Over a 56-year recording career, Paul Rodgers has collected guitar players like a connoisseur collecting fine wines. They’re pulled in by the soulful power of his voice, and he embraces what the combination, and combustion, of that with their playing can do to a song.

Consider the company English-born Rodgers — a solid rhythm guitarist himself, as well as a pianist — has kept, starting with the late Paul Kossoff in Free between 1969 and 1973, the band that put both men on the rock and roll map.

After that he joined forces with Mott the Hoople’s Mick Ralphs in the recently minted Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group Bad Company, for six albums defined by brawny, muscular but still sophisticated hard rock that had few peers for success during the ’70s. (The new Can't Get Enough: A Tribute to Bad Company demonstrates the group's continuing influence, with Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke joining on tracks like "Shooting Star" and "Feel Like Makin' Love" with Halestorm, Blackberry Smoke and Def Leppard's Joe Elliott and Phil Collen.)

Then for his next trick? No less than Jimmy Page in the short-lived band the Firm, delivering a pair of powerhouse albums and Billboard Mainstream Rock chart toppers such as “Radioactive” and “All the King’s Horses.”

Rodgers went on to join forces with drummer Kenney Jones in the Law, then spent five years alongside Brian May in Queen + Paul Rodgers, another supergroup collaboration that brought May and drummer Roger Taylor back on the road and also yielded two live albums and 2008’s The Cosmos Rocks, the first Queen-related studio album since 1995’s Made In Heaven.

Rodgers maintained his impressive six-string relationships outside of his band affiliations, too, and through his seven solo albums — Jeff Beck, Joe Bonamassa, Steve Cropper and Slash among them.

“I don't really know the secret of how guitarists create their own unique sounds,” he tells us, “but I know a good guitar sound when I hear it.”

Here he shares some reflections about some of the best he’s worked with.

Paul Kossoff (Free)

“Koss was my friend and guitar player extraordinaire from before the formation of the band Free. We had met at a jam session. He came up onstage at a blues club in London, the Fickle Pickle, and blew me away with his powerful sound and his fluid electric guitar work. We played like we had been playing together for a long time, There was an instant rapport between us.

“His Gibson Les Paul was, as we used to say, ‘the bees’ knees.’ At the time, Eric Clapton was doing the Les Paul–Marshall stack thing and was playing at the Marquee just across town on Wardour Street in the West End.

The London music scene was referred to as experiencing a blues boom. The blues was the music we all listened to, the likes of B.B. King, Albert King, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters.

“Paul was one of those instantly recognizable players. You could identify him from just a few notes or chords, as in the opening chords of ‘All Right Now.’ Such a full spectrum of sound — all the high tones and all the low, with just a hint of crunch. I think the uniqueness is in the fingers, but you have to have the right gear too, and Koss had one hell of a great sound, even to this day. He was my soulmate guitarist, and we were in sync musically. Sad we lost him when he was just 25. Such a tragedy.”

Mick Ralphs (Bad Company)

“We were ‘label buddies.’ Both our groups, Free and Mott the Hoople, signed to Chris Blackwell's Island Records. I would see Mick in the office on Bodine St., Notting Hill Gate. Then Mott the Hoople and my next band, Peace, toured the U.K. together. I got to know Mick and liked him as a person — always friendly and so funny.

“We started writing songs together, and songs being the lifeblood of any band, the songwriting turned into a band, Bad Company. He had ‘Can’t Get Enough;’ Mott's Ian Hunter did not feel it suited the band's style, so when Mick played it for me I told Mick that the song was a hit and that I would love to sing it — and we were off to the races on our first album.

“Mick was often, described as a nuts-and-bolts guitar player, but to me he was always so much more than that. Being both a brilliant songwriter and guitarist. One of the great things about his sound was that he was multi-dimensional.

“Take ‘Rock Steady’ or ‘Burning Sky’ or ‘Silver, Blue and Gold,’ and of course the unstoppable ‘Can’t Get Enough’ or ‘Movin’ On.’ If you picture each song or track and focus on the guitar, not just the part he chose to play but the actual sound, each song is a a one-off — never been done before or since. Although there have been lots of copycat attempts — which is the highest praise, I’m told.

