10 Greatest Rock Music Guitar Solos Of The 2000s
1. Blackbird - Alter Bridge
In 1968, The Beatles released a song called Blackbird, a soft, finger-picky ballad based on Paul McCartney’s view on race relations in the US.
In 2007, American hard rock band Alter Bridge released a different song called Blackbird, and it was… well, it was different.
This song, written for a friend of singer Myles Kennedy’s who died as it was being finished, Blackbird is an eight-minute long behemoth. Soft in parts, cacophonous in others, it features all the things that make Alter Bridge such an exciting band to follow. And then there are the two solos.
They run back-to-back with Kennedy taking the first one and Mark Tremonti (formerly of Creed) picking up the baton. Tremonti is one of the most underrated guitarists of his generation and Kennedy’s no slouch either, and the two together are pure magic.
A sprawling combination of slow, deliberate notes and all-out shredding, Blackbird’s centrepiece isn’t just stirring, it's award-winning, as readers of Guitarist magazine voted it the greatest guitar solo of all time in 2011. Of all time.
Take that, The Beatles! What did they ever do anyway…