The one thing Jeff Beck missed out on that he “bitterly resents”
If there’s one thing people rarely say about Jeff Beck, it’s that he was born in the wrong era.
It’s actually a fairly common feeling among some of the most legendary names of all time, especially when they start evaluating the career and legacy of others. Stevie Nicks, for instance, once said the same about Sheryl Crow, discussing how she thought she was a “golden girl” who is “lost in a high-tech world” and who would have “preferred the last generation”.
In all fairness, people likely say the same about Nicks, especially looking at all the ways she was scrutinised for absurd reasons, from her appearance to “some wacky, creepy people” writing in big-name publications about how she’s a witch. But in Beck’s case, it wasn’t necessarily about his own treatment (or privilege) that made him feel slightly out of place sometimes, but how he longed for a space among his own heroes.
Now, this isn’t all that uncommon either. In fact, most of Beck’s peers grew up wishing they could somehow fashion a time machine so they could go back and witness their musical heroes in action or maybe even perform alongside them. Countless stars recall the moments they first saw Elvis Presley or The Beatles, live on television, cursing the gods above for not letting them be born earlier so they could have at least got in on the action.
And for Beck, things were no different. Considering his legacy, this probably isn’t all that surprising, especially how he and many others in the same circle rose from the golden embers of jazz and blues into a new era that hinged on the flames of two often opposing forces – tradition and eclecticism. Often, people tried to place musicians in either camp, but the real innovators knew how important it was to bridge the gap.
It’s like when Quincy Jones reflected on the two mindsets to Uncut, saying, “People were telling us not to mix jazz with rock, that myopic mentality. That’s bullshit. Miles, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock and myself used to talk about this, how you should try everything.” Obviously, Jones and Beck operated in distinctive spaces, but there’s a common thread throughout countless musical movements that placed some in the back seat, while the inventors surged forward, willing to embrace it all.
But this forward motion never meant leaving other legends behind. In fact, it was because of them that players like Beck could thrive in the first place, even if it pained him that he wasn’t a part of another time period. As he once recalled to Guitar Player, “I did [like the 1980s], because of the revitalising of things, like punk rock, which I loved and thought was a smack in the eye for the world. It made things a lot more exciting and insecure.”
He added: “It was getting very stodgy. I was getting so depressed by 1965 because I was 10 years too late to be around the Gene Vincent, Cliff Gallup thing, and I bitterly resent that.”
Were it not for the generation before, there would be no Beck or even players like Jimmy Page. Beck was hugely impacted by the immense talent of Gallup, but he also acknowledged how, despite his skillset, he never made it into mainstream spaces, and died before anybody could even catch up. But he absorbed many of his mannerisms and let him shape his own craft, blending together the two sides of past and present, like a true innovator.
