“Barely playing”: The guitarists Angus Young thought played the best solos
There’s a certain art that comes with putting together the ultimate guitar hero. While most people use however many bars they have for a specific song to go crazy and play whatever comes to mind at the moment, the best guitarists are known to carefully look over every note until they feel that it’s the best solo they could possibly come up with. It’s not necessarily supposed to be rocket science, though, and Angus Young thought that the best solos came out of these blues rockers of yesteryear.
At the same time, has there ever been a guitarist throughout rock history who hasn’t taken from the blues at least once? Even if someone would one day test the limits of what rock and roll could be, some of the biggest ways of getting into the instrument involve sitting on a blues riff and getting that sense of rhythm down before getting into fretboard pyrotechnics.
Even when Young started out on guitar, he was pretty comfortable staying with that traditional pentatonic box that everyone begins with. Despite their reputation as one of the best rock and roll bands of all time, it’s not that hard to get the lion’s share of Young’s lead under your belt, especially if you take notes on where his Chuck Berry-influenced leads had come from when he first started.
But there’s nothing wrong with staying in that lane, either. Young has been playing those solos for years, and even if some of them blend together if listened to on a loop, it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t worked well for them over the years, whether that’s the pure swagger of ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ or the rock and roll abandon of ‘Let There Be Rock’.
Then again, even Chuck Berry had to get it from somewhere, and Young was transfixed by what people like Albert King and Freddie King could do. As much as rock and roll was about speed and intensity, what the Kings came out with was pure soul music out of his guitar, taking every bit of the pain they went through in life and taking it out on that six-string for however long one of their solos lasted.
Compared to the other guitarists of the modern age who wanted to shred first and worry about the song later, Young still felt no one could compare to what the Kings did, saying, “They could play what they’re doing on stage at home. It really sounds like they’re practising scales. And that’s fine, but then, to me, it’s rehearsed. For me, some of the greatest solos are by guys like Freddie and Albert King and they’re barely playing three notes.”
And the fact that they got that much swagger out of the guitar is astounding for their time. Freddie King already had the pedigree of a blues legend, but Albert King, who played a right-handed guitar flipped upside down without changing the strings, had a superhuman guitar skill that no one could really match.
Listening to what Young has been doing as well, he hadn’t lost that pedigree, either, usually taking the basis of a melody in his solos and putting together something magical by weaving a handful of notes in exactly the right way. There are different ways to wow an audience every time someone gets onstage, but it’s sometimes better to give the people what they want than try to challenge them during every song.
