I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it?
Jeff Beck
Biography
Geoffrey Arnold ("Jeff") Beck (born June 24, 1944 to Arnold and Ethel Beck in Wallington, Greater London) Like many rock musicians in the early 1960s, he began his career working as a session guitarist. In 1965, following a gig with the Tridents, 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.
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, 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.
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.
While on the surface Beck seems to have departed the group because of his health, Jimmy Page, who had been invited into the band 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.
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, Clapton's Cream and Page's 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 (Beck's most successful release) and most critics also regard it as his best work.
Arguably the world's most famous record producer, if only for his achievements with The Beatles, is George Martin, who was deservedly knighted in 1996. But even a man of his great wisdom was thrown into confusion when, in 1975, he produced Jeff Beck's powerfully adventurous, jazz-tinged album Blow by Blow at AIR Studios in London's Oxford Street. Jeff 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 George and say "I think I could do a better one on this track", and they would return to AIR to try again. Jeff would play over and over until he was satisfied that he had performed his best. A couple of months went by and George received another phone call from Jeff: "I want to do this solo again." Bemused, George said: "I'm sorry, Jeff, but the record is in the shops!"
Wired, which followed a year later, paired Beck with drummer-composer Narada Michael Walden and keyboardist Jan Hammer. A more straightforward work 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, with critics complaining that Hammer had eradicated the subtleties of Blow By Blow
1980s There and Back, featuring three compositions from Hammer and five with keyboadist 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 "Living on Tulsa Time" 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 last solo 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 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. Examples include Jimi Hendrix, Brian May (who calls him "The Guv'ner"), the late Mick Ronson (who said Beck was his guitar idol), Slash, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan.