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Jeff Beck

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Jeff Beck

Geoffrey Arnold ("Jeff") Beck (born June 24, 1944 to Arnold and Ethel Beck in Wallington, Greater London) is an English rock guitarist. He was one of three noted guitarists — the others being Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page — to have recorded with the band The Yardbirds.

Beck has never attained the sustained commercial success of his fellow Yardbirds guitarists, though the band, along with Beck, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Jeff Beck wise-cracked at the ceremony stating:

Someone told me I should be proud tonight...But I'm not, because they kicked me out. Fuck them! (Laughs)...

Much of his output has been instrumental, and his releases have spanned genres, ranging from blues-rock, heavy metal, jazz fusion and (currently) a blend of guitar-rock and electronica. This versatility has made it difficult for Beck to establish and maintain a broad following.

Nevertheless, Beck has gained wide critical acclaim for his work as a guitarist.[1] He has won many Grammy awards in the category for best rock instrumental.

Away from the stage, Beck is an avid collector of American-style hot rods, and is reputed to have perhaps the finest collection in the United Kingdom. Hot rods are a recurring theme in many of his more recent albums.

Biography

Early life

As a ten year old Beck sang in a church choir. As a teenager he learned to play a borrowed guitar and then made several attempts to build his own instrument. His first attempt was by gluing and bolting together (forgetting the washers so that the bolt head sank into the wood) a selection of cigar boxes for the body and an unsanded fence-upright for a neck. The strings were aircraft control line wires, both single and double stranded were used depending on the effect he wanted to achieve. The frets, however, were a different matter. In an unknowing portent for the future use of fretless guitar, the frets were simply painted on. Another attempt at a home-build was when he studiously cut a body from a very thick piece of wood. When fabricating the neck he attempted to use memorized measurements. Unfortunately the measurements he had remembered were those of a bass guitar. He described the result as "The scale was so bad that it was only playable with a capo at the fifth fret...", he went on to say, "I was interested in the electric guitar even before I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one." [2]

Beck is cited as saying that the first electric guitar player he singled out as impressing him was Les Paul.[3] Similarly Cliff Gallup, lead guitarist with Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps was also an early musical influence, followed by Chuck Berry. Upon leaving school he attended Wimbledon Art College, then he briefly worked as a painter and decorator, a groundsman on a golf course and spray painting cars. Beck's sister would also play an instrumental role in introducing him to another young teen guitarist learning the instrument named Jimmy Page.

Early career with The Yardbirds

Like many rock musicians in the early 1960s, he began his career working as a session guitarist. In 1965, following a gig with the R&B band the Tridents and on Yardbirds initial choice (and old pal) Jimmy Page's recommendation, Beck was recruited to join the Yardbirds (after Eric Clapton had left the group for John Mayall's Bluesbreakers). It was during his tenure with the Yardbirds that they recorded most of their hits.

During Jeff Beck's time with the Yardbirds he pioneered the use of many new guitar techniques, such as the intentional use of feedback, heavy distortion and complex soloing.

Stories about Beck's volatile temper began to circulate early. His perfectionism, coupled with the faulty equipment often in use during the 1960s, led to many stories about his willingness to take out frustrations on his equipment, though not in the form of smashing a guitar. The 1966 movie Blow-up contains a scene where the Yardbirds perform "Stroll On", and Beck becomes so enraged by equipment problems that he smashes his guitar. This scene was staged for the movie, as it was a re-creation of an actual event that director Michelangelo Antonioni witnessed at a concert of The Who.[4]. This was also spoofed in the movie This is Spinal Tap.

His time with The Yardbirds was short, allowing Beck only one full album, Roger the Engineer (1966); Beck left after 18 months, partly for health reasons. For a few months he shared the dual-lead guitar role with Jimmy Page, who had joined the Yardbirds as a bass player, but quickly moved to co-lead guitar, with Chris Dreja moving on bass .

While on the surface Beck seems to have departed the group because of his health, Page, who had been invited into the band for a second time in 1966 by Beck himself, tells a different story:

It was on that Dick Clark tour — there were a few incidents. One time in the dressing room I walked in and Beck had his guitar up over his head, about to bring it down on Keith Relf’s head, but instead smashed it on the floor,” Jimmy Page recalled years later. “Relf looked at him with total astonishment and Beck said, ‘Why did you make me do that?’ Fucking hell. Everyone said, ‘My goodness gracious, what a funny chap.’ We went back to the hotel and Beck showed me his tonsils, said he wasn’t feeling well and was going to see a doctor. He left for L.A., where we were headed anyway. When we got there, though, we realized that whatever doctor he was claiming to see must’ve had his office in the Whiskey. He was actually seeing his girlfriend, Mary Hughes, and had just used the doctor bit as an excuse to cut out on us.

