The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time

By Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Contact Rolling Stone by Email View all posts by Rolling Stone May 4, 2026

All hail the guitar solo — one of the most indestructibly great art forms in all of modern music. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of a glorious six-string explosion — a long, twisted, never-ending saga that stretches from “Free Bird” to “Purple Rain,” from “Johnny B. Goode” to “Eruption.” Some classic solos come from virtuoso shredders; others are just a blast of awesomely sleazy licks. But they’ve all burned their way into our brains.

Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time is a full-blast mix of different genres, generations, grooves. We travel all over history, with blues pioneers, hippie jammers, punk rockers, metal warriors, funkateers. We’ve got surfers, stoners, starship troopers, and steely knives. We’ve got legends like Jimmy Page, Jerry Garcia, and Jimi Hendrix, alongside seasoned slingers St. Vincent and John Mayer, and young rebels like Geese and MJ Lenderman. Some are solos that always make you hum in the car, or play air guitar using the nearest vacuum cleaner. A few you could even sing in the shower. (Hey, we don’t judge. Guitar worship is a sacred thing.) We didn’t include any jazz (Les Paul and Mary Ford’s “How High the Moon” is a pop tune by a guy with a jazz background), and a few entries are instrumentals.

The criterion isn’t sales or airplay — just the six-string brilliance on display. We also took into account that the solo makes the song, and that it doesn’t just repeat the melody line. (A bonus: if you can sing it note-for-note.)

As you can imagine, the arguments we had assembling this list got louder than the final minute of “Voodoo Chile.” Note: This is about solos, not riffs, which is why our Deep Purple classic is “Highway Star” instead of “Smoke on the Water.” Some of these stretch out for double-digit minutes, exploring the cosmos. Others just need a few seconds to make their impact. But a guitar trip can be a cry from the heart, full of rage, joy, hunger, pain, or maybe all at once.

Some of these 100 solos are influential cult classics; others are so universally beloved they’re banned at your local guitar shop. Every fan would compile a different list, and that’s the point. But it’s a salute to the guitar-solo tradition and all the rituals that go with it. So crank up the volume, and read this list loud.

Photographs in Illustration By

Gus Stewart/Redferns/Getty Images; Echoes/Redferns/Getty Images; Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Larry Marano/Getty Images; James Kriegsmann/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images;  John Atashian/Getty Images; Chris Walter/WireImage/Getty Images; Richard E. Aaron/Redferns; Gie Knaeps/Getty Images

• AC/DC, ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’

  

  The giant ringing chords, platonically perfect snare drum sound, and throat-bleeding vocals of “You Shook Me All Night Long” set a daunting standard, but Angus Young manages to somehow take a perfect song even higher with a taut, lascivious, no-note-wasted solo. With its shuddering vibrato, major-minor contrasts, and steady build, it’s a quick, little Ph.D.-level school on the art of rock lead playing, all from a guy in schoolboy shorts. It’s impossible to imagine a change to even a single bend or flourish. Young’s “solos always had a purpose,” Joe Perry once said. “Instead of using all the traditional tricks, he found a way to get inside those licks and be inventive.” —Brian Hiatt