10 Guitar Solos That Changed The Face Of Rock Music Forever

Rock and roll was never meant to be the most sophisticated genre of music in the world. If anything, the songs that lit up the dance floor back in the '50s felt more like a reaction to what had come in the past few years, getting clogged with far too many big band arrangements coming out of Bing Crosby. There was power in knowing your music theory though, and Brian May essentially created a guitar symphony every time he took a solo.

While Bohemian Rhapsody was practically a masterpiece by itself without May's involvement, his guitar solo was the glue that helped blend everything together, taking the kind of lead break that sounds like it could have been played on a viola if it were released 50 years beforehand. The tone of the solo is decidedly rock though, and you can really hear the aggression that Brian is trying to get out of his guitar here, using a sixpence coin instead of a pick to get more of a ring out of his strings as he plays.

For all of the sophisticated lines though, there are also a handful of sections that seem to be more in line with hard rock, almost throwing together a classical form of shredding when he goes on long runs, before bringing it back down to Earth with the slower sections. There are no rules when it comes to what rock and roll guitar is supposed to be, but Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the few cases where it actually pays to do your musical homework.