duh-- you’re not supposed to listen to them sober 
Agreed - listen to the solo on “The Night Before” (starts at 1:30)
Link
Add the solo in Can’t By Me Love to that list.
George Harrison became a great guitar player the day he decided to start playing like George Harrison and stopped playing like Chet Atkins.
Chet Atkins? I think it was Carl Perkins… anyway it’s surprising, considering all the musical taste in the group (John, Paul, George Martin), that such atrocities occurred. I guess at the time rockabilly was on a pedestal (Perkins, Elvis, Buddy Holly).
Deep Purple’s lead guitarist was just incompetent. The guitar solo in “Hush” hurts to listen to. They had a great rhythm section and wrote great music, but … good god, that guitarist sucked.
What the?! Where did the black guitarist come from? No sign of him, then all of a sudden there he was. Was he even a member of the band, or was he another performer at that “Jazz” fest coming on stage to jam?
I think he had the autowah (or whatever effect he was using) turned up way too high, because it was turning all the notes he was apparently playing into a sort of monotone “murblemurf” (to coin a bit of onomatopoeia).
ETA: But the bass and drums were tight!
Ritchie Blackmore is an incompetent guitarist? WTF? Have you heard any of the absolutely amazing stuff he’s recorded since then with his own groups? Or is “Hush” one of the songs Deep Purple recorded without Blackmore on the lineup?
Whole Lotta Love
IMHO, the guitar solo is just godawful. Painfully bad.
“Southern Man” is okay if you like Neil Young’s voice and lyrical stylings, until the guitar solo kicks in (and I quote):
twank twanktwank twanktwank twank twanktwank twanktwank twank twanktwank twanktwank
…on and on, and it’s the same frelling note. It’s so bad it undercuts the message of the song for me.
Funny, I like the organ ‘solo’ in “Light My Fire” (IIRC John Densmore compared it to the Raga form in Indian music) and the end of “Baba O’Reilly”, but I don’t like “Layla” or “Free Bird”.
No, no, no - I can’t sit by and not respond to this. The live version on Four Way Street is one of the most sublime pieces of music ever. The guitar duet/battle between Young and Stills is stunning. You can follow it as if you’re reading a story: it’s got twists and turns, it’s galvanising and stimulating. You’re compelled to give it your full attention to follow the narrative.
I thought Black Crowes, touted in some quarters of the music press when their first album was released as the “new Zeppelin”, were totally undermined by a pathetically uninventive guitar soloist. I see from Wikipedia this was originally Jeff Cease, but he was subsequently replaced by Marc Ford (I wonder if the crappy solos were the reason?), but I’ve heard nothing of them since.
Ritchie Blackmore is many things including arrogant and difficult to work with. He is most definitely not incompetent. He is #55 on Rolling Stone’s top 100 Greatest Guitar players of all time.
I will take your word for it as I’ve never heard aught but the radio-play version, but I’m glad the live version is an improvement. For the record, I like Young and CSN/CSN&Y.
As for my original post I should have said “the same frelling chord”, but the rest stands.
The Clash’s “Prisoner.” Good strong song, and then this amateurish sounding guitar wanking at the end. Actually, I feel that way about a number of Clash songs.
But the best answers so far, IMO, Light My Fire and Layla-- I’m not keen on either song, but the wanky solo sections drive me up the damn wall.