Jeff Beck Group

The following year, after recording the one-off song "Beck's Bolero" (with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Nicky Hopkins, and Keith Moon), Beck formed a new band called The Jeff Beck Group, which featured him on lead guitar, Rod Stewart on vocals, Ron Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Micky Waller on drums.

The group produced two albums, Truth (August, 1968) and Beck-Ola (June, 1969). Both albums are highly acclaimed, and considered by many critics to have inspired the heavy metal genre.[citation needed]

Truth, released five months before the first Led Zeppelin album, features a cover of "You Shook Me", a song first recorded by Willie Dixon which was also covered on the Led Zeppelin debut. While it sold well (reaching #15 on the Billboard charts) and received great critical praise,[citation needed] Truth did not equal the impact of the release by Page's new band. Beck-Ola while well-received, was less successful both commercially and critically. Resentment, coupled with touring-related incidents, led the group to dissolve.

After the breakup, Beck decided to continue working with Stewart, and team up with bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, the rhythm section of the Vanilla Fudge. This project was sidelined when Beck suffered head injuries in a car crash, and left the music scene for over a year. Rod Stewart left to team up with Ron Wood and the Small Faces; and Bogert and Appice formed Cactus instead.

When Beck regained his health, he reformed a band with entirely new members. The new ensemble — Bob Tench on vocals and guitar, Max Middleton on piano and keyboards, Clive Chaman on bass and Cozy Powell on drums — although still known as the "Jeff Beck Group" featured a substantially different sound from the first lineup.

For the album Rough and Ready (1971), Beck wrote or co-wrote six of the album's seven tracks (the exception written by pianist Middleton). The album included elements of Soul, Rhythm and Blues and Jazz, foreshadowing the direction Beck's music would take later in the decade.

The follow-up, Jeff Beck Group, (1972) was recorded in Memphis, at the studio used by Booker T. & the M.G.'s; their guitarist, Steve Cropper, produced the album. The album, unsurprisingly, displayed a strong Soul influence. Five of the nine tracks were covers of American artists; one ("I Got To Have A Song") was the first of Beck's four covers of compositions written by Stevie Wonder.

Shortly after this release, Cactus broke up, leaving Bogert and Appice available. Beck dissolved the band in order to achieve his ambition to work with them, forming Beck, Bogert & Appice.

Beck, Bogert & Appice

The long-awaited lineup worked together for less than two years and released only one US album Beck, Bogert & Appice. While critics acknowledged the band's instrumental prowess, the album was not well received, except for its cover of Wonder's Superstition. Beck left the group during recording sessions for the second album. (A double-album (Beck, Bogert & Appice Live in Japan) was eventually released in Japan.)

Beck, Bogert & Appice were, to some degree, victims of forces beyond their control. The lineup (a power trio featuring a superstar guitarist) prompted critics to compare the band to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream and Led Zeppelin. Since Beck and his bandmates were less gifted singers and composers than their counterparts, comparisons were unflattering.

Beck's auto accident — and resulting delay in forming the group — also shaped critical response. Had Beck, Bogert & Appice been released in 1970, its similarity in style and content to Beck-Ola would have been expected. Coming in 1973 — after Beck had released two albums covering more diverse territory — led many critics to believe the guitarist had taken a step backward.

However, Beck's dismissive public comments about the album, coupled with his next career move, suggest that he also had grown bored with the band's limitations and the blues-rock genre.

Solo Albums

In October 1974, Beck began recording instrumentals at AIR studios with pianist Max Middleton (from the second Jeff Beck Group), bassist Phil Chen and drummer Richard Bailey and George Martin producing and providing string arrangements.

The resulting album, Blow by Blow (1975), displayed Beck's technical prowess in a jazz-rock format. The album reached #4 on the charts. It is Beck's most commercially successful release.

Arguably the world's most famous record producer, if only for his achievements with The Beatles, is George Martin, who was knighted in 1996. But even a man of his great wisdom was thrown into confusion when he produced Jeff Beck's album Blow by Blow at AIR Studios. Beck was fastidious about over-dubs but never seemed to be happy with his solos. A few days after a recording, when he'd had time to digest his own performance, he would telephone Martin and say "I think I could do a better one on this track", and they would return to AIR to try again. Beck would play over and over until he was satisfied that he had performed his best. A couple of months went by and Martin received another phone call from Beck: "I want to do this solo again." Bemused, Martin replied: "I'm sorry, Jeff, but the record is in the shops!"[5]

Wired, which followed a year later, paired Beck with drummer-composer Narada Michael Walden and keyboardist Jan Hammer. A more straightforward work of jazz-rock fusion (sounding similar to the work of his two collaborators), Wired sold slightly less well and also received less ecstatic reviews. A live album with Hammer was even less successful as critics complaining that Hammer had eradicated the subtleties of Blow By Blow.

