The artist that Jeff Beck “loved to death”
Every single note that Jeff Beck ever played wasn’t put in there by accident.
As opposed to other guitar players who wanted to jam whenever they performed live, the guitar legend always knew how important it was to tell a story with his instrument that wouldn’t normally be done if a bunch of musicians were sitting in a room playing off each other. There had to be some structure to it, but that’s not to say that a few of his friends could help him loosen things up from time to time.
When looking at the kind of artists that he worked with, though, it’s no secret that Beck liked to keep the pedigree high whenever he put together a session. No one goes into the studio with someone like Stevie Wonder expecting to have a loose session, and even in the early days of The Yardbirds, you could sense that he wanted to go into new territory instead of playing the same bluesy tropes every time he went into the studio.
That kind of approach would have killed anyone else’s creativity, so putting together the Jeff Beck Group was the next best thing. It did sting a little bit knowing that Jimmy Page had the exact same idea with Led Zeppelin, but whereas Robert Plant had his signature wail behind him, Rod Stewart was a healthy change of pace. The Faces frontman had that distinct gravel in his voice, and that was more than enough to make Beck stand out above the rest.
Then again, even Beck would have put his hand up and said that he was far from the greatest band leader. He had spent a lot of time trying to get the right sound whenever he worked, but whenever they went on tour, it’s not like he was the most accommodating person off the stage. He wasn’t good at confrontation, and it’s not exactly a surprise that Stewart and Ronnie Wood decided to jump ship.
Because had they kept going with Beck, the world would have missed out on a lot of great moments in rock history. Stewart was always going to be a solo star, and while Wood would spend some more time in The Faces, any rock guitarist with halfway decent taste didn’t even need to be asked if they wanted to join The Rolling Stones when Wood finally got the call from Keith Richards.
Despite not being the best collaborators, Beck said that he never forgot the friendship that he had with Wood over the years, saying, “Ronnie Wood. I love him to death. I think he’s one of the greatest people I’ve ever met, really. [His style is] totally against everything I ever stood for, which is sharp, funky rhythms, which need to be slightly more clipped. That’s the sound that everyone loves, that grungy looseness.”
That’s a good point about Wood’s playing style, though. Not a lot of it can be described as the tightest guitar playing in the world, but for a band like The Stones, you almost need that kind of looseness to keep everything moving. No one is looking to hear a song like ‘Satisfaction’played straight, and if everything was played right on the beat, it would lose all of its personality in the first few notes.
So, really, it’s people like Wood that helped remind Beck that there was a lot more that music had to offer other than precision. It was important to practice to make sure everything sounded as good as it could, but sometimes the best performances of all time are the ones that feel right as opposed to the technically perfect ones.
