There was a time when no self-respecting piece of rock music would be without one. If you were a boy, you would studiously recreate them in your bedroom, with or without the aid of a tennis racquet. If you were a girl, weirdly, you didn’t care about them at all. They were the ultimate symbol of self- absorption, of narcissism, of phallocentricity. They got longer and longer, more and more intricate, until finally they died. You would do well to spot a great guitar solo now.

I miss them, I have to confess. Of course they became ridiculous in the end – mannered and heavy-handed. But that happens to most art forms. At their bombastic peak – think “Stairway to Heaven” or “Bohemian Rhapsody” – they were poised on the very edge of self-satire, but still devastatingly effective. Along came Rob Reiner’s brilliantly observed movie This is Spinal Tap in the mid-1980s, and we were way over the edge. That was that for the guitar solo.