The one guitarist David Gilmour says he owes everything to: “He is a maverick”
Given the cerebral quality of his work, it’s no surprise that David Gilmour has a taste for only the finer things in life. It is also true for the musicians he’s a fan of.
Over the years, the Pink Floyd main man has listed greats such as Lead Belly, Jimi Hendrix and Roy Buchanan as his favourites. He also admitted to fans of their influence on his work: “I copied – don’t be afraid to copy – and eventually something that I suppose that I would call my own appeared.” However, outside of these figures, there is only one Gilmour deems his favourite: the late Jeff Beck.
Beck, who passed away in January 2023, is hailed by many as one of the most influential guitarists in rock. An instrumentalist who refused to sing, even after encouraging advice from Eric Clapton, in swinging sixties London, together with Clapton and Jimmy Page, he formed a triptych of the most sought-after axemen around.
This led to his genre-bending stint in The Yardbirds, the pioneering instrumental ‘Beck’s Bolero’ and the brilliance he achieved with the Jeff Beck Group and Beck, Bogert & Appice and as a solo artist. Noted for his fingerpicking style and a kaleidoscopic blend of genres, Beck will be remembered as one of rock’s definitive game-changers.
As a contemporary of Beck’s and a fellow adherent of the Fender Stratocaster, there’s no real surprise that David Gilmour has effused about Beck across his career. Famously, Beck was also the guitarist that Pink Floyd wanted to hire before Gilmour entered the fold, but according to drummer Nick Mason, “none of us had the nerve to ask him”.
During an interview posted on his YouTube channel in 2022, the Pink Floyd leader was asked about his favourite guitarist of all time. Although he explained he has “lots”, it was Beck who took the crown, with Gilmour labelling him the “most consistent” of the bunch.
David Gilmour on Jeff Beck…
He said: “I have lots of favourite guitar players. Probably the person who I have admired the longest and the most consistent is Jeff Beck, in the guitar playing stakes. A lovely guy”.
As fans know well, you never quite knew what you were going to get from Jeff Beck once he was strapped in and ready to play. One minute it was swooning beauty, the next it was like being fucking slapped with a wet cable. David Gilmour, the tasteful tactician, clocked this early on. He wasn’t trying to imitate Beck (because nobody in their right mind would), but you could hear it in the spaces between his notes. Beck taught Gilmour that it wasn’t about playing more, it was about playing dangerously.
The thing is, Beck didn’t care for the tidy stuff. No choruses or no crooning; the man couldn’t be arsed to sing, even when Clapton egged him on. Gilmour, being the more restrained of the two, probably admired that even more. In a world of fretboard show-offs and tone-chasing anoraks, Beck was that bloke you couldn’t quite pin down.
When Gilmour finally did get up on stage with him at the Albert Hall, it was more than a guest spot – it was a bloody pilgrimage. You could see it in his face: part fanboy, part fellow craftsman. Because for Gilmour, Beck wasn’t just a guitarist; he was proof that you could rewrite the rules if you had the nerve, the ears, and the bloody-mindedness to do it loud.
After that performance with Beck in 2009, Gilmour praised Beck again, labelling him a “maverick”. He explained: “He is a maverick. A maverick guitar player who doesn’t like to repeat himself. Who takes big risks all the time and has done all the way throughout his career,” David Gilmour said.
Elsewhere, when speaking to Guitar Tricks in 2017, alongside records by Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and The Shadows, Gilmour listed his favourite Jeff Beck album as 1975’s Blow By Blow.
