The conversation at the elegant French restaurant where we are dining is slowly but surely being drowned out by the increasing noise from the adjoining table. Seated nearby is a harangue of rather obnoxious conventioneers, ten middle-aged tubbos who seem to have been teleported here straight from a Wednesday night bowling league dinner dance somewhere in Iowa. Each is nattily attired in pastel-colored leisure suits, with floral print shirts that proclaim 'Hi, I'm a tourist' as the collars swell out over the jacket lapels. They keep looking around in anticipation , as if some black-laced chambermaid is about to spring out of a giant crepe at any moment.

Jeff Beck glances up at me from his vichyssoise. 'Those fucking pig businessmen; I can't stand them. They're doing all the things that they used to keep people like us out of places like this for fear that we'd act that way.' Another writer, who'd interviewed Beck earlier that day finds the moment suitably hostile to hit Jeff with just one more question. 'Well Jeff,' he casually cajoles, 'what about feedback? Was it you, or Glapton or who?' Beck drops his spoon and places one hand over his mouth. 'Feedback?' he retorts through his covered mouth, giving a slight vibrato effect with his palm. 'You get some every time you open your mouth.' On to the sauteed mushrooms...

Feedback, especially verbal, is something that Jeff Beck knows quite a great deal about. He's spent an entire career making bold, often self-destructive moves and paying the consequences for his actions. His abundance of talent as a guitarist has often been offset by an equal talent for not getting along with other musicians for any' significant period of time. Frankly, after going through three different Jeff Beck Groups and the Beck, Bogert and Appice death wish trip, I took the news of Beck doing an all-instrumental album (Blow by Blow) somewhat apprehensively. I was fully prepared to expect, if that venture failed, a Jeff Beck album that would feature just Beck alone, with some newly developed self-designed guitar that would — like those Lowry organs — enable him to provide himself with bass, drum ana keyboard accompaniment and screw the rest of the world. Man conquers environment, once and for all.

Luckily for musicians' locals throughout the universe, such drastic measures don't seem necessary anymore. With the success of Blow by Blow, Beck has apparently found some degree of peace in the world of sound, a niche in the scheme of things where he can do whatever he pleases, however he pleases, for as long as he pleases. His new stance, which has brought him into the company of some of the finest jazz musicians around, has made him not only the recipient of his very first gold album but also a guy you can talk to, yet another interesting spin in the Beck saga.

The first time I met Beck was during the first Beck, Bogert and Appice tour. We rolled out to the airport to pick up the band and no matter what you said to him, his answers took the form of a well honed Donald Duck imitation. I figured I'd chew the fat a bit with Bogert, who was at the luggage pickup area. 'Hey, Tim,' I said, 'always wanted to tell you that the Fudge's version of 'The Look of Love' [flip side of 'Where Is My Mind,' never on an album] is one of my all-timers. How'd you guys come to record it?' Bogert continued to stare at the conveyor belt. 'Very simple,' he snapped, without any kind of visual recognition of my existence. 'We were in the studio, our instruments were plugged in and they turned on the tape. We make all our records that way. Where's my suitcase?' I looked around to where Carmen Appice was sitting, half nodding out and quickly realized that Beck's constipated duck act made plenty of sense in the context of this band. Anyway, Beck had, at that point, learned to keep mum whenever possible, thereby adding more fuel to the infamous Beck egomaniac image. To quote Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty from his liner notes to the English copy of Over Under Sideways Down : 'It's been said that Jeff Beck is one of the leading guitarists in the country — and I'm inclined to agree with him.'

So I'm sitting after dinner in Beck's suite at the St. Regis and as I turn the old cassette recorder on, I figure I may as well see if Jeff is really feeling comfortable enough about life to let a bit of himself out of the bag. I tell him that to me his music has always been characterized by overtones of hostility and frustration, with a general unsettled feeling somehow made palatable by a rather schitzed out sense of humor. Beck waits a moment, sips at his vodka and tonic, looks me right in the eye and smiles ever so subtly. 'I'd say that that's a pretty direct translation of my musical personality.' A sigh of relief passes through me. We're on our way now.

I'm weird I realty don *t play a lot. Most people think that I probably go home to some guitar shop in the sky and practice all day.

