The rock band that didn’t have the nerve to take on Jeff Beck: “I’m not a joiner”
In terms of strictly rock and roll guitar, Jeff Beck may be the closest thing to perfection that most of us will ever see. Jimi Hendrix had undoubtedly taken the genre to new heights, but whereas he could play with everything from jazz harmony to his own strange chord voicings, Beck was the one who could twist his guitar into different shapes and still manage to make it sound like he was emoting through his instrument. He had made his living as a lone wolf in his field, but he was in the running when Pink Floyd was looking for a guitar player.
But looking at where both groups were brought up, they were already a bit of a mismatch. Sure, the members of Pink Floyd loved the sound of blues, but with Syd Barrett at the helm, that was just one flavour in the massive musical stew that went into making The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
They were far more psychedelic than anyone could have imagined, but they were already in deep trouble before they even made their second record due to Barrett’s mental state. Any group that sees their bandmate fade away before their eyes is always painful to see, but the group thought they may have had the solution in Beck.
After all, Beck was in The Yardbirds, and he had just been looking to break free from the conventions of rock guitar when he started making music on his own. He even had a taste for more unusual songs on Wired, so it wasn’t like there wasn’t like they were trying to teach him rocket science or anything.
In the end, Beck said that the group never got around to asking him, telling Louder, “I’m not a ‘joiner’, really. Pink Floyd wanted me but they didn’t have the nerve to pop the question.” Then again, let’s peel back and see what a Beck-ified version of Pink Floyd might have sounded like.
The band would have certainly sounded different on A Saucerful of Secrets, but chances are that Beck would not have gone for their more avant-garde experiments, most likely leaving the studio if he was told to work on a song like the title track or anything off of Ummagumma. At the same time, every band member got some time to flex on that record, so Beck’s side of the album could have been the guitar extravaganza that would have ended up on albums like Blow By Blow.
Let’s face the facts, though. That would have been interesting for an album or two, but if they lost another band member and didn’t think to carry on with David Gilmour, there would have been no Dark Side of the Moon, no Wish You Were Here, and no The Wall to look back on fondly, not to mention the amazing solo on ‘Comfortably Numb’.
Being in a band was never how Beck thought, anyway, usually electing to stay on his own and not be tied down to any specific group. Roger Waters might have gotten his wish when Beck joined him for the album Amused to Death, but Beck was born to fly free rather than be someone else’s lead guitarist.
