Dweezil Zappa

Wow! This is awesome! A fantastic resource! Thanks again Allen for sharing all of your materials with us. Many practice hours ahead to look forward to!

Near the end of the episode, I also played one of my favorite variations of the repeating open string licks similar to those in “Eruption”, “Somebody Get Me a Doctor”, “I’m the One” (second solo), “5150” etc. in F# during the “Hot For Teacher” solo. Here is my complete transcription of that solo where you can see exactly how Eddie played that iteration of the lick where he mixed up his straight picking with his normal “single open E picked with the rest legato” patterns with added picked notes at various points in an off-the-cuff way which doesn’t follow his usual non-varying pattern all the way through all of the repeats:

The “Hot For Teacher” solo is based almost entirely on the Clapton/Cream “Sitting On Top of the World” ending solo licks…the phrasing and the overall composition of each part of this solo is breathtaking! 

I also played through the solo from “Girl Gone Bad” which is one of my favorite of all of Ed’s solos at the very close of the episode. To me, the song is a strong candidate for being perhaps the best song the band ever did…right up there with “Push Comes To Shove” or “Hear About It Later”. To my mind, it is the closest the band ever came to Led Zeppelin…a masterpiece! And the solo showcases some of Edward’s old familiar licks played with swinging gusto and with a nice long legato phrase near the beginning of the solo…a clear example of the influence of Holdsworth before Ed goes to his more familiar five-note pattern with one Upstroke picked note at the 14th position (same as in the “Beat It” solo in the 12th position) and his raked Am arpeggio/A blues phrasing to wind it up. I love it! Here’s my transcription of the complete “Girl Gone Bad” solo:

Also, here is a video lesson in which I go over these five note patterns from “Beat It” and “Girl Gone Bad” which contains some tips on how to execute this pattern cleanly:

https://youtu.be/lIL27p_MAfA?si=2VHmj5yBHTIeCN5R

To demonstrate Ed’s penchant for whole step bending with his Index finger rather than his Ring finger in his typical blues box playing, I played the opening lick from the “Jump” solo which is a great workout for these Index finger whole step bends. My transcription is in the tuning from the album which is about 3/4 of a step ABOVE standard pitch, so this is played in Am in the 5th position:

The very fast lick near the beginning of the “Panama” solo is an example that I played which is an extension of the Clapton “Sitting On Top of the World” ending solo lick patterns:

And another example of this Clapton inspired playing in the “When It’s Love” solo…(I played the last fast phrase at the end):

And that fast lick from “When It’s Love” begins with a similar string skipping pentatonic box lick that Dweezil mentioned and that I demonstrated in the beginning of the first solo in “Bottoms Up!”. The whole solo is another bluesy homage to Clapton and Billy Gibbons:

Here is a link to the live version of “Sitting On Top of the World” from Cream’s ‘Goodbye’ LP that was discussed as being so critical to Ed’s playing. The unaccompanied solo flourish at the end begins at around 4:34 here:

https://youtu.be/rSlyX4eDq9s?si=0GrzM0nQTXG4AZZE

And this is my transcription of it. Ed would basically play these notes in different keys with either the verbatim left and right hand articulations as Clapton played it or with the addition of silent hammer-ons throughout nearly his entire lead guitar playing catalog:

Lick #1 and Lick #2 were identified by my friend Bill Flanagan who taught them to me and it was like opening a veritable Pandora’s Box of understanding Ed’s lead playing…it was a major “light bulb” moment for me!