10 Best Rock Guitar Riffs Of The 1980s
2. I Want It All - Queen (1989)
Slash, eat your heart out... this is how you grab peoples' attention.
If it wasn't enough to open this track up with Freddie Mercury eliciting one of his classic vocal performances, Brian May then had to rip the most explosive guitar lead of the decade. This track was classic hard rock, you had a simple driving chord progression laying the foundations for May to tear up the fret board.
May doesn't really let up throughout this song. There's moments when he reins it in, punctuating the verses with a couple licks here and there, but he comes back around with a number of mid song solos that are equally as exciting as the initial opening riff.
And, all this was going on beneath the vocal power of Freddie Mercury. Was there ever a guitarist/frontman duo that was able to display a more emotionally stirring brand of rock?
Sadly this number never got the treatment it deserve and was only played live after Freddie Mercury died in 1991. But, it remains one of the bands most defining tracks.