10 Alt Rock Songs That Are Impossible To Play On Guitar

Half of the battle of Britpop revolved around getting things back to the bare essentials. Just like the grunge rockers across the pond, the sounds of Oasis and Blur were about taking things back to the glory days of rock and roll, which didn't involve the long stretched out solos that started to become far more prominent in the era of hair metal. There were exceptions though, and History might as well be one long guitar solo by itself.

Coming out of the La's, John Power's first record with Cast had what sounded like a synthesizer being hammered out through most of History, but what you're hearing here is actually an electric guitar. Throughout the entire piece, guitarist Liam Tyson is tapping his way through the entire song on the neck of his guitar, with the right amount of effects added into the mix to swirl around your head as the track goes on. While you can call this whole song a solo if you wanted to, the right magic comes a few minutes in when Liam starts bouncing around the vocals, almost acting as a second melody line throughout the song before finally crashing into a flurry of noise at the end.

Solos like this may have been frowned upon at the time, but you also weren't going to see people like Slash or even Kim Thayil from Soundgarden pull out something weird like this around the same time either. In between the Graham Coxons and Noel Gallaghers of the world, the guitar part to History is the moment where Eddie Van Halen and the Edge collided into one sound.