The “nuclear explosion” that made Jeff Beck love music
For any aspiring musician, one song is something so much more than three minutes of music. This is a holy practice, seeing any artist be in tune with their instrument so much, and whether it’s some jazz improvisation or the latest pop smash, the one thing that people will always hear right off the bat is the emotion that goes into every single note that’s being played.
Jeff Beck had already made it his calling card to make some of the most emotional sounds come out of his guitar, but that would have never happened had the building blocks not been laid out for him first.
Then again, there was always a strange anomaly listening to a lot of Beck’s greatest works. There wasn’t any prime influence as to where every one of his tunes came from, and even though there were many different guitarists he had respect for, there was no way to put his playing in any category.
Sure, many of them started by listening to the best blues guitarists of all time, but once he had moved on to albums like Blow by Blow, the blues was only one flavour of what he could do. Eric Clapton had spent his career playing the blues, but after walking into the world of fusion, there was no difference between any genre as far as Beck was concerned, so long as it had a decent melody for him to play over top of everything.
Because like all great musicians, Beck understood that melody ruled over everything else. The thought of anyone playing long extended jams for the better part of an hour may have been fun for people who didn’t know any better, but if there’s no central hook behind it, you may as well be musically masturbating in front of an audience. It might be enjoyable for the person playing, but don’t be surprised when everyone else leaves or gets utterly repulsed by what you’re doing.
It’s always important to have that sense of melody, which goes back to Beck listening to people like Django Reinhardt. His success story despite only having two working fingers was already one of the biggest hurdles for anyone to jump over, but even with a limited range of motion in his fingers, Reinhardt always knew the right notes to go to, and that’s when Beck started to really pay attention.
From then on, the guitar meant more to him than a vehicle to play blues licks, saying, “That’s because they were the first nuclear explosion musically [for me]. It must have grabbed Jimmy [Page] the same way. I believe that James Burton was more important than Earl Hooker, for example.” While that also included listening to a fair bit of rock and roll guitar players like James Burton, there was a lot of music that Beck was learning from that dealt with the ins and outs of what a guitar could do in the mix of a song.
It may have taken centre stage when he was playing tunes like ‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers’, but whether it was listening to Buddy Holly records to get the exact right tone for the record or working on his jazz chops to get a section right on one of his own songs, there was always a need for him to make something that was a lot different than the bog standard blues textures that everyone learned from Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.
Both of them were iconic in their own right, but whereas they were crying out in pain whenever they made some of their best material, Beck was after something different. He wanted to make the guitar speak in a way that no one else could, and whether it was Gene Vincent playing or hearing Reinhardt play a beautiful solo, he was learning how to get sounds out of his instrument that no one had ever heard.
