The one frontman Jeff Beck said “had everything”
There will always be a little bit of envy in any band between the guitarist and the frontman. Although everyone loves the idea of someone shredding one of the greatest solos that they can, any musician would gladly trade in all of their chops if all they had to do was sing and stand in the middle of the stage to rake in applause. Jeff Beck usually didn’t need to worry about such things when playing many of his classics, but he knew a classic frontman out in the wild whenever he saw one.
Over the years, though, Beck quickly realised that people were more than happy to come to his shows for the music more than anything else. He had some fantastic singers come through his ranks, but listening back to records like Blow By Blow, his guitar could speak in a way that no singer ever could, almost sounding like he was pulling out bits of his own heart whenever he played tunes like ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’.
When Beck first debuted as a solo artist in the 1960s, though, having a singer was the only way that a band was guaranteed to see success. No one was going to a Beatles concert back in the day to listen to the Fab Four jam, and while Beck had someone like Keith Relf to work off of in The Yardbirds, he knew that he needed a journeyman in his ranks if he wanted to keep the fire burning in his solo career.
And when it came to blues rockers, you could hardly go wrong with Rod Stewart. The Faces were already gaining traction as one of the greatest bands going at the time, but whenever Stewart opened his mouth to sing, that signature rasp was what caught people’s ears as much as Beck’s guitar playing when working on tracks like ‘You Shook Me’. In fact, Beck was doing so well that he didn’t even realise his former colleague was coming up behind him.
While Led Zeppelin has gone down in history for being one of the defining hard rock bands of their day, it’s easy to see them taking their entire playbook from Beck in retrospect. Jimmy Page wanted to have a similar band setup to what his former bandmate had, and while there was no rule that there had to be only one blazing blues rock out at the time, there was no question who was going to be more popular when John Bonham kicked off the intro to ‘Good Times Bad Times’.
“Zeppelin was hot on our tail, and our manager was more interested in them, because of the potential with Plant, I mean Robert had everything, he had the bare chest factor, you know.”
Jeff Beck
Beck had great musicians among his ranks as well, but the minute that he saw Robert Plant sing, he knew that there was no hope for him to have the same kind of staying power, saying, “Zeppelin was hot on our tail, and our manager was more interested in them, because of the potential with Plant, I mean Robert had everything, he had the bare chest factor, you know. [Rod] was definitely not looking too good, with the back-combed hair. But then people warmed to him because he sang like no one else. I just felt it was time that I got out of that – I knew that the band would come to an end sooner or later.”
However, splitting up his group may have been the best decision Beck could have made at the time. Page would always have Zeppelin as his primary outlet, but Beck was now free to do whatever he wanted, whether contributing some licks to a Stevie Wonder song or delving into the world of fusion with any players that caught his ear. And if Stewart had stuck it out with Beck, we would have probably never had the pleasure of hearing songs like ‘Maggie May’ later down the road.
In retrospect, though, Truth is an excellent look at what Beck could do when left to his own devices. It does tend to look bad knowing that Page would come to steal his entire style, but like all of Beck’s records, he would rather have put it out to get that sound out of his system rather than be stuck there forever.