1980s There and Back, featuring three compositions from Hammer and five with keyboardist Tony Hymas, sold less, but received better reviews. Hymas's compositions, which sounded to some like space-age jazz, gave the guitarist a more open framework for his pyrotechnics.

Later career

In 1981 he made a series of historic, joint live appearances with his Yardbirds predecessor Eric Clapton at the Amnesty International The Secret Policeman's Other Ball benefit shows. He appeared with Clapton on Crossroads, Further On Up The Road and his own arrangement of Stevie Wonder's Cause We've Ended As Lovers. Beck also featured prominently in the all-star band finale performance of I Shall Be Released with Clapton, Sting, Phil Collins, Donovan and Bob Geldof. Beck's contributions were seen and heard in the resulting album and film, both of which achieved worldwide success in 1982. Another benefit show called the ARMS Concert for Multiple Sclerosis featured a jam with Jeff, Eric and Jimmy Page performing "Tulsa Time", "Stairway to Heaven", and "Layla". This is the only time all of the 1963-1968 Yardbirds lead guitarists appeared on stage together.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Jeff Beck recorded sporadically (due largely to a long battle with noise-induced tinnitus): There and Back (1980, featuring Simon Phillips, Tony Hymas, Jan Hammer and Mo Foster), Flash (1985, including performances with Rod Stewart and Jan Hammer), Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop (1989, with Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas), Crazy Legs (1993), Who Else! (1999), and You Had It Coming (2001). He also accompanied Paul Rodgers of Bad Company on the album Muddy Water Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters in 1993. Jeff Beck won his third Grammy Award, this one for 'Best Rock Instrumental Performance' for the track "Dirty Mind" from You Had It Coming. The 2003 release of Jeff showed that the new electro-guitar style he used for the two earlier albums would continue to dominate. This style has been lauded by critics; Beck has skillfully fused an electronica influence with his blues/jazz past, with a sound mix which seems heavily influenced by the "brown" tone of subsequent guitarists like Van Halen and Joe Satriani. The song "Plan B" from this release earned him his fourth Grammy Award, again, for 'Best Rock Instrumental Performance'.

In the past few years, Jeff Beck has performed on new albums by Les Paul, Cyndi Lauper, and Roger Waters. Beck also is featured on one track on Queen guitarist Brian May's album Another World. He also appears on ZZ Top's album XXX. Beck made a cameo appearance in the movie Twins starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.

Jeff Beck continues to perform shows on a regular basis, including opening for B.B. King in the summer of 2003, backed by Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas.

Beck's most recent tours in 2005 and 2006 have included Jason Rebello on keyboards, Vinnie Colaiuta on drums and Pino Palladino on bass (replaced by Randy Hope-Taylor due to Palladino's prior commitment to The Who). An Official Bootleg USA'06 from the tour has been released through Beck's site.

Jeff Beck also accompanied Kelly Clarkson as the guitarist for her cover of Patty Griffin's song, "Up To The Mountain", during the 2007 Idol Gives Back episode of American Idol, receiving a standing ovation from the audience.

Beck was featured at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2007, and Bill Murray in introducing him cited Beck as his favorite guitarist.

Influence

Beck was one of the first electric guitarists in the 1960s to experiment with electronic distortion (most notably in The Yardbirds' 1966 album, Roger the Engineer) and helped to redefine the sound and role of the electric guitar in rock music. Beck's work with The Yardbirds and The Jeff Beck Group's 1968 album Truth were seminal influences on heavy metal music, which emerged in full force in the early 1970s. Jeff Beck is still highly influential with many modern guitarists, who cite him as a major influence on their playing.

Technique and equipment

Unlike some guitarists, Jeff Beck does not rely heavily on electronic effects. Beck does not use a pick (plectrum) but relies on his fingernails and thumbnail for his attack. He produces a wide variety of sounds by using his fingers and the vibrato bar on his signature Fender Stratocaster, although he frequently uses a wah-wah pedal both live and in the studio. As Eric Clapton once said, “With Jeff, it’s all in his hands.”[6] Along with Fender Stratocasters, Beck occasionally plays Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul models as well. His amplifiers are primarily Fenders and Marshalls. In his earlier days with the Yardbirds, Beck also used a Fender Esquire guitar through Vox AC30's. He has also played through a variety of fuzz pedals and echo-units along with this set-up and has used the Pro Co RAT Distortion Pedal.

