My Best Friend's Girl by The Cars | rhythm & solo
An electric guitar lesson on how to play the rhythm guitar parts and the solo from "My Best Friend's Girl" by The Cars from their debut album released in 1978.
This is another Cars classic. Just three chords in the whole song, but its' the way it's put together that makes it so good. A lot of that is the great guitar parts that Elliot Eaton came up with. Not just the solo, which is killer, but all of the rhythm parts and those cool rockabilly type fills. At the time, the focus was mostly on Ric Ocasek and Benjamin Orr. It only seems in the last few years that Elliot Easton has gotten the attention he deserves as one of the greatest guitar players of the seventies and early eighties. His solo in this is like most of his solos, short and sweet. It may only be 20 seconds long, but it could take years to develop the techniques and the chops to play this one accurately and up to speed! Here's a quote from a Wall Street Journal article: Elliot Easton, lead guitarist The inspiration for my rockabilly riff and solo was the guitar lick from the Beatles’ “I Will.” I mutated it a bit to counter Ric’s strong 8th-note feel. While our song’s melody chords are E, A and B, I played E, C-sharp minor, F-sharp minor and B, to offset them. I played my solo on a new Fender Telecaster I had brought to London along with my Martin D-35 acoustic and Gibson Les Paul Standard. The Fender was twangy to begin with, but we added a little slap-back echo so it sounded fatter and jumped.
Elliot bases a lot of his solos around the chords, not so much the scales and this one is an excellent example of that. Learning it is like a master class on how to construct a guitar solo. I can't stress enough how much you'll improve not only your techniques but also your understanding of the fret board by learning solos like this. I had a great time working on the this song. I always enjoy the challenge of playing EE's solos. They're easy to listen to, and easy to play badly, but a lot harder to really nail them down! I hope you enjoy the videos. Cheers Andy |
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