The album Jeff Beck said could reduce people to tears
While Jeff Beck was best known for his work in the blues, he was often the first to tell anyone who’d listen that he moved on from the genre fairly quickly. His work in The Yardbirds, while incredibly influential and well worth setting him up as the heir apparent to Eric Clapton’s blues mastery, was done and dusted within four years. His solo work still carried traces of the blues, yet he was constantly on the lookout for new influences and in the late 1960s, there were plenty of them going around.
When the late ’60s turned the early ’70s, his music was still grounded in the blues, but it also took influence from genres like psychedelic rock, soul and jazz. By the mid-’70s, he was playing shows with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a progressive jazz band that took influence from Indian classical music. Perhaps inspired by them, Beck began seeking out musical inspiration even further flung than that.
Since the man’s guitar skill was second basically to none at this point, he could take more or less any kind of music and translate it into his playing. Then, the 1980s onwards, Beck took influence from everything from electronica to Bulgarian folk music and managed to give it all his unmistakable treatment. All this came to a head on a 2010 album where it was clear he saw it as something close to his masterpiece.
After a comeback in the 2000s that saw him brush closer to the mainstream than he’d done in years, Beck poured that clout into Emotion & Commotion. An album that, if you ignore the unintentionally hilarious cover art, is legitimately a crowning moment in a career full of them. One that is the sound of Beck trying to combine everything he’s learned about the guitar, and arguably music as a whole, over the course of his career into one grand statement.
How did Jeff Beck make this album happen?
Emotion & Commotion, at its core, is a collaboration album, which makes sense. Jeff Beck has always been arguably the greatest sideman in the history of rock, thriving on collaborations with everyone from Jon Bon Jovi to Toots and the Maytals. For this record, though, his collaboration wasn’t with an artist or even a band, but something on a much bigger scale. Beck’s co-pilot on the record was a 64-piece orchestra.
Considering that scale, one can see the vision he had in mind with the track listing alone. This is a record that sees Beck take on classical works by Benjamin Britten and Giacomo Puccini. Along with songs from the ‘Great American Songbook’ like ‘Over the Rainbow’ and ‘I Put a Spell on You’. The latter winningly sung by Joss Stone, who’s not the only vocalist on the record either; Imelda May leads a star turn through James Shelton’s ‘Lilac Wine’.
While Jeff Beck was famously not a man to be modest about his achievements, the way that he talked about Emotion & Commotion was more than justified. In an interview with Billboard, he said, “It’s a hell of a risk. It’s as close as I can get to playing things people understand, I think. Maybe I’ll lose some people. Maybe I’ll gain some. But all I can tell you is I’ve seen grown men, after ‘Nessun Dorma’ and ‘Corpus Christi’ with the orchestra, just lose it. You could tell in their eyes they were gone. It seems to work from an emotional level. I’m quite pleased with the way it’s going.”
15 years later, with its creator having moved on to the great gig in the sky, we live in an era where, thankfully, other musicians are taking similar risks with their instruments. They may not be as maximalist as Beck’s work, but if you know where to look, they’re still there.
