Credit: Far Out / Mick Mingle / Freestocks

‘Stairway to Heaven’ vs ‘Comfortably Numb’: Which is the definitive rock guitar solo?

Thu 30 January 2025 13:00, UK

There’s no set magic that comes with writing a great guitar solo. Some of the best players know that the best way to play is to serve the song, and the most celebrated lead lines of all time don’t come from someone showing off their technique but rather hearing the tune and playing what suits the song properly. When talking about the greatest rock and roll solos of all time, it normally comes between two main attractions that find themselves at the top of the list: ‘Comfortably Numb’ by Pink Floyd and ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin.

It’s not like both aren’t worthy inclusions, either. The biggest appeal behind both of them is that they take the listener on a journey with their melodies and sprawl out over long stretches of time, but in terms of history and legacy in rock and roll, is there a proper way to judge them both on the same metric?

Well, both of them have been around for over 40 years, and listening back to what each of them has done to the history of rock and roll, it’s easy to judge both of them on three simple criteria. First, we’ll look at how impressive it was for the time, then the note choices, and most importantly, the impact that the song has made on the culture at large.

In terms of being impressive, there’s a good chance that David Gilmour himself would say that Jimmy Page belongs in a separate class by himself for showmanship alone. Even if he started out a little bit sloppy playing tunes like ‘Heartbreaker’ during Led Zeppelin’s prime, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is still his crowning achievement, if only for the amount of fury it has behind it, like the midsection where he makes the guitar sound like it’s crying and then answering himself by overdubbing those beautiful slide parts.

And while both of Gilmour’s solos contain those same bluesy flourishes, his playing is far more clinical by comparison. Then again, that also means that his note choices are a lot better, especially in the first solo he plays, where he seems to have the same phrasing that someone would get if they heard the tune sung by a vocalist. And since the ending solo revolves around the character Pink slowly losing his grip on reality, those rolling pentatonic licks do a much better job at telling that story, as opposed to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ sounding like the listener is being pulled down to hell.

But the hardest thing to judge both artists on is the impact that they’ve made. Both of them have made great strides in hard rock, but when looking at the people who have emulated what Led Zeppelin has done over the years, it’s easy to see people sticking with a holding pattern. The world will never get tired of hearing them on the radio, but there’s a bit of a disconnect when thinking about how ‘Stairway to Heaven’ begat many artists that did the same thing, like Greta Van Fleet or Wolfmother.

Whereas if you look at musicians who were influenced by Pink Floyd, you will see people who are equally as interested in pushing things forward. Even if someone wasn’t directly influenced by their sound, a song like ‘Comfortably Numb’ helped inspire acts like Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails to dream bigger and make music that’s a bit more adventurous than before, even if they hadn’t even heard of Dark Side of the Moon.

So while it’s not exactly fair to judge both guitarists on one of their solos, ‘Comfortably Numb’ does beat out ‘Stairway to Heaven’ not only in terms of stylistic choices but also what it meant for rock and roll going forward. Page’s guitar licks may have been the sound of someone reaching musical Mount Olympus, but Gilmour made the kind of solo that was both beautifully fluid and capable of moving the genre into new areas.