The guitar solo from Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird, played on drums

Eric Carr playing his drum kit — (Image credit: EMCproductions)

Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd features one of the most famous guitar solos in all of rock. Indeed, our colleagues at Guitar World consider it the eighth best solo of all time, sneaking it into their Top 10 between Eddie Van Halen's fleet-fingered contribution to Michael Jackson's Beat It and Mark Knopfler's fingerpicked Sultans Of Swing wizardry.

But did you know you can also play the Free Bird solo on a drum kit?

Nope, us neither. Until now. Fo drummer Eric Carr (presumably no relation to the late Kiss tubthumper of the same name) has proved that not only is possible, but it's also extrtemely impressive. Carr has released a video in which he plays all 143 bars of the solo on an extensive stand-up kit, with the various drums tuned to match the notes played on Allen Collins' original six-stringed version.

What with this being the internet and all that, we'd normally expect a performance like Carr's to polarised opinion, but we're delighted to report that his feat of rhythmic speed and dexterity has been greeted by near-universal acclaim.

"I don't think most people understand how impressive this actually is," reports therevx5225. "This is so incredibly jaw dropping, well done."

"I wish I could like this more than once!" adds ethnofalcon. "This is one of the coolest, most impressive things I've ever seen. Well done!"

"This was probably harder than learning it on guitar," says Carr, who has 347,000 followers on YouTube, 122,000 on Instagram and another 77,000 on TikTok. Carr is also a world record holder, claiming a Guinness World Record after managing to hit a single drum 722 times in just 60 sixty seconds during a demonstration in Turnersville, New Jersey, USA, on 29 December 2020.

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.