Great songs with terrible solos

relic245

KKJale said:

Great Lennon/McCartney-style Slade balled. JIm Lea played guitar. Dave Hill looks embarrassed to even mime it  

Wow, that is poor Still he must have been pretty embarassed to be dressed up like that and just playing cowboy chords in the world's most simple strumming pattern anyway. 

Why was Dave Hill mimining someone else's solo anyway? Did he hot actually play guitar in slade? 

Rocker

Someone mentioned The Beatles.  'Let it be' is a great song with an awful solo tacked on...

thomasross20

Really surprised that SCOM and Robert Palmer's "addicted to love" (not "lube" as my phone tried to type!!) were mentioned. That Robert Palmer solo is sexy!!

ICBM

Modern one...

Paolo Nutini - Jenny Don't Be Hasty



Maybe not a 'great' song, but not a bad one... until the solo, which sounds like someone who *can* play trying to be cool by pretending they can't. Just shit.


Just realised this is a very old thread and I said the same thing on the first page! Oh well... I haven't learned to love it in the mean time.

Sympathy For The Devil is still brilliant though, anyone who thinks it isn't has their ears painted on .

skay

Rocker said:

Someone mentioned The Beatles.  'Let it be' is a great song with an awful solo tacked on...

I'd agree about the single version, but the album version is vastly better, one on my favourites from George on his tele!

eSully

Six feet deeper - Winery Dogs. I think it's a cracker of a song but that solo does nothing for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlBXQUx9B7c

RandallFlagg

U2's Gloria, dreadful solo that is even more prominently abysmal on the live version on ‘Under A Blood Red Sky’. After some wishy washy, fairly out of tune slide work by The Edge Bongo enthusiastically shouts out “Adam Clayton” as he launches into the plunk plunk plink plonk ham fisted bass solo, then just when you think the song is about to collapse, Bongo pipes up again and bellows out “This is The Edge” and there's a pause that seems to last forever and Edgy boy pulls out a simple two chord “solo” motif and lets it hang there. Truly appalling.

check out around 3m 20s and treat yourself:

https://youtu.be/yohnJNx8M3g

randerson

Every Santana song

schrodinger1612

Yngwie Malmsteen. Any song. If I want a bunch of sped up technical exercises I’ll listen to Mel Bay

EricTheWeary

schrodinger1612 said:

Yngwie Malmsteen. Any song. If I want a bunch of sped up technical exercises I’ll listen to Mel Bay

You’ll have to remind me which of Yngwie’s fits the category Great Songs With Terrible Solos. 

Jalapeno

RandallFlagg said:

U2's Gloria, dreadful solo that is even more prominently abysmal on the live version on ‘Under A Blood Red Sky’. After some wishy washy, fairly out of tune slide work by The Edge Bongo enthusiastically shouts out “Adam Clayton” as he launches into the plunk plunk plink plonk ham fisted bass solo, then just when you think the song is about to collapse, Bongo pipes up again and bellows out “This is The Edge” and there's a pause that seems to last forever and Edgy boy pulls out a simple two chord “solo” motif and lets it hang there. Truly appalling.

check out around 3m 20s and treat yourself:

https://youtu.be/yohnJNx8M3g

Completely agree.  A howler that should never have made the album ! (and I'm a U2 fanboi)

TheOtherDennis

57Deluxe said:

just listen to the bollocks that this solo is!



Bet you never noticed before???

Jimmy Page apparently once said that was the worst solo he'd ever heard.

In terms of musicality and harmony with the chords and notes in the rest of the song, it's appalling.

In terms of energy, drive, anger and just plain old howling rock'n'roll, I think it's brilliant. (I also found it an utter bastard to replicate. Couldn't get anywhere near it when I tried to learn it once.)

easyrazors

Greatest bad solo of all time, played appropriately deadpan:  

Philly_Q

In a similar vein to the above, terrible but brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgqa3cVOxUc

Roland

Faith - George Michael

jaymenon

Rainbow: Stone Cold
Huey Lewis: Power Of Love
Derek & Dominoes Layla: Outro Solo ( horribly out of tune) 
The Beatles: All You Need Is Love
Foreigner: Hot Blooded 
Deep Purple: Strange Kind Of Woman

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

'Fly Away' by Lenny Kravitz - there's no bad playing, it's just the most pointless solo of all time!

ICBM

Dontgiveupyourdayjob said:

'Fly Away' by Lenny Kravitz - there's no bad playing, it's just the most pointless solo of all time!

But it’s also an utterly dreadful song.

Haych

ICBM said:

Dontgiveupyourdayjob said:

'Fly Away' by Lenny Kravitz - there's no bad playing, it's just the most pointless solo of all time!

But it’s also an utterly dreadful song.

We used to play that one in one of my old bands - when I say "my", that's just to denote I was in the band - it certainly wasn't my choice of song and I used to cringe and do a Derek Trucks through the entire song.  Hated it then, still hate it now. 

Back on topic I'll throw this on in the ring, not a bad solo in that it works well with the song but Iain Harvey must have been hitting the booze particularly hard the day he came up with this, the intro is more of a solo than the actual solo.  Fast forward to about 2:05 for the actual, ahem, solo.

Funkfingers

bloodandtears said:

So Lonely by The Police. such a shame and waste of talent ...  or maybe I just don't get it?!?!

In the early days of The Police, when they were still pretending to be "punk", any form of conspicuous musicianship was all but verboten. Summers was expected to be grateful if he was allowed eight bars over which to wail. 

Worse, some of the early Police guitar recording contributions were by Stewart Copeland. 

It is also true to say that many of those recordings were made in double quick time. There is a fair amount of throwaway content from all concerned.