10 Greatest Guitar Solos Of The '70s
7. Walk This Way - Aerosmith
Aerosmith really got a raw deal at the start of their career. As opposed to being praised as one of the biggest hard rock acts of their generation, many critics simply dismissed the band in the early days as a knock off of bands like the Rolling Stones. Even though there were some parallels between the two, their album Toys in the Attic proved that the band was onto something else entirely.
With one of the greatest backbeats on Earth, Joe Perry turned in one of the greatest riffs of the '70s, which made you want to groove from the minute you heard it. In case that wasn't enough, Perry ends up going off on the solo, keeping everything in the pocket while going through blues licks with funky swagger. The whole song was already a funky romp to begin with, but the solo feels like it could have been hammered out by James Browns’ backing band rather than a hard rock band.
People may have been salty about Aerosmith’s supposed plagiarisms, but after this one song, they were no longer just a run of the mill band. This was a down and dirty swing band that just so happened to play guitars instead of horns.