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Beck was the very incarnation of the British rock star, lean and focused, with an enviable pile of hair.
\n Photo: Gijsbert Hanekroot\/Redferns<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nThere were small clubs in London in the early 1960s that, on a typical evening, were packed with riffraff, mostly unwashed boys from nondescript backgrounds, art-school dropouts at best. Surely there were nights when a certain group all happened to be present at the same time. Back then, few besides their immediate friends and family would have recognized them. Today, they’re household names. Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, and Brian Jones; Mick Fleetwood and John McVie; Peter Townshend and Roger Daltrey; Ray Davies and his brother Dave.<\/p>\n
Among them was a guitarist, Jeff Beck, whose eventual celebrity (and, no doubt, bank account) would always be a bit smaller than the others’. His aloof mien masked a strain of volatility, and perennial musical dissatisfaction made working with him, by many accounts, difficult. But his guitar skills were a match of any of his peers, and he would go on to record for nearly 60 years, displaying again and again a mastery of the instrument’s sonic possibilities that was among the most adventuresome and advanced of his generation.<\/p>\n
Beck, whose death at 78 of bacterial meningitis was announced by his publicist this week, became best known for playing in the Yardbirds during its most successful incarnation. He soon left the band to form the Jeff Beck Group, with Rod Stewart as lead vocalist, and then a tough power trio, Beck, Bogert & Appice. In both, he was the very incarnation of the British rock star, lean and focused, with an enviable pile of hair. (\u201cHe had that weird pineapple cut that a few English bands had,\u201d drummer Carmine Appice would later recall.) After that came a 50-year career of increasingly adventuresome solo work, ranging from fusion to techno, hard rock to rockabilly to the Great American Songbook \u2014 even a cover of \u201cNessun Dorma.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck’s playing stood apart; he was among the wildest of players, yet also the most controlled and precise. He unquestionably had the widest range of influences of any of his peers; never doctrinaire about the blues or anything else, he could play in any style. He was a student of guitar effects and unleashed essays of unearthly sounds, but always with a mind-bending clarity and precision. He was, for a time, the leader of the band that some thought might claim a heavy-metal crown from Led Zeppelin, but he was just as comfortable displaying easy-listening jazz chops on songs by Charles Mingus or Narada Michael Walden. And in an industry of showoffs and sociopaths, he was a showboat only onstage, tending to be aloof elsewhere, one who kept his own counsel on just about everything but the music.<\/p>\n
Beck had grown up in Wallington, a suburb about ten miles south of London; he was infatuated with the guitar, and as a youngster he had met someone quite like him, Jimmy Page. A few years later, Beck ended up playing in a band called the Tridents; by that time, Page was a prodigy on the London recording scene working prolifically, and remuneratively, as a studio musician \u2014 and pushing Beck into the business as well.<\/p>\n
He eventually joined the Yardbirds. The band is pretty much forgotten today, but they remain of interest to rock fans for having produced an impressive spring of guitarists \u2014 first Clapton, then Beck, and then Page. The original Yardbirds had a serious front man in Keith Relf. Like the Stones, they began as sober and serious devotees of American blues music, and had a reputation based around their live blues \u201crave-up,\u201d where they would embark in high-energy instrumental breaks, driving their club audiences into a frenzy.<\/p>\n
But the bands were fighting a rearguard action. In their minds they were honoring the music, but all around them, the managers and record labels that controlled their careers smelled the money that could be made in the wake of the emergence of the Beatles. One by one, the doctrinaire defenses fell. Clapton was a blues diehard. He didn’t like a pop single the band had recorded, so he left. The Yardbirds, looking to replace Clapton, turned to Page. He passed and referred them to Beck. Recalled Relf:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cOur manager \u2026 told us to audition Jeff. We did, and wow! What a wreck he looked. His hair hung matted below his shoulders, his jeans were torn open. [We] muttered, ‘Oh, no!’ And then he started to play, and it was like a healthy chunk of heaven dropped into our lap.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Beck joined just as \u201cFor Your Love\u201d \u2014 the single Clapton didn’t like \u2014 began its race up the British charts to number one, and into the top ten in the US The Yardbirds recorded their next single with Beck. \u201cHeart Full of Soul\u201d became another solid hit, with Beck delivering a fuzzed-out guitar riff that, along with the Kinks’ earlier \u201cYou Really Got Me\u201d and, a short time later, the Stones’ \u201cSatisfaction,\u201d would limn the new frontiers in electronic sound.<\/p>\n
The band in its own way widened the sound of the music, working with unusual instruments and slotting in unexpected instrumental breaks. Beck was the driver behind their incendiary cover of \u201cTrain Kept a Rollin’,\u201d and delivered a blistering performance in \u201cYou’re a Better Man Than I.\u201d But their history is also a reminder that the groups that came together and survived in that era were charmed. Others, like the Yardbirds, weren’t so lucky.<\/p>\n