| 5th September 2006 12:07 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Tuesday September 5, 2006
Jeff Beck is keeping alive the guitar solo
By SEAN PICCOLI
star-ecentaral.co,
Jeff Beck doesn't claim to know why young rock guitarists by and large have stopped playing solos. "You think they can't do it, or is it just out of fashion?" he said, answering a question with a question.
Either way, the disappearance of the solo from most contemporary rock music has turned this six-string flamethrower into a flame-keeper. Beck isn't consciously campaigning for the guitar solo's revival. He's just carrying the torch by example. A British Invasion original, he continues to play guitar-centred music - instrumental rock, jazz-rock fusion and, more recently, tracks underlined by computer-generated rhythms.
In a telephone interview Beck, 62, said he "still struggles" to write songs that don't use the human voice. "My problem is finding concise pieces in a rock `n' roll context that won't bore the pants off of people," he said.
He has many such pieces to his credit, from the royal rumble of Beck's Bolero (1968) to the industrial crunch of Earthquake (2001). In between are quintessential Beck numbers: Definitely Maybe (1972), with its crying slide guitar; Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (1976), a freehand jazz and blues sketch composed by Charles Mingus in tribute to Lester Young; Star Cycle (1980) a cosmic face-off between guitar and synth; and Behind the Veil (1989), a dubby dip in reggae waters.
All these and more are likely to turn up in one of Beck's career-spanning live sets. But he's also giving himself a bit of a break from the all-instrumental discipline. The Beck quintet includes a singer, Beth Hart, who steps up for a handful of songs.
Beck has plenty of history with vocalists, first as a member of the Yardbirds, a formative British rock band that also counted fellow guitar deities Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page as members. The Yardbirds including Beck and Page appear briefly in a nightclub scene in Blowup, the 1966 mod-London murder mystery. Beck's most famous Yardbirds moment might be Shapes of Things (1966), a save-the-world song with impeccable manners, considering the subject, until Beck splits it in half with a chaotic, spiralling feedback solo.
He went on to collaborate with singer Rod Stewart, reprising Shapes of Things two years after the original, doing impossibly deep wah-wah bends on the subterranean blues of I Ain't Superstitious (1968) and playing shivering, soulful notes on their cover of People Get Ready (1985).
But Beck hadn't toured North America with a lead vocalist since the mid-80s, a spell that ended when Hart joined him for a handful of West Coast dates earlier this year. Beck discovered Hart in Europe and compares her to 60s blues-rock belter Janis Joplin, only "a lot more raucous" and with "a lot more thickness and control in the voice".
He also sounds grateful for the addition. Hart is, according to Beck, a "wild child" who established herself with occasionally "lewd" onstage antics during the West Coast shows - not all of which went over. "There were some rough reviews in L.A.," Beck said. But with a singer drawing audience attention away from him, "I feel a little freer," he said.
The 20-city tour that begins on Wednesday doesn't coincide with a new album. The last release of new Beck material was 2003's Jeff, on Epic Records. He is touring, as he's often done over the years, because he feels like it. Rounding out the band are Randy Hope-Taylor on bass, Jason Rebello on keyboards and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums - players who can keep up with the Beck battery of complex melodies, time-signature jumps and improvised leaps.
Beck is not alone in his devotion to the elements of lead guitar - tone, phrasing and articulation. He says that in England nowadays he's hearing a lot of world music, especially from Africa, with "yards and yards of great rhythmic playing ... and articulate guitar playing." A few American rock bands - including Audioslave and Atreyu - feature intricate, involved solos of the kind that used to keep amateur players practising for hours.
But in today's universe of laptop recording studios pre-loaded with every conceivable sound, interest may be flowing away from mastery of the instrument and toward mastery of the software. Beck himself has made what he calls "bedroom techno", with his three most recent albums inspired in part by the work of the Chemical Brothers, Amon Tobin and other luminaries of electronic music.
"They got some of the most astonishingly powerful sounds. I wanted to pirate some of that and put it in a guitar-bass-and-drums context," he said. But he added that a lot of the computer-assisted pop he hears leaves him cold: "The music is becoming forged and phoney to me."
He hasn't made an album in three years and has no immediate plans to do so. He said his mind tends to drift, and drifting was OK when he was allowed to make albums in a gradual way - working out songs on the road and later finishing them up in the studio when the time felt right.
The economics of the music business no longer permit that kind of leisure, he said, and making albums has become a more taxing, all-at-once process.
But he said that once he starts, his record company, Epic, is "respectful enough to leave me alone" until it's finished. He also finds it remarkable that a big label such as Epic - a subsidiary of media giant Sony BMG - retains him. As he put it, "How can you sell the stuff that I put out?"