Recently, Fender created a Custom Shop Tribute series version of his beat-up Esquire as well as his Artist Signature series Stratocaster.

Discography

As the Jeff Beck Group:

As Beck, Bogert & Appice

Solo:

With Big Town Playboys:

Compilations:

Appeared on

Trivia

  • While Beck and Jimmy Page played together in The Yardbirds, the trio of Beck, Page and Eric Clapton never played together in the group all at the same time. The three guitarists did play on stage together at the ARMS charity concerts in 1983 in honour of Ronnie Lane.
  • Beck's girlfriend Mary Hughes is name-checked in The Yardbirds song "Psycho Daisies".
  • He appears in the movie Blow Up with The Yardbirds performing "Stroll On".
  • He appears in the movie Twins with Nicolette Larson.
  • Beck plays an instrumental version of Lennon/McCartney classic "A Day in the Life" on Sir George Martin's album In My Life (1998), which also appeared in Julie Taymor's Beatles-inspired movie, Across the Universe.
  • Beck and Jimmy Page have known each other since they were 11 years old.
  • Beck is a vegetarian.
  • Stevie Wonder originally wrote "Superstition" for Beck. However, Stevie's manager insisted that he record it before Beck did.
  • When not touring or recording, Beck rarely plays guitar. Instead, he spends most of his time working on his classic Jaguars or building hot rods.
  • Following Mick Taylor's resignation, Beck was invited to an audition for the The Rolling Stones. After staying for a couple of days at a hotel in Amsterdam, where the Stones had rented a studio, Jeff and his manager decided to leave because they got tired of waiting around for a phonecall from the Stones. Subsequently, the Stones hired Ronnie Wood to play guitar on their 1975 Tour.
  • Jimi Hendrix considered Beck a close friend.
  • Beck is an Honorary member of the Henchmen Motorcycle Club.
  • He restores vintage American Cars.
  • Beck did a co-headline tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1989.
  • He was interested in playing lead guitar for Iron Butterfly when the group reformed in 1968 after a brief split. Before deciding upon Erik Brann, the band also considered Neil Young and Michael Monarch.
  • Beck appears on John McLaughlin's Promise.
  • Pink Floyd originally considered Beck to replace Syd Barrett after the latter became difficult to work with. However, as Nick Mason recalls in his autobiography, 'none of us had the nerve to ask him. Roger finally managed it twenty years later'. David Gilmour became Pink Floyd's guitarist instead.[7]
  • Beck's group plays with Donovan on the song, "Goo Goo Barabajagal (Love is Hot)"
  • Beck was to play a song with Guns N' Roses in Paris in 1992 but couldn't perform due to ear problems. He did rehearse on stage with them though.
  • Beck rarely uses a pick while playing.
  • Jeff has played on the rare blues album Guitar Boogie with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page
  • Jeff was due to play as featured guitarist on Mo Foster's first solo album Bel Assis but days before the recording was due to start Jeff injured his thumb working on one of his beloved hot-rods. He was replaced at the last minute by Gary Moore.

See also

Further reading

  • Carson, Annette (2002). Jeff Beck: Crazy Fingers. Backbeat books. ISBN 0-87930-632-7.
  • Christopher Hjort and Doug Hinman (2000): Jeff's Book: A Chronology of Jeff Beck's Career, 1965-1980: From the Yardbirds to Jazz-Rock, Rock'n'Roll Research Press ([1], [2])

Notes

  1. ^ Top ten guitar players
  2. ^ Foster, Mo (1997). 17 Watts? The Birth of British Rock Guitar (2nd Edition ed.). Sanctuary Publishing. pp. pp119-120. ISBN 186074267X. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. ^ Foster, Mo (1997). 17 Watts? The Birth of British Rock Guitar (2nd Edition ed.). Sanctuary Publishing. pp. p38. ISBN 186074267X. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  4. ^ Anyway Anyhow Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of The Who
  5. ^ Foster, Mo (1997). 17 Watts? The Birth of British Rock Guitar (2nd Edition ed.). Sanctuary Publishing. pp. p315. ISBN 186074267X. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  6. ^ http://www.jeffbeck.com/jeffbeck_bio.html
  7. ^ K Whitlock. "Record Collector Interview". Pink Floyd & Co fan website. Retrieved 2007-12-15.
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