A Blues Legend Was Behind One Of The Greatest '80s Guitar Solos

The '80s had a multitude of great guitar solos. Rock music had split off into a ton of subgenres, and many of these were smashing the charts. It really put the guitar forward in a way music of the past hadn't. And as focus increased on the six-string melodic powerhouse, solos got better and better. Eddie Van Halen blasted neck-climbing licks with his signature two-hand tapping, Slash burned up the fret board, and Kirk Hammett of Metallica was basically redefining the heavy metal solo sound. But one of the greatest guitar solos of the decade was actually created by legendary Texas blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan.

You can hear Vaughan's epic solo on the 1983 David Bowie title track "Let's Dance." This was one of both Bowie's and Vaughan's best performing songs ever. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard 100 in the United States and equally as high on the U.K. singles chart. Vaughan, who died in a helicopter crash in 1990, was an exceedingly accomplished guitar player who's best known as the guitarist of Double Trouble, but he wasn't limited to one band. He also laid down licks on tracks by other seriously big-named artists like James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Dylan. No other tracks the blues guitarist worked on, however, peaked as high as "Let's Dance," and, at least in some small part, this was due to the song's signature solo.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was only on the scene for roughly seven years before his untimely death, and in that time, he became one of the best guitar players of the era in his own right. His style differed significantly from many of his contemporaries who played the thrashy solos popular in the hard rock scene. Vaughan was a blues man at heart and significantly contributed to the blues revival in the '80s. You could hear it in his guitar playing regardless of if he was on a blues stage or laying down a solo on a new wave dance rock hit with David Bowie.

One phrase sums up Vaughan's solo on "Let's Dance" perfectly: beautiful simplicity. The guitar legend showed that a solo doesn't need to be obscenely quick or hyper-complicated to be good. The ring of steel strings, the full-bodied vibrato, and the soul Vaughan's licks echoed through his pickups immediately elevated the song. He gets this unique sound by playing a mix of long and rapid bending notes interspersed with downward and upward blues scale walks. It's the sort of thing you'd hear on the blues scene, but also one that had fallen out of favor in rock and pop music as it moved further from the blues of its origin, and it added an entire dimension to the track.

Vaughan doesn't only grace this song with his masterful blues guitar. You can actually hear him on the majority of the album's tracks. And if that isn't enough Vaughan for you, there's always Double Trouble.