“In each song his sound perfectly matched and enhanced the mood and atmosphere of the lyrics — dark, moody and mysterious ‘Electricland’ or the blatantly rock and roll ‘Preacher.’ To me he was, and will forever and always be extremely inspirational. I believe that Mick made Bad Company what it is with his unique and varied guitar sounds.

“I can’t say how he got the variety of sounds he did. They broke the mold when they made him. I’m so happy we learned about our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction while he was still alive. He was very happy when he heard the news.”

Jimmy Page (The Firm)

“We kind of fell together after I had built a studio in my London home, with the help of a designer, Steve Hoyland, and made a solo album Cut Loose — coincidently the same name as the smash hit American movie at that time.

“But Jimmy and I got together in that studio and began to create music. It was a very mind-expanding, creative and exhilarating time for me. Jimmy would bring along music for me to write lyrics to; the first serious song was ‘Midnight Moonlight Lady,’ and his guitar layering on that is superb — a beautiful, introspective sensitive and deeply personal piece of music.

“I would bring songs along that I had written, like ‘Radioactive’ and ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed,’ and it was pure magic watching him add his signature touches. We weren’t together long — as agreed, two years — but we left our mark on the tapestry of the story that is rock and roll.”

Brian May (Queen)

“I always admired Queen from afar. They had such a good sound. Every word from Freddie and every note from the band was crystal clear.

“When I heard ‘I Want to Break Free,’ the guitar solo was mouth-watering — so good. When we played that song together live, I would always turn around from the end of our 30-foot thrust in the center of huge arenas and watch and listen. Every time it just blew me away.

“‘The Show Must Go On’ is another great song. The passion and commitment is breathtaking, and Brian’s guitar totally matched the incredible moments in that song. His sound burns and pierces the very heart of things. He played ‘All Right Now’, with his massive chord sound, banks of Vox AC30s hooked up together. He uses a six-pence, which is an old silver U.K. coin, for a plectrum, which gave the strings a metallic overtone. After a show the stage was littered with them.”

Jeff Beck

“Now, Jeff Beck took no prisoners. He was outstanding amongst outstanding guitar players, in a league of his very own out in the stratosphere.

“Don't believe me? Listen to ‘Shapes of Things’ with Rod Stewart. The solo on that recording can't fail to blow your gaskets. He was a towering monster on guitar. There's also a track he did in the same time period, the B-side of ‘Tallyman.’ Just listen and you will know what I'm talking about. Actual words fail me, he was just so gut wrenchingly awesome.

“In 2002, Jeff invited me to perform a couple songs with him in London at the Royal Festival Hall. Sharing the stage with him was an exhilarating experience and one that I will never forget. I remember touring with Jeff, Ann Wilson and Deborah Bonham in 2018. Jeff and I would, flip-flop: One night he would close the show, the next night I would close with my solo band. It was so surreal on the nights when he was closing to stand at the side of the stage with my wife, Cynthia and listen to Jeff. It was absolutely breathtaking.”

Steve Cropper

“Steve Cropper was a staple in my listening and learning curve. He followed the emotion of the song and was the gold standard by which I viewed every guitar player. His playing really moved me.

“Steve was a sensitive yet powerful member of Otis Redding’s band on the Otis Blue album, the first vinyl album I ever bought with my own hard-earned cash, and my first love in terms of music. I still have that album. Steve Cropper, Duck Dunne, Al Jackson and Booker T Jones — the core band on ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ — build it incredibly to a climax that moved me to tears, the band working with Otis to tear your heart out.

“And Steve is such a big part of that emotional climb, hitting just the right notes in just the right place — sometimes chordal, sometimes playing lead. He was very, very restrained, nothing flashy or extraordinary until required, as in ‘Rock Me Baby,’ which has such an incredible groove.

“And when he lets it loose on the solo — every note counts with Steve. I was blessed to work with him a few times, most recently in 2021 on his last solo album, Fire It Up. We cowrote a song together: ‘She's So Fine.’ He’s sadly missed, but his contribution to music will always be remembered and appreciated.”

