Great Guitar Solos 5

Had to include at least one American in the list, and it seems appropriate to go for something off one of Bill Frisell's most American albums, the surpassingly fine Have A Little Faith. Actually I'm not sure he can be regarded as actually playing a solo as such in his version of Madonna's Live To Tell, although the coruscating passage towards the end once the melody has been reprised, before everything breaks down into another free-form jam, probably qualifies, but the whole guitar part is just so heart-breakingly gorgeous I don't care what it might be called. Also I'm assuming some double-tracking has gone on in the studio, but it's done with such perfection that you don't really notice it even when you do.

Curiously the beauty of Mr Frisell's playing seems to be related to the fact that he never quite plays the melody (of itself very beautiful) in its entirety or, as it were, correctly. Of all the solos I've discussed this is the one that comes closest to eliciting tears. As Signor Benedick once put it: Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies? Well, it is so, and there you are.

I recently discovered a live version from 1993 on youtube, and this is also very fine, especially the free-form chunk in the middle which in some ways outdoes that on the studio version, but I just know the studio version so well that I'm utterly enamoured of it (which is a bit unusual for someone who pretty much invariably otherwise prefers his music live.) In fact, I once used the track (in its complete form) in a workshop for teachers on getting kids to write haiku. Don't ask me how, but I did and am inordinately proud of doing so.