The Best Guitar Solos Of All Time: Number 5
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 12:01AM
You knew this song would be on the list, right? Coming in at number 5 on the best guitar solos of all time is Queen's masterpiece, "Bohemian Rhapsody." Without Brian May's growing and soaring guitar work on "Rhapsody," the track just would not be the same. The song is on the 1975 album A Night At The Opera.
Back in 1983, Brian May did a video tutorial on his famous solo:
The problem, of course, is that most experienced guitar players may well be able to play the correct notes, but they cannot replicate the tone or feel that May produces. After all, there is only one Brian May of Queen.
Guitar World magazine readers recently rated May's work on "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best guitar solo of all time. May was humbled - but when asked about the solo by a journalist, he said he believes his best solo is in "Killer Queen." To be sure, that is an amazing and complicated riff, too!
Reader Comments (1)
How so? May differs with others about his greatest solo. Or, to reverse it to make the point better, others differ with May about his greatest solo. Shouldn't we take the artist at his word? It is, after all, _his_ solo. No. We shouldn't, though we might. What we find to be 'best', 'greatest', or what have you is what constitutes an opinion. To my knowledge, there is no computational device yet created that can mathematically determine a value-based assertion. Can we determine which solo came first? Which solo has technical errors? Which solo placed higher on the charts? Yes to all. But those facts are not opinions about them. And so we go about debating value-based opinions.
Why? Because it is fun (consider how much Bkallday and I enjoy the banter). Because it can be contentious (consider the stuff Jacklyn Tee Roper and I get into) . But also because, for the most part, facts can't be debated. Granted, that is currently a subject of much discussion (and also, keeping in mind, I am not speaking of hypotheses in science which are adjusted as new data becomes available). But it stands to reason (again, the best way to reason), that debating a fact is usually really a ruse insofar as the fact in question is wrapped in enough value-gauze to make it, in fact, an opinion. You want to debate the case for gravity? Go for it! Have fun! But you aren't really debating. You are doing a version of the old Philosophy 101 course, considering needles and camels . . . all the while standing (for reason) on a flat piece of earth (not a Flat Earth, to be clear).
Hope everyone's week is off to a good start.