Slash

“Slash played on ‘The Hunter,’ a Steve Cropper/Albert King song on my Tribute to Muddy Waters blues album in 1993, and gave the recording his own inimitable interpretation of the blues with a fiery solo and some outstanding rhythm guitar playing. I think Slash is influenced by all the right people, old-school and blues, with his powerful Les Paul and his Marshall stack. He has great stage presence, witnessed when he joined me and performed at Woodstock in 1994. He was ripping it up in the rain and sounding good with Andy Fraser on bass and Jason Bonham on drums.

“I invited him up for a jam when Queen and I played in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005. The crowd loved it and so did I. Most recently we performed together as a tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington on the CMT Awards show. That same year I also sang on his latest album, Orgy of the Damned, on which Slash's guitar playing once again shines a light on the blues with his excellent sound and unique style, pure gold, raw and bluesy.”

Joe Bonamassa

“When I first met Joe, he told me that he was a huge Free fan, which impressed me, because most people in America are aware of Bad Company, not Free, other than ‘All Right Now.’ He had taken a deep dive into Free’s catalog, and the songs that he preferred weren’t the commercial songs, which intrigued me — songs like ‘Walk in my Shadow’ and ‘Fire and Water.’

“So when he asked me to join him at New York's Beacon Theatre in 2011 to record a live DVD, I accepted. And which songs did we decide to play? ‘Walk in My Shadow’ and ‘Fire and Water.’ Joe and his band were tight and nailed both songs. I really like his tone and sound and his phrasing is blinding liquid.

In 2024 Joe organized a tribute album to B.B. King, B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 [out February 6, 2026]. He asked me to record a track and I chose ‘The Night Life.’ I have always liked that track; the sentiment spoke to me. The next generation of guitar greats has arrived, and Joe is leading the way.”

Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story by Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill is the first biography to fully capture the life, music, and mystery of Jeff Beck. Drawing on more than 30 hours of original interviews with Beck, along with extensive conversations with friends and collaborators including Jimmy Page, Johnny Depp, Clive Davis, and many others, the book offers the most complete portrait of Beck ever assembled

In this excerpt, Tolinski and Gill follow Beck as he joins the Yardbirds following Eric Clapton’s exit from the British blues-rock group.

Jeff Beck’s initial encounter with the Yardbirds was unexpectedly adversarial. The four remaining band members were praying for another Eric Clapton to stroll through the door, but instead they were greeted by his antithesis. Where Clapton was meticulous and stylish, Jeff Beck, with his greasy jeans and scruffy, shoulder-length hair, resembled someone who had just emerged from under a car…and probably had.

Beck’s grungy appearance made a statement. Deep down, he believed he had more to offer the Yardbirds than they had to offer him, and he wasn’t about to dress up just to win their approval. Beck recalled, “I didn’t like the band when I met them. They didn’t seem particularly eager to welcome me. It appeared they were still nursing resentment over Eric’s departure and were worried that their whole sound would disappear without him.

“They asked me rather condescendingly, ‘Can you play blues?’ I shot back, ‘What kind of blues — slow blues, jump blues, Chicago blues?’ I played a few licks, and though they seemed impressed, they advised me to ditch my echo units because ‘You don’t use an echo in Chicago blues.’ I just shook my head, wondering if they truly grasped anything. Had they ever listened to Buddy Guy, whose guitar sound was drenched in echo?”

Yardbirds rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja chuckled at Beck’s testy recounting of their initial meeting. “We were in a panic after Jimmy Page declined to join the band, and we felt like we were settling for Jeff,” he confessed. “Moreover, he was unlike the rest of us and did appear a bit rough — he was a mechanic. I remember him telling me this story about someone infuriating him, so he doused their car in paint stripper. Nervously, I thought, ‘Yes, this is just what we need in this band…’”

Despite this, Dreja understood the challenge Beck faced by joining a group that had already been together for three years. “[Bands are] closer than marriages. We had our own language and our own humor — a lot of it was Eric’s invention, I might add. Jeff was introverted and socially a bit off, but we all agreed that he was incredibly inventive, and his playing was astounding.”

