The 10 songs that made Jeff Beck an icon
The late Jeff Beck was a guitar-playing legend in every sense and significantly impacted the instrument’s evolution. A genuine virtuoso, his unique finger-picking style made him stand out from the mass of notable guitarists his generation produced and directly inspired many subsequent axemen, ranging from prominent artists to casual hobbyists.
A part of 1960s London’s most eminent triptych of guitarists, alongside friends Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, from the mid-1960s onwards, everyone with an eye for great art was acutely aware of the power his hands possessed as he continued to develop his craft and discover new creative areas.
Whether it be pioneering psychedelia with The Yardbirds, penning the era-defining instrumental ‘Beck’s Bolero’ with Page, or the many other hard-rock flourishes of his later career, Beck’s list of achievements is extensive. One of the definitive figures in the transition from blues to classic rock, the Londoner made such an impact that even Pink Floyd’s resident guitar hero, David Gilmour, cites him as his favourite axeman of all time.
Plucking from a broad church of musicians such as Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix to establish his dynamic approach, today, we’ve listed the ten songs that made Jeff Beck the icon he was. Expect to revisit some classics.
10 iconic songs by Jeff Beck:
10. ‘Heart Full of Soul’ (1965)
The song that started it all. Famously, The Yardbirds’ guitarist Eric Clapton departed the band in March 1965 due to what he perceived as an unfavourable shift in musical direction, as it didn’t suit his deep obsession with the blues. Taking his place was Jeff Beck, who introduced the increasingly experimental group to his own pioneering approach.
Beck inspired the band to widen their horizons further. Explicit about the experimental scope of his influences, Beck used electronic guitar effects extensively, a new feature for the era. This sonic edge helped The Yardbirds stand out. The riff on ‘Heart Full of Soul’ is also one of his most iconic. It ripped through the analogue speakers of the day, largely thanks to his use of a fuzz pedal and the use of feedback, which would later become a standard tool for rock guitarists.
It is claimed that Beck developed his classic riff after borrowing Jimmy Page’s fuzz pedal, which Roger Mayer designed. The first time he played it for the band, they knew they were onto a winner. Rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja later recalled: “This great sounding riff emerged … I mean, Beck just nailed it.”
9. ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ (1966)
From one Yardbirds song to another. The mystical ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’, stands out as one of the band’s most pulsating efforts, carried by the dual guitar attack of Beck and Page. During an American tour in August and September 1966, Beck experienced health and personal issues, forcing him to miss shows. Accordingly, Page assumed the role of lead guitarist, with Dreja switching to bass.
Upon returning to the UK, Beck and Page became co-lead guitarists, with Dreja staying as bassist. This shift in line-up saw The Yardbirds enact another stylistic metamorphosis, moving out their swaggering form of R&B to a heavier, more psychedelic approach.
Instead of taking turns to play solos whilst the other maintained rhythm, Page later explained how he and Beck intended to dovetail. The pair had already enacted this shift when recording the instrumental ‘Beck’s Bolero’ five months earlier. Page said: “We rehearsed hard on all sorts of riffs to things like ‘Over Under Sideways Down’, which we were doing in harmonies, and we worked out where we’d play rehearsed phrases together. It was the sort of thing that people like Wishbone Ash and Quiver [later] perfected, that dual-lead-guitar idea.”
From the riffs to the droning effects, Beck and Page were far ahead of their time on ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’.
8. ‘Stroll On’ (1967)
Jeff Beck became a rock star in Britain the second he joined The Yardbirds in 1965. But his visibility in America only came gradually. The Yardbirds had scored their first hit single in the US, ‘For Your Love’, at the very tail end of the Clapton era. An American studio album of the same name was put together, but it largely featured Clapton on lead guitar.
Beck’s tenure coincided with a brief moment when The Yardbirds seriously contended with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones as one of England’s biggest bands. The group adopted suits and mop-top haircuts, but Beck wasn’t ideal for the button-up style. With his stinging lead guitar style and fiery temper, Beck quickly took The Yardbirds in a more dangerous direction.
For a large subsect of the unsuspecting public, their first exposure to The Yardbirds came from Michaelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blowup. The winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival also competed for ‘Best Director’ at the 39th Academy Awards. A rare glimpse at the brief Page-Beck lineup also sees Beck destroy a guitar that becomes central to the film’s wandering plotline. With that smash in ‘Stroll On’, Beck was a must-know guitar hero.
7. ‘Beck’s Bolero’ (1967)
Another Jeff Beck classic featuring his old friend Jimmy Page, ‘Beck’s Bolero’ is one of the most significant pieces of the era, a triumph when noting that it’s an instrumental. It’s reflective of the gravity of this song that despite being released ten months after recording and as the B-side to Beck’s first single, when it was re-released in 1968 on Beck’s debut Truth, it was still considered advanced, regardless of being over two years old.
Comprised of a prominent central melody, and several guitar parts fuelled by a rhythm inspired by Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, it’s demonstrative of Beck’s grasp of other areas that they drew on the expansive 1928 orchestral work. Notably, the recording session also featured several other heroes aside from the duo of guitarists, including Keith Moon, John Paul Jones and Nick Hopkins.
The decision to book the session for ‘Beck’s Bolero’ was underpinned by Beck needing time away from The Yardbirds and the band’s management actively encouraging members to bring more exposure to them through successful solo projects. “It was decided that it would be a good idea for me to record some of my own stuff … partly to stop me moaning about the Yardbirds,” Beck remembered.
6. ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ (1967)
Beck’s legend is as a guitar player. His innovative approach helped rocket the British music scene headfirst into the psychedelic revolution. Equal parts careful experimentation and ferocious attack, Beck’s guitar style is what defined him to the point where he didn’t need to be the lead vocalist in a group to be its central figure.
