The “most agonizingly wonderful” album by The Bulgarian Women’s Choir that made Jeff Beck cry
For someone who has been playing music for as long as Jeff Beck had, there came a point where any gig can start to feel like a job.
Even if he was living out the kind of fantasy that most guitar fanatics only dream of, there were always going to be pieces of his gig that he did because he had rather than because he wanted to. But the core part of Beck’s identity was never forgetting the importance of exploring other forms of music, and even he wasn’t afraid of shedding a few tears when it came to his favourite music.
Then again, anyone who has made the guitar weep as he had has most likely hit on some emotional hard times in their life. The whole premise of the blues was making music that came out of the soul rather than the mind, and listening back to records like Blow By Blow, Beck was more than willing to take his guitar into places that his heart told him to go rather than what his brain said.
Even as far back as The Yardbirds, Beck was already beginning to voyage outside the norm and making something a bit different from typical blues. Anyone taking the slot after Eric Clapton was bound to be judged against ‘Slowhand’s massive shadow, but Beck figured that the next best thing would be for him to approach music outside of the same American blues artists people had been talking about across England.
No one was going to earn their keep being the best Muddy Waters wannabe in London, and that meant Beck venturing into different musical textures. There would be albums like Wired that dealt with more jazz-oriented approaches, or Blow By Blow, which practically helped birth the idea of a guitar leading a fusion group half the time.
If he was looking for a real thrill, he would have to go beyond Western textures altogether. There were many moments when he could see what Jimmy Page was doing and go in the opposite direction, but if the Led Zeppelin mastermind was already attuned to Eastern music, Beck knew he needed to go even farther when listening to the sounds of Bulgaria.
When talking about his influences, Beck remembered being incredibly moved hearing the Bulgarian Women’s Choir sing, saying, “I got the Bulgarian Women’s Choir CD and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should just sit and listen to this for about ten years.’ That CD is the most agonizingly wonderful thing. It had nothing to do with rock and roll, but it impressed me just as much – a part of my psyche moves into tears every time I hear it.”
But even if most Western ears hadn’t heard what a Bulgarian choir sounded like, it didn’t take long for Beck to draw inspiration from it. While a lot of his guitar textures seem to be coming from another world, hearing him shape his tone to sound like a human voice came from hearing this kind of singing and wanting to get that same smoothness when he was bending a note or playing a lead melody.
If there’s anything to take from what Beck did venturing out into different genres, it should be the fluidity of his playing. Most people can try to find the perfect take whenever they’re recording, but Beck’s greatest strength always came from him phrasing his guitar the same way that a person would talk.
