# East-West guitar solo > Mike Bloomfield's guitar solo on East-West by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (1966) starts at 1:00. From the album East-West. Played on a Gibson Les Paul. Canonical URL: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, 1966, from *East-West*. Solo by *Mike Bloomfield*. A 13-minute raga-blues jam. East-West is a sprawling instrumental where Mike Bloomfield blends Chicago blues with modal ideas drawn from Indian raga. Over a droning, one-chord groove, his solo builds slowly, exploring a scale rather than following chord changes, and gradually rises in intensity. Elvin Bishop also takes a solo, providing a contrast with his more down-home style. The piece was a key step toward the long improvisations of late-1960s psychedelic rock, showing that electric guitar could sustain long, exploratory solos. Bloomfield's tone is warm and biting, with a vocal quality that keeps the long lines engaging. Listen for how he uses repetition and slight variation to build tension over the drone, then releases it with a burst of fast runs. East-West by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is ranked #244 in our consensus of 80 guitar-solo lists. The solo is played by Mike Bloomfield and the song was released in 1966. It appears on 2 lists, placing as high as #69 (uDiscover Music). ## In our lists - [One and Only](https://greatestsolos.com/list/one-and-only/) — #40 - [The 25 Greatest Blues Guitar Solos](https://greatestsolos.com/list/blues/) — #18 - [The 25 Greatest Psychedelic Guitar Solos](https://greatestsolos.com/list/psychedelic/) — #13 - [Rolling Stone vs. Everyone](https://greatestsolos.com/list/rolling-stone-vs-everyone/) — #17 - [The Best Mike Bloomfield Guitar Solos](https://greatestsolos.com/list/mike-bloomfield-guitar-solos/) — #1 - [Top 20 Guitar Solos of 1966](https://greatestsolos.com/list/best-guitar-solos-1966/) — #4 ## Sources - [uDiscover Music: The Best Guitar Solos Of All Time: 108 Amazing Moments](https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/best-guitar-solos-ever/) — #69 - [Rolling Stone: The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-guitar-solos-1235519961/) — #90 ### Who played the guitar solo on East-West? Mike Bloomfield played the solo on The Paul Butterfield Blues Band's East-West (1966). ### What guitar was used on the East-West solo? A gibson les paul, according to widely reported accounts. ### Where does East-West rank among the greatest guitar solos? #244 in the GreatestSolos consensus of 80 published lists; it appears on 2 of them. --- GreatestSolos ranks the greatest guitar solos by consensus across published lists. Agent guide: [llms.txt](https://greatestsolos.com/llms.txt) · [Sitemap](https://greatestsolos.com/sitemap.xml) · [Dataset (CSV)](https://greatestsolos.com/data/greatest-guitar-solos.csv) · [How we rank](https://greatestsolos.com/method/)