10 Guitar Solos That Changed The Face Of Rock Music Forever

By the time that Led Zeppelin got around to making their fourth record, they already didn't have the best reputation with the music press. After declining different interviews and creating a certain mystique around themselves, the band almost played into the press's hatred for them, doubling down on their creative streak with songs that paid tribute to rock and roll while pushing it forward. Many classics have come and gone in the rock world, but Stairway to Heaven was one of the first songs that felt like you were taken on a journey.

For all of the memes that have come out of the opening guitar line being banned in every guitar store known to man, the real meat of the song comes in the solo section, where Jimmy Page takes his years of playing in the Yardbirds into the stratosphere, blending different bits and pieces of blues with the hard rock sound that he was pioneering. Even with all of the well constructed solos that came out of records like Physical Graffiti, what you're hearing on this solo was pretty much made up on the spot, with Jimmy doubling different parts of the solo in postproduction like the last squeal that leads us into the breakdown section.

There's definitely some connective tissue between each section, but the difference between the folksy intro and this solo is like night and day. Those soft sections were just the prelude, and this solo was the turning point that lit a fire under a new generation of guitar players once they heard it.