Jeff Beck November 1, 2011

Inspired by the music he heard, it wasn’t long before Beck picked up a guitar and began playing around London. He briefly attended Wimbledon’s Art College before leaving to devote all of his time to music. Beck worked as a session player, with Screaming Lord Sutch – the British equivalent to Screaming Jay Hawkins – and the Tridents before he replaced Eric Clapton as the Yardbirds’ lead guitarist in 1965.
Beck left the band in 1967 and formed The Jeff Beck Group, which featured Rod Stewart on vocals and Ron Wood on bass. The band released two albums – “Truth” (1968) and “Beck-Ola” (1969) – that became musical touchstones for hard rockers in the years to come.
Stewart and Wood left to join the Faces and Beck disbanded the group until 1971 when he formed a new version of the band and recorded two albums – “Rough and Ready” (1971) and “The Jeff Beck Group” (1972). Beck again dissolved the group and formed a power trio with bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, which released “Beck, Bogert and Appice” (1973).
Veering away from hard rock, Beck created two landmark two jazz-fusion albums – “Blow By Blow” (1975) and “Wired” (1976). The all-instrumental albums shattered people’s preconceptions of what a rock guitarist was supposed to sound like. were a critical and popular success and remain two of the top-selling guitar instrumental albums of all time. The live album, “Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group – Live” followed in 1977.
Music may have been one of Beck’s earliest passions but it has always shared space with a love of hot rods that began as soon as he could see over the dashboard. After the success “Blow By Blow” and “Wired,” Beck began devoting more time to his fleet of hot rods. “I like the studio because it’s delicate; you’re working for sound. I like the garage because chopping up lumps of steel is the exact opposite of delicate,” explains Beck. “The garage is a more dangerous place though. I’ve never almost been crushed by a guitar, but I can’t say the same about one of my Corvettes.”
Beck returned in 1980 with “There and Back,” but he wouldn’t be heard from again until 1985’s “Flash,” which earned him the Best Rock Instrumental Grammy- his first – for the song “Escape.” Beck re-emerged from semi-retirement in 1989 with “Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop with Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas.” The album earned him his second Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental. After a co-headlining tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Beck gave retirement another try, but it didn’t last.
Beck returned to the studio in 1993 backed by the Big Town Playboys to record “Crazy Legs,” a tribute to seminal rockabilly artist Gene Vincent and his guitarist Cliff Gallup. Six years passed before the release of “Who Else!” (1999) but the album opened a relative floodgate of music by Beck standards. It only took two years before “You Had It Coming,” (2001), which earned Beck his third Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental for the song “Dirty Mind.”
To support his latest album “Jeff”, Beck returned to the road in the summer of 2003 on a coast-to-coast tour with blues legend B.B. King on the 12th Annual B.B. King Music Festival. An official bootleg “Live at B.B. King Blues Club” was recorded in the New York club in September 2003, and released for online retail only at www.jeffbeckmusic.com.