The guitarist Jeff Beck called “unequalled”
The late Jeff Beck was about as eminent as rock guitarists get. One of the most influential of his day, in the 1960s, he formed a triptych of fretboard masters alongside friends Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, and by the end of the decade, all three had played in the pioneering psychedelic band The Yardbirds. What’s more remarkable is that for a brief period, Beck and Page formed a dual six-string assault in the group to a game-changing effect.
Following his time in The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck refined his talent, forging a distinctive finger-picking style that he would display on some of his best-loved offerings. Some of his most culturally relevant efforts include ‘Beck’s Bolero’, a boundary-pushing instrumental featuring his old friend Jimmy Page, as well as his version of ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’.
It says all about Beck’s talent that Jimi Hendrix – a man Jeff Beck was a big fan of – was –“totally OTT” about his style. When speaking to Classic Rock in 2022, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons recalled that his friend Hendrix was mad about Beck’s skill on the guitar and loved his 1968 album, Truth.
Gibbons said: “The one I really remember him playing the ass off was the first Jeff Beck Group album, Truth. Hendrix was mad about it, totally OTT about Jeff’s playing. Oddly enough, Hendrix was all too willing and ready to include blues licks in his arsenal of guitar offerings, which had fallen out of favour in the States with most black entertainers.”
Clearly, Jeff Beck was better placed than most to comment on the work of other guitarists. In his time, he effused about an array of players, and when speaking to Music Radar in 2022, he delivered one of his most glowing accounts. It was regarding British jazz virtuoso John McLaughlin, Mahavishnu Orchestra leader, who he dubbed “unequalled”. Famously, this was not the first time Beck celebrated the work of McLaughlin. In a chat with Uncut in 2010, he went as far as to call him “the best guitarist alive”.
“Things took a funny turn in the early 70s,” Beck told Music Radar. “It all turned out well when I heard John McLaughlin, because his performance on the Miles Davis Jack Johnson album and with Mahavishnu Orchestra said, ‘Here’s where you can go’. And every musician I knew was raving about them. I thought, ‘This is a little bit of me, this. I’ll have some of that.’ The mastery of the playing, it was unequalled.”
Watch John McLaughlin in action below.
