ALL THE WAY UP TO ELEVEN, eh? Pah. Here’s Twelve Sumptuous Solos, an unabashed six-gun salute to virtuosity, dexterity, judiciousness, hand-ear coordination and plain old good taste.
1. Clarence Clemons – Jungleland (Bruce Springsteen and the E St Band – Born To Run)
It took dozens of takes and 16 hours to satisfy Bruce, but boy, was all that rejection worthwhile. The Boss may have written the words, but it’s the Big Man and his mellifluous sax that enable you to smell the streets, see the blood, feel the hope and live the tragedy. “It opened up a lot of channels between Bruce and I,” recounted Clarence. A brass symphony for the ages.
2. Carlos Santana – Song of the Wind (Santana – Caravanserai)
James Marshall Hendrix apart, has any guitarist ever been so integral to a band’s sound and very being? Not from where these ears are sitting. Virtually every Santana track is a series of samba-ised solos by this most pleasant of pluckers, but SOTW is the one that engraved itself on this particular neck of the woods. Sustaining and sustainable, the ultimate showcase for a born show-off who once told me he was proud to have been responsible for the untold (wanted) pregnancies inspired by Samba Pa Ti. As well he ought.
3. Mick Taylor – Time Waits For No-One (Rolling Stones – It’s Only Rock ‘n’Roll)
Harshly neglected, the Stones’ sweetest strummer performed a more than passable impression of primetime Carlos on Sticky Fingers (Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’), then went the full Monty here. Climbing and subsiding again and again, each and every note hits the back of the net with Ronaldoesque precision.
4. Dicky Betts – Blue Sky (The Allman Brothers – Eat A Peach)
Santana’s Southern-fried, countryfied doppelganger (how both adore those tingling high notes). Dixie Dicky at his most majestically laid-back.
5. Duane Allman – Loan Me A Dime (Boz Scaggs – Boz Scaggs)
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed and Whipping Post are commonly touted as the apogee of Duane’s work with the Allmans, yet he saved much of his best for his gigs as a sessioneer, most notably on Laura Nyro’s Map To The Treasure, Wilson Pickett’s rendition of Hey Jude and, above all, this slow-burning, resistance-searing blues.
6. Ray Manzarek – Hyacinth House (The Doors – LA Woman)
He was at his most distinctive and creative when allowed to stretch out – Light My Fire, The End, When The Music’s Over, Riders On The Storm – but this underrated nugget finds that organ tripping light and fantastic. Short, sweet and shamefully irresistible.
7. Jeff Labes – Autumn Song (Van Morrison – Hardnose The Highway)
Labes’ ivory-tinkling was a feature of Morrison’s most fruitful period, as heard to optimum rollicking effect on It’s Too Late To Stop Now, but Cul de Sac (Veedon Fleece), Moondance and this oft-scorned gem illustrated his delicate side. Prettier than pink, lighter than a feather on the Atkins Diet.
8. Jack Schroer – Moondance (Van Morrison – Moondance)
The soundtrack to a million seductions (at a conservative estimate), most vividly the Jenny Agutter shower scene in An American Werewolf In London. Labes’s delectable pianissimo in the middle gives way to Schroer’s raunchy alto, et voila: an instant passport to carnal delight.
9. Denny Dias – Your Gold Teeth II (Steely Dan – Katy Lied)
Industry gossip has it that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are the hardest-to-please taskmasters in popular music history, which probably explains why they drew so many wondrous solos from their elite hired hands, most famously Larry Carlton (Kid Charlemagne), Elliott Randall (Reeling In The Years) and Jay Graydon (Peg). The prime slices of fretwork, though, were the work of original band member Dias, whose remarkable doodling on Aja was trumped by this Wes Montgomery-fuelled trip to jazz heaven. “Holy fuuuuck!” exclaims Fagen on a studio outtake, then emits an indecipherable grunt that can only be classified as orgasmic.
10. Michael Leonhart – Almost Gothic (Steely Dan – Two Against Nature)
As the years wore on, so horns edged ahead of guitars in Becker and Fagen’s affections, culminating in Chris Potter’s near-interminable four-minute tenor blast on Two Against Nature’s West of Hollywood. Phil Woods’s alto tootling on Dr Wu is rightly lionized, yet the bittersweet trumpet interlude to this unlikely love song, succinct, serene and sublime, was even more bodacious.
11. Todd Rundgren – The Last Ride (Todd Rundgren – Todd)
Stately, almost funereal, yet apt to tingle the stoutest spine. Running the gamut from howling metal to yowling cat but with a melodic core, this is Hendrix for those who admire Jimi but aren’t terribly fond of his music.
12. Novi Novog – Losin’ End (The Doobie Brothers – Takin’ It To The Streets)
Bar Geoff Richardson’s luminous stint with Caravan, the History of Violas in Rock is not a conspicuous one. All the more reason, then, to discover this well-concealed, terminally unhip humdinger. Novi’s bowing decorated Purple Rain and Raspberry Beret, she’s played with Michael Jackson, Madonna, Tangerine Dream and even Spinal Tap, but I knew none of that until I checked her CV last week. Had this slow-motion hoedown been her sole contribution to our enrichment, it would have been way more than ample.