And for the moment, that was enough. With “For Your Love” climbing the charts and a packed schedule of concerts, television appearances, and promotional obligations looming, there was little time to ponder whether Beck was the ideal replacement for Clapton. The Yardbirds needed a guitarist, and Beck needed a break.

His first test came quickly. The Yardbirds were scheduled to perform on March 5, 1965, at Fairfield Halls, a venue in Croydon, South London. Beck had barely a week to notify his current band, the Tridents, of his departure, learn 15 songs, and step into the shoes of what many considered England’s most respected guitarist.

Before he could face the audience, however, there was one other matter to address: his appearance. Dreja, who had absorbed a few fashion lessons from Clapton, was assigned the task of making the band’s scruffy new recruit look presentable.

“I took him off to Carnaby Street, got him a fashionable haircut, and bought him nice shirts,” Dreja recalled. “Everything happened quickly because ‘For Your Love’ was a hit and suddenly we were on theater tours and television.”

As for Clapton, he was surprised and somewhat irked that the band didn’t collapse in the aftermath of his exit. Intrigued by his successor, he discreetly attended one of Beck’s final gigs with the Tridents. He was both shocked and slightly relieved by what he witnessed. Beck’s unruly hair and “all this fucking echo” on his guitar made Eric wonder if the Yardbirds had truly comprehended what they were getting into.

Clapton’s youthful arrogance and steadfast loyalty to tradition prevented him from seeing the truth: Beck’s wild, psychedelic guitar playing wasn’t an attack on his cherished blues but a glimpse into the swiftly approaching future — one that would pave the way for innovative players like Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and, yes, Jimmy Page. For now, Clapton was merely content that his former band would be stuck with what he perceived as an unkempt barbarian.

Meanwhile, Beck had little time to think about his judgmental predecessor; he was too busy gearing up for an undoubtedly challenging couple of weeks. To many, Clapton was synonymous with the Yardbirds, and after the music press announced his departure, Eric’s devoted followers couldn’t wait to chase the new guy offstage. But Beck wasn’t going to be coerced or cowed. When he took the stage for his debut Yardbirds performance, he locked eyes with the Croydon audience with the unwavering resolve of a gunfighter at high noon. In response to someone in the crowd shouting, “Where’s Eric?” Beck defiantly retorted, “Haven’t you heard? Read the papers. He’s gone.”

And for the next 40 minutes, the guitarist did his best to make them forget Clapton had ever existed. “I tore the place apart,” Beck recounted. “The gig bolstered my confidence, but I knew our next show would be even more demanding. I was going to face Eric’s regular crowd at the Marquee and was a little nervous. Nevertheless, I also came to the realization that being part of the Yardbirds was the best break I’d ever get, so I just went for it. Fortunately, I had a fantastic night. I played ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ [an early Beck signature piece] and received a 10-minute ovation.”

There remained one more significant hurdle. The Yardbirds were set to perform at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, where ardent blues enthusiasts congregated. As Beck recalled, it was “an athletic, smelly place to play,” where the audience expressed their enthusiasm by standing on each other’s shoulders and cheering or showing their disapproval with clenched fists.

“It was the first time I genuinely felt like I might get slaughtered,” said Beck. “But I was cocky. I was like, ‘All right, you lot, get a load of this!’”

Beck managed to win the skeptical crowd over, even though few thought of him as a “genuine” blues player. Unlike Clapton, he never fully embraced the music. Instead, he took some pride in being an iconoclast — a hybrid of [Gene Vincent guitarist] Cliff Gallup, Buddy Guy, and Les Paul. The audience thought he was peculiar…yet oddly intriguing.

“I vaguely recall [Yardbirds singer] Keith Relf being a purist,” said Beck. “I thought, ‘You can be a purist, and you can be broke.’ I’ll do what I believe is right. Before the Yardbirds invited me to join, I was already moving toward avant-garde and experimental music — a bit like [jazz saxophonists] Eric Dolphy and Roland Kirk. I’m not comparing myself to them musically, but the essence of what I was doing involved creating the strangest sounds I could. That’s when Eric [Clapton] came down to see me and realized where his job was going.”

