Guitar Solos

Guitar Solos
The album cover is a black-and-white photograph of a cricket field with a sight screen in the distance, off-center to the left. Off-center to the right and in the distance Fred Frith is standing playing a guitar. There is no text on the cover.
Studio album by
ReleasedOctober 1974 (1974-10)
Recorded11–13 and 15 July 1974
StudioKaleidophon Studios, London
Genre
Length37:17
LabelCaroline
ProducerFred Frith
Fred Frith chronology
Guitar Solos
(1974)
With Friends Like These
(1979)
Guitar Solos series chronology
Guitar Solos
(1974)
Guitar Solos 2
(1976)

Guitar Solos is the debut solo album of English guitarist, composer, and improviser Fred Frith. It was recorded while Frith was still a member of the English experimental rock group Henry Cow and was released in the United Kingdom on LP record by Caroline Records in October 1974. The album comprises eight tracks of unaccompanied and improvised music played on prepared guitars by Frith without any overdubbing.

Guitar Solos was voted one of the best albums of 1974 by NME critics. AllMusic called it a landmark album because of its innovative and experimental approach to guitar playing. It also attracted the attention of Brian Eno, resulting in Frith playing guitar on two of Eno's albums, and spawned two follow-up albums, Guitar Solos 2 (1976) and Guitar Solos 3 (1979).

Guitar Solos was remastered and released on CD on Frith's own record label, Fred Records, in 2002. In February 2024, a fiftieth anniversary edition of the album was released on double-LP by Week-End Records entitled Guitar Solos / Fifty, comprising the original 1974 album, plus a new solo album of 13 previously unreleased tracks.

  1. ^ Milkowski 1983, p. 24.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Westergaard was invoked but never defined (see the help page).