Guitar solos are the currency by which young players judge their worth. No matter how many chords they know or whatever skills they get under their fingers, they won’t consider themselves true guitarists until they’ve mastered a solo by one of their favorite performers.
George Harrison was forever drawn to a solo by one of his early guitar idols. Joe Satriani, meanwhile, has found so much to value in solos by a quintet of stellar six-stringers that he recommends them to every player.
Clearly this habit isn’t limited to older generations. Sophie Lloyd has now named a few of her favorite solos by other guitarists and revealed the solo she needed to play before she could feel good about her talents.
Lloyd, a YouTube star who balances her solo career with her job as guitarist for Machine Gun Kelly, tells Metal Hammer that one solo held the key to her future success.
"We're gonna go for 'Beast and the Harlot' by Avenged Sevenfold,” she says. “This is because when I was growing up, I remember listening to that solo in the car and thinking, 'When I can play that, that's when I'll finally admit I'm a good guitarist.'"
The solo is an souped-up fretburner by Synyster Gates that becomes a twin-lead harmonized solo when fellow Avenged guitarist Zacky Vengeance joins in.
Lloyd eventually learned the solo and devoted a video to it on her YouTube page.
Despite achieving her goal, and so much more, Lloyd remains reluctant to call herself a good guitarist. And while she admits she’s become rusty performing the solo, she says she learned so much from it.
“I probably can't anymore; I haven't played it in so long,” she explains. “But the techniques that Synyster Gates uses are just incredible. His little chromatic runs at the end — he really is the daddy of shredding to a lot of people. He just comes up with such cool, creative ideas."
Whatever Lloyd makes of her playing skills, there’s no denying she’s made a mark in the music world since launching her YouTube channel in 2011. In addition to her gig in Machine Gun Kelly’s touring group, she released her debut solo album, Imposter Syndrome, in 2023.
Along the way, Lloyd became the first female signature artist for Kiesel Guitars, an experience that allowed her to design her own model of electric guitar. In doing so, she says, she was able to create an instrument that not only meets her tonal requirements but also fits her frame and body shape — and that of other women.
“I had trouble before, you know, because we have boobs,” she says. “Sometimes you get a guitar and the place where it cuts really hurts when it kind of leans into you.
“And that's something that people wouldn't really think, you know? If there's men making them, they wouldn't really think about that. But that's something we need to think about.”
