Jeff Beck has died

January 11, 2023

It’s a sad day in rock music history, as the New York Times reports:

Jeff Beck, one of the most skilled, admired, and influential guitarists in rock history, died on Tuesday at a hospital near his home in Surrey, England. He was 78.

The cause was bacterial meningitis. …

Here he is last year covering “Isolation,” from John Lennon’s debut solo album, Plastic Ono Band album (1970), with Johnny Depp singing and playing rhythm guitar. Notice how Beck plays guitar solos using his thumb instead of a pick — that makes it much harder to play fast, so that’s a sign he cared less about drawing attention to his own speed or virtuosity than about allowing us, the listeners, to savor the tone and expressiveness of each note:

From the NYT obituary:

During the 1960s and ’70s, as either a member of the Yardbirds or as leader of his own bands, Mr. Beck brought a sense of adventure to his playing that helped make the recordings by those groups groundbreaking.

In 1965, when Mr. Beck joined the Yardbirds, to replace another guitar hero, Eric Clapton, the group was already one of the defining acts in Britain’s growing electric blues movement. But his stinging licks and darting leads on songs like “Shapes of Things” and “Over Under Sideways Down” added an expansive element to the music that helped signal the emerging psychedelic rock revolution.

Three years later, when he formed his own band, later known as the Jeff Beck Group — along with a then little-known singer, Rod Stewart, and the equally obscure Ron Wood on bass — the weight of the music created an early template for heavy metal. Specifically, the band’s 1968 debut, “Truth,” provided a blueprint that another former guitar colleague from the Yardbirds, Jimmy Page, drew on to devise Led Zeppelin several months later.

 Jeff Beck plays lead guitar on a beautiful song on Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book album (1972), “Lookin’ for Another Pure Love.” Listen to the whole song and notice Jeff Beck’s solo starting just after 1:45. You can sense Wonder delighting over the solo, laughing and saying: “Do it, Jeff!” After the solo, Beck’s leads continue interacting with Wonder’s singing.

For a change of pace, here he is playing with Stevie Wonder on “Superstition,” a more upbeat and better-known song from the same album. Wikipedia says the song was created in the studio when Jeff Beck started playing not guitar but the drum beat. Stevie Wonder told him to keep playing it; they started improvising together, and that turned into this song:

More from the Times:

In 1974, when Mr. Beck began his solo career with the “Blow by Blow” album, he refigured the essential formula of that era’s fusion movement, tipping the balance of its influences from jazz to rock and funk and in the process creating a sound that was both startlingly new and highly successful. “Blow by Blow” became a Billboard Top Five, a platinum hit and his most popular work.

Along the way, Mr. Beck helped either pioneer, or amplify, some important technical innovations on his instrument. He elaborated the use of distortion and feedback effects, earlier explored by Pete Townshend; intensified the effect of bending notes on the guitar; and widened the range of expression that could be coaxed from devices amended to the guitar like the whammy bar.

Drawing on such techniques, Mr. Beck could weaponize his strings to hit like a stun gun, or caress them to express what felt like a kiss. His work had humor too, with licks that could cackle and leads that could tease.…

Here’s an 11-minute video by Rick Beato on “why Jeff Beck is uncopyable.” Recording this video in October 2022, Beato emphasized that Jeff Beck was still “as good as he ever was” at age 78:

Jeff Beck was ranked #5 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, in 2015. (The voters for that list included Eddie Van Halen, Brian May of Queen, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, Kirk Hammett of Metallica, and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.) Beck’s entry on the list was written by Mike Campbell, from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who said:

Jeff Beck has the combination of brilliant technique with personality. It’s like he’s saying, “I’m Jeff Beck. I’m right here. And you can’t ignore me.” Even in the Yardbirds, he had a tone that was melodic but in-your-face — bright, urgent and edgy, but sweet at the same time. …

There is a real artistry to playing with and around a vocalist, answering and pushing him. That’s the beauty of those two records he made with Rod Stewart, 1968’s Truth and 1969’s Beck-Ola. Jeff is not getting in the way, but he’s holding his own. …

I saw him last year at a casino in San Diego, and the guitar was the voice. You didn’t miss the singer, because the guitar was so lyrical.

Rolling Stone recommends these as some of his essential tracks: “Beck’s Bolero,” “Freeway Jam,” “A Day in the Life,” and “Heart Full of Soul.”

Here’s Sting singing “People Get Ready” with Jeff Beck: