Listen to the great guitarists of the Fifties. They didn't do that nasty sort of industrial distortion. They played musical compositions as solos - Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallup, Django Reinhardt. There wasn't a bad note in any of those solos. I listened to that and stayed with those rules.

Jeff Beck

I'll get up there and I'll do my guitar solos in one of those space outfits.

Ace Frehley

I'm not into solos, I'm into lyrics.

Adam Jones

Music can be useful during training to help get you psyched, and I still listen to music on easy climbs or in the gym. But during cutting-edge solos or really hard climbs, I unplug. There shouldn't be a need for extra motivation on big days, be it music or anything else. It should come from within.

Alex Honnold

I love my climbing shoes. Virtually all of my big solos have been in the TC Pros. They are the most important thing when I'm soloing.

Alex Honnold

With solos, I don't like to be too prepared going in - I like to surprise myself.

Alex Lifeson

It was by listening to Goodman's band, that I began to notice the guitarist Charlie Christian, who was one of the first musicians to play solos in a big band set-up.

Alvin Lee

My solos are more tastefully conceived now. But I still get going in places. It's just that I build up to it now. I don't race off on a solo. I take my time.

Alvin Lee

I don't regard myself as a soloist. It's a color; I put it in for excitement. It's not great loss if a solo has to go. We've made songs without solos.

Angus Young

Most people can do what I do - they can do guitar solos - but they can't do a good, hard rhythm guitar and be dedicated to it.

Angus Young

Like, even going to Duke Ellington School of the Arts, like, they slept on me. I think they thought I was talented, but for whatever reason, they didn't want to give me a lot of solos or any type of just love like that. But I don't know. I think that's what encouraged me to grind so hard.

Ari Lennox

Nowadays I get complaints about long drum solos, but in those days they wanted me to keep on going so they could go over to the bar and have a drink.

Aynsley Dunbar

You can go crazy and play solos in the right place, and that's great because it can intensify and bring an emotional lift. But the thing is you don't want to get in the way of the song.

Benmont Tench

I didn't want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through.

Brian Setzer

That was very flattering, meeting Steve Vai and hearing his stuff, because he was kind of a fan, even though we kind of dumbed down what he was doing and what people were doing in the '80s. We weren't doing solos; we were doing sounds and all this creepy, trippy stuff.

Brian Welch

Steve Van Zandt, the poor guy, doesn't get to play enough as it is with me hogging a lot of the solos. Steve has always been a fabulous guitarist. Back from the day when we were both teenagers together, he led his band and played lead and was always a hot guitar player.

Bruce Springsteen

I don't labour over my lead guitar solos; they're better just caught in the moment.

Bryce Dessner

That's the exact concept behind the music: to take that kind of, I guess whatever you want to call it, jazz sensibility - but not have it be about solos.

Charlie Hunter

I don't like drum solos, to be honest with you, but if anybody ever told me he didn't like Buddy Rich I'd right away say go and see him, at least the once.

Charlie Watts

In the '90s, guitar solos were dead.

Chris Daughtry

I used to hear all these guys on 78s at my mother's when I was a teenager... I used to daydream that I was onstage playing the solos; I'm playing with B.B. King, and I'm playing with Lowell Fulsom, Jimmy McCracklin. And I literally ended up being in a band that backed them up at different clubs.

Cynthia Robinson