The guitarist who made Jeff Beck think he was out of a job: “Shook us”
There aren’t many bands that can boast not one but three of popular music’s most celebrated guitar players. Formed in 1963, London’s The Yardbirds counts Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page lending their virtuoso fretwork for the psychedelic blues outfit, respectively launching Cream, The Jeff Beck Group, and Led Zeppelin before their first disbandment in 1968.
While Clapton and Page would dominate the 1970s, Beck would carve a heavyweight presence in the rock world in a much more low-key fashion, committing himself to an instrumental artist following the brief fronting of his Group and the short-lived Beck, Bogert & Appice trio. Guided by a fierce creative intuition and curiosity, Beck would explore jazz fusion, hard rock, classical reinterpretation, and electronic detours across his diverse body of work up until his death in 2023.
Yet, Beck and his former Yardbirds nearly packed it all in when a new guitar slinger from Seattle arrived in London in 1966, ready to immerse himself in the local music community. Having played with Little Richard and The Isley Brothers, Jimi Hendrix’s move to the UK via acquaintances with Keith Richards, a semi-impromptu live jam halfway through a Cream set left Clapton stunned.
Later, having formed his Experience band with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, a show at Soho’s The Bag O’Nails electrified the star-studded crowd, with everyone from John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Mick Jagger, and Beck in awe by the set. With 1967’s Are You Experienced following shortly after, music was never the same again. Seattle’s Jimi Hendrix’s impact on the psychedelic world was incalculable, conjuring a lightning weld of electric blues and masterful effects use to wield his guitar virtuosity as a scythe hacking away at new sonic terrain as much as merely wowing with his impressive fret technique, as well as forming mystical theatre onstage via pyromania to teeth playing ensuring his antics became shrouded in lore.
“I saw Jimi live at an underground club. Dollybirds in Biba clothing were probably expecting a folk singer, but he came on and blew the house down,” Beck reminisced to Guitar Player in 2003. “It shook all of us—me, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page. He was so good, we all wondered what we were going to do for our living.”
Striking a friendship while touring together in America, any rivalry was quashed due to Hendrix’s tragic death less than a year after his iconic set at 1969’s Woodstock Festival: “I wanted to be friends with Jimi on a less flippant level, which was difficult to do. We had the perfect opportunity while driving to a jam in upstate New York. The real Jimi was coming out as he was driving, and I thought, This is probably the greatest moment of my life. And then…just as I had become friends with him, the guy went and died.”
Despite the later lightning bolts of inspiration that struck Beck and The Yardbirds gang, Hendrix spoke candidly about Beck’s time with his former band as proving instrumental in his pursuit of a path toward psychedelic rock.