He might have another project in the works - but he's not sure. It began with a recent phone call from Sir George Martin, the Beatles' legendary studio guide and producer of Beck's 1975 album Blow by Blow. Beck said Martin asked him to conduct a piece of music with 16 string players for a one-off public performance that Martin had in mind. Beck had never worked with a string section before, and said the rehearsal was "a train wreck". The project - or his part in it, at least - is in limbo.
Told that Clapton once got bad reviews for touring with a string section, Beck said, "I'm so glad to hear that."
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| 5th September 2006 12:24 PM |
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| Martha |
e's cpoming here this month and I'd love to see him for a second time. You have to SEE Jeff to believe him.....he's off the charts! I noticed Derek Trucks holds and plays a bit like Jeff does. |
| 5th September 2006 12:26 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Saturday, August 26, 2006
rockradioonline
Jeff Beck says Rod Steward can't sing rock music anymore
For people dreaming about a reunion of the Jeff Beck Group, with Rod Stewart on vocals, don't get your hopes up. Beck and Stewart have had a love-hate relationship over the years, but this time, their differences are of a physical nature. Beck told us that he and Stewart tried to work together recently, but Stewart just doesn't have it anymore: "Rod doesn't sound the same. We had a rehearsal, and it was 'People Get Ready,' and he couldn't sing it in the key of D anymore, which kind of threw the spanner in the works for me because the whole song loses its majestic quality when you lower it to C. I don't know what it was, but he can't reach D anymore, and I thought, 'This is not good.' He doesn't sing heavy rock-and-roll anymore -- (just) The American Songbook, kind of lightweight ballads and stuff. Which is great -- you know, he's sensible not to push his voice if it's not gonna happen."
The Stewart-Beck relationship was neatly summed up in January 1994 when Stewart was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and Beck said, "He loves me, and I hate him."
Stewart will release a new album called Still The Same... Great Rock Classics Of Our Time on October 10th, with cover versions of songs by Elvin Bishop, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Bob Dylan, among others.
Beck kicks off a U.S. tour on September 6th in Clearwater, Florida |
| 5th September 2006 12:27 PM |
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| jb |
Friggin funny!!! |
| 5th September 2006 01:26 PM |
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| mojoman |
i can't wait to hear his guitar. just ten more days till the house of blues!!! |
| 5th September 2006 02:00 PM |
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| Martha |
Our show is on Turdsday! I hope we can make this one!
Thu, 09/21/06
08:00 PM
Jeff Beck
Colorado Convention Center Lecture Hall Denver, CO |
| 5th September 2006 03:02 PM |
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| Maxlugar |
Tues 9/12 Hammerstein Ballroom Maxy gets his Jeff Beck fix.
Sweet.
I am available for greeting if anyone wants to buy me a drink and personally thank me for being such a great poster all these years...
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| 5th September 2006 03:18 PM |
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| PartyDoll MEG |
Sorry I will miss your meet and greet...
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| 5th September 2006 03:51 PM |
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| mojoman |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
Tues 9/12 Hammerstein Ballroom Maxy gets his Jeff Beck fix.
Sweet.
I am available for greeting if anyone wants to buy me a drink and personally thank me for being such a great poster all these years...
as much as i want to attend two things prevent me, the start time of 6.30 WTF? and having tix to see the who in philly. |
| 5th September 2006 05:11 PM |
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| MRD8 |
We have tix to see Jeff at the HOB at Disney World this Friday night...I've been listening to a couple of boots from his short California tour in March to get ready! |
| 5th September 2006 05:18 PM |
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| Joey |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
I am available for greeting if anyone wants to buy me a drink and personally thank me for being such a great poster all these years...
Man , ... what a Friggin ego !!!!!
" How does he get through DOORS with that ego Ronnie ?! "
Superfly ! |
| 5th September 2006 06:04 PM |
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| sammy davis jr. |
Jeff Beck is an incredibly talented guitarist - but can't write a good SONG to save his life..... but if I'm gonna hear one guitarist wank for an hour and a half, it'd be Beck. As far as slamming Rod, it's not like "People Get Ready" is any earth shattering song anyway. Every time I see Jeff live, his amp blows up or another technical problem "delays" the show and pisses him off. I can see why singers wouldn't want to work with him. |
| 5th September 2006 06:06 PM |
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| Saint Sway |
WTF is he talking about? Theres tons of good bands around that can solo |
| 5th September 2006 07:47 PM |
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| BILL PERKS |
quote:
sammy davis jr. wrote:
As far as slamming Rod, it's not like "People Get Ready" is any earth shattering song anyway.
OH YES IT IS! |
| 5th September 2006 08:58 PM |
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| Joey |
quote:
BILL PERKS wrote:
OH YES IT IS!
Perks ......................
