Lead

When we guitarists get together to talk great unaccompanied solos, there are a few obvious ones. Van Halen’s “Eruption”. Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker”. Extreme’s “Flight Of The Wounded Bumblebee”. But there’s a criminally overlooked one that really deserves more love: the late, great Gary Moore’s intro solo to “End Of The World” from his album CorridorsOfPower.

This song was recorded back when Moore was dabbling in heavy metal with Ian Paice of Deep Purple on drums and future Black Sabbath member Neil Murray on bass. It’s a killer album, and at the time, Moore’s style had more in common with Eddie Van Halen than the blues. The dude was all about heavily technical ideas at the time.

The centrepiece of the “End Of The World” intro is a descending lick that incorporates open strings as a pedal tone. But we’re not gonna rip off Gary Moore’s lick in this column, because frankly, who has the budget to pay for licensing? So, this is a lick inspired by that one, but it uses a dif ferent scale, goes in a different direction, and throws in a few other little tricks.

Moore’s lick featured a descending minor scale run starting at the 12th fret and moving down to the D string, but we’re going to use the minor pentatonic scale and jump around the fretboard a bit more. This lick takes advantage of the fact that the E minor pentatonic scale includes notes at every open string (doubled, naturally, at the octave on the 12th fret).

Like the Moore lick, we’ll be alternating between fretted and open notes, picking each note in a steady up-down-up-down pattern. You’ll have to leap from the 12th fret to the third in the first phrase, but the open string will buy you time, and you’ll be able to play the lick more accurately if you fret each of the 12th fret notes with your ring finger rather than your index.

What I like about this lick is that it’s a standard pentatonic scale, but it has a little bit of a unique spin on this well-loved and much-used pattern. Although it works well as a lick you can throw into a song, you can also treat it as an exercise to learn how to extend your E minor pentatonic outside of the traditional box format. Or, if you’re pretty attached to the box, you can at least use it as a handy stepping stone to get from the open position to the 12th midway through a solo.

And, if you want to be a bit more flash about it, try playing it as 16th notes instead of eighth notes, and tap each of the 12th fret notes. That’ll get pretty interesting visually once you get to the G string, where you’ll be playing crosshand, tapping notes behind your fretting hand.