Jeff Beck on the album that changed songwriting forever: “Gave me the vision”
Whenever the topic of rock’s greatest guitarists is discussed in Rolling Stones‘ periodical mammoth features, all three of The Yardbirds’ former guitarists are likely to make the top five. Eric Clapton would bridge blues and psychedelia with Cream, Jimmy Page would dream up the 1970s stadium monster Led Zeppelin, but it’s Jeff Beck who boasted the most eclectic scope of material—trying his hand at everything from hard rock and jazz fusion to synth dabblings until his death in 2023.
Replacing Clapton in 1965, Beck’s short but fruitful Yardbirds tenure pushed the group toward a deeper immersion into acid pop and oversaw their greatest period of chart success. Yet, while UK audiences embraced Beck’s new innovations in fuzzed-out feedback, fans Stateside still largely saw them as a British invasion outfit and pined for their less experimental blues from the Clapton era.
Amid a gruelling and demoralising US tour, Beck snapped backstage in Texas and expressed his dissatisfaction with the band; his departure was officially announced a month later, and Page stepped up to lead guitar from bass.
Beck would cast his mind back to this moment in his career, reflecting on the artists he felt inspired by to explore his intrepid work retooling 1968’s Truth and beyond. Like many of his generation, it was the inventive champer pop harmonies conjured on The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds which pointed him toward a more adventurous creative journey. “It transcended way beyond surf into almost psychedelic pop songs,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2013. “It gave me the vision to make wild sounds on the guitar…”
No one in pop was working as hard as The Beach Boys as the music world was shifting toward the era’s counterculture. With a dizzying ten studio albums behind them in just four years, California girls, surfing and hot roddin’ had gotten stale for the band’s principal songwriter Brian Wilson. While 1965’s The Beach Boys Today! had allowed more melancholic lyrical musings to creep in, it was the following year’s Pet Sounds which saw Wilson pour all his heartache, alienation, and studio obsessions—paving the way for his “genius” marketing tag.
Recruiting Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew ensemble of Wall of Sound musicians, Wilson crafted meticulously arranged and inventive pop pieces which explored an earnest and wholly innocent end of surrealism. While influenced by LSD use, his take on psychedelia felt closer to the baroque stylings of The Zombies than West Coast freakouts.
It was also instrumental in establishing the album as its own coherent artistic statement, setting the stage for The Beatles to quit touring that year and dream up their fictitious club band following Pet Sounds‘ disregard for live reproduction of any of its complex tracks.
Accompanied by the classic ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ / ‘God Only Knows’ double A-side, Pet Sounds was the ultimate offering to a generation keen to follow its intrepid example. Beck had never forgotten its effect, taking part in a 2013 North American with Wilson himself to celebrate his legacy.
