Shawn Lane with The Willy's - end of 'Purple Haze' (circa 1987)

[Staplesz]

I think I was just electrocuted

[MaximusDowns]

...did he just play Eruption with one hand?

[oilkills]

He welds Chopins Fantasie into a one handed ERUPTION (no tapping)

That's sick!!! AND GENIUS!!!

[lanesblitz]

... interesting that he was shaped in his style at this young age, ... you can hear here all the "tricks" that were peculiar to his style when he performed later on during the Powers of ten period, ... all the rhythmic groupings, 5, 6, 7, 9, and the diminished and augmented patterns, ... everything. Amazing!

[treybruce]

What a fukn shame! He played that till there was nowhere else to take it....completely drained! That old Roland guitar he had was clean and clear as a bell.

[aliensporebomb]

Starting at 1:05 it starts sounding like telepathic morse code from outer space. Unbelievable.

[fryBASS]

MAB wishes he could do this

[Geomapaxtor]

At that time he definitely must have been the best on earth.

[guitarvirtuoso14762]

Holy. Fucking. Shit. That's all I have to say about that.

[smkonwater23]

Only Shawn Lane can play guitar, piano at a hummingbird's wing speed. If you slow motion his playing, U discover even more notes and melodies, not just scales like others, and U go... what , where and how the heck did he do that???????

[L2fish]

He knocked billy gibbons for a loop when he heard him!

[xxwantedxx]

the only guy who can truly melt my face off.

[ChiZ712]

tabs?

[Chromatype]

Not as musical as it is impressive to watch with a few beers

[ChiZ712]

@Chromatype judging from the fact that this was from some random memphis bar, than yea I'd say that would be spot on.

[adriangel143]

just got 5 years older due to the fact that shawn through videos accelerated time! ^_^

[Prattinator999]

I like how the band doesn't really cut off at @1:06, it's almost as if they are completely mesmerized by Shawn and just can't find the strength to keep playing

[genolafrite]

Did anybody noticed ? Shawn's playing a little bit of "Eruption's" final tapping lick....without tapping .... 1:40 or 1:41

[rocksinthehead]

1:41-1:47...who needs to fingertap eruption? Not Shawn!

[NprogresiveR]

scalloped fretboard?

[TheHornet79]

1:59 "May the Power of Christ compell you!"

[BoxenstienMusic]

Almost choked on my damn gum!

SHAWN LANE IS GOD!!!

[gainiac]

Man.....so clean.....

[PIMPZproduction]

he fuckin raped that guitar, in a good way though. RIP shawn lane

[starakketa]

This is porn.

[Apologeomasis]

He's performing a fucking exorcism on that guitar.

[MyShawnLaneVideos]

LOL!!!

[jckbac9]

And I was just beginning to enjoy guitar. Dicks like this ruin it for me....I'll never be able to play, let alone comprehend the complexity of music like this. I quit.

Damn, Shawn Lane was (RIP) the most talented guitarist of all time.

[bigxlongxnow]

that note at 1:55 is by far the most insane note ive ever heard ANYONE hit in the history of guitar.

[TheWhocares233]

Starting at 1:00 i can safely say that is one of the most difficult things ever to be played on a guitar

[skatinsince97]

this is prolly the most terifyinglytremendouspotofbrai­nmeltingstewshred ive seen on youtube in a while

[Vordrab]

I might be wrong, but I think that lick at 1:22 is also in the end of Paul Gilbert "The Gargoyle" song.

[Dynamitarian]

@Vordrab

About the pattern in 1.22

Shawn Lane played it first here

then Michael Angelo Batio in an old Instructional Video

and finally Paul Gilbert in "The Gargoyle"

Shawn Lane was light years ahead of his colleagues.

Shred in Peace

[zeralful]

actually Michael Angelo was already playing that pattern in the early '80 when he was in Holland (1984).