.............! ™ |
| 5th September 2006 09:20 PM |
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| mojoman |
quote:
sammy davis jr. wrote:
Jeff Beck is an incredibly talented guitarist - but can't write a good SONG to save his life..... but if I'm gonna hear one guitarist wank for an hour and a half, it'd be Beck. As far as slamming Rod, it's not like "People Get Ready" is any earth shattering song anyway. Every time I see Jeff live, his amp blows up or another technical problem "delays" the show and pisses him off. I can see why singers wouldn't want to work with him.
its a moving song. beck and rod covered alot together and apart and alot is good. rod covers more than ever and jeff has moved on fer the most part and thats what makes them endearing to their fan bases. would i like to see them together again? definately fer a tour. as far as slamming rod, rod won't be his bitch anymore.
[Edited by mojoman] |
| 6th September 2006 12:55 AM |
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| Brainbell Jangler |
quote:
sammy davis jr. wrote:
it's not like "People Get Ready" is any earth shattering song anyway.
Au contraire. "People Get Ready" is one of Curtis Mayfield's best compositions. Have you heard the Chambers Brothers' version from their first album? |
| 6th September 2006 07:51 AM |
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| Maxlugar |
Jeff does an instrumental People Get Ready from his latest Live at BB Kings and it's better without Rod, believe it or not.
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| 6th September 2006 07:57 AM |
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| Nellcote |
I've always dug Jeff Beck.
I think this love/hate thing with Rod probably goes back to the Jeff Beck Group days.
Beck probably saw how Rod made it without him, caught his pants in a bunch.
Rod thru him a bone back in the 90's with PGR, which is a great tune.
Beck has a point about Rod's voice, however, I'm certain he wishes he could make Rod's bling.
Not saying Rod holds onto any of it, with all trophy chicks he's got on his walls... |
| 6th September 2006 09:23 AM |
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| Joey |
quote:
Brainbell Jangler wrote:
"People Get Ready" is one of Curtis Mayfield's best compositions.
So true Sir.
We people who are ' darker than blue ' .
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| 6th September 2006 09:24 AM |
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| Joey |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
Jeff does an instrumental People Get Ready from his latest Live at BB Kings and it's better without Rod, believe it or not.
Macky ......................
Are we still seeing THE WHO together on Pearl Harbor Day this December ?!?!?!
Kins.
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| 6th September 2006 09:31 AM |
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| Martha |
quote:
MRD8 wrote:
We have tix to see Jeff at the HOB at Disney World this Friday night...I've been listening to a couple of boots from his short California tour in March to get ready!
Have you seen Jeff before?
He'll knock your socks right off! Wear sandals!
:-)
Have a great show!!!
peace out,
Martha |
| 6th September 2006 09:46 AM |
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| Maxlugar |
quote:
Nellcote wrote:
I've always dug Jeff Beck.
I think this love/hate thing with Rod probably goes back to the Jeff Beck Group days.
Beck probably saw how Rod made it without him, caught his pants in a bunch.
Not really, from what I remember reading. It goes back to Rod and Ronnie acting like two little school girls in the Jeff Beck group with their constant giggling and private jokes. After a while, a sane man will go nuts and tell them both to f*ck off, you want to do some serious rockin'. Ronnie still does this and gets the odd smack in the head from Keith. |
| 6th September 2006 09:46 AM |
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| Maxlugar |
quote:
Joey wrote:
Macky ......................
Are we still seeing THE WHO together on Pearl Harbor Day this December ?!?!?!
Damn skippy we are! |
| 6th September 2006 09:55 AM |
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| Joey |
quote:
Martha wrote:
Have you seen Jeff before?
He'll knock your socks right off! Wear sandals!
:-)
Have a great show!!!
peace out,
Martha
Looking forward to meeting / greeting you tomorrow evening Martha .
Kins . |
| 6th September 2006 09:56 AM |
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| Joey |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
Damn skippy we are!
YOU MAKE YOUNG JOEY GIDDY !!!!!!
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| 6th September 2006 10:26 AM |
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| Maxlugar |
quote:
Joey wrote:
YOU MAKE YOUNG JOEY GIDDY !!!!!!
And you me.
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| 6th September 2006 10:38 AM |
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| Martha |
quote:
Joey wrote:
Looking forward to meeting / greeting you tomorrow evening Martha .
Kins .
I am all GIDDY!!!!! We can (finally) get all cakey together!!!
I've waited years for this day!
:-)
(I'll call you later today, Bob is on the radio right now!)
;-)
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| 6th September 2006 10:39 AM |
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| Joey |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
And you me.
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| 6th September 2006 10:53 AM |
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| mojoman |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
Jeff does an instrumental People Get Ready from his latest Live at BB Kings and it's better without Rod, believe it or not.
thats a wonderful disc |
