The Thrill Is Gone

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.

There’s a moment halfway through Nickelback’s massive 2005 hit Photograph in which singer Chad Kroeger’s voice fades away and a chiming acoustic-guitar passage plays out over a couple of bars. Older music fans — those familiar with the performers Nickelback has been accused of ripping off — might have felt a twinge of expectation: if this song had come out 10 years ago, this is where the guitar solo might have begun.

Instead of some fretboard sizzling, Photograph returns to another verse of Kroeger’s musings on visually inspired nostalgia. The fact that Nickelback, a defiantly un-hip band that hews closely to the dictates of mainstream radio, would forsake a guitar solo indicates how much this longstanding rock-music staple has fallen out of favour.

Not long ago, an instrumental guitar passage was a prerequisite for any respectable rock song; tracks like Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine, AC/DC’s Back in Blackand the theme to Top Gun felt like threadbare excuses for extensive axe-wielding. Eighties pop hits like David Bowie’s Let’s Dance or Michael Jackson’s Beat It featured guest appearances from noted soloists — Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eddie Van Halen, respectively — to attract a rock audience. Nirvana’s 1991 anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit might have signalled a plate-shift in the pop-culture landscape against corporate rock, but it wasn’t revolutionary enough to eschew a solo.

These days, it’s hard to find much six-string noodling in any rock music. In the 1990s, even indie rock had guitar heroes, like Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis, whose solos were long and sloppy but full of reckless charm, and the Pixies’ Joey Santiago, whose inspired, angular playing suited singer Black Francis’s abstract, Magnetic Poetry lyrics. Now, indie-ish guitar bands like the White Stripes or Franz Ferdinand go solo-free. Even the bands you’d most expect to feature extensive lead-playing — hard-rocking all-guy groups like Audioslave and Slipknot — don’t bother with them.

“It’s not trendy enough to do guitar solos,” suggests Mike McCready, lead guitarist for Pearl Jam. “Maybe people aren’t writing songs that they think need guitar solos, or people are telling them not to do that. I want them to come back.”

The issue arises in one memorable scene in Some Kind of Monster, the 2004 documentary about the making of Metallica’s album St. Anger. In an unintentionally hilarious discussion, the iconic metal band argues about leaving out guitar solos entirely from the album. “We started talking about the idea of the guitar solo as... something that’s a little outdated,” drummer Lars Ulrich informs lead guitarist Kirk Hammett.

Not so young anymore: Angus Young of AC/DC during a 2000 performance in Devore, CA. Photo: Vaughn Youtz/Stringer/Getty Images.

“That’s so bulls---,” replies Hammett, obviously wounded. “If you don’t put a guitar solo in one of these songs, it dates it to this period.” (Hammett would lose the fight; no solos ended up on St. Anger.)

Some, like Warren Kinsella, author of the punk history Fury’s Hour, are shedding no tears over this development. According to Kinsella, lead-guitar breaks are no longer in fashion “because they suck. They represent the zenith of rock ’n’ roll onanism. Because they are boring. Because they add nothing to the melody. Yuck.”

Solos endured for decades because they served practical purposes. They provided the listener a break from the singer’s voice; the singer, conversely, wouldn’t have to think up another verse — or, God forbid, write an entirely new bridge — to fit between choruses. They allowed a band’s guitar player time in the spotlight.

Over the decades, it evolved. Solos in the 1950s to mid-’60s were mini-compositions within a song, eight-bar passages that both ornamented and toyed with the melody of the verse. At that time, instrumental guitar bands like the Shadows and the Ventures were the apex of hip, and lead guitarists from vocal groups often brought a nimble, sometimes twangy sheen to their solos. George Harrison’s layered, chiming work on the Beatles song And Your Bird Can Sing is one example of how an already cool song can be elevated by a great lead-guitar part.

