"I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I am not doing my job properly".
Jeff Beck
He's been called arrogant and difficult to work with. He has an ego and occasional flashes of a temper that has been known to melt bands. He has broken up bands because of his well deserved reputation as a guitarist who goes off on tangents while playing, often leaving his band mates far behind. He has been called a forerunner, a progenitor, of the early days of the heavy metal movement and one of the best rock-jazz fusion guitarists to experiment in the genre. He turned down a spot in The Rolling Stones and replaced Eric Clapton in The Yardbirds. And yet aside from a few brief moments in the 1970's, Jeff Beck has managed to spend an entire career eluding the high profile of some of his peers of equal or even lesser skill. Even though he has never reached the popular heights of some, there are very, very few guitarists who do not laude his skills and or cite him as a major influence to their playing style and energy.
Hailing from the U.K., Geoffrey Arnold Beck was born in Wallington in June of 1944. Like so many before him, his early musical training was singing in the church choir. His initial foray into the guitar was, as a teenager, an attempt to build his own out of a cigar box for the body and a fence post for a neck. In error and lack of knowledge of the guitar and perhaps as a little foreshadowing into the future, he never added frets to his guitar, opting instead to just paint them on the neck. British jazz musician Mo Foster quoted Beck as saying "The scale was so bad that it was only playable with a capo at the fifth fret … I was interested in the electric guitar before I knew what the difference was between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one."
Citing influences as wide ranging as B.B. King, Les Paul and rock-a-billy guitarist Cliff Gallup, Beck essentially taught himself the guitar. After leaving school, he entered and left the Wimbledon College of Art where he found work as a painter and decorator, spray painting cars and, briefly, working as a groundskeeper at a local golf course. But during these early days, fate played an interesting role in his life. Becks sister introduced him to another young guitarist that would have an impact on his career.
She introduced him to Jimmy Page. A few years later, this introduction and eventual friendship would help steer the direction of his nascent career.
Jeff began his music career briefly backing up the horror themed, prop maniac musician Lord Sutch and The Savages. The stay was short and Beck moved quickly to other early 60's British bands like Him And The Others, The Bandits and Kerry Rapid and The Blue Stars. But after early member of The Rolling Stones Ian Stewart loaned him a few R&B records, Beck immediately formed the band Nightshift. It didn't take long for that band to collapse from Becks 'going off on a tangent' while playing and that apparently he would become easily distracted and bored with the material the band was playing. The same fate befell his next project, The Tridents.
But his next gig booted him into international stardom. He was tapped as the replacement to Eric Clapton in The Yardbirds. Beck was not the first choice. The band had originally wanted power house session guitarist, Jimmy Page. Page turned down the opportunity and recommended his friend, Jeff Beck. For two years, Jeff Beck was the guitarist for The Yardbirds during their most popular and successful period. His eclectic playing is evident in their hits 'Heart Full Of Soul', 'Shapes Of Things', 'Evil Hearted You' and 'Over Under Sideways Down.'
But according to rock historians, the attention paid to Beck over the other members of the band led to the end of The Yardbirds. This was especially evident when Page finally joined the band but not as a guitarist but rather as their bassist. It became a clash of both talent and ego.
Jeff Beck went solo and released a few singles while trying to get a foothold on his career. Singles 'Hi Ho Silver Lining', 'Tallyman' and 'Love Is Blue' made noise in England but barely registered a blip on the radar in the United States. Interestingly even Beck himself was not a fan of this period of his career. He has even said that he deliberately played the song 'Love Is Blue' out of tune because he hated the song so much.
In 1967 he formed the band The Jeff Beck Group with Ron Wood and Rod Stewart on vocals. The bands furious and loud reworking of R&B standards, according to many, set the groundwork for the Heavy Metal sound of the 1970's. Many critics have said that the original version of the Jeff Beck Group was the prototype for Led Zepplin which formed shortly after. Although the band was very successful, the clashing egos of Beck, Stewart and Wood blew up the band after a short stint. Wood and Stewart left to join The Faces and Beck joined up with Vanilla Fudge's rhythm section drummer Carmine Appice and bassist Tim Bogert. Before this 'super group' could get off the ground, Beck was involved in a serious car accident and sustained a skull fracture that took him out of music for almost two years. (A noted car 'fanatic', Jeff Beck has had three separate crashes and was once sidelined for months after having his thumb trapped under a car.)
[FONT=Tahoma]"All I can do is be me ... whoever that is". Bob Dylan [/FONT]
