Quote:
Originally Posted by Highbury
...David Gilmour. He is not the best technically among those listed, not by a long shot. He does however have a sound that goes right into me and makes me feel the way that I think music should.
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And that's why "Comfortably Numb" is still my fave solo ever - it carries the entire emotional content of the song... which is about not being able to, or more accurately, not
wanting to feel anything at all because what is being felt just seems unbearable. And yet at the end there's this incredible expression of all that anguish which cannot be expressed in any other way. To me, that's what being a great musician is about, and what a great solo is about. He once said in an interview I read years ago that he knew he couldn't whip out as many notes as quickly as some other guys, but that was okay because he wanted every note to contribute something to the entirety of the song, not just be a showcase for his own abilities.
Another guy whose playing I really love that I think falls into the same category is Robbie Robertson. A lot of his stuff with The Band may not be "show off" calibre playing by most standards but it still sounds amazing in the context of those songs.
Reminds me of something I once heard said about Count Basie when he played piano solos in some of his band's songs - they might not be complicated, and there might not be that many notes, but even if it was only eight notes it would be the perfect eight notes played in just the right way at just the right moments. It was what the song needed in order to be even better than it already was, instead of what he needed to play to prove how awesome he was.