Over Rated Guitar Solos

[Kotowboy]

Post here any of the "must hear" guitar solos of all time that you find over rated...

OR

Any guitar solo in a song that makes you go wtf was that ?!


For me - pretty much any Kerry King or Jeff Henneman solo are just mindless wankery with no tonal centre.


Also - not saying it sucks or anything but the Under A Glass Moon solo has never done anything for me. Prefer the As I Am solo personally.

[Architeuthis]

To the contrary, Under a Glass Moon solo is incredible. It goes through my head alot.
As far as overrated, alot of Zepplin solos fall into that category. 

[TheCountOfNYC]

Despite me being a huge Metallica fan, I'm gonna have to vote One. It's often regarded as their best guitar solo, but I can name four that are better on ...And Justice For All alone. Kirk has written some brilliant solos (Ride the Lightning, Fade to Black, and The Unforgiven chief among them) but for some reason, One gets most of the attention for some reason.

[Kotowboy]

I think my favourite Metallica solo by Kirk at least is the fast one in the second half of Master Of Puppets.

Just for the way it klcks off with the legato run and then the tremelo picked descending scale with that pull off at the end of it.

The way it builds tension in the second half over the chords and builds to a climax is pretty amazing.

[Architeuthis]

Freyed Ends of Sanity is my fav solo from AJFA..

[wolfking]

UAGM technically is brilliant.

Anything by the likes of Angus Young, Slash or Kirk fits here.

[El Barto]

We're using a peculiar definition of overrated here that I'm not familiar with. Nobody has ever accused Kirk, Kerry King or Angus of playing great solos.

I never got all the love for the Aqualung solo. It's wonderfully melodic, and live it takes on a different life as it progresses, but the studio version of it never seemed like one of the greats, which many consider it to be.

[Kotowboy]

We're using a peculiar definition of overrated here that I'm not familiar with. Nobody has ever accused Kirk,  of playing great solos.

Eh ??  A lot of Master of puppets and Ride The Lightning & Metallica have good solos.

From Load onwards he went more or less exclusively bluesy & pentatonic based.

Also in my OP I said post any over rated solo or just any solo you thought was dire.

[KevShmev]

The best solo in One is the first one (around 3:10-ish).

[Cruithne]

We're using a peculiar definition of overrated here that I'm not familiar with. Nobody has ever accused Kirk, Kerry King or Angus of playing great solos.

Has anyone ever accused Kerry of even playing a good solo? I listened to quite a lot of Slayer back in the day and I'm not aware of a single memorable solo either him or Jeff wrote, and in my experience they've always been regarded as bad soloists. Maybe something's changed in the last 10 years...

As far as Kirk's One solo goes, it's probably a case of conflating a great song with a solo that's appropriate with a great solo. Plus, Kirk did write a lot of good solos over the first 4 or 5 Metallica records. The well known flaws in his playing were always there, but his note choice and solo construction was very good back then. Hell, he still wrote some good stuff on TBA and Load/Reload here and there, but nothing on the last couple of records is worth a mention.

[romdrums]

For me - pretty much any Kerry King or Jeff Henneman solo are just mindless wankery with no tonal centre.

I've often heard Kerry King and Jeff Henneman solos referred to as the sound of turkeys fighting.

As far as overrated solos go, I'm going to come right out and say Layla. 

[Scorpion]

Octavarium, the outro solo.

I get why people like it, and it sounds like I'd love it, on paper. But I just find it mind-numbingly Boeing whenever I listen to it.

[Stadler]

For me - pretty much any Kerry King or Jeff Henneman solo are just mindless wankery with no tonal centre.

I've often heard Kerry King and Jeff Henneman solos referred to as the sound of turkeys fighting.

As far as overrated solos go, I'm going to come right out and say Layla.

Every time I hear a Slayer solo I get the song "Entrance of the Gladiators" running through my head.  For the uninitiated, "Entrance of the Gladiators" is the real name for the "circus theme" music you hear in cartoons.    They are a joke if you ask me. 

