“I can die happy”: The moment Jimi Hendrix paid tribute to Jeff Beck
From an outside perspective, the rock music scene of the 1960s appeared to be little more than a competition between guitarists. The period’s music was driven forward by a variety of revolutionary players, the vast majority of whom used the six-string as their weapon of choice. For years, figures like Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck would battle it out, trying to one-up each other. That was until Jimi Hendrix came along and blew everybody else out of the water.
After honing his craft for many years as an R&B guitarist for various relatively obscure bands, Hendrix relocated to London during the late 1960s, where he formed The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was during this time that the Seattle-born songwriter established the unique and endlessly psychedelic guitar tones with which he soon became synonymous. Despite the oversaturation of guitarists in London during the 1960s, nobody could play in quite the same way as Hendrix, no matter how skilled they were.
Hendrix’s playing style, while incredibly skilled and proficient, was never about technical ability. When Hendrix played, he played with deep emotion and improvisational techniques; it was as though he was playing directly from his soul. It was this emotional weight which made the guitarist such a revered figure, along with his ability to take and adapt pre-existing music to make it into something new, exciting, and undeniably Hendrix. However, the guitarist could not orchestrate this psychedelic revolution entirely on his own.
In reality, Hendrix was always indebted to his broad range of influences. Particularly within the London scene of the 1960s, the American took a lot of cues from people like Jeff Beck. Beck was a pretty revolutionary guitarist in his own right, particularly famed for his pioneering blend of blues and psychedelia during his time with The Yardbirds – the band which also spawned the musical careers of Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. Without the inventive sounds of Jeff Beck, it is unlikely that Hendrix would have ever landed on the distinct sound that came to define his music.
Hendrix, of course, was aware of that fact, and the pair struck up something of a friendship during the guitarist’s time in London. Occasionally performing on stage together, it is clear that the two began to influence each other as the years went by.
This relationship is perhaps best represented by the Hendrix track ‘In From The Storm’, which featured on the posthumous album The Cry of Love. Musically, the track lifts a lot from the Jeff Beck track ‘Rice Pudding’, and Hendrix himself admitted to using Beck’s riff as a main source of inspiration.
While other musicians might feel pretty annoyed at the idea of being plagiarised, Beck seemed to take Hendrix’s ‘In From The Storm’ as a compliment, a kind of tribute to him from the greatest guitarist in the world. During an appearance on SiriusXM, months before his death, Beck recounted, “There’s not one single photo of me and Jimi on this planet,” but the fact that Hendrix paid tribute to him on ‘In From The Storm’ meant, “I can die happy”.
Rock guitarists, particularly of that era, are often portrayed as sneering, ego-driven, and ultimately self-centred, but the relationship between Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix works to dispute that idea. The pair were never in competition with each other; they merely pushed each other forward to develop and expand upon this revolutionary new style of guitar playing.
