Ah, the guitar solo: heralded in some quarters and reviled in others. Though sometimes dismissed as self-indulgent finger exercise, the guitar solo is – like any artform, from film to painting – open to a wide range of emotions and possibilities. Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and other much-loved axe wielders may still entice after a thousand listens, but here are five lesser-known guitar solos to enjoy.

‘So Goes the Story’ by Eddie Hazel

Primarily known for his magnum opus, ‘Maggot Brain’, on the Funkadelic album of the same name, Eddie Hazel was a guitar prodigy. Joining Funkadelic at only sixteen years old—then as part of the backing band to the vocal group the Parliaments, who later became Parliament—Hazel would soon go on to star on several classic, innovative and genre-melding albums.

He released one solo album during his short life, 1977’s Games, Dames and Guitar Thangs. As the title suggests, the music is heavily guitar-focused, with Hazel’s bold, distorted sound featuring prominently on ‘So Goes the Story’. The repetitive vocals and groovy bassline lay a foundation for his Hendrix-influenced bends and vibrato. Nearly three minutes into the track, the titular vocal refrain, wah-wah bass sounding exceptionally like an angry duck quacking, and urgent drums swell into a crescendo with Hazel’s guitar leading the pleasing mess.

‘200 Years Old’ by Frank Zappa and the Mothers, Captain Beefheart

‘200 Years Old’ features one of Frank Zappa’s finest lyrical verses. While the words on the page can’t match Zappa’s delivery, they’re so good it bears repeating them in full: “I was sittin’ in a breakfast room in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Six o’clock in the morning. Got up too early. It was a terrible mistake. Sittin’ there face-to-face with a 75 cent glass of orange juice about as big as my finger, and a bowl of horribly foreshortened cornflakes, and I said to myself, ‘This is the life!’”

As if that wasn’t enough, it also boasts some classic Zappa wild and gnarly distorted guitar. After the brilliant chorus lyric shared by Zappa and Captain Beefheart (“She’s 200 years old. So mean, she couldn’t grow no lips,”) and some frenetic guitar-and-mouth-organ duetting, Zappa finally lets rip a true guitar solo. As the keyboard, bass and drums keep a steady groove, Zappa’s guitar wails and flits in and out of dissonance, before leading in to a Beefheart-led second verse. Zappa’s phrases somehow sound both precise and disorganised, and match the rest of the music in delivering uncurbed fun.

‘Cler Achel’ by Tinariwen

Tinariwen’s sound is often called “desert blues”. The band are Tuaregs, members of a nomadic tribe from the Saharan desert. Rooted in traditional West African music, their sound is often reminiscent of 1960s American blues rock, undeniably groovy, and often trance-inducing. ‘Cler Achel’ was the opening track on Aman Iman, the album which started spreading Tinariwen’s name across the globe.

Rooted by a gut-deep bassline, the other instruments fill different spaces, forming a hypnotically polyrhythmic collage. Following each of the verses, electric guitar solos give the groove variation and extra momentum. The playing is disciplined and never flashy, adding to the composition rather than trying to stand above it. The track is a great entry point to Tinariwen, featuring some of their signature elements: multiple electric guitars, percussion parts that’ll have your foot tapping unwillingly, sweet bluesy licks, and repeated ‘backing’ chants that are as important as the lead vocal.

‘Sketch for Summer’ – The Durutti Column

The Durutti Column, a project led by Vini Reilly, explored lyrical guitar ideas in dreamy, jazzy instrumentals (and occasionally songs). While in the post-punk scene, Reilly’s guitar playing was more delicate and understated than many of his contemporaries. With classical influences, his compositions, rather than suffering from the lack of a human voice, seemed to contain many voices in his guitar.

‘Sketch for Summer’ was a highlight from Durutti Column’s debut album, The Return of the Durutti Column. Reilly’s multiple guitars sway and intertwine with each other like separate, gentle tides in an ocean. Throughout the track, there’s birdsong treated with synthesizers. The song as a whole seems to embody that mix of the natural world and the machine world. The simple drum machine pattern sounds less rigid than you might think it ought to, perhaps in part because its snare sounds less like crashes than whooshes, and the kick is slightly muffled. The effects on the drums are almost as integral to the song as its rhythms.

The lead guitar, which continually blurs the line with rhythm playing, reaches a (still understated) apex shortly after the 2:20 mark. It’s such a fleeting moment of higher energy, followed by a smooth transition back into Reilly’s measured motif, but its brevity seems to make it all the more special. Reilly is a singular player, and ‘Sketch for Summer’ was quite a way to take the stage.

‘Rapid Fire Tollbooth’ – Omar Rodríguez-López

‘Rapid Fire Tollbooth’ eventually transformed into ‘Goliath’ of The Bedlam in Goliath by The Mars Volta. Omar Rodríguez-López’s solo work, which he composes and releases at a baffling rate (with dozens of solo albums to his name to go along with those with the Volta, At the Drive-In and other projects), often informed compositions later used for his band. Cedric Bixler-Zavala is on hand to sing and wail in his trademark nasally, oddly captivating voice. Lyrics that would later be tweaked for ‘Goliath’ are of a consistently disturbing vibe (“Did you scratch your left eye? Did it blink three times?”, “On your blackened breath, did he smell of us?”), giving the guitar riff a weird extra spice.

‘Tollboth’ is played much slower than ‘Goliath’, and the groove has a little more room to breathe. The slower tempo doesn’t discourage Rodríguez-López from playing a flurry of fast fills in the last two minutes of the song. Mixed in just the left speaker, his solo seems like it could have been lifted from an entirely different song, such is its hurried pace. It’s an intriguing contrast to the patient and foreboding chords.

Rodríguez-López’s soloing style could perhaps be fairly described as more about energy than melody. Maybe you won’t be humming many of his lead phrases days later, but his intensity may well leave a lasting impression.