You mentioned clarinet and that reminds me of a cool song by War.
Not really a solo, but Jimmy Buffett’s “Hippolyte’s Habitat” uses a machete being hand-sharpened with a stone as rhythm.
Rush’s Losing It features an Electric Violin before those really began happening much.
Not the Beatles though, and short but sweet - Alto Reed on sax at the beginning and end of Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page”
Took his Intro to Jazz class at UCLA. Great guy, unassuming, informative, entertaining. One of those “easy A” type classes used by jocks. Still, a hell of a lot of fun.
Love that disc, one of the first music performance DVDs I ever bought.
I’d forgotten Paul McCandless (woodwind/horn player) was with Oregon for a good while.
(isn’t the sax as common a lead instrument as guitar/bass/etc.?)
anyhoos…
Always went all loopy over how the solo ends with that nifty ascending run!
Trippy mellotron solo here at the one-minute mark in Captain Beefheart’s Ashtray Heart.
Always liked how David Cross’s violin solo starts quietly at around 11:46 and then builds in King Crimson’s Lark’s Tongues Aspic (Part I).
Chick Corea’s “The Mad Hatter” has an awesome bass guitar solo to start side two (on my vinyl record).
Rory Gallagher played Mandolin on “Going to my Hometown” on his Live in Europe album.
Carl Palmer played a percussion synthesizer on “Toccata” on the Emerson Lake & Palmer album “Brain Salad Surgery”
Nitpick: He was playing multiple synthesizers, each triggered by its own drum.
Two Canadian bands, neither of them Rush:
“Undun” by the Guess Who - that’s Burton Cummings playing the flute.
Saga's "No Regrets" concludes with a clarinet solo.