Songs With Guitar Solos That Serve the Song

Tony Peluso's fuzz tone enters after Karen Carpenter has delivered loneliness with remarkable composure. Richard Carpenter wanted the solo to have a melody, and Peluso gives the electric sound a singable shape. The voice has said what it can. The solo takes over where her control might otherwise make the emotion easy to miss.

The opening guitar lines set up a conversation. When Nels Cline gets more room at the end, the others still give him phrases to play across. Cline chose a brighter tone than he usually favors, and it helps his high notes stay legible even when all three guitars are busy.

Ernie Isley's fuzz guitar answers the singers in short bursts before taking up more space in the second part. He recalled having to redo a pass that left too little room for the voices. The finished track shows how much can come from holding the guitar back long enough for the second part to open up.

A drum break makes the sound begin to swirl just as the last guitar passage opens up. Engineer Eddie Kramer remembered playing that change back to Hendrix in the studio. The last lead feels as if the room has grown around it, a fitting expansion for a song that has been describing emotion through color.

Larry Carlton's phrases follow the changes closely enough to sound like part of the arrangement. Listen for how a quick run will settle on a long note just when the chord beneath it moves. The solo brings a kind of sure-footedness to a song about a man whose luck is running out.

Live at Wilbraham Road station, Manchester, 1964. There is room for the guitar to answer the shouted gospel lines from the start. In the instrumental break, Tharpe uses that same clipped attack to keep the rhythm moving while her voice rests. The solo belongs to this performance because it picks up the force of the singing without changing its pace.

The guitar starts with enough patience to let Wendy Melvoin's chords keep setting the pace. Prince builds the lead a phrase at a time until it becomes the loudest expression of the song's appeal. Its slow start is what makes the later height feel earned.

Carlos Santana's lead has room to bend and hang above the groove as the singer leaves space between lines. When the arrangement moves into the quick closing section, the guitar has a sharper rhythmic job to do. Its role in both sections helps the two pieces sound like one performance.

George Harrison begins the solo with a line as easy to follow as the verse melody. The notes lengthen and bend while the strings move underneath, letting the guitar hold on to the tenderness of the sung lines. It sounds like another way to speak in the same song.

Elliot Easton's lead lets notes ring long enough to feel almost unguarded against the song's angular backing. He worked over the part away from the studio before recording it. The space between phrases is as important as the quicker bursts, especially when the rest of the band keeps the beat so steady.

David Rawlings lets a little acoustic phrase bend away from the chords, then leaves a gap where the listener might expect it to resolve. Welch's voice has the same patience, so the instrumental breaks fit the song's sense that a thought can remain unfinished. The small scrape and ring of the strings are enough to change the mood.

Brian May starts with one guitar, then brings others in to answer at different pitches. He wanted the entrances to have a cascading, bell-like effect. Follow the replies as they turn the solo into a miniature ensemble, fitting the precise entrances and exits of the rest of the song.

Mark Knopfler uses the first solo as a compact interlude, then brings the singer back for another verse. The ending lets his fingerpicked lines get faster and looser. It is a neat reversal for a song that begins with a narrator standing off to one side watching a band.

Nancy Wilson's acoustic solo has its own little surges and pauses before the band enters. The picking establishes how much urgency the guitar can generate on its own. That makes the switch into the full electric band feel like an enlargement of the same idea.

The quiet, repeating guitars let the voice set a near-whispered mood. Billy Corgan's solo arrives after the band has already started turning up the pressure, and its rough edges make the release feel risky. The song needs the long quiet stretch so that this break registers as a change in the way the singer has been holding back.

King answers the sung complaint with short bends, then carries the same way of phrasing into the guitar break. The riff underneath holds its shape, so the small delays and held notes in the lead stand out. He can make the guitar sound like it has one more thing to say without interrupting the pace of the backing band.

Richard Lloyd's shorter solo after the second chorus still keeps close to the melody. Tom Verlaine takes longer to bring the whole band to a peak after the next chorus. Hearing the first lead gives you a scale for the second, and the return to a verse after the peak makes the whole detour part of the song's shape.

Samantha Fish's slide makes long notes buckle and slip at the edges. The vocal has spent its time pushing back against the demand to be tougher, and the guitar can throw the same challenge back with fewer words. The steady beat gives those sharper little turns somewhere to land.

Eddie Van Halen's break sounds like a sudden escalation, with quick, high runs and bends that seem to test the limits of the beat. Jackson's chorus can come back on the other side with its balance intact. The solo gives the confrontation a few seconds of danger without taking the song away from the dance floor.

Annie Clark keeps the song on a rigid electronic pulse as the narration gets stranger. The guitar break darts in little spurts and streaks, like a sudden release of the nervous energy the verse has been containing. It gives the chase an ending the words do not have to spell out.