[proteoid]

@Dynamitarian Agree. Also, Scott Mishoe was doing some crazy atonal shred in the late 80s/early 90s. Check out 'Scott Mishoe - live shred improvisation' here on youtube. Some of his licks were quite Lane-esque. Dont know what happened to him, but he was a talent.

[LordBeia]

Shawn was and still is the only person who I think, in my opinion, have pushed the guitar to it limits. I have never ever seen anything like this.. Nobody but him will ever be able to do this... Mindblowing to say the least...

[nlo13]

@LordBeia

I agree. Though I would also include Buckethead in that arguement, especially due to his success of bringing atonality and dissonance into the "mainstream" guitar scene.

[benjie616]

Oh My Fucking God!! Shawn was awesome!!!

[nickwellings]

Really Shawn was the greatest guitar player to have ever lived.

[oilkills]

umm... does this prove that 1 Shawn Lane is equal to 2 EVH's?!

lmao jk Peace!

[TheWhocares233]

(in a good way)

[remnant24]

That's insane. The guy is insane.

[TheWhocares233]

I feel sorry for the guitar...that must have hurt =[]

[oilkills]

I'll bet, if he really wanted to, he could...

do it with one hand tied behind his back;)

[MyShawnLaneVideos]

.... or both, lol.

[seanSHRED87]

1987 was a great year.

[includao]

shawn lane is a genius, the best. thanks for the videos willjay

[venomps13]

i swallowed my tounge @ around 55 seconds

[MyShawnLaneVideos]

lol.... comment of the month!! :-D

[venomps13]

thx. and thanks for your dilligence, awesome collection.

[snouter]

The best of all time.

[perromanchado]

insane. bravo!!!!!!

[proteoid]

How the hell does he manage to play a part of Chopin Fantasie with one hand at around 1:42 ? That's just wrong ! :-)

[MaximusDowns]

prodigious skill

[zackvanhalen]

He should have been listed as the fastest guitarist ever and not Batio. I've never heard ANYONE that even closely resembles this. NO ONE not Cooley, not Holdsworth, no one.

[BigMoneyAl]

you said that right ,,Shawn Lane is the best

[GaryNull]

@zackvanhalen - Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, George Benson, could all play faster than him WITHOUT DISTORTION.

Take his distortion away and see what he sounds like.

[oilkills]

@GaryNull

He would sound like The Fastest Alternate Picker... without a little distortion.

BTW, MyShawnLaneVideos a.k.a. Willjay has assembled the definitive list on various guitarists Alternate Picking speeds (as seen in Guitar World mag). And it's the only scientifically based list, where actual footage is examined in slo-mo. Guess who's fastest!!! (giggles) So... where did you get your information from?!

[Willys29588]

@GaryNull,Hi Gary, Did you ever see Shawn play live? ,No offense but Shawn was faster than all those guys!1 He didnt need distortion. I heard him many times without playing thru an amp. Vernon Reed from Living Color said this in numerous articles.

[m9mdc]

@GaryNull He played quite a few songs without distortion and just as fast. Look them up. He was more than some guy who played hard rock/metal. He played MANY different styles including traditional jazz, indian/indian fusion, etc.

[m9mdc]

@GaryNull He is also listed as the fastest guitarist in any genre ever measured by the way.

[27adry]

@zackvanhalen yo pienso asi

[Chromatype]

@zackvanhalen Holdsworth plays lines with phrases that lead somewhere...a lot of this is very very fast scales from an alien planet :)

[led96zeppelin]

@zackvanhalen certainly underrated guitarist

[BillyJimmyBobbyTimmy]

You can tell Buckethead takes sooo many moves from this guy and Paul Gilbert.

[Phrygian12]

half of the advance side of guitarist take alot of things from this guy(Shawn Lane)

[munkaaaa]

0:40-0:45 rocks the shit out of everything

[KARN1V4L]

imo 0:01 - 2:31 rocks the shit out of everything

[shreddingjake]

and i'm sure the stuff before and after was pretty insane as well

[dasilvaj2008]

1:09 is so epic!!! that is such a cool shot of shawn, especially since it is in black and white!

