“He really is the daddy of shredding”: Sophie Lloyd picks her five favourite guitar solos of all time
Guitarist Sophie Lloyd has tackled plenty of solos in her time, boasting a whole YouTube channel of shred covers. Now, she’s revealed her five favourite guitar solos.
In interview with Metal Hammer, Lloyd kicks her list off with an “obvious choice”, albeit a total classic – Eruption by Van Halen, specifically the Live in New Haven version. “Eddie Van Halen is just the biggest inspiration for me,” she explains. “That tapping lick is something I think pretty much all guitarists learnt when they were growing up… I actually used it in my solo I played today!”
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While Lloyd praises Eddie’s technique, she does admit she has a “love-hate relationship” with the song sometimes. “It was my alarm while I was at university,” she says. “It was kind of traumatic for me when I had to wake up early for lectures. But it’s still one of my favourite solos to this day – and he looks so cool when he takes his cigarette and puts it in his guitar. I aim for the day I can be that cool.”
Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd is another pick. “This one has a special place in my heart,” Lloyd begins. “Because I did a shred version of this one on my YouTube channel and I did the original solo. Before this I was very much, you know… let’s shred like crazy! [When] I had to learn this, I really had to adjust my playing style.”
“I think studying the way David Gilmour bends, the way he puts licks together and stuff, just really kind of opened my eyes to playing with feeling and telling a story through your solos,” she continues. “I really credit that as a turning point in my kind of soloing journey.”
Another challenging solo that would help define Lloyd’s style was that of Beast and the Harlot by Avenged Sevenfold. “When I was growing up, I remember thinking and listening to that solo in the car thinking ‘When I can play that, that’s when I’ll finally admit I’m a good guitarist,’” she recalls. “I still won’t admit it, but I can play it!”
“The techniques that Synyster Gates uses are just fucking incredible,” she adds. “His little chromatic runs at the end… he really is the daddy of shredding to a lot of people! And I think he just comes up with such cool, creative ideas. The harmonies with Zacky Vengeance [are also] really cool and really inspiring to me. [Gates is] definitely a guitarist that I look up to. And I think you can see that in my playing.”
Lloyd also gives a nod to Ozzy Osbourne with Crazy Train – quite fitting, considering this weekend saw the Prince of Darkness’ final ever performance with Black Sabbath. “Randy Rhoads, of course, recorded this solo,” she explains. “[It’s just a] masterclass in good rock metal soloing. It’s got so much feeling in it… you feel like you’re on the crazy train with the way he uses his techniques, uses the whammy bar in the solo and does his tapping down. It really kind of portrays that craziness.”
“Again, that was another one [where] I was like, ‘when I can play that, I’ll admit I’m a good guitarist,’” she notes. “And I still won’t admit it! Randy Rhoads is such a big inspiration for me. Like his little techniques and tricks he does, like his finger slides on the fretboard.”
The final pick is November Rain by Guns N’ Roses, a track Lloyd notes as an “all-round beautiful” song. “It’s amazing,” she praises. “They kind of switch up from the slow song to suddenly having this build into this epic solo at the end with the epic bends! And everyone knows that scene with Slash in the wind, everyone wants to recreate that. And I think it’s just something that really stands out in people’s minds as a solo.”
Like most guitarists, Lloyd notes Slash as a standout inspiration. “He’s one of my biggest inspirations of all time,” she says. “I couldn’t not put a Slash solo in there! Again, I did a shred version of that [track], and learning that solo really taught me so much about emotion and putting different notes into different scales to make it sound good according to the backing track and everything.”
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