Jeff Beck: 24/06/1944 – 10/01/2023

Known as the ‘guitarist’s guitarist’, Jeff Beck was a member of that remarkable trio of 1960s guitar players – which also included Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page – who passed through The Yardbirds; although he didn’t gain the high public profile and superstar trappings of his friends Clapton and Page, he did enjoy the adulation of fellow musicians, and was regularly mentioned in the same breath as Jimi Hendrix.

Born Geoffrey Arnold Beck in Surrey, he had an epiphany aged six, when he heard Les Paul and Mary Ford’s ‘How High The Moon’ on the radio and decided the electric guitar (he rarely expressed interest in the acoustic) was his calling. Initially playing borrowed and self-built instruments, by the time he turned 18 he had developed considerable skill on his chosen instrument. As well as Les Paul, Beck’s other early influences included BB King, Lonnie Mack, Steve Cropper and Cliff Gallup, guitarist with Gene Vincent’s band the Blue Caps. After a brief spell at art school, he began getting regular work as a musician, including with Screaming Lord Sutch. His big break came in 1965, when Jimmy Page recommended to The Yardbirds that Beck replace the departing Eric Clapton.

After a tempestuous but fruitful stint in the Yardbirds, Beck went solo in 1968 (he had been considered as a replacement for the ailing Syd Barrett by the members of Pink Floyd, before the group settled for David Gilmour) releasing Truth, which drew on the blues and hard rock template that Jimmy Page would later use for Led Zeppelin. One year later, he released Beck-Ola with The Jeff Beck Group, but his career derailed after he suffered a head injury in a car accident (cars, perhaps even more than guitars, were Beck’s great passion).

Although best-known as a rock player, Beck was also a consummate bluesman and even dabbled in pop – his best-known tune is the Mickie Most-helmed hit ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’, which charted twice in the UK in the 1967 and 1972 – and was a crucial figure in the jazz-rock and fusion scene of the 1970s and 80s. In 1970, after recovering from his head injury, Beck formed a new incarnation of the Jeff Beck Group, and released two records – 1971’s Rough and Ready and 1972’s Jeff Beck Group – which displayed his earliest forays into the jazz fusion sound he would become known for. Later in the decade, while supporting John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra on tour, he had another epiphany, an experience that radically changed how he saw music: “Watching McLaughlin and the sax player trading solos, I thought, ‘This is me’,” he said many years later.

Although not a natural improviser, Beck embraced the jazz-fusion cause with gusto and made the George Martin-produced Blow By Blow. A million-seller in the US where it peaked at No 4 in the Billboard album chart, it was Beck’s most commercially successful album, but, typically for Beck, he had mixed feelings about the album and its success. Nevertheless, he continued with jazz-rock for a few more years, releasing two more platinum albums, Wired, in 1976, and There and Back, in 1980.

Thereafter Beck’s output slowed, and he moved away from instrumental jazz towards more straightforward rock and pop, later adding hip-hop and electronica to his already broad musical palette. By the turn of the century, he had become something of an elder statesman, collaborating with a bewildering array of artists from Kate Bush and Roger Waters through to Jonny Depp and Joss Stone. Perhaps the most successful recording of the latter part of his career was the 2008 album and DVD release Live at Ronnie Scott's, recorded the previous year at the iconic London club and featuring Jason Rebello, Vinnie Colaiuta and Tal Wilkenfeld alongside Beck. It won a Grammy and the guitar master’s cover of Mingus’ ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ has gone down in musical folklore.

It is a measure of the esteem in which Beck was held that as soon as his death was announced, the internet and social media began to fill up with fulsome and often awe-struck tributes from fellow musicians. Perhaps his old mucker Page put it best: “The six stringed warrior is no longer here for us to admire the spell he could weave around our mortal emotions. Jeff could channel music from the ethereal”.