JEFF BECK: DONALD DUCK AS VIRTUOSO

JEFF BECK: DONALD DUCK AS VIRTUOSO

Iman Lababedi

When people discuss Jeff Beck, two words tend to crop up: Genius and erratic. As master guitarist (and replacement for Eric Clapton) with the Yardbirds, his work testifies that despite a baroque loudness and other-than-pure blues conviction, he was an original axe hero. And the Jeff Beck Group proved that sloppiness and haphazard leadership can be worked to the artist’s enhancement. As a jazz musician, however, Beck left a lot to be desired.

It’s easy to pinpoint the period of Beck’s career where the turnabout (that he has yet to fully recover from) occured. In 1969, he was in a serious car accident that left him out of action for 18 months. His postaccident work simply doesn’t compare. But let’s go back to the beginning.

In 1965, the Yardbirds were coming off the success of their superb single “For Your Love” and re-routing themselves towards America. Unlike any other blues band in Britain at the time, the Yardbirds were not purists; their heart lay in rock, even if they got their soul from the blues (after all, these are the guys that jammed with Sonny Boy Williamson). But that wasn’t for Clapton, and when he left, collegiate Jeff Beck was brought in. The Yardbirds followed through 1967, irreverantly re-writing blues to fit everything from pop to psychedelia, and gaining a handful of hit singles to boot. Beck left in the same year, to be replaced by Jimmy Page.

What followed was a Beck solo single that became a smash U.K. hit, the optimistic, pure pop pleasure “Hi Ho Silver Lining.” But he worked best in a group setting—so he formed the Jeff Beck Group, a prototype for the likes of the Faces and Led Zeppelin. With Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood (and Nicky Hopkins), the Jeff Beck Group released two superb albums, Truth and Beck-Ola, and enhanced their reputation with an American tour that drives those lucky (and old) enough to have seen it into wild hysterics, frothing at the mouth. From what I can figure, it was solidly blues-based with the heady excesses of—say—the Faces, only with a tighter, more professional base. Rod Stewart was a perfect (maybe the best) foil for Beck’s tenacious yet tense playing, his wrenching voice a countering white soul shout. But there were personality conflicts of mammoth proportions (especially between Beck and Stewart), and after a bare two years the Jeff Beck Group folded.

Jeff was ready to form another band with the vastly inferior Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice (ex-Vanilla Fudge) when the car accident occured, putting him in bed to 1971. When he was ready to work again, Bogert and Appice were already with Cactus, so Beck brought back the Jeff Beck Group (with Cozy Powell) for two albums even Beck didn’t like. Finally, in 1973, he formed his much-loved Beck, Bogert & Appice with an eponymous first and last album. It was worse than his last two albums.

I pretty much stopped listening to him thereafter. Not because I don’t like jazz-rock fusion (although I far prefer jazz-funk), but because he doesn’t play it all that well. And if I don’t doubt Beck’s musical integrity in playing such “unpopulist” guitar, good intentions ultimately mean nothing. The past seven or eight years don’t wipe out Beck’s best music, but they clear up the obvious searching of the mid-period JBG MKII and B, B & A. With the Yardbirds, Beck could shuffle down his guitar, and, much in keeping with his actual playing, be the crazy boy, uncompared and uncomparable. His roots were in blues. But with jazz, he didn’t figure out that learning a new genre—especially one as complex as improvisational jazz—and re-teaching it is not the same.

Still, there would not have been a Heavy Metal as we know it without Beck. Which makes him what most people say he is—an erratic genius. Well past his prime.