Guitar gods like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton moved the solo to a more improvised, blues-based style. Once hemmed in by the length of a song’s verse, solos swelled to indefinite lengths. The guitar break was no longer a component of the song but a freestanding, often orgiastic reaction to it. At best, these leads added another texture of feeling to a song. In his instrumental rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner (first played live in 1968), Hendrix created noises with amplifier distortion, feedback and his guitar’s tremolo bar to echo the sounds of destruction and carnage of the Vietnam war — at least that’s how some music critics interpreted it. Clapton and Duane Allman’s duelling axes on the Derek and the Dominoes track Layla (1970) created the tension and frenzy needed for a song about loving your best friend’s wife. In the ’70s — the era of stadium rock and double live albums — the soloing of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Peter Frampton sometimes went upwards of 20 minutes.

That decade also saw the emergence of punk rock, which may have represented the guitar solo’s first setback. Reacting to the bombast and self-indulgence of mainstream rock, punks made a virtue of their inability to play well. Kinsella, who played in the Calgary punk group the Hot Nasties, recalls how “one guy in an early incarnation [of the band] was kicked out for starting to play Stairway to Heaven in front of the rest of us.” Bands like the Ramones never played solos; the Sex Pistols played them in a sloppy, half-assed way, taking the majestic piss out of this convention in the same snotty manner that Sid Vicious paid “tribute” to Frank Sinatra’s My Way. In the 1980s, a decade where classical-inspired guitarists like Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen played like speed-addicted bumblebees, bands like U2 and R.E.M. built songs around distinctive guitar parts without soloing.

It was only in the 1990s that the guitar solo became un-cool. Punk-influenced groups like Nirvana and Green Day turned the technically adept “guitar wizard” into a laughingstock overnight. Green Day skipped solos completely, while Nirvana played simple solos that rehashed the song’s main melody. Both groups emphasized honesty and directness over virtuosity; trying to shock and awe audiences with hot licks now seemed shallow and pathetic. The increasing dominance of hip hop also ushered the guitar solo towards irrelevance.

Big hairy deal: Slash, formerly of Guns 'n' Roses and now a member of Velvet Revolver, playing his axe at the one-year anniversary party for 944 magazine in Las Vegas in July. Photo Ethan Miller/Getty Images.

The 1990s saw an increasing number of women playing in bands, which some say has influenced the decline of the solo. “You never heard Bikini Kill or the Slits playing guitar solos,” observes Kinsella, “because they knew it was a dumb, rock, male thing.”

Singer and guitarist Carla Gillis, who plays solos in the Vancouver band Bontempi, disagrees. “There still aren’t that many of us out there — especially on guitar. You’d need a huge number of women to make a difference and, unfortunately, women still aren’t major players in rock music.” Gillis, who was part of the all-female Halifax band Plumtree in the 1990s, mentions other female soloists like Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney), Nancy Wilson (Heart), Allison Robertson (the Donnas).

A fan of both Randy Rhoads and Neil Young’s guitar work, Gillis believes the solo is ready to make a comeback. She sees the emergence of the tongue-in-cheek guitar solo, one that winks at the ludicrousness of noodling while also indulging in it, as one way for bands to overcome their hesitation. The Canadian punk-pop band Sum 41, for instance, playfully mashes up goofy rap lyrics with a speed-metal solo in their 2002 ode to rock, What We’re All About.

“[Sum 41] completely embrace the ironic guitar solo,” says Gillis, “and everything else that is funny about heavy metal. You can tell they actually love that style of music.” Gillis cites soloing on recent albums by the Strokes, the Fiery Furnaces and Deerhoof as evidence of a resurgence. “I think, deep down, people do love the guitar solo,” she says, “but are sometimes embarrassed to admit it.” (Also currently popular are internet videos of young men shredding on their guitars in a completely un-ironic manner. These clips suggest that while soloing might be impressive, it’s still another activity that guys do alone in their bedrooms.)

It remains to be seen whether critics’ darlings like Deerhoof will help usher in a new lead-friendly era. One thing is certain: by the time Nickelback starts playing guitar solos, hipster music fans will be ready to reject them again.

Kevin Chong is a Vancouver writer. His book Neil Young Nation is published by Douglas & McIntyre.

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