The guitarist Jeff Beck said was “everything” he didn’t want to be
The last thing any rock critic needs is the sense that their opinions—or specifically the barbs aimed at artists far more talented than themselves—could actually prove useful to their intended targets. Insecurity doesn’t retreat from geniuses, however, and even a widely canonised guitar hero like Jeff Beck was apparently prone to reading an occasional review of his work—or at least an indirect one—and taking it to heart.
“I had a criticism once,” Beck recalled to interviewer Paul Guy in 1999. “I read a review of one of Ronnie Wood’s gigs, and I know what they meant by this comment . . . it said, ‘Ronnie Wood, unlike some people we could mention, knows when to shut up.’ And I just suddenly went red, and I thought, ‘They’re talking about me! Shit.’ And it stuck with me, and I used that criticism to some effect.”
In the same chat, Beck wasn’t shy about implicating another of Britain’s foremost blues guitarists as someone guilty of the same sins. “You know, you talk about the ‘70s, and Eric Clapton playing 20-minute guitar solos—without even one rest—absolutely note linked to note. There’s not one break in it. And that last concert was the epitome of everything I didn’t want to be—standing there wailing away for hours on the same riff.”
Beck and Clapton famously had a bit of a tumultuous love/hate relationship over the decades, dating back to Beck taking Clapton’s place in the Yardbirds in 1965. In this case, however, the critique of Clapton’s ‘70s era self-indulgence was more about Beck’s recognition of his own tendency to get similarly carried away—a shared flaw among creative axe men with too much time on their hands.
“Also, I’ve been heavily influenced by Scotty Moore and people like that,” Beck told Guy, citing the not-so-flashy guitarist in Elvis Presley’s backing band, “and Albert Lee, cause he just plays beautifully, and Steve Cropper—he just does a jab in ‘Green Onions’ and it’s so cool. They’re the kings, just wonderful players.”
Not every musician with Beck’s level of fame and success would still have the self-awareness and open-mindedness to keep re-assessing his approach and style, but Beck was nothing if not consistently driven to take on new challenges and work within different genres and self-imposed constraints.
In Moore, Lee, and Cropper, he saw guitarists who adapted to their outfits and understood restraint—what wasn’t played—as much as the notes themselves. It was a pivot away from dominance and toward discipline.
In some respects, the “less is more” approach would indeed become a calling card of Beck’s later career. Even on a fairly grandiose, highly produced album like Emotion & Commotion (2010), Beck leaned into tone, phrasing, and feel—using his Stratocaster to whisper and weep and hover rather than attacking the fretboard. The focus seemed to be more on an emotional connection rather than technical dazzle.
Should the lesson, then, be that rock n’ roll critics are truly important, after all? That a simple throwaway line from a Ron Wood concert review can inadvertently help determine the course of another Hall of Fame artist’s career? Or are the best rock critics actually the ones who know when to shut up?
