are a song in themself. And he could rock with fury like any metal guitarist of the age. But he always looked so calm and prancing !

bdenton said:
And IMHO...the line between a great solo (any instrument) and self-indulgence is a very thin one...
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I've never understood why people have a problem with self indulgence. Serving the song doesn't mean an absence of self indulgence. My thing is less a problem with whether a solo is self indulgent and more with whether it's good or not !
 
Self indulgence leads to stuff like Steve Vai and Malmsteen. Unlistenable garbage wankery. They can't function in a band. They make music for other guitarists to oooh and ahh at, and only other guitarists appreciate what they do. Regular people don't listen to guys like Malmsteen. If the guitar wasn't such a popular instrument, and guitarists weren't so eager to worship an idol, guys like Vai and Malmsteen and Satriani would be flipping burgers somewhere.
 
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