I am suspending the Animal Songs series for the day to mark the passing of one the great guitar players of modern rock music. Beck helped to provide the soundtrack of my early musical life and so I wanted to feature some of his music on the blog this morning.
As a teenager Beck learned to play on a borrowed guitar and made several attempts to build his own instrument, first by gluing and bolting together cigar boxes for the body and an unsanded fence-post for the neck with model aircraft control-lines and frets simply painted on it. After leaving school, he attended Wimbledon College of Art. Then he was briefly employed as a painter and decorator, a groundsman on a golf course, and a car paint-sprayer. Beck’s sister Annetta introduced him to Jimmy Page when both were teenagers.
In March 1965, Beck was recruited by the Yardbirds to succeed Eric Clapton on the recommendation of Page, who had been their initial choice. The Yardbirds recorded most of their Top 40 hit songs during Beck’s short but significant 20-month tenure with the band allowing him only one full album, which became known as Roger the Engineer, released in 1966. In May 1966, Beck recorded an instrumental titled “Beck’s Bolero”. Rather than members of the Yardbirds, he was backed by Page on 12-string rhythm guitar, Keith Moon on drums, John Paul Jones on bass, and Nicky Hopkins on piano.
Beck was fired during a U.S. tour for being a consistent no-show—as well as difficulties caused by his perfectionism and explosive temper. In 1967, he recorded several solo singles for pop producer Mickie Most, including “Hi Ho Silver Lining” and “Tallyman”, which also included his vocals.
He then formed The Jeff Beck Group, which included Rod Stewart on vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Aynsley Dunbar on drums. Rough and Ready (October 1971), the first album they recorded, on which Beck wrote or co-wrote six of the album’s seven tracks (the exception being written by Middleton), included elements of soul, rhythm-and-blues, and jazz, foreshadowing the direction Beck’s music would take later in the decade. A second album Jeff Beck Group (July 1972) was recorded in Memphis with the same personnel. Beck employed Steve Cropper as producer and the album displayed a strong soul influence, five of the nine tracks being covers of songs by American artists. One, “I Got to Have a Song”, was the first of four Stevie Wonder compositions covered by Beck.
Beck had intended to form a power trio with Vaniila Fudge members Carmine Appice (drums) and Tim Bogert (bass), but those plans were derailed when he suffered a serious car crash in 1970. By the time he recuperated in 1971, Bogart and Appice were playing in Cactus. They dissolved in late 1972, and Beck, Bogert and Appice formed a power trio the following year. The group’s lone studio album — a live record released in Japan but never in the U.K. or U.S. — was widely panned due to its plodding arrangements and weak vocals, and the group disbanded the following year.Beck retired for 5 years returning in 1980 with There and Back. Following the tour for the album, Beck retired again, returning five years later with the slick, Nile Rodgers-produced Flash. A pop/rock album recorded with a variety of vocalists, Flash featured Beck’s only hit single, the Stewart sung “People Get Ready,” and also boasted “Escape,” which won the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental. In 1992, Beck played lead guitar on Roger Walters’ comeback album, Amused to Death.
Beck’s first new studio album in seven years, appeared in the spring of 2010. It was greeted by considerable acclaim, including winning two Grammy Awards in 2011 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Over the next few years, Beck gigged regularly, highlighted by a 2013 joint tour with Brian Wilson; the duo planned to record together but those plans fell apart. In April 2015, Beck released Live+, a record culled from concerts given in August 2014 augmented by two new studio cuts. The following summer brought the all-new Loud Hailer, an album recorded with vocalist Rosie Bones and guitarist Carmen Vandenberg. After the release of Loud Hailer, Beck befriended Johnny Depp. Soon, the pair cooked up plans to record an album together. After releasing a pointed cover of John Lennon’s “Isolation” during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the duo delivered the full-length in June 2022.
Beck ranked in the top five of Rolling Stone and other magazines’ list of 100 greatest guitarists. He was often called a “guitarist’s guitarist”, Rolling Stone described him as “one of the most influential lead guitarists in rock”. Although he recorded two hit albums (in 1975 and 1976) as a solo act, Beck did not establish or maintain the sustained commercial success of many of his contemporaries and bandmates. He recorded with many artists. Beck earned wide critical praise and received the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance six times and Best Pop Instrumental Performance once. In 2014 he received the British Academy’s Ivor Novelo Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: as a member of the Yardbirds (1992) and as a solo artist (2009).