Overrated?  Tom Morello's solos.  I have two Audioslave CDs because I love Chris Cornell (I won't give RATM my money; sorry) and probably 70% of the solos start with some weird noise generated by rubbing a q-tip or a Preparation H tube against the pickups, followed by some whammy bar dive bombing (of aforementioned sound) and then some basic widdly widdly stuff that sounds like it came from Michael Angelo's instruction tapes. 

Honestly?  As much as I love them, Judas Priest.   For a while they had liner notes of "KK- First solo; Glenn - Second solo; KK - Outro solo" and what not, and I was like "what's the point of that?".    They're both technically very good, but nothing that grabs me like a Dave Murray solo. 

And if you said "Stadler, there's a thread called "Over Rated Guitar Solos", give you a dollar if you can guess who started it!", I would have won a dollar!      (Just bustin' Kotowboy; you know I'm with you on this.)

[romdrums]

For me - pretty much any Kerry King or Jeff Henneman solo are just mindless wankery with no tonal centre.

I've often heard Kerry King and Jeff Henneman solos referred to as the sound of turkeys fighting.

As far as overrated solos go, I'm going to come right out and say Layla.

Overrated?  Tom Morello's solos.  I have two Audioslave CDs because I love Chris Cornell (I won't give RATM my money; sorry) and probably 70% of the solos start with some weird noise generated by rubbing a q-tip or a Preparation H tube against the pickups, followed by some whammy bar dive bombing (of aforementioned sound) and then some basic widdly widdly stuff that sounds like it came from Michael Angelo's instruction tapes. 

Haha!! So true. 

[Podaar]

Just curious. Has anyone, ever, said, "Wow, that Morello solo really moved me and gave me the chills." I mean, don't you need to be rated highly prior to being overrated?

[Kotowboy]

Overrated?  Tom Morello's solos.  I have two Audioslave CDs because I love Chris Cornell (I won't give RATM my money; sorry) and probably 70% of the solos start with some weird noise generated by rubbing a q-tip or a Preparation H tube against the pickups, followed by some whammy bar dive bombing (of aforementioned sound) and then some basic widdly widdly stuff that sounds like it came from Michael Angelo's instruction tapes. 

I love you. 


People worship Tom Morello for his FX smothered wankery and take the piss out of The Edge for his completely playing for the song melodic FX smothered solos.

But it's cool to hate U2 so....

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

Octavarium, the outro solo.

I get why people like it, and it sounds like I'd love it, on paper. But I just find it mind-numbingly Boeing whenever I listen to it.

Yeah, it just never really takes off.

[romdrums]

Octavarium, the outro solo.

I get why people like it, and it sounds like I'd love it, on paper. But I just find it mind-numbingly Boeing whenever I listen to it.

Yeah, it just never really takes off.

Like it's JP on auto-pilot, if you will.

[rumborak]

There is a tapping section in Joe Satriani's "Always With Me, Always With You" that people always seem to cheer for when he plays it. Never got it, it's really simple and rather pedestrian IMO.

[King Postwhore]

Octavarium, the outro solo.

I get why people like it, and it sounds like I'd love it, on paper. But I just find it mind-numbingly Boeing whenever I listen to it.

Yeah, it just never really takes off.

Like it's JP on auto-pilot, if you will.

You're all high.

[TAC]

Octavarium, the outro solo.

I get why people like it, and it sounds like I'd love it, on paper. But I just find it mind-numbingly Boeing whenever I listen to it.

Yeah, it just never really takes off.

Like it's JP on auto-pilot, if you will.

You're all high.

I actually find it to have a lot of lift.

[rumborak]

You guys are crazy, the outro solo is excellent. In fact, the fact that JP restrains himself for the whole time totally works in its favor.

[King Postwhore]

Bingo.   It bleeds emotion.  I love when a guitarist doesn't stick to one style of soloing. 

[Elite]

The guitar solo in Ride the Lightning by Metallica. Pretty much a 'classic' metal guitar solo, especially for the arpeggio part at the end and while it may have been quite groundbreaking at the time* (for a metal song perhaps), by modern standards it's a pretty laughable guitar solo.

