Ronnie Wood describes the guitar style of Jeff Beck
Few people knew the inner workings of Jeff Beck and his approach to the guitar quite like Ronnie Wood. The Rolling Stones guitarist first came to prominence in the British rock scene thanks to his time in the Jeff Beck Group. With Beck taking up all the necessary space on guitar, Wood was happy to step over to bass on classic albums like Truth and Beck-Ola.
When tensions between Beck and Wood escalated during the group’s 1969 tour, Wood opted to jump ship and join the Faces along with Jeff Beck Group singer Rod Stewart. Whatever ill feelings were felt between Beck and Wood had been dissipated in the years since, with the pair remaining on good terms all the way up to Beck’s death in 2023.
“He’s playing out of his skull right now,” Wood told Classic Rock of Beck’s playing in 2022. “He’s still like a kid in a toy shop and loves to experiment. I spoke to him the other day and said: ‘Jeff, will you give us some guitar lessons, show us your latest tricks?’ And he said: ‘Yeah, I’m really dying to.’”
“He does this bending where he can pull one way and one string goes up and the other string goes down, and it sounds like a pedal steel guitar, and he was teaching me that and I was starting to get the hang of it,” Wood added. “Jeff is always experimenting and he’s such a pleasure to be around because he makes you excited about learning things on the guitar again.”
Although Beck had become known for his fiery temper and lack of commitment to any group, most infamously shown when he was a member of The Yardbirds, Wood had a completely different view of the guitarist when they played in a band together.
“He used to be incredibly shy when we were in the Jeff Beck Group, as was Rod,” Wood recalled. “If there was another guitar player like BB King or Albert King on the bill he’d go: ‘No, I can’t go on,’ and he’d disappear because he’d think he wasn’t good enough. Rod would be like: ‘I’m gonna sing behind the amps, I’m too shy,’ and I’d say: ‘Why don’t you just come out and enjoy yourselves?'”
“That’s how it developed with The Faces – we got rid of all the nerves,” Wood added. “Everything was a risk, some risks came off and some didn’t and the audience picked up on that looseness and raggedness. There’s still a bit of that with The Faces. You can’t polish a turd – unless you wait for it to go hard.”
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