The Stevie Wonder hit that could have belonged to Jeff Beck: “We were gutted”
Don’t get me wrong, come 1972, Stevie Wonder wasn’t short of a hit.
He had, of course, released Signed Sealed and Delivered, which hosted a string of classic hits, including the title track. But, he hadn’t delivered that one hit. That one hit that would exist in the history books as one of the greatest songs of all time.
When he felt the makings of the hit in his bones, he enlisted the studio help of a legend. In 1972, there weren’t too many guitarists out there better than Jeff Beck, and so Wonder invited him into the studio to start working out some hits for his upcoming record Talking Book, and in exchange, the songwriter offered to pen Beck a song to take home.
But given the creative atmosphere of their session, there weren’t any strict rules in place to determine which song would belong to Beck upon completion. Naturally, however, it was the very best of the bunch that Beck hoped would be his.
After laying down several tracks, the early makings of Wonder’s mega-hit ‘Superstition’ began to come to life. “Stevie came kinda boogying into the studio, ‘Don’t stop.’ ‘Ah, c’mon Stevie, I can’t play the drums’,” Beck recalled in Jeff Beck: Crazy Fingers. As they coaxed the melody out of one another, they finally stumbled on the hammer blow.
Beck continued, “Then the lick came out, ‘Superstition’. That was my song in return for Talking Book. I thought, ‘He’s given me the riff of the century’.”
With nothing definitively agreed, Wonder penned some lyrics to the song right there and then, and the pair cut a demo to send to Motown. At that point, however, Wonder was the label’s golden boy, and so when he came to them with what is objectively a smash hit, there was nothing to do except release it into the world.
Beck laid a version down with his own band, but by the time he had, it was far too late, and the song was clearly going to become Wonder’s forever. “We were gutted, you know, totally,” Beck explained. “We would have had a monstrous, monstrous hit.”
There really are no rules when it comes to creativity, and it’s hard to understand just why Beck feels so aggrieved, especially if it was Wonder who laid down the riff. Nevertheless, Wonder claimed that he did still try to give it to Beck.
“Motown decided they wanted to release ‘Superstition’,” he recalled. “I said Jeff wanted it. And they told me I needed a strong single in order for the album to be successful. My understanding was that Jeff would be releasing ‘Superstition’ long before I was going to finish my album. Jeff recorded ‘Superstition’ in July, so I thought it would be out. I did promise him the song, and I’m sorry it happened and that he came out with some of the arrogant statements he came out with.”
While the riff could happily belong in the hands of either musician, it’s hard to imagine anybody but Wonder singing that iconic song. So, despite the contention, I think what panned out in the end was the best course for this timeless track.
