10 Alt Rock Songs That Are Impossible To Play On Guitar

Before grunge was even part of our regular vocabulary, there was no way to put a band like Jane's Addiction in any particular box. Though they may have had the kind of funky sounds that we would get out of bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, how would you even categorize some of their heavy sections, which sounded like the greatest metal song that Parliament Funkadelic ever wrote? These guys seemed to be making Led Zeppelin by way of funk half the time, and Been Caught Stealing is the kind of James Brown pastiche that we never knew we needed.

Going into the solo, you can hear Dave Navarro practically revving up for his moment, favoring the lower end of the neck and squeezing the life out of his strings before going on his signature runs. While most alt rock guitar players wanted to serve the song, Navarro was always about cutting to the chase and shredding, with some leads that sound so clean and precise they would make the likes of hair metal bands a little jealous.

This is still about the funky side of the spectrum though, and Dave's stabbing chords on the back half of the solo work perfectly playing off of Perry Farrell's vocals, almost operating as a discount horn section in the song before we get back to the funk strumming on the verses. Alternative rock may have been more about playing from the heart, but they didn't mean that we couldn't throw down the gauntlet when we wanted to.