While Beck was finding his footing with the Yardbirds on British stages playing his ’59 Telecaster through two Vox AC30 amplifiers, “For Your Love” continued its steady ascent, peaking at number three on March 20, 1965. This success secured the band several television appearances, including spots on two of Britain’s premier music shows: Top of the Pops and Ready Steady Go!

With his gleaming blonde hair and wraparound shades, Keith Relf naturally commanded the most on-camera attention. But Beck’s presence also caught the media’s eye, with some music publications even noting his passing resemblance to Rolling Stone Mick Jagger.

“I was on the telly, and suddenly I was somebody,” Beck recounted with a hint of his astonishment at the time. “It was a mind-blowing experience.”

Although Beck had no experience before a camera, his presence was magnetic. It was on these shows that the guitarist carved out a brooding persona that stuck to him like an adhesive for decades to come. With an air of smoldering indifference, his menacing nonchalance would be studied and emulated for years by future guitar legends such as Ritchie Blackmore, Joe Perry, Chrissie Hynde, and even Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel. Dark, cool, and disenchanted, Beck provided the perfect gritty contrast to Relf’s androgynous, flaxen-haired hipster.

“The fans loved Jeff,” said drummer Jim McCarty. “Eric’s shoes were still warm, but there was something about Jeff that ignited their imaginations. The way he moved, the way he dressed — to the kids, he wasn’t ‘one’ of them, he was them. The fans worshipped Eric, but they wanted to be Jeff.”

To celebrate the release of Blow by Blow, an all-star tribute concert, along with a live interview and book signing with the authors, will be held this Thursday, July 16 at the Cutting Room in New York City. Additionally, a book signing and Q&A with author Brad Tolinski will also take place the following Thursday, July 23 at Book Soup in Los Angeles.

When the British blues scene bloomed in the 1960s, with the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers at the forefront, Ronnie Wood often found himself at the heart of it all. He enjoyed enduring friendships with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, played with Jeff Beck, and later lived with Jimi Hendrix. He watched it unfold and played a key part.

At the start of his career, he was simply a budding guitarist with lofty ambitions, holding the work of Yardbirds – at the point with Eric Clapton – in high regard. Then, one night, he found himself pulled out of the crowd to perform with them. It’s here, he says, that his friendship with Clapton began.

“I used to gauge my music by seeing the Yardbirds at the Crawdaddy,” Wood said at a Q&A to promote his autobiography in 2015. “They were a big influence on me.”

The Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Surrey, was one of the Yardbirds’ usual haunts throughout their various eras, with their tri-fecta of guitar greats: Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck. It was one of the shows with the latter that saw Wood plant the seeds for him playing in Beck’s solo project after the Yardbirds broke up, first as a guitarist, then relegated to bass. But he’d found himself part of Yardbirds folklore long before that.

“One night, Keith Relf, the singer and harmonica player, was ill, and Chris Dreja [guitar], Jim McCarty [drums], Paul Samwell-Smith [bass], and Eric Clapton said, ‘Does anybody in the audience play harmonica?’ and all my friends pushed me up, and he said, ‘He does!’ Suddenly I’m on stage with the Yardbirds; I did ‘I’m a Man’ and a few [other] songs.”

It would have been a night to savor for this moment alone. But there was more to come.

“They sent for me afterward,” he remembers. “They said, ‘Get that guy backstage who looks like Cleopatra.’ Eric and I stayed close after that.”

Wood would, in fact, steal a bass to play with Jeff Beck several years later, and at the Q&A, he was asked to break down why the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s band proved to be, in his own words, a “breeding ground” for incredible guitar players.

“There was a lot of ambition within guitar players to spread the word,” he believes. “They were sort of like, ‘Have you heard this lick?’ Jeff Beck is still like that to this day. He’s like a kid in a toy shop with his guitar and his riffs; ‘Can you do this?’ ‘No, but I’ll give it a damn good try.’ There was a camaraderie.”

