Jeff Beck: Guitar Grandmaster
As impossible at it is to believe Jeff Beck has died (aged 78), it’s just as difficult to fathom that he was with us in the first place. If you’re not a fan or are unfamiliar, pay attention to what your favorite guitar players are saying right now. We live in a world where being disagreeable is the default setting, and seemingly no one can agree with anyone else about anything. But you’re not going to see any forced sentiment or dissension: Jeff Beck was a god amongst mere guitarists, and a model for any musician, full stop. No one ever possessed such sustained and heightened mastery of feel, technique, and tone. If it’s ridiculous to assert (or care whether or not) Jeff Beck is the best guitar player ever, it’s also absurd to not include him on the shortest of lists.
We have guitar players, guitar heroes, guitar gods, and those who can only be described as other. Jeff Beck is difficult to pin down not only because he never claimed (or, by all accounts, courted) global fanfare, but because unlike so many of his contemporaries, he didn’t have a style; he had styles, he contained multitudes. Sure, he could shift seemingly without effort between rock, blues, jazz, and (here the cliché is not only warranted but obligatory) possessed an encyclopedic repertoire, and the facility to go from dark to bright, loud to subtle, fast to languid, covering centuries in mere seconds. For the uninitiated, head to YouTube and pull up virtually any video of Beck performing live: it’s all there on display.
For such a complex individual whose palette stretched the possibilities of what one artist could attempt, Beck’s approach to performance is almost disarmingly simple, honest. As is invariably the case, particularly with jazz players who bring their proverbial 10,000 hours of woodshedding to the stage every time they improvise, it’s what musicians do in a live setting, without a net, that allows us to see and hear the truth.
No overdubs, no layers, no studio wizardry; if Jimi and Jimmy (and, later, Eddie Van Halen and the thousands of slingers he inspired) went into the studios the way Clark Kent used his phone booths to turn into super heroes, Beck was a warrior, needing neither armor nor an army — just himself and his axe. Not for nothing: we didn’t get to see Jimi Hendrix evolve and add to his seemingly fathomless reservoir of talent, and we did see Jimmy Page lose his fastball (too many speedballs?) and occasionally embarrass himself (Live Aid, etc.). We had the privilege of watching Beck grow, tweak his attack, and become one with his instrument in ways matched only by the likes of career maestros such as Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, or Max Roach.
Concerning the historical record: the issue of guitar players in The Yardbirds still necessitates elaboration. For perfectly understandable reasons, people assume — or don’t realize they’re mistaken to think — Eric Clapton was the primary and important guitarist in that group. On the contrary, Clapton was there for the very early and blues-y recordings, while Jimmy Page was there for the short and sloppy swan song. It was Jeff Beck who played on their essential songs. Put simply, Jeff Beck was The Yardbirds, with all due respect (and I offer tons) to the other members.
Certain songs The Yardbirds made in mid-’65 and ’66 are as close to perfect as anything we got from rock, blending an old school sensibility, which had prevailed for decades, of writing a tight, focused hits ideally within the two-to-three minute range. But we can also taste changes in the air: within these succinct powder kegs are ideas, feelings, and longings that would grow into the more free-flowing and, as the ’70s commenced, sprawling artistic statements (see: prog rock).
As such, the sheer weight of stuff packed inside these (again not just the sounds, remarkable enough though they are, but the energy and ambition, like a cocoon waiting to explode) endure as period pieces: they still feel fresh and furious, and they still, somehow, manage to surprise. “Heart Full of Soul” and “Shapes of Things” comprise a one-two punch illustrating the power and purpose of Beck’s tenure, but the lesser known “Over, Under, Sideways, Down” warrants further scrutiny. For starters, it’s an absolute Molotov Cocktail of a song, exploding with invention and discovery. Lockstep with the overlooked (or uncelebrated) rhythm section of Paul Samwell-Smith and Jim McCarty and the always-awesome Keith Relf, it’s a total clinic of rock that swings, pulling in Eastern vibes and anticipating full-on psychedelia, all in under two minutes(!).
From “Beck’s Bolero” to the Jeff Beck Group, for a few years it seemed that his Post-Yardbirds iteration would make him the undisputed champ. Instead, bandmates Rod Stewart and Ron Wood went on to become Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, and, with Led Zeppelin absorbing most of the post-Hendrix oxygen, Beck licked his wounds and made peace with a lower profile. Mid-decade he broke big again, dropping the much-loved and very imitated Blow by Blow and Wired (1975, 1976). Most folks know the radio-friendly “Freeway Jam” (and it’s sublime), but I single out his cover of the uncoverable Charles Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” as his shining moment from the ’70s. As he’d proven, he could shred and innovate like nobody’s business, but he also did slow and soulful perhaps better than anyone else who has ever strapped on a guitar.
Beck balanced the subsequent decades with highs (his megahit and MTV-friendly “People Get Ready,” another fruitful collaboration with mate Rod Steward) and not-so-highs (most of the other stuff featuring assorted vocalists), he continued gravitating toward other ventures, going underground, hitting the road, disappearing, reappearing, becoming a studio session MVP to the stars, tinkering with classic cars. As an encore, for himself and fans (like Robert Plant, who can be seen enjoying the goods on offer during Beck’s one-week stand at Ronnie Scott’s in 2007), he took an extended victory lap during the last decade-plus so people could appreciate the Lion in Winter who, somehow, some way, still blew every other pretender to his throne off our world stage.
He’s gone, but he’s not going anywhere. It’s not only Beck’s catalog that will endure, but the mark he’s left on music, the stories so many will tell, the ways future players may approximate but never achieve the quicksilver blueprint he laid out, and the collective memories of those who appreciate what humanity, operating at its pinnacle, can achieve.
Jeff Beck is irreplaceable, and that was the whole point of him. If Jimi Hendrix is the Alpha and Jimmy Page the Omega, Jeff Beck, over the course of almost seven full decades, covered every sound and sensation in between, neither burning out (JH) nor fading away (JP). His artistry is at once impossible and indescribable: one can only listen — and believe.
