10 Alt Rock Songs That Are Impossible To Play On Guitar

Ever since Mike McCready joined Pearl Jam, he always seemed to wear his love of the blues rockers on his sleeve. Just one listen to a song like Yellow Ledbetter will tell you that this guy worships at the alter of Jimi Hendrix, with different solo runs that have the same kind of effect that the solo in Little Wing does. There's more ways to play the blues than just Hendrix, and the opening to Vs. was the kind of madness taken out of Stevie Ray Vaughan's playbook.

While Vs. on the whole is the more punk leaning experience from Pearl Jam, the metallic sounds of Go are undercut with Mike's bluesy leads, going on long solo runs that seem to have more in common with hair metal than they do with blues. Much like Stevie, a solo like this is much more about creating a vibe for the music, going through fast runs while also trying to make every note mean something, in this case just a barrage of noise to add to the intensity of Eddie Vedder's vocals.

Mike was always the one member of Pearl Jam that always had a soft spot for hair metal, and this is the kind of solo that Eddie Van Halen would have respected, taking the basics of blues from Clapton and turning it into something much more exciting when you turned the amp up to 11. While it was this kind of playing that gave Pearl Jam a bad name for their cock rock style, there's nothing wrong with these leads as long as you have the right feel behind it.