But for a brief period in 1967, Beck entertained the idea of becoming a solo pop star. That meant working with producer Mickey Most, who was also trying to keep The Yardbirds in line at the time. With professional songwriters Scott English and Larry Weiss on board, Beck took the lead vocals on ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’.
A top 20 hit in the UK, Beck could very well have embraced a life in mainstream ‘60s pop. Instead, he decided to get heavier and louder, forming the Jeff Beck Group that same year. Beck largely turned his back from the microphone from that point on, electing to let the guitar be his voice in music.
5. ‘You Shook Me’ (1968)
Originally by eminent Chicago blues masters Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and J.B. Lenoir, Beck’s post-Yardbirds group, The Jeff Beck Group, really made ‘You Shook Me’, their own. It remains one of the most swaggering junctures in the guitarist’s career. Here, we hear his love of the emerging guitar effects taken to another level.
Beck recorded the song – driven by the oscillating swells of his wah-pedal – with the first iteration of The Jeff Beck Group during the Truth sessions in May 1968. Whilst the track retains the languid groove of its original version, Beck and the band instilled a distinctly hard-rock edge into it, mainly via his noisy guitar work and searing soloing. Notably, future Led Zeppelin whizz, John Paul Jones, contributed the organ, which he would later do on their own version.
Concluding with some of Beck’s trusty reverb, the guitarist wrote in the liner notes of Truth: “Last note of the song is my guitar being sick – well so would you if I smashed your guts for 2:28.” A demonstration of Beck’s intellect and technique, I can’t imagine what it would have been like hearing his performance for the first time in 1968.
4. ‘Spanish Boots’ (1969)
A number taken from The Jeff Beck Group’s second album, 1969’s Beck-Ola, ‘Spanish Boots’ is one of their finest moments. Featuring Faces frontman Rod Stewart’s bluesy vocals and his bandmate Ronnie Wood on bass, this grooving piece sees Beck’s soloing dovetail with the dynamic bass playing, filling the space with a range of noises.
“I wrote the lyrics,” Stewart says of the track in his autobiography, “a load of old nonsense about monasteries and tapestries and putting your boots on.” Produced by studio master du jour, Mickie Most, it is claimed that the sessions for ‘Spanish Boots’ were tense, with Beck’s experimental propensity at loggerheads with Most’s commercial leanings. Regardless of the creative differences, though, Beck’s performance is incredible and conveyed to fans that he wasn’t going anywhere. He was only getting started. The end climax is another moment far ahead of its time.
3. ‘Superstition’ (1973)
‘Superstition’ was originally supposed to be a shared track. When Jeff Beck got into contact with Stevie Wonder during the sessions for 1972’s Talking Book, an agreement was made that put Beck’s guitar on the song ‘Lookin’ For Another Pure Love’. In exchange, all that Wonder had to do was write Beck a song.
While messing around the studio, Beck hopped on drums and began playing a beat. Wonder took his place on the keyboard and improvised most of the musical accompaniment that became ‘Superstition’. “I told Motown, ‘Listen, I did this for Jeff Beck. He likes the song,’” Wonder explained to The Detroit Free Press. “I thought we should make ‘Sunshine of My Life’ the first single. They said, ‘No, no, no, no. The first single should be ‘Superstition’. So I went back to Jeff and had that discussion.”
“That was my song in return for playing on Talking Book,” Beck later recalled. “I thought, ‘He’s given me the riff of the century.’” Beck even recorded his own version with his new band, Beck, Bogert, and Appice, in 1973. But by that point, onder had already taken ‘Superstition’ to number one.
2. ‘Cause We Ended As Lovers’ (1975)
Beck returned to his solo career in 1975 with his second album, Blow By Blow. A brief tenure with Beck, Bogert, and Appice ended the year prior. Beck was almost considered to replace Mick Taylor in The Rolling Stones, but a one-day blues jam was all it took for Beck to realise that he wasn’t interested.
That meant that Beck was once again on his own. After assembling a backing band, Beck looked to some of his famous friends for material. That included an instrumental version of The Beatles’ ‘She’s a Woman’ and another Wonder collaboration.
‘Cause We Ended As Lovers’ has all the hallmarks of a classic Wonder ballad, including some mind-altering panning effects and gentle lyrical touches. The only difference is that, in place of a lead vocal, Beck lays down his guitar with all the impassioned phrasing that Wonder would bring to his work.
1. ‘Freeway Jam’ (1975)
Beck had threaded his way through numerous different genres by the mid-1970s. Rock, jazz, pop, and soul were all weaved into his style, but the blues was still very much a part of his DNA. With 1975’s Blow By Blow, Beck didn’t even attempt to act like he was much of a songwriter. He had completed his transition to largely instrumental material, giving tracks ridiculous names like ‘Scatterbrain’ and ‘Constipated Duck’.
But no matter what he was playing, nothing brought the best out of Beck like a good jam. His keyboardist at the time, Max Middleton, knew as much. Middleton was Beck’s main co-writer throughout the album, appearing as a co-writer on the majority of Beck’s original material. He even gets a solo credit for ‘Freeway Jam’, a funk track that the band unfurled immediately after the Stevie Wonder track ‘Thelonius’.
Bridging the gap between the blues, rock, and funk, Beck takes hold of the lead spotlight with his stinging lead tone sounding more ferocious than ever. ‘Freeway Jam’ is also the perfect example of how Beck can blend with his bandmates, dipping in and out of the arrangement as the rest of the band continues barrelling down the highway.
