Has any album cover ever been so regularly plundered and copied over the years as The Beatles’ ‘Sgt Pepper’? Probably not and ‘Guitar World’ has got in on the act on occasion too, as with their September 1998 edition.
Piecing together a montage of some of the great axe heroes of all-time – and some unexpected names too – they used it to herald their feature on GW readers’ selection of the best 100 solos of all time.
Let’s take a look at the edited highlights shall we?
It comes as no surprise that, at number 1, is the solo from rock music’s unofficial national anthem, Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway To Heaven’. According to guitarist Jimmy Page, “I winged it. I had prepared the overall structure of the guitar parts but no the actual notes. When it came to record the solo, I warmed up and recorded three of them…Every musician wants to do something that will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did that with ‘Stairway’.”
Elsewhere you’ll find Jimi Hendrix, obv., Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kirk Hammett, Kurt Cobain, Dimebag Darrell, Frank Zappa and, as befits the cover, George Harrison.
You can find the whole list and find out more about the solos here.
