While there are plenty of exceptions, the average rock song has one big guitar solo…or two at the most. But then again, the typical rocker isn’t more than a few minutes long. The longer the song, the more time there is for guitar solos.
Take, for example, Pink Floyd’s “Dogs,” which clocks in at over 17 minutes long. Released on the 1977 album Animals, “Dogs” features a total of four iconic David Gilmour solos, one of which is apparently the guitarist’s favorite of all time.
“There’s a solo on ‘Dogs’ that I thought was pretty good and unusual,” he once explained when asked which of his performances he likes the best, per Guitar Player.
“It hasn’t entered the pantheon of the ones people seem to like because it’s a slightly different style for me, I suppose,” Gilmour continued. “I tracked it with an old Tele, and I was really thrilled with it.”
Unfortunately, Gilmour didn’t specify which of the four solos he was talking about, but they’re all pretty epic.
“My style is my style, and it was created out of an amalgamation of the folk and blues music I started with,” Gilmour said, “as well as my early years in Pink Floyd when I was attempting to be a psychedelic-type guitar player. That being said, I think I always come back to certain elements of blues phraseology. The blues run pretty deep in my playing.”
As Gilmour revealed in a 2025 interview with Rick Beato, his original second guitar solo on “Dogs” was actually erased by accident, thanks to Roger Waters and Nick Mason.
Photo by David Redfern on Getty Images
“We had the whole first half of the song,” Gilmour said. “Then we had a middle breakdown, which became all that weird stuff, and that was filled with white two-inch leader tape.”
“There was something on the first half that we wanted to erase,” Gilmour explains. “Roger and Nick put it into ‘erase,’ and then forgot that it was in ‘erase,’ and went right through the leader tape by two minutes, and then took away my second guitar solo. Completely erased, gone forever. Done.”
Gilmour was forced to recreate the solo using rough mixes, but wasn’t completely happy with the results.
“You never quite feel 100 percent satisfied,” he admitted. “Although every note has been learned and rehearsed and played, you think, Oh, there’s something about the feel that had before that is gone forever.”
One thing’s for sure: Not every band can get away with packing that many solos in a song that lasts for nearly 20 minutes, but Pink Floyd made it an art form.
Related: The Story Behind Pink Floyd’s ‘Quiet Masterpiece’ That’s Been Streamed Nearly One Billion Times
