Juzt curious...
 
Seen various polls from the past. Music Radar and others. The 12 year old kids have voted to put Stairway to Heaven up in lights as the greatest guitar solo in the universe. Or maybe something like that.
 
Can't get down on the 12 year old kids. There are a wash of savants that can put Eddie Van and the rest of us to third tier. Proof is as far as opening YouTube.
 
Was wondering from the standpoint of you guys and girls who have paid your dues and lived through the trends and the evolution of techniques and styles.
 
What solos (or guitarists) did you hear that made a major impact on your playing style or maybe your life.
 
For me, at least 25 percent of what Rev Hendrix did. Then there was his student (or influenced him... Randy California)
 
Randy's tirade in Street Worm, from "12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus" was over the limit.
 
So many of the defining moments were also an artifact of the era. Something that has since been copied and run rings around, but broke critical ground at the time.
 
Curious, what made you tick, got you thru blood and guts to the place you are now, where you can raise hellfire with the instrument.
 
John

I have to say the first time I heard Eruption, I was blown away. Instantly became a VH fan....every track on that first album was something else (especially for 1976).

JohnKenn 
The 12 year old kids have voted to put Stairway to Heaven up in lights as the greatest guitar solo in the universe. Or maybe something like that.
 

Pretty much everyone acknowledges "Stairway to Heaven" as one of the all-time greats. The reason we started putting "no Stairway" signs in music stores is because we got tired of hearing it---not because it was a bad song. It was too much of a good thing.

The solo from the song "Rejoice" by Phil Keaggy live 1977. The man was simply the best guitar player on the planet in the 70's. He had no peer.
 

We need to define between "lick" and "riff".
 
and of course this is subjective (and I'm limiting it to electric guitar on rock tunes and weighting popular influence on following generations)...
 
"Lick(s)" - The outro solo from Hotel California
 
"Riff(s)" - All Day and all of the Night by the Kinks

I was born in 1970. My mom played Sabbath, Zeppelin, Creedence, and stuff like that. My dad played a lot of Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Beatles. In '76 my mom bought me my first KISS record, and that's when I decided I wanted to play guitar. My folks got me an acoustic guitar and a Mel Bay book, and that was my world for a year or so. But as an 8 year old kid, guitar took a back seat after a while. Then in early 1981, my whole world changed. Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard of Ozz was released. I begged my parents for an electric guitar. Diary of a Madman came out several months later, and blew my mind even more. My parents got me a guitar and a year's worth of lessons for Christmas, and I started my quest. Guitar became an obsession after that. It was all because of Randy Rhoads. He's even the reason I studied classical guitar in college. I have many influences when it comes to guitar, but Randy will alway be the one who inspired me the most.

Oh BTW, my favorite riff is probably Zero The Hero by Black Sabbath, or Over the Mountain off Diary of a Madman.

There's about seven of them, and they are all in one song!

 
 

@leadster...
 
I've always been a rather secular fellow but this was my guit bible as a greasy young metalhead twonk with a guit, amp and a chip on his shoulder...
 
Unfortunately it's a YT playlist but yanno, that's how she goes...
 
Ozzy - Randy Rhoads Tribute

This is gonna get nerdy... ain't it?
 

NTTIAWWT
 
Apparently Rhoads said he just used his classical training and applied them to ripped off EVH techniques... which of course worked spectacularly.
 
At one point I had coaxed some family member to buy me the tab book for "Tribute".
 
ooooohhhhh... I stole so many things... which I am now realizing so much more listening to the original for the first time in years.
 
lulz