“Very depressing”: The album that made Jeff Beck question his own playing
Electric guitars might have been invented in California, but they were perfected on the streets of London. Over the years, the city has produced many of the world’s greatest guitarists, completely redefining expectations of the instrument. One such figure was Jeff Beck, who first established his groundbreaking guitar stylings during the revolutionary period of the 1960s before embarking upon a diverse career as a solo artist and collaborator. Nevertheless, Beck never got too big-headed about his own talents.
Audiences were first exposed to Beck’s unique playing style when he joined The Yardbirds in 1965, replacing fellow guitar hero Eric Clapton under the recommendation of Jimmy Page – a real holy trinity of Britain’s greatest guitarists. With Beck, The Yardbirds experienced their most successful and musically profound period, with songs like ‘Heart Full of Soul’ and its pioneering use of a fuzz box becoming iconic of London’s swinging sixties era. However, an artist as prolific as Beck was never going to stay in one place for too long.
Over the next few decades, Beck would perform with a variety of groups, fronting The Jeff Beck Group, and collaborating with the likes of Keith Moon and John Paul Jones on songs like ‘Beck’s Bolero’. While his contemporaries often dedicated themselves endlessly to hard rock, the guitarist was always much broader in his taste and ability. Jazz fusion, for instance, became a particular favourite of Beck’s as his music career progressed.
The often-maligned genre of jazz fusion suited Beck’s complex playing style perfectly, allowing for the kind of improvisational, sprawling compositions that he enjoyed playing. However, the downside was that jazz fusion never really had much mainstream appeal – particularly in comparison to the mounting commercial success of Beck’s friends in The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin.
Although Beck was never really at risk of becoming forgotten or overlooked, this lack of commercial success seemed to impact his confidence as a performer as the years went on. The 1989 album Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop, for instance, only made it to 49 in the US album charts, despite featuring some of the guitarist’s finest performances to date. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get the dimension that we wanted,” he told Guitar World in 1999. “I felt that after the initial tour, the failure of the album to do anything more than a little blip was very depressing.”
Explaining why the album’s lacklustre reception was so disappointing, the guitarist continued, “We put a lot of work into it. Bear in mind that Guitar Shop was a startup album as well, after another long period of no output from me. I was doing a lot for other people, and I thought, ‘Well, I can make a living doing this.’ So I went into this rather uncomfortable but laid-back mode.”
The fact of the matter is that collaborations often don’t pay as much as solo albums. “Unfortunately, the closer you are friends with who you’re working with, the less you’re paid,” Beck shared. “I often did things for nothing because they were my friends.” This period coincided with some self-doubting on Beck’s part, too. “I got really disillusioned with my playing as well,” he said. “I knew there were these other guitarists coming up around the block, and they could really play.”
It reflects Beck’s incredible music career and flawless playing style that even his most “disillusioned” work won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Nevertheless, the disappointment which came from Guitar Shop inspired Beck to put everything into his next project, Who Else! which came after a ten-year absence from his solo career and marked a triumphant return for the guitarist.