'Everyone thinks of the Sixties as something it really wasn't,' Beck says in answer to a question regarding an overview of his years with the Yardbirds. 'I realize it might burst some balloons, but it wasn't all that exciting to me. I call the Sixties the frustration period of my life. The electronic equipment just wasn't up to the sounds that I had in my head, and it was an endless battle to get my feelings across. When we first got to America, everything I'd hoped for got washed down the drain in the sense of technological shortcomings. You'd get to a gig and find a PA that was virtually nonexistent, and we had been much better off, I felt, in the small clubs in London where you didn't need a big PA to hear everything. We'd play a big ice rink with a few thousand people on hand and room for ten thousand more and it was really frightening. I used to fly into rages and tantrums — I had a terrible temper then — and purposely play all the wrong notes and bend them in complete contempt of the whole situation. And that just aided and abetted my guitar style.'

Who better than Jeff Beck then to express all of that hostility for posterity's sake in Michaelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up? There are the Yardbirds, at a small club, breaking the sound barrier with Beck and Jimmy Page playing a ping pong match of feedback, and Beck's amp conks out. He kicks it, he shakes it, but still it refuses to function. Finally he takes his guitar and bayonets the amp with it, then smashes the instrument to smithereens while the crowd goes wild with excitement. 'I wasn't acting at all that was real. It was the epitome of where I was at at the time. Antonioni just wanted me to lose my temper and break my guitar, told me to inject as much violence as possible into it. And after four days on the set of being told where to stand here and do this and silly , ugly girls sponging my nose with makeup — I'd have broken the guitar anyway, even if it wasn't in the script.'

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The short marriage between Beck and Page, an alliance that produced 'Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,' the mind-boggling single that almost single handedly demolished AM radio, couldn't, in Beck's eyes, have lasted too long, and Beck soon left the Yardbirds to start his solo career. 'I think it could have been really dangerous for both of us had it gone on. Page and myself together was like a complete amalgamation of sexual anticipation and utter schizophrenic tendencies. By then we'd surpassed our own technology and the best they could dp was to wheel out those Super Beatle amplifiers which were totally worthless. Out of sheer wantonness I ordered six Fender Dual Showmans for our Fillmore gig and wired them all up together. It was the best sound I'd heard in my life.'

As a solo artist, Beck first hooked up with producer Mickie Most. Beck scored a hit with 'Hi Ho Silver Lining' but was knocked for the song's popishness ('And might I point out that that song is now the public house national anthem of England,' mugs Jeff with a last laugh tone). His cover version of Paul Mauriat's MOR classic 'Love is Blue' drew even more venom from old fans. 'One of the stipulations of my contract with Most was that I had to play the songs that he provided or approved of. I couldn't come up with anything that he liked, so he suggested 'Love is Blue.' I was promised that I'd appear on national TV as well and I really couldn't wait to do that.' What a f version it was too. Amidst a backdrop of strings, harpsichord and female backup singers, Beck plays the entire song on a slightly off-key slide guitar, demolishing the bridge with power chords. 'I was so disgusted by the reaction that tunegot. It was incredible. People who knew my playing >vere so blind they couldn't see the humor in it. They deserved to be offended.'

When Beck formed his band with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, an old face popped up now and then as the band launched its first tour. 'Page was going with us from city to city,' Jeff recalls, 'as a friend more than anything else. But I could tell he was taking things in, seeing just what kinds of reactions we were getting and where we were getting them. He was already turning into a real businessman. Led Zeppelin, I guess, was beginning to take form in his mind at that point. It's fine that he's where he is today, because I think that's what he really wanted all along. But I could never be that way. He's so boxed in with Zeppelin, the whole group is, and they can never get out of it. In that sense, I suppose I feel sorry for him.'

After the Stewart-Wood-Beck clashes tore that group apart, Beck looked towards a power band setup with Bogert and Appice, whom he'd met while in the Yardbirds ('Everybody in the band hated the Fudge, but I thought they were great'). But a severe auto accident curtailed those plans and by the time Beck had recovered, Bogert and Appice were involved in Cactus. Beck's next group featured two'' black musicians, bassist Clive Chaman and singer Bob Tench and perhaps more importantly to his present music, he hit it off immediately with jazzoriented pianist Max Middleton. 'It was strange, coming back after the accident.

I couldn't relate to anything I'd ever done before musically, I had a kind of musical amnesis. My playing wasn't at all affected, but I had no real sense of proportion on what I was doing.'