*(was it though? I wasn't around back then, but you had the likes of Eddie van Halen & Michael Schenker and later on Yngwie Malmsteen & Nuno Bettencourt who could play circles around Kirk Hammett)

The unison in Afterlife by Dream Theater. Basically a rehash of the Ride the Lightning trick, but slightly altered to make it a little more interesting. Petrucci has so many better solos.

The rehash of the verse melody in Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. Yeah, I know it fits the song. It works really well in fact. Does that make it good solo? I don't think so.

Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker. It's sloppy, badly edited in and completely random wankery with no relation to the rest of the song. What the hell man. Sorry for offending people with this pick

... and there's probably more, but those are the first couple I could think of.

---

Regarding Slayer; I'm not a fan of their music, but the 'solos' (if you can even call them that) are strangely fitting. Hearing perfectly played melodic lines in their songs wouldn't really make sense with the rest of the music.

[wolfking]

Honestly?  As much as I love them, Judas Priest.   For a while they had liner notes of "KK- First solo; Glenn - Second solo; KK - Outro solo" and what not, and I was like "what's the point of that?".    They're both technically very good, but nothing that grabs me like a Dave Murray solo. 

As a guitarist, I always loved solo credits in albums, I feel they deserve to be there.  And I can't agree with saying Tipton is overrated.  Some of the stuff he comes up with is incredible and honestly would leave Smith and Murray scratching their heads.

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

You guys are crazy, the outro solo is excellent. In fact, the fact that JP restrains himself for the whole time totally works in its favor.

I was just poking fun at 'Boeing;' I think the solo is pretty good. I do think the end of Intervals would have been a better climax for the song, though.

[pogoowner]

Just curious. Has anyone, ever, said, "Wow, that Morello solo really moved me and gave me the chills." I mean, don't you need to be rated highly prior to being overrated?

Yeah, maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd, but I've never heard anyone praise his solos too much. He is (or was) innovative, and people give him credit, but for a specific solo? Not really. But as I've said before, his best solo is "I Am the Highway," which doesn't follow the typical Morello formula that Stadler described at all.

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

I love his solo on Like A Stone.

[erwinrafael]

There is a tapping section in Joe Satriani's "Always With Me, Always With You" that people always seem to cheer for when he plays it. Never got it, it's really simple and rather pedestrian IMO.

The beauty of that section is not about complexity of technique. It's about how such a section sort of comes out of nowhere in the middle of a slow melodic guitar ballad but Sach made it work.

[KevShmev]

Octavarium, the outro solo.

I get why people like it, and it sounds like I'd love it, on paper. But I just find it mind-numbingly Boeing whenever I listen to it.

Nah, the Hollow Years solo from Budokan is far more overrated. 

[TheCountOfNYC]

Octavarium, the outro solo.

I get why people like it, and it sounds like I'd love it, on paper. But I just find it mind-numbingly Boeing whenever I listen to it.

Nah, the Hollow Years solo from Budokan is far more overrated.

For me, the most overrated Dream Theater solo is the extended instrumental section of Beyond this Life from Budokan.

[Scorpion]

Fuckin autocorrect, man.

You guys are crazy, the outro solo is excellent. In fact, the fact that JP restrains himself for the whole time totally works in its favor.

I agree that restraint often works in the favour of solos, Another World being a great example. I just happen to think that it falls flat on Razor's Edge, which is just so damn underwhelming after the intensity of Intervals.

[wolfking]

There is a tapping section in Joe Satriani's "Always With Me, Always With You" that people always seem to cheer for when he plays it. Never got it, it's really simple and rather pedestrian IMO.

The beauty of that section is not about complexity of technique. It's about how such a section sort of comes out of nowhere in the middle of a slow melodic guitar ballad but Sach made it work.

I kind of have to agree with Rumbo.  It's one of my least favourite section of the whole song.  I don't find it as amazing as most others do.

[Architeuthis]

To me the solo on The Razors Edge is the most climatic part of the song. It has so much melody and heart to it, in the same league as Comfortably Numb. I think JP tapped into some genious on that one
and it ends the song just perfect. The guitar really sings here..

[wolfking]

Yeah, Razors Edge is brilliant.