Vince Gill Reveals His Favorite Guitar Solo of All Time

Vince Gill didn’t have to think long before he pointed to his favorite guitar solo of all time. During an appearance on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now, Gill named Albert Lee’s guitar solo on Emmylou Harris’ 1976 song “Luxury Liner” as his all-time favorite.

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As for why Gill pointed to that piece of music, he revealed that Lee was “a huge inspiration” to the way he plays.

“What I loved about it is what was reminiscent of flatpicking, the bluegrass flatpicking,” Gill explained. “There’s a lot of open strings he uses when he plays. Obviously there’s not a lot of bending that goes on in flatpicking and bluegrass guitar picking much, but it made sense to me.”

“Jazz never really made sense to me. It was above my pay grade in so many ways,” he continued. “But that, that was reminiscent of what I already did.”

Lee’s playing also inspired Gill to get his hands on a Telecaster guitar.

“After hearing Albert, James Burton, people like that, Don Rich who played with Buck Owens, I wanted a Telecaster if I was going to be playing any country music, playing in club bands and stuff like that,” he said. “So I found an old white Telecaster that I play all the time. I found it in 1978 and it’s still probably my favorite electric guitar of all time.”

Vince Gill on Joining Roseanne Cash’s Band

During the conversation, Gill also revealed that, over the course of his career, he got the chance to be in bands that Lee was previously in. As such, he had to learn to play Lee’s parts. One such experience came when Gill joined Roseanne Cash’s band and had some big shoes to fill.

“I remember the first rehearsal with Roseanne, the first song was a song called ‘Rainin” and I had the intro,” Gill recalled. “It’s a who’s who of musicians in this band. The best musicians I’d ever played with to that point.”

“We start playing and I said to myself, ‘Oh my God. I have to play the best I’ve ever played in my whole life right now,’” he added. “And so I did the solo and everything went great. The next tune was ‘My Baby Thinks He’s a Train,’ which is another great Albert Lee showpiece. They called that and I played it, nailed it.”

After that, Cash stopped the rehearsal and came over to chat with Gill.

“She said, ‘I owe you an apology.’ I said, ‘For what?’” Gill questioned. “She goes, ‘I didn’t think you could do that. Rodney [Crowell] told me you were good, but I didn’t think you could do that. In all honesty, first song I thought you just got lucky.’”

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