[Nilli4rock]

THIS is how it should be played!

wonder why the strings doesn't get tremendously out of tune at 1.56

[maacan]

I wonder what yngwie malmsteen thinks about shanwn lane hehe...

[digitised]

source?

[nemogre]

@maacan definitely envy...as well as the rest of guitar players on the planet...

[vetmusician]

@maacan HE doesnt THINK ABOUT HIM..............lol

[dasilvaj2008]

greatest guitar player of all time. period.

[fizzlemagizzle]

god this video is so BADASS!

[nickwellings]

Very right, it is amazing!

[KeithWhalen11]

Shawn Lane was quoting Eruption with his left hand while I was 3 years old! I love the impromptu stuff he used to do at the end of Purple Haze! Shawn had the most incredible left hand stamina, how he did those augmented single string triads for so long is beyond my comprehension!

[Phrygian12]

lot of people dont believe me when i tell them he can do this video game-ish lick with out tapping its the thing that inspired bucketheads 8finger tapping thing

anyway i run in to them later and they would just tell me they were blown away

Lanes Hands cant be human

[Heyshevanelcutaflip]

I haven't been listening to him long, but i read about what happened to him and watching the videos where he was really big made me ridiculously sad but then again seeing him this happy at the end of this video makes me think he was happy with his life, as short as it was =) we all love ya shawn

[rockstarr2113]

yeah i hear the eruption lick your talking about lol its that little hammer pull off walk down thing =P

[Th1sWasATriumph]

This video is bizarre, the quality makes it look like this was back in the 50s and Shawn was tearing it up in a cellar somewhere.

I mean that in a good way. I LOVE this guy. But the video makes it look like he's genuinely back in the era of pre-Hendrix rather than just 20 years ago.

Is it me, or does he play a very Eruption-esque lick at about 1.45?

[MyShawnLaneVideos]

"Is it me, or does he play a very Eruption-esque lick at about 1.45?"

Yeah, that's what i always thought, hehe.... crazy to see it done with just the left hand.

[MyShawnLaneVideos]

As for the quality, i'm pretty sure that's because it was copied/tranferred from one media to another but in a country different to it's origin (ie. an NTSC video copied in a country that uses PAL, on a PAL VCR/DVDR machine).

[MyShawnLaneVideos]

I recieved it on a Video cassette, and by that point it already had the lines on the screen. Then when i copied it do DVD, it created a black gap at the bottom of the screen (which i later clipped out on this version i posted).

When i 'view' NTSC video's on my (PAL based) dvdr/vcr Combi, they look fine, but as soon as i start 'copying' it, a black gap appears at the bottom of the screen. I know some other machines have the same kinda problem, only with lines appearing across the screen instead.

[Th1sWasATriumph]

I don't find the quality bad per se, you can hear and see very clearly - more clearly than, say, the gig at that party playing ZZTop etc. But it looks oddly like early footage of the Beatles (with evil diminished shreddage).

Anyway, you're the reason that most people know exactly how far Shawn's talents spread. If you have to get footage that was recorded on wax tablets I'm still good with it.

Put up those vids of yourself playing, if you are Wilijay - I think you are? You rocked hard.

[Chromatype]

It's sounds like a soundtrack to a SCI-FI movie...not that it doesn't take talent to do this, IT DOES.

[MABISGOD]

Shawn Lane was THE GREATEST!!!!

[frackle123]

Wow!!!

Yup, that is all I have is the palindrome WOW!

[Soon851216]

Complete madman.

[blorg52]

yeah :)

[pongopigmayiss]

Holy shit!

[BryanBetts]

oh my god...

[nickwellings]

Soundeed like Shawn added a bit of "Eruption" to that outro? Except, gulp, without the tapping.

PS: the tone he gets from that Roland is obscenely good.

[egits]

lol! he did! he was a madman!

[JasonBeckersGood]

What roland?

[nickwellings]

Roland guitar.