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Van Halen and Led Zeppelin Make Greatest Guitar Riffs In Music History List

02/08/2011
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Gibson continues their weeklong countdown of the greatest guitar riffs in music history. Today they lay out 40-31. Here are just a couple:

36. "Panama," Van Halen (1984): The world knows Eddie Van Halen can ignite a fretboard with his preternatural pyrotechnics. But what really makes him one of � if not the � greatest axemen in the solar system, what separates him from the pack, is his wonderful ear for the monster and always tasty riff. "Panama," the third single from Van Halen's epic 1984 album, is a heavy-duty and immensely catchy riff that harkens back to some of the finer work of his first two albums. Not terribly intricate, certainly not by Edward's standard, but the riff makes the song. � Sean Patrick Dooley

35. "Rock and Roll," Led Zeppelin (1971): This showstopper on Led Zeppelin IV was born during a 1971 jam session in which the band aimed to polish off their song "Four Sticks." Instead, Jimmy Page came up with this magical intro guitar riff and the band dropped what they were doing to write "Rock and Roll." "The riff and the sequence was really immediate to those 12-bar patterns that you had in those old rock songs like Little Richard," Page told The Times last year. "It was just so spur-of-the-moment the way that it just came together more or less out of nowhere." � Ellen Barnes The rest of today's list

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