It started happening before you were even born - growing, changing and intensifying.
You heard the youthful screaming voices of independence. You might not have even been aware of all the changes happening to turn that primitive, crawling caterpillar into the blossoming, floating butterfly it was to become. And who could forget all the hair?
No, I'm not talking about puberty. The butterfly is - or maybe I should say was - the guitar solo, and it's becoming an endangered species.
The electric guitar's roots go back to the 1930s and the Rickenbacker company.
Soon after, Fender had the first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar on the market, and the rest is history.
So why is it fading into history, at least when it comes to being featured in songs?
It's debatable who actually invented the guitar solo, but we know the blues gave birth to it. And the blues helped lead America toward rock. And rock inspired countless long-haired couch potatoes to mooch off their girlfriends because "the band's gonna make it any day now" - but it sure inspired some great music, too.
As America entered the 1960s, the British Invasion brought with it the first guitar solos that really made it into mainstream music. Thank you, George Harrison.
It makes you wonder if those Brits could have made it if the pop music scene were like it is now. Someone probably would have told them to get a choreographer and lose those annoying instruments.
Plus, a lot of those British band members weren't exactly lookers by today's standards, so the whole thing might have been hopeless from the start.
Then the hair bands of the '70s and '80s hit the scene. If you just now got that puberty joke from a few paragraphs ago, it's OK. Anyway, these crazy-looking people popularized hard rock and discovered yet another way for young people to annoy the older generations. Hair bands also laid the foundation of what was to become metal - one of my favorites.
Now, just because I like metal doesn't mean I like to listen to someone scream and sound like he's passing a kidney stone - Michael Bolton included.
Good metal is like a symphony with electricity. Metallica's song "One" is a great example. There is a melody that repeats, while several instruments begin at different times to add layer upon layer to the song. And the best part is when they stick in that guitar solo as everything is peaking near the end. You can tell that solo goes with that song. The music is not cacophony, as some would have us believe.
Speaking of Metallica, here is a great example of how things have changed. Metallica is one of the metal bands that have made it big in pop culture. Metallica peaked at the perfect time in the 80s. As the AC/DCs, the Journeys and the Ozzys were dying out of mainstream music, Metallica survived.
But now, even Metallica is a sold-out shell. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett pleaded with band members not to become trendy and eliminate their signature solos from the band's most recent album, but the group did it anyway. Now, Metallica might as well be Green Day or Good Charlotte - with a better singer.
If you think all of this hard rock and metal stuff is junk, and that's why it's dying out, you have the right to that opinion. I know the sound is harsh to some people, but I think there is more to this near-extinction than that.
The guitar is still the main instrument in a lot of pop music. Songs just aren't taking the time to give it exclusivity anymore.
Who needs guitar solos when you have "American Idol" to watch? Bodies sell.
So, what's next - the boob solo?
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