Elsewhere, Wood’s story intertwines with that of Pete Townshend, with the loudness wars that would redefine the future of amplifiers, and an argument over a particular innovation at the core of their relationship.

He’s just released his latest album with the Rolling Stones, which Mick Jagger says was created with a “bulldozer approach.”

The infamous “Clapton is God” graffiti that began appearing on London walls in the mid-’60s helped cement Eric Clapton’s status as Britain’s first guitar hero. Roughly a year earlier, Jeff Beck had taken his place in the Yardbirds, stepping into one of the most scrutinized jobs in British rock.

Comparisons between the two guitarists began almost immediately and never truly disappeared. Although Beck often praised Clapton’s playing, he also believed his predecessor viewed him as a rival, a suspicion that followed both men for decades.

Born on this day in 1944, Beck was revered as one of the instrument’s great innovators. He frequently spoke highly of Clapton, once calling him “the household name for electric guitar.” But he also felt there was an undercurrent of resentment stemming from the success he enjoyed after replacing Clapton in the Yardbirds.

“I know he didn’t like the fact that I took over from him in the Yardbirds and we did great,” Beck told Classic Rock.

“The general buzz of the band was that they thought they were finished when Eric left. At my debut with the Yardbirds at the Marquee, I showed them what was what, and I got a standing ovation. That was the end of that.”

Beck believed Clapton was also irritated that the Yardbirds reached America before he did. While Beck’s band was enjoying chart success and building a following across the Atlantic, Clapton was still grinding it out on the British blues circuit with John Mayall.

Years later, Beck said he received what he considered confirmation that the rivalry was real.

“I remember he invited me to this gig [in 1980] in Guildford, and I thought, Why is he asking me?” Beck recalled to Rolling Stone.

During the drive to the venue, Clapton invited him to join him onstage for a song and to use his electric guitar Blackie, the famous Fender Stratocaster he’d cobbled together. .

“On the way there, he goes, ‘Do you want to play Blackie?’” Beck recalled. “And I said, ‘Uh, I don’t know that song.’ He said, ‘No, it’s my guitar.’ I went, ‘Oh, whoops.’ First calamity of the evening.

“So I said, ‘I didn’t bring a guitar, so I’ll do that.’

“Then about a minute later, he turned around and stood at the car and goes, ‘This is not gonna be one of these blowing-off things, is it?’ I said, ‘Listen, either I play, or I don’t.’ And there was that — what’s the word — uncomfortable rivalry about it.

“I found out later from Pattie, his wife, that there definitely was — especially with the Stevie Wonder stuff. He was not too amused about me doing something successful with Stevie. I think that maybe got under his skin a bit.”

The Stevie Wonder collaboration Beck referenced dated back to the early ’70s, when the two musicians struck up an unlikely creative partnership. Beck played on and co-wrote material for Wonder’s Talking Book album and was present when Wonder came up with the central riff for “Superstition,” a figure Beck later called “the riff of the century.”

There’s little doubt Beck’s success irked Clapton, who was enduring one of the darkest chapters of his life. Derek and the Dominos had collapsed, and his drug addiction was worsening.

Those circumstances only reinforced Beck’s belief that professional jealousy had occasionally colored their relationship. Yet for all the stories of rivalry, competition and perceived resentment, Beck would eventually discover that Clapton’s feelings toward him were more nuanced than he had imagined.

That realization came while watching Still on the Run: The Jeff Beck Story, the 2018 documentary chronicling his life and career.

In the film, Clapton offered an assessment that caught Beck completely off guard.

“I think he was a hard rock pioneer from day one,” Clapton offered early in the film. “He was doing stuff that didn’t exist, except for him.” Later in the documentary, reflecting on Beck’s invitation to perform with him at his 2007 Ronnie Scott’s residency, Clapton said, “It was honor to get up with him in that venue. It was tremendously touching that he would want me to get up and play with him.”

For a guitarist who had spent years suspecting that Clapton viewed him as a rival, the praise came as a genuine surprise.