Two year's later, Bogert and Appice left Cactus and the unholy trio was finally born. 'I can't say that I was satisfied with that group,' Beck confesses. 'I wanted to do something very badly and there was a certain magnetism pulling me in that direction. I wanted a band that could outdo all of the heavy metal stuff around. I didn't ever think of it as a long term thing. We just got enough material together for one show and took it from there. Some nights it was really incredible. The energy level was just ridiculous, static electricity in the air even before we got onstage. But it was to no avail; the content was just about nil and we just rode on whatever artistry we could muster up, and that didn't happen too often.

'The two of them really drove me around a twist. Always complaining. Such tension in the air — I was doing a bottle of Smirnoff's a day just to survive it all. But after committing myself totally to the band and letting it be called Beck, Bogert and Appice, I realized that I wanted to get out. Amazingly enough, the group went down rather well in England and France. I guess ihe music appealed to the audience's sadistic nature.' I tell Beck that I really liked the album for what it was. 'What did you think it was?' Beck asks. 'Well, I think it aptly put an end to the power trio once and for all.' 'Yeah,' Jeff confides, 'That is what I really wanted to do. Too many people had infringed on that kind of setup.'

The movement from BBA to Blow by Blow was mostly a mental one. 'It didn't happen one day. I'm weird — I really don't play a lot. Most people think that I probably gq home to some guitar shop in the sky and practice all day. The guitar may or may not be in my bedroom and it's neither here nor there. I prefer just to get outdoors and live when I.have the time. But after a certain period of thinking about music, you can conceive of amudea and while you're conceiving that one others are wasting away and deteriorating. So when I eventually do get to play, depending on the surroundings, what bass player and drummer, etc., that music will then come out, that which was originally conceived. Sound is something that's hard to explain. When you listen to it, you either like it or hate it or nothing happens at all. But then; a couple of days later, those sounds may return and it'll hit you. And if it manages to stay that long, then it's good. Over a three or four-month period, which is what we're discussing, a lot of past influences, a little James Brown and all of that good funky stuff was wanting to come out of me. Blow by Blow was the end product.'

Was he worried about what reaction an all instrumental record would get? 'No. On that album I wasn't particularly worried. I hadn't made what I'd considered a decent record in ages, so I just threw all my ideas into it and tried to freeze that feeling and put it in a package. George Martin was a big help as producer. Very level-headed and objective. He put me in the right framework and built me up.' Beck doesn't see any point in calling what he's playing now jazZ-rock or rock-jazz. 'I haven't really altered what I do all that much. That bracket (jazz-rock) is so small. Lots of people think that a fast guitar player is a jazz guitar player. But all I'm playing is elaborated blues with progressive rock overtones. It's just evolution, that's all.'

His new album, Wired, is another evolution. Much rougher and caustic than Blow by Blow, Beck displays a * verocity that is almost unnerving. Sublime migraine music, if you will. Jarv Hammer, who Beck is currently touring with, showed up after most of , the album's basic tracks were recorded and injected some stratosphere synthesizer into the songs. 'Led Boots' is so furious that it transcends heavy metal, 'Head for Backstage Pass' is a neat definition of the word chaos, and 'Blue Wind,' the album's final track, with just Beck and Hammer playing, invokes the spirit of much older Beck influences (mention Gene Vincent's Blue Caps and Beck goes wide eyed in remembrance of Cliff Gallup's utterly manic guitar playing) in a mesh of outer limits dragstrip riot thunder.

As to the future, Beck is pensive, but not overly concerned. 'I want to do stuff that's not too far from amaudience because that's not productive. You cam be great and stilhmiss the boat by a mile. When you die, everyone picks up on what you've done and that's just totally frustrating. To me, the best formula is one where what you're playing is in no way beneath you but at the same time keeps you and your audience on its * tries. Most performers just turn things out to be consumed and digested. Then the audience comes back for more and more until finally you get indigestion. That's just plain overindulgence and I don't want to do that.' Exactly what Jeff Beck wants to do or will do is as impossible to predict as what he's done in the ppst. 'Everything I've ever done has beeri conscious. You have to be guided by your own head and whatever information you receive.' The info we all have received over the years is that Jeff Beck is one of the leading guitarists in the world. At this stage of the game I think we're all inclined to agree with him.