Masterful beginnings: the debut performance that Jeff Beck called “quite devastating”
Jeff Beck is one of the most important guitar players who has ever picked up a six-string. There are a number of reasons for this, which come down to his ability to play the guitar and the way he acted on stage. His actions paved the way for more artists to become more experimental and exciting when playing the guitar.
There is no denying that Jeff Beck’s talent alone is enough to cement him as one of the most influential guitarists out there. Even Brian May once spoke highly about how Jeff Beck could play the guitar and make people feel a whole range of emotions through just instrumentation alone.
“If you wanna hear his depth of emotion, sound and phrasing, and the way he could touch your soul, listen to ‘Where Were You’ off the Guitar Shop album,” he said, “Sit down and listen to it for four minutes, it’s unbelievable; it’s possibly the most beautiful bit of guitar music ever recorded […] So sensitive, so beautiful, so incredibly creative and unlike anything you’ve ever heard anywhere else.”
Beck also approached the guitar with a flamboyancy that was previously considered alien. When he performed in The Yardbirds, he wasn’t a guitarist who stood back and let the frontman get all the credit. Instead, he made his way to the front of the stage, holding up his guitar while playing it and giving crowds a show that they might not have been used to. The subsequent flamboyancy and heroism surrounding the lead guitarist in rock music likely wouldn’t have happened were it not for Jeff Beck.
Of course, while Beck may have pioneered this attitude, he isn’t considered the king of it. Jimi Hendrix was one of the guitarists who immediately made a name for themselves as both a guitarist and a showman. He flew to the UK using $40 that he borrowed from a friend, and within a matter of weeks, thanks to the strength and craziness of his live shows, he had made a name for himself as the next big guitarist. As a fan of guitar music, it wasn’t long before Beck was put on to Hendrix, and he went to one of the Seattle-born guitarist’s first shows in the capitol.
“When I saw Jimi, we knew he was going to be trouble. And by ‘we’ I mean me and Eric [Clapton], because Jimmy [Page] wasn’t in the frame at that point,” he said, “I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating.”
Beck was blown away by all of the different playing techniques that Hendrix implemented into his show as a means of turning heads. Concluding, “He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin. I had the same temperament as Hendrix in terms of ‘I’ll kill you,’ but he did in such a good package with beautiful songs.”
