The secret life of a guitar hero’s ‘favorites’
A guitar hero’s favorite work is the set of songs and rock guitar solos that the artist personally values most, which often differs from the commercial hits that fans and radio stations keep alive. That gap between what charts and what creators cherish exposes how artists measure growth, risk and satisfaction in ways sales and streaming numbers can’t touch. When legendary players rank their own catalogs, they are not tallying royalties; they are reliving hard riffs, risky ideas and moments when their musical identity first clicked into focus. Listening to those choices tells us more about their artistic conscience than any greatest-hits package. For rock fans, hearing these favorite songs artists pick is like getting the director’s commentary on records we thought we already understood.
Angus Young’s Bon Scott-era deep cuts over stadium anthems
Ask most people about Angus Young AC/DC highlights and they will talk about the obvious stadium anthems. Angus doesn’t. When pressed on great guitar riffs, he points straight at “Riff Raff” from the 1978 album Powerage, calling it “a cooking guitar riff” and a perfect rock piece. He doubles down by naming “Riff Raff” the riff that hits the “platonic ideal” of straight-up rock and roll with a Chuck Berry swing. That is not a safe, crowd-pleasing answer; it is a craftsman’s pick, a song that still excites his hands, not just the audience’s fists. His second choice, “Bad Boy Boogie” from Let There Be Rock, carries the same logic. He has said Let There Be Rock is his favorite AC/DC album with Bon Scott, and “Bad Boy Boogie” stands out for its twist and feel, not its chart position. Angus is ranking sweat and swing above sing-along value.
Eric Johnson and the album he had to grow into
Eric Johnson guitar fans often enshrine him as a flawless technician, but his own story is about struggle and slow discovery. Born in Austin in 1954 and later winning a Grammy for his 1990 showpiece “Cliffs Of Dover”, he still talks about the grind: his first riff, “Out Of Limits” by The Ventures, came only after grovelling over the instrument and accepting that nothing arrived for free. His most revealing confession is about hearing Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced: it sounded so alien that he “wasn’t even sure” he liked it at first, and the record was “over my head”. Over time, repeated listening turned confusion into admiration. That arc matters. When a virtuoso says they had to grow into a record, they are admitting that artistic taste is not born fully formed. It stretches, gets uncomfortable, and learns to hear new dimensions. Johnson’s favorites track his evolution more than his ego.
Ritchie Blackmore’s favorite solos and the cost of complexity
When it comes to Ritchie Blackmore solos, fans argue over the classics, but Blackmore’s own short list is unexpectedly narrow. He has admitted it is hard to choose the best guitar solos from his career, yet he singles out two Rainbow tracks as his favorites. The first is “Gates of Babylon” from Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll (1978), a song he wrote on cello and twisted by inverting the riff multiple times. That complexity backfired: he says Rainbow played it live only once because he could not remember how to perform the shifting riff. His second pick, “Weiss Ham,” originally appeared as the B-side of “All Night Long”. Neither track is a casual radio staple. They are self-imposed challenges, exercises in pushing structure and harmony until they almost break. Blackmore’s favorites are not the easiest to play or sell; they are the ones that still feel like puzzles.
When the artist’s heart splits from the hit parade
Put these stories together and a pattern emerges: the songs that define rock guitar solos for fans are not always the ones that define the artists’ lives. Angus Young clings to “Riff Raff” and “Bad Boy Boogie,” not the predictable stadium staples. Eric Johnson’s inner canon includes Are You Experienced, a record he had to learn to appreciate over time. Ritchie Blackmore champions “Gates of Babylon” and “Weiss Ham,” even though their difficulty kept at least one of them off the stage. Meanwhile, there are bands like Free, who poured their heart into the album Highway, only to see it underperform and leave them disheartened. The disconnect is not a sad footnote; it is the point. Creative fulfillment follows risk and obsession, not charts. For listeners, the lesson is simple: if you care about favorite songs artists hold close, you have to follow their weird, demanding choices as closely as you follow the hits.
