We’ve Lost a Sorcerer: Jeff Beck Remembered

It was a musical moment that I will never forget. In December 2013 I got a gig at Ronnie Scott’s, the legendary London jazz club that opened in 1959 and has hosted the likes of Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Count Basie, Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Rollins, Sarah Vaughan and many more Guest were, well, basically everyone who’s ever been in the jazz world.

Ronnie Scott’s is also where my very favorite electric rock ‘n’ roll guitar performance was recorded: Jeff Beck’s 2008, Live at Ronnie Scott’s. In fact, you’re doing yourself a favor. Stop reading my mind and click YouTube for the full 2-hour performance.

You will no doubt be so mesmerized that you will scrutinize each moment and then return to the beginning to watch the performance a second time. But on the off chance you’re not willing to let the bravura performance put aside your other commitments in life, skip to the penultimate track, the rendition of “A Day in the Life,” which rightly earned Mr. Beck a Grammy nominated for Best Instrumental Rock Performance. Yes I know. You will return to the performance again and again.

Thoughts of the fabled venue and Mr Beck’s performance floated through my mind as I climbed the steps to the club many years ago. When I entered the manager greeted me and led me to the stage. “Oh,” he said, “Jeff is coming to visit you tonight.” “Jeff who?” I asked. “Jeff Beck.” gulp.

Jeff Beck died on January 10, 2023 at the age of 78. As his family put it, “After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he died peacefully.”

As we all know, Beck was a member of the holy guitar triumvirate, along with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, whose career blazed through 1960s British band The Yardbirds. After brief stints in the band, all three, born within 15 months of each other, emerged as certified guitar heroes. Clapton and Page had reached the artistic level that would remain constant throughout their careers. Not so Beck. As Page would one day tell the BBC about Beck, “He just kept getting better and better. And he leaves us, mere mortals.”

Beck even stood out in The Yardbirds. He forgoes the usual blues-rock licks of his countrymen in favor of something more imaginative. Listen to his solo in 1966’s Shapes of Things. The tune sounds like typical mid-1960s rock-pop. Then Beck enters, feedback howling over raga-like licks.

As music journalist Alan Di Perna reports in his book, Guitar Masters: Intimate Portraits, Beck recalled, “There was mass hysteria in the studio when I did that solo. They didn’t expect it and it was just a strange fog coming out of an amplifier from the east.” Rock and roll would never be the same. Jimi Hendrix would never be the same again. Remember this was a year before the release of Hendrix’s first album, Do you have experienceand Hendrix dropped Beck’s name during interviews early in his (too brief) career.

Beck was already ahead of the musical curve in the mid-1960s. His work with the Yardbirds heralded hard rock, he previewed heavy metal with the Jeff Beck Group and invented jazz fusion with his first solo release. beat by beat.

Two vignettes illustrate how closely connected Beck’s artistic restlessness was with his iconoclastic personality. The first is his strained relationship with Rod Stewart, his compatriot from the Jeff Beck group. As the singer recalls in his autobiography, “The problem with [with the group], was from the start that it all too obviously cast Jeff into a supporting role he was pretty much guaranteed to hate, however well paid it might be. The tour was set for 74 dates over four months. Backstage, a lot of people were muttering, saying, “This is doomed – he won’t last two shows.” But they were all wrong. He lasted three. And then he went and said something about the audience being all housewives, which was a bit rude of the old scoundrel.” Oh, and Beck left the group three weeks before their scheduled Woodstock performance.

Perhaps more importantly, as Beck told journalist Kate Mossman, he turned down an offer to fill Mick Taylor’s shoes with The Rolling Stones, certain he would derive no artistic satisfaction from the performance. Beck had spent the spring of 1975 touring with John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, during which time the two formed a society of mutual artistic admiration. As he dismissed the Stones offer, “Play with McLaughlin and then the Stones – damn, damn, damn – can you imagine that?” No, Beck couldn’t.

Let’s go back to Ronnie Scott’s set. Beck’s Stratocaster, his favorite instrument of the last few decades, screeches and swoons. Mixing the staccato with the legato, howling open string tones with pinched overtones, he goes from whispering soft to screeching, sometimes within a few bars. His right hand is a miracle. He operates the volume control and the whammy bar at the same time while plucking complex and sometimes frantic figures. Check out his guitar and amp setups. Do your best to mimic Beck’s tone. No you can’t. As Eric Clapton is credited with famously saying, “It’s all in his hands with Jeff.” As record producer and educator Rick Beato recently put it, “His melodic sense! [And] each note has a different volume. Each note has a different attack, a different envelope.” Jeff Beck, Beato rightly concluded, “cannot be copied”.

Ronnie Scott’s set offers a good overview of Beck’s career (although you’ll surely want to take a deep dive into his catalogue). The opening number “Beck’s Bolero”, a rendition of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero”, documents Beck’s penchant for incorporating classical music melodies into his playing. Beck originally recorded the tune in 1966 with Jimmy Page on rhythm guitar. Yes, 1966.

The set never fails to surprise. Beck demonstrates his jazz credibility with Charles Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”, John McLaughlin’s “Eternity’s Breath” and Billy Cobham’s “Stratus”. Most poignantly, he illuminates his love and mastery of melody with his transcendent rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers.”

Beck reveals his range in two of his own compositions. In “Where Were You” he demonstrates his ability to use artificial overtones and the whammy bar simultaneously to serve up a beautiful melody. With “Scatterbrain,” he grabs a guitar pick, something he hasn’t used in at least a few decades, and rejuvenates “Scatterbrain,” a 1974s tune beat by beatand plays lightspeed fusion.

Then, of course, there’s Beck’s transcendent interpretation of Lennon and McCartney’s “Day in the Life.” Not only does it conjure up the complete Beatles arrangement, but it also reveals the melody in a way that springs to mind every time you hear the song again, regardless of who is playing it.

The variety, range, contrast in techniques and Beck’s modest stage presence reveal the guitarist’s strengths and weaknesses. He was an otherworldly musician whose artistic pursuits and social reticence prevented him from treading the beaten path into the world of rock ‘n’ roll stardom.

We may not always please everyone, but Jeff Beck has proven over four decades that he can challenge anyone, anytime.

Well, back to my reverie. I’m about to take it on stage at Ronnie Scott’s now. Opening the second set of a night with Classical Kicks, a genre-bending series sponsored by Classical Music Magazine. The performances before me included classical, Gershwin and Turkish music. Alright, take a deep breath. Uh, one more deep breath. I look out at the audience, trying not to focus on Beck at his table, just a few feet away from me. I play something slow and beautiful, hoping not to be compared to the virtuosos who have preceded and will follow me that evening. You can see the result here.

In the lyrics, Becks notes a vocal performance (which he disliked, disliking his singing voice): “And it’s hi ho silver lining and here we go…. I see your sun is shining, but I won’t make a fuss.”