The rockers that inspired Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck
The Yardbirds were one of the most influential bands of all time. It’s sad to see them often overlooked for as much, as without their string of fantastic guitarists, the modern rock guitarist simply wouldn’t exist. Their individual ideas and attitudes towards the instrument all went a long way when it came to the guitarist becoming an important factor in the development of rock.
Eric Clapton was their first guitar player, and he was responsible for blending different styles of rock music together. Those who came before him were excellent musicians, but they very much stayed in their lane. Eric Clapton borrowed from all these different lanes to build his very own road, which he travelled down.
“Eric Clapton is the most important and influential guitar player that has ever lived, is still living or ever will live,” said Steve Van Zandt when discussing his favourite musicians, “Do yourself a favour, and don’t debate me on this. Before Clapton, rock guitar was the Chuck Berry method, modernised by Keith Richards, and the rockabilly sound – Scotty Moore, Carl Perkins, Cliff Gallup – popularised by George Harrison.”
Then you had Jeff Beck, a fantastic guitar player, who picked up where Eric Clapton took off. However, he also brought an element of flamboyancy to the table. He played in an exciting way, moving about the stage and making it so that the lead singer wasn’t the only star of the show. People became more interested in the guitarist than they did anybody else in the band.
His friend Jimmy Page learnt a lot from Beck and ended up playing in The Yardbirds once Beck left. Page was able to combine the ideas of Clapton and Beck, as well as the playing styles of other guitarists he had worked with as a session musician, and create something completely different as a result. He ended up starting Led Zeppelin, a band that could shatter the boundaries between genres and prove that bands could make any kind of music they saw fit, regardless of the elements incorporated.
These three were all huge influences on the modern rock guitarist; however, there is a lot more to it than that. While they may all have been big influences on modern rock, other variations of the genre needed to come before for rock ‘n’ roll to have its moment in the sun as it did throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s.
One of the movements was the rockabilly sound, which introduced a unique rhythm and songwriting to guitar music. Gene Vincent was a huge inspiration for rock guitarists, as he was a big name in rockabilly guitar but also made the sound a bit heavier than people had come to expect. Jimmy Page admitted that Vincent’s work massively influenced both him and Jeff Beck.
“We were really, really keen on exactly the same things with the Gene Vincent records and Ricky Nelson records,” he said. “There were all these fine guitar solos by James Burton, and one of the things that we would ask of each other was ‘What’s your version of My Babe?’ ‘OK, what’s your version?’ That sort of seemed to be a common ground between most guitarists around that time, to see how well other guys could cut this solo.”
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