The best drummer Jeff Beck ever heard: “He was just dancing with the drums”
Joining the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, the name Jeff Beck should never fail to find a place in the upper regions of all-time top guitarist lists.
Of course, there are many unsung heroes of equal skill, but guitarists like Beck and Hendrix are revered among the all-time greats because they surfed on a popular wave just before it broke. They took electric guitar blues to its virtuosic pinnacle just before the distracting dawn of punk rock.
Beck would become famed not for his soloing ability like Hendrix but for his dexterity. Beck was able to move through genres like a ghost through walls, seamlessly transitioning from one sound to the next, rarely being bogged down by categorisation. He moved like a spiritual deity, able to deliver licks and riffs like nobody else.
In a 2021 interview with Louder Sound, Beck took some time to remember his friendly rival and idol, Hendrix. “When I saw Jimi, we knew he was going to be trouble,” he recalled. “And by ‘we’, I mean me and Eric [Clapton] because Jimmy [Page] wasn’t in the frame at that point.” The men would continually duke it out on stage to see who might be considered the greatest guitarist of all. A debate that rages on to this day.
“I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating,” he continued, humbly revealing envy. “He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin. I had the same temperament as Hendrix in terms of ‘I’ll kill you’, but he did in such a good package with beautiful songs.”
“I don’t want to say that I knew him well, I don’t think anybody did, but there was a period in London when I went to visit him quite a few times,” Beck added later. “He invited me down to Olympic studios, and I gave him a bottleneck. That’s what he plays on Axis: Bold As Love. We hooked up in New York and played at Steve Paul’s club, The Scene.”
During the late 1960s, London’s fertile rock scene also conjured up a few of the greatest drummers of all time, including Mitch Mitchell, who backed Hendrix in The Experience; Ginger Baker, who earned his stripes with Clapton in Cream; and John Bonham, who played with Page in Led Zeppelin. The scene was rife with truly magnetic stars, and Beck was a part of the audience for some of their greatest tours. It means his view on who might be the greatest percussionist is worth listening to.
During an interview with Kate Mossman of the New Statesman in 2016, Beck discussed his unique career trajectory and revealed how he had recently insured his fingers and thumbs for $7million after accidentally chopping off the tip of a finger in the kitchen. During the conversation, Beck also revealed that touring alongside the jazz-rock band Mahavishnu Orchestra changed his outlook on music.
“It was the refinement of [frontman John] McLaughlin that presented a way out for me,” Beck says. “Arriving at the soundcheck and watching him and the sax player trading solos, I thought, ‘This is me.’ He has such knowledge of scales, and he tells the story within the scale. Playing with McLaughlin, and then the Stones – dang, dang, dang – can you imagine?”
Continuing, Beck saved his biggest praise for the band’s drummer, Billy Cobham. “Mahavishnu’s drummer, Billy Cobham, was the best I’d ever heard,” he said. “Not loud, that’s not the secret – powerful as hell when he wanted to be – but 90 per cent of the time, he was just dancing with the drums, you know? Just like a butterfly, all over them.”
This is an impressive comment for Cobham from anyone, but considering the source, it might well be the greatest compliment a drummer can receive. That’s because Beck might well have heard every single truly gifted drummer of rock’s golden age. Keith Moon, John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell, and Ginger Baker were all stars that Beck would have seen up close and personal. For Cobham to beat them all is mightily impressive.
Watch Mahavishnu Orchestra perform live in 1972 below.
