“Some goof”: The artist Jeff Beck said it was torture to work with
In his time, Jeff Beck worked with a long list of greats. Emerging in London’s exciting ‘Swinging Sixties’ scene, he quickly asserted himself in the city’s foremost triumvirate of guitar heroes alongside Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page and would come to prominence playing in The Yardbirds, a group inextricably connected to this set of players. However, his time with the psychedelic rock pioneers was brief, and it wouldn’t be long until he was burnishing his sound elsewhere.
After being selected to replace Clapton in The Yardbirds at the recommendation of his friend Page, Beck played a key role in making their sound heavier, expansive and altogether more dynamic than it had been during his predecessor’s tenure. This would be typified by the out-there rock track ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’. Boasting the twin guitar assault of him and Page – who joined the group in June 1966 – it provided a heavy dose of their joint power, but unfortunately, their time as a duo was brief. Later in the year, Beck was eventually fired during a US tour due to him being a regular no-show and the inner-band difficulties arising from his on-stage temper and general perfectionism.
Unlike many of his peers, Beck was more than in his right to be such a perfectionist. In May of 1966, months before ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ arrived in October, he’d already released what would become one of his ultimate cultural contributions in the instrumental ‘Beck’s Bolero’. A pioneering fusion of hard rock and psychedelia, fuelled by a rhythm inspired by Ravel’s Boléro, and featuring a star-studded band of Beck, Page, John Paul Jones, Keith Moon and Nick Hopkins – instead of The Yardbirds – it was the first real indicator that Beck would be absolutely fine on his own, and actually flourish in an A-list musical milieu that he was leading.
Of course, after his short but consequential time in The Yardbirds and the release of ‘Beck’s Bolero’ – both of which confirmed him as one of the era’s most exciting innovators – Beck was emboldened to become a band leader, and not just a cog in another’s creative machine. In 1967, he recorded several solo singles for producer du jour Mickie Most, and in early that year, formed The Jeff Beck Group, featuring an exciting line-up of Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Aynsley Dunbar and Hopkins. Moving quickly, they released their hit albums Truth and Beck-Ola, in 1968 and 1969, respectively.
Since those two albums that saw Beck distil his craft and lay the foundations for a stellar career, the Londoner would strive to improve his guitar playing and do so by fusing genres, ranging from jazz fusion to hard rock. Despite being an instrumentalist, he kept fans on their toes, and one of his greatest strengths as a guitarist was always his commitment to stylistic dynamism. One way he achieved this, and one of his other ultimate career victories, was by working with other talented musicians who allowed him to flourish.
One of these is the celebrated pianist Tony Hymas, known for being in the band PhD, who scored a hit with ‘I Won’t Let You Down’ in 1982. He played with Beck on 1980’s There & Back, 1989’s Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop, and 1999’s Who Else!. While Hymas was pivotal for Beck getting through the ’80s and returning from jazz fusion to the more straight-up rock that he’d composed in the ’70s, when speaking to Guitar World in 1999, Beck called it “torture” to play with the keys maestro, and outlined his fear of “sounding like some goof” with him.
He said: “It’s torture for him listening to me trying to interpret his songs. And it’s torture for me to try to interpret his songs, to try to supplant some kind of notion of what I want to do without sounding like some goof who can’t remember what I want. I got pretty graphic with some of the stuff that you hear on the record.”
Although there might have been a decade between Guitar Shop and Who Else!, it says a lot about Hymas’s talent that it was torture for Beck to play with him. The rock legend had played with a host of the best in the business, so for a relatively unknown name to the public to keep him on his toes shows that not every musician of truly genius levels manages to break into the mainstream; there’s far more who do not.
