After replacing Eric Clapton with The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck in turn became a guitar legend. With the Jeff Beck Group he announced psychedelic rock. But the greatest success was not forthcoming. “When you look around and see who’s all become gigantic, it’s a really bad feeling.”
It was 1965 and the English rockers The Yardbirds had just scored their biggest hit with the immortal ‘For your love’ when Eric Clapton stepped out, out of some blues purism and fear of being called the new Beatles. He recommended the band to a friend: one Jimmy Page, who declined the honor and in turn passed the baton to Jeff Beck, a childhood friend he mostly knew through his sister. Two days after Clapton’s departure, Beck was already performing with The Yardbirds.
He gave the band a psychedelic twist, with his love for reverb and other guitar effects, which he often invented. He put an Indian guitar style in ‘Heart full of soul’ and made the band sing like Gregorian monks at times. The hit ‘Shapes of things’ was the first song the band wrote itself and is credited as the first classic of psychedelic rock.
After a year of success for The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page retraced his steps and joined the band, which was now led by the tandem Page and Beck. They can also be seen in Blow-up, in which Michelangelo Antonioni portrayed the zeitgeist. In the film, the audience stands in a seemingly disinterested silence as The Yardbirds give their best until Beck smashes his guitar to smithereens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHqXWIoYRvA
Two years after Beck joined the band, he was fired during a US tour because of his difficult nature. He then formed The Jeff Beck Group, for which he gave a chance to a few musicians who would later find fame in their turn: a still unknown Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. The leading album Truth inspired Jimmy Page after the collapse of The Yardbirds to start a band a few months later: Led Zeppelin.
From another planet
In the 1970s, Beck would merge jazz, rock and funk into the successful fusion album Blow by blow. Widely regarded by his peers as one of the best, most characterful guitarists of his generation, he has amassed seven Grammys. Music sheet Rolling Stone ranked Beck fifth in his top 100 greatest guitarists. Yet he did not know the sales and success of Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and his idol Jimi Hendrix. Four years ago, Beck expressed some regret about that Rolling Stone. “When you look around and see who’s all become gigantic, it’s a really bad feeling.”
Beck released a total of eighteen studio albums, solo and with bands. The guitarist released his latest with actor Johnny Depp, who sought refuge in music because his acting career collapsed. The two also toured last year, but that was especially painful to watch.
Jeff Beck died of meningitis in a hospital in England on Tuesday, aged 78. “Jeff Beck was from another planet,” Rod Stewart wrote after the news broke. “He took me and Ronnie Wood to the US in the late 1960s with his band The Jeff Beck Group and we’ve never looked back since. He was the rare guitar player who actually listened to what I sang and responded to it in a live performance. Jeff, you were the best.’
