Prince playing four shows at The Joint

Prince doesn’t play guitar.

No, he grips a hunk of wood and metal and magically transforms it into something other than an instrument, some all-powerful device with which to make sweet, sweet whoopee to your ear canals.

Live, Prince solos into the next calendar year: Days go by, people grow old — but dude’s playing never does.

Seriously, the guy might be the world’s greatest guitarist who never seems to get mentioned among the world’s great guitarists.

This is because his playing is meant to complement his songs, not overwhelm them, and so he often favors finesse over fireworks.

But not always.

The man has laid down some legendary leads over the years.

In honor of Prince’s stop in Las Vegas for four shows in two nights this weekend, here are five of my favorite Prince solos:

5. “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?”: “What more do you want me to do for you?” Prince asks a petulant lover on this track from his 1979 self-titled sophomore record (you know, the one where he’s topless on the album cover, a river of chest hair plunging down his torso like a waterfall of manliness).

Well, to answer your question, sir, how about ripping a tasty minute long lead hotter than a red-headed roofer in Tehran?

Kicking in at the 2:47 mark, this solo captures all the pent-up frustration that Prince feels toward his lady, beginning with a few sustained high notes that hang in the air like bubbles floating on a breeze before accelerating into some funny-car-fast fingerwork.

“You know I try so hard to keep you satisfied,” Prince declares as his guitar files for protective custody.

4. “Get It Up”: If guitar solos were body parts in ’80s buddy cop action flicks co-starring Jim Belushi, this would be Arnold Schwarzenegger’s swollen biceps in “Red Heat.”

One of Prince’s longest, most awesomely overblown solos, taken from The Time’s eponymous 1981 debut, this one spans nearly two minutes of fretboard peacockery.

Maybe his most flamboyant, look-at-me lead, this is Prince letting everyone know that he can get his Eddie Van Halen on whenever he wants — he just chooses not to, in most cases.

Here, though, he disavows restraint as if it was another word for monogamy, starting slow, letting the notes ring out and reverberate like the loud rapport of a bolt of lighting striking a tin shack.

Then, he proceeds to set the neck of his guitar ablaze like kindling tossed onto a campfire.

“I’m gonna try to blow your mind,” Time frontman Morris Day sings as Prince does just that.

3. “Peach”: Actress Kim Basinger moans in the background of this blues aphrodisiac taken from the 1993 collection “The Hits 2,” and Prince’s playing follows suit, similarly carnal and overheated, suggestive of a certain activity that’s frequently followed by a Marlboro and the oiling of one’s bedsprings.

The solo is actually performed in three parts, weaving in and out of the song, panning between speakers, fading out, then flashing back to life just when you regained the breath it knocks out of your lungs.

It’s among Prince’s funkiest, most bluesy leads, as eruptive as the coital release he’s in pursuit of here.

2. “777-9311”: Remember in ’87 when Prince did Ecstasy, wigged out, and then shelved his recently recorded “The Black Album” because he deemed it to be evil?

Well, that’s about half as crazy as his solo on “777-9311,” another Time track, this one from their second record, “What Time Is It?”

Prince takes his time — get it? — on this 2½-minute rager, starting slow, like he was seducing a lady, but with a six-string in place of your mom.

And then, he loses his mind and finds a nuclear-powered robot appendage forged of steel and awesomeness in the bowels of Mount Doom to serve as his picking hand (at least it sounds like it).

Soon, he’s hammering his whammy bar with the force required to drive home a railroad spike, warping the notes into a dissonant squall, before lunging back into the solo with the speed and fury of a jungle cat chasing down another jungle cat who swiped his lunch money.

It ends with Prince’s guitar shrieking like it had just seen a ghost.

Forget 777-9311.

Someone dial up an ambulance instead, the guy’s self-control has flat-lined.

1. “Purple Rain”: A lead of such transportive power, you just need to close your eyes and let this one take you away Calgon-style.

A thing of aching beauty, this solo distills so much longing and regret, the song could be an instrumental and it would convey the same thing.

Deliberately played with gorgeous phrasing, this is Prince at his most emotive, so much so, that his playing subjugates his own words.

And ours.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.