Great Guitar Solo #1: 37 Seconds of Brilliance

Does a great guitar solo have to be long? Hell no, here's one of the greatest, which clocks in at barely a half-minute.

Many, if not most, music critics profess to put little value in “Best Of” lists. But critics’ urge to make lists is, I’d say, almost as strong as a beaver’s to build dams. Flip, or scroll, through any music magazine for evidence of the human list-making instinct and you’ll find “The 500 All-Time Greatest Albums,” “The 100 All-Time Greatest Guitarists,” “The 50 Greatest Female Vocalists of the 21st Century So Far,” etc.

I plead guilty to the impulse, though in this case the list is very short. For years, decades, I have carried around in my head three rock guitar solos that never fail to push my button more emphatically than any others, of any genre. There are plenty of great ones that are not on my “Three Most Beloved” list: Prince’s mind-boggling explosion on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, for instance. Not that I would hesitate to call it a great moment in rock history. There’s no Chuck Berry solo on my list—I was too young for Chuck’s greatest to hit me full-force. Nor is there an Eddie van Halen solo, virtuoso though he was. I was listening to too much other stuff when Edward was in his heyday.

I have three all-time favorite guitar solos. But I’m not going to write about all three here. My plans have changed since I started this piece. Halfway through writing about Solo #1, I thought, exhaustedly, “Three of these is going to be way too much stuff for one post. Readers are going to start scrolling down and say, ‘Forget it.’” So I’ll write about one now, and leave the other two for the near future. Everyone will be the happier.

Robbie Robertson, of course, was The Band’s guitarist. The final song on The Band’s second, 1969, album, The Band, is “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)”, the story of a man who abandons his failing farm to become an industrial worker. The guitar solo that closes the song is where Robertson, still only 26, reached his guitar apotheosis. ¹

“Selfless” is not a word one normally associates with Robbie Robertson, who never had a problem taking credit. Yet when The Hawks, The Band’s earlier incarnation, became The Band, Robertson made a genuine sacrifice.

In his years of apprenticeship with The Hawks (1959 to 1965), Robertson worked tirelessly to become the fieriest, flashiest guitarslinger on the rockabilly circuit. Rock guitar of the day didn’t get much more aggressively virtuosic than Robertson’s solo (1:44 to 2:19) on John Hammond’s 1965 version of Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book By the Cover.” Song and solo are in my Substack of May 19, 2024, the second chapter of my four-part series on Robbie Robertson’s apprenticeship. But I’ll repost it here, for ease of comparison.

Here’s one of the highlights of blues singer John Hammond’s 1965 album So Many Roads, including a solo in which the “early,” ie. flashy, Robbie Robertson’s arsenal is on full display. Hammond enlisted the services of three future Band members on the album. For some reason, they’re listed in the credits by their full names: Jaime R. Robertson, Mark Levon Helm and Eric Hudson (the record company left out the organist’s middle name: Garth).

Hammond introduced the Hawks to his friend Bob Dylan, who hired them as the backup band for his momentous 1965-’66 world tour. The tour over, the Hawks repaired to Woodstock, NY, where Dylan lived. During the time they recorded the so-called “basement tapes” with him, they began writing the songs for their first album, Music from Big Pink (1968).

The story of how The Hawks moulted into The Band is circuitous (see below). But even before they were The Band, “We knew one thing for sure,” writes Robertson in his memoir, Testimony: “We were a real band. Everybody played a major role in our balance of musicianship.” So it was that Robbie Robertson traded his guitarslinger’s fury for an understated, ensemble-oriented style. Which, with the occasional exception, remained Robbie’s sound for the rest of his life.

Not long after Music From Big Pink came out, Van Morrison, who lived near Robbie, stopped by to chat while Robbie was at home, “noodling around” as he put it, on his guitar.

“Where did you learn to play like that?” asked Morrison.

“I don’t know,” said Robbie, “it’s just what I picked up along the way.”

The Irishman persisted. “Seriously, where’d you get that kind of playing from?”

“It’s nothing, man,” Robbie said, “just a more understated approach.” It was, of course, much more than nothing; it was the style that Robbie had deliberately chosen for his work with The Band.

Robertson’s solo on “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” is only one chorus, a mere 37 seconds (2:53 to 3:30). Harmonically complex for a rock song, “King Harvest” has 12 chords, not the usual four or five. Robertson solos across eight chords, drawing on them as fluently and imaginatively as any jazzman, but earthier (this is rock & roll). The first 20 seconds are a model of restraint. At 3:12, Robbie ratchets up the intensity level, keeping it high for the rest of the solo.

Apart from its austerity, what makes Robertson’s “King Harvest” solo special is that it owes its greatness to the contribution of a second player. From 3:15 to the end of the song, Robertson and drummer Levon Helm, Robbie’s bandmate for a dozen-plus years, lock in, marvelously attuned to each other. From 3:19 to 3:21, for instance, and again in the solo’s final notes, Levon plays the exact same notes, rhythmically, that Robertson plays melodically. It’s split-second, wordless communication, thrilling to witness.

And solo, song and album are over. Fifty-five years later, these thirty-plus seconds are as electrifying to me as when that 16-year-old first heard them. Listen to “King Harvest (Has Surely Come).” It is magical throughout, but especially so at its final, understated climax.

The cover of the eponymous second album. How did The Band get its name? Backing Dylan on the road and jamming with him in Woodstock, they slowly shed the name “the Hawks” and became essentially nameless. “One morning while I was running some errands in Woodstock at the hardware store,” Robertson writes in Testimony, “I overheard a couple saying, ‘That guy there is with the band. You know, they play with Bob Dylan and stuff.’ When I stopped into the Woodstock Bakery… a patron in the shop referred to me as being in ‘the band.’ There weren’t other bands around town at that time, so we got used to hearing ourselves described like this. On evenings when the boys and I were having a bite at Deanie’s, the main restaurant in town, folks would stop by our table and ask, ‘You making any good music these days?’

“We’d usually answer, ‘We’re trying. Got an album coming out soon.’

“They’d walk away saying, ‘That’s the band. They live up here.’

“I said to Rick, sitting across the table from me, ‘Everybody around here calls us “The Band.”’

“That’s what everybody’s been calling us for nearly two years now,’ said Richard.

“Rick laughed, ‘We are “the Band,” simple as that. All those other silly names bug me. I don’t even like thinking about it.’

“I passed the idea on to Albert [Grossman, Dylan’s and The Band’s manager]. He thought it was perfect, almost like having no name at all.”

1. With keyboardist Garth Hudson’s passing on January 21, 2025, all five members of the original Band are now deceased. Robbie Robertson, who died in 2023, was the next-longest-lived. The Band’s music, as well as the records they made as individuals or as members of other aggregations, will be with us for many years to come.