Seeing as I can never make up my mind about which solo to figure out each week, I decided to apply some sort of structure to my weekly lesson series. I was thinking about doing another Bon Jovi tune, and when I saw that “Wanted Dead or Alive” was number 100 on Guitar World’s list of the 100 greatest solos, the choice was simple.
This list was chosen by their readers, so it shows their biases; there isn’t a single jazz player on the list, no country, very few straight blues, and few songs that predate 1968 (with the only entry from the 50’s being Johnny B Goode. So, while I find the idea of the “greatest solos ever” not including Rock Around the Clock, Au Privav, and other landmark recordings to be quite silly, all the solos on the list ARE great.
However, there seem to be several versions of this list! I purchased the book which purported to contain the 100 solos from that poll, intending to use it as a master list, only to discover that the solos were not ranked in the book. I assume this was due to publishing rights as there were a few guitarists who had multiple solos on the list, but not in the book. Those that were omitted were just replaced with other solos (some of which are odd choices, but still excellent solos).
There are two versions of this list I will be working from, which you can find below. I will be working my way backwards from #100 to #1. Whenever these ranked lists differ, I will pick whichever song is actually in the book (or whichever I prefer should neither be in there). I won’t be learning these solos from the book though, as the point of me doing these regular videos is to buff up my own transcription skills.
So, publishing rights sorta mucked up my initial plan, but I think this will still be very fun.
Here are the lists:
RateYourMusic
And here is a video where I basically say everything you just read: