I learned to play guitar solos because I thought people, specifically girls, would like me if I got good at them. This is a lie born in Hell’s anus. Sure, being in a band is good for meeting girls, but being able to rip a burning solo only impresses one group of people: other dudes.
I believe that the Devil, in conjunction with bands like Van Halen, Guns n Roses, and others, concocted this lie in order to lure unsuspecting young men into hour upon hour of carefully studying cryptic musical notation — known as “tablature” — in hopes that their efforts might someday be paid back in the form of face-pressed titties.
The Devil does this because, quite simply, he’s an asshole. He wants people to suffer. And maybe he gets a kickback from Fender and Gibson probably too.
Have you ever seen tablature? Here’s the tablature, or “tab,” for the intro to Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N Roses:
How the hell are you gonna turn this gibberish into titties? You aren't. That's how.
Do you know how long I stared at those dashes and numbers to learn how to play that intro? I don’t either! At a certain point my brain just gave up recording memories, chucking incoming information from by eyeballs straight into the trash.
What I do remember is playing that intro in Ms. Bellinger’s Homeroom in 7th grade. Hell yeah, I brought my acoustic guitar to school, son. Do you think 7th grade hotties are gonna come to my parents’ house to hear me jam? Hell no! Gotta go where the action is.
I stood up, the other kids fumbling around doing whatever you do in Homeroom. Ms Bellinger marking papers at her desk. I grabbed my axe, put my foot on my desk chair — because I didn’t have a strap for the guitar — and ripped into the opening notes of the most popular song in the land.
Shit yeah, bitches! Get a load of this skill!
Now, at the end of Slash’s intro W. Axl Rose begins to whine and gyrate like a weirdo, but I just sort of trailed off at that point. With a high-powered song like that one, the intro should be plenty. Besides, I couldn’t sing worth a damn, and I’m a bass in any case.
Nothing happened. I looked around. None of the girls were even looking at me. A few were making friendship bracelets and chatting to one another. What the hell?
So I played it again. And again. Finally I got some attention! Yes! One of the hottest girls in my class turned to look at me. She opened her pretty mouth, probably to invite me to a party at her rich parents’ house.
“Play a whole song!” she said.
Looking back now, I know that a fat awkward kid with no friends who can rip a rad solo is like a diseased, mangy housecat who can crap in the people toilet. Great trick and thanks for the effort, but you still ain’t getting petted.
The Ms. Bellinger’s Homeroom me did not understand this, though. What about Van Halen’s “Jump?” It had a badass guitar solo which led into a badass keyboard solo played by the same dude. Why would they do that if it didn’t result in women? Most of their songs were about girls, surely they knew what they were doing.
And what about AC/DC’s “Back in Black?” It has two — two! — guitar solos, and neither one is what you’d call short.
In high school I had a guitar teacher who was a certified badass. He wore snakeskin boots, smoked Marlboro Light 100′s, and had a crotch bulge that made it seem af if he was smuggling cantaloupes down his pants in quarter-round segments.
“The guitar,” quoth he, “is an extension of your dick.”
And that’s exactly why girls don’t care about guitar solos. You might as well be vigorously pleasuring yourself.
Take heed, young hopeful guitarists! Actually I don’t think they’re in much danger as the guitar solo doesn’t seem to figure prominently in today’s popular music, but still.
The Devil will lie to you if he can.