Jeff Beck

Bio

Jeff Beck was born in 1944, and grew up around music. First as a choir boy, then learning piano and guitar. By age 11, he was proficient at both. Jeff never could sing well, so he channeled his musical energy into his guitar to make very original voicings of its own.

At a very young juncture, Eric Clapton had left the popular band the Yardbirds, to pursue personal goals, and his shoes were filled by Jeff, and another lead guitarist named Jimmy Page. While the Yardbirds had Jeff, he added depth, color, flair and breadth to their existing songs, and gained a following of his own that otherwise would have left the band to follow Eric Clapton exclusively. After a time, creative and personal tension between Jeff and Jimmy would drive the two apart, and Jeff walked out of the band for good. This was a show of force that would repeat itself in later tours with Rod Stewart and others.

Not withstanding his tendency not to be a team player, Jeff's long chain of solo work as well as commissioned studio and touring work continued to flourish, and establish him as a definite creative force with the ability to hear, find and express pure musical ideas in ways that still manifest themselves in the work of other guitar gods who give hime the credit.

Not one to employ an arsenal of custom-made gear, Beck sticks with a single guitar and amp (a modified white Fender Stratocaster and a Marshall JCM 2000) for the majority of his recording. It's still a mystery how he can pull so many sonic elements out of such a limited setup. But that is an enigma that has applied to the guitarist for decades.

Beck has been credited with inventing techniques and sounds that are so common within the rock lexicon that it's difficult to envision the style without it. He is regarded as the first rock guitarist to use distortion and Eastern-influenced droning riffs, as well as the earliest to popularize the talk box (called a mouth bag in England), years prior to Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do." Has Beck ever invented something he didn't get credit for?

"I suppose the most unnoticed in my style, and probably the best things, were some of those slippery licks," he says. "The illusions that I can do with some triplet scales, people have sort of brushed them aside for something more gimmicky -- which is something people will do. Jimi Hendrix gets remembered for setting fire to his guitar almost more than for playing it."

So is Beck the world's greatest living rock guitarist? "Nope," he says emphatically. "That's the most ridiculous thing to start those kind of sweeping titles. I don't see why everybody has to make everything the best. 'Is it the best? Is it the fastest? How fast does this car go, mate?' It's not a contest. We're all different. It's like asking which is the best breakfast. It's not a question of that; it's what you fancy. I'm not in the business of making self-appraisals. As long as there's something original going on, that's all that really matters."

Links

Jeff Beck's Official Web Site

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