“I didn’t know he thought that,” Beck later admitted.

Whatever tensions may have existed between the two guitar legends over the years, hearing Clapton speak so openly and admiringly about his playing revealed a side of their relationship that Beck had never fully appreciated — one rooted not in rivalry but respect.

Eric Clapton says he hit a rough patch on tour in the early 2020s.

The fix for his problem wasn’t rest or reflection — it was watching Jeff Beck perform on YouTube every night in his hotel room.

Clapton has long occupied a rare tier in rock guitar history, but even he has acknowledged periods of doubt and exhaustion across his career. In this case, the strain was physical and mental, compounded by illness and the pressures of touring during the COVID-19 era.

Speaking in an interview uploaded to YouTube by Enter the Jam, Clapton described a nightly ritual that became unexpectedly restorative.

“We were doing gigs in Europe, and I was really getting down, I was not well,” he said. “I still had COVID, and I was playing gigs. [Afterward], I’d go back to my room and find Jeff’s gig from the night before on YouTube, and I’d watch that. It would lift me up to where I could work that night for my thing.”

What he was responding to wasn’t nostalgia, but evolution. Beck — who took over Clapton’s spot in the Yardbirds in 1965 — had developed into something Clapton felt was still advancing, even decades into both men’s careers.

“To me, it seemed like he’d moved on,” Clapton said. “He’s constantly been moving up a notch all the time, every year. The refinement in his right hand and the independence between the fingers is so phenomenal.”

That sense of continual progression, Clapton suggested, became a kind of antidote to his own creative fatigue. Watching Beck’s remarkably fluid touch on electric guitar didn’t just remind him of their shared history in the British blues explosion—it demonstrated that reinvention was still possible.

At a moment when Clapton was questioning his own endurance onstage, Beck’s playing provided a reset: a reminder that technical growth and expressive depth don’t have an expiration date.

In that sense, the inspiration ran both ways. Beck and Clapton had shared stages and eras since the 1960s British blues boom, but in Clapton’s telling, it was Beck’s later-life refinement — not their shared past — that helped him push forward again.

Last week, Ritchie Blackmore ruffled a few feathers in the guitar-playing community when he claimed that “most guitarists aren’t nice people.” He may have also listed an exception to the rule, but there is one other player you’ll never hear the former Deep Purple man bad-mouthing.

Of course, Blackmore’s offhand comment quickly became headline news. In that moment, memories of him taking digs at his Deep Purple successors Joe Satriani and Steve Morse, and his claims that he was “not too struck” by Jimmy Page and that he “never saw what was in Eric Clapton at all” came flooding back. He has a track record for not always waxing lyrical about his peers.

But there was one player whom the guitarist — who has, in turn, been called a “dick” by Billy Corgan — has only kind words for.

“I was in Hamburg, Germany, when I first heard ‘Shapes of Things,’ with Jeff Beck playing,” Blackmore once said. “And I thought, ‘My God, who the hell is this?’ This shouldn’t be allowed. It’s too good. I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since. They were way ahead of all the other bands.”

Yet the pair had already crossed paths when Blackmore and Beck were playing on a track being produced by Jimmy Page, long before they all became guitar heroes in their own right. And though Blackmore accepts that Page’s Led Zeppelin and, to an extent, his own Deep Purple were the front-runners of the heavy blues-rock sound of the early ’70s, it was Beck who “got the ball rolling” during his time in the Yardbirds.

When the band disbanded, Beck and Page would team up for a short-lived project that yielded the first-ever metal guitar riff — and the pair argued over who wrote it for decades afterward. It was what came next — Beck’s sonically tumultuous 1968 solo debut, Truth — that set the scene for the next decade of blues-rock evolution.

“Jeff cheats on the guitar because he has notes that I don’t have on my guitar,” Blackmore jokes. “But he knows how to ring a note. His soul comes through his tone as well as his notes. And a great player — my favorite guitar player. Ever since ‘Shapes of Things,’ we’ve kind of just followed that style.”

It’s easy to hear the song’s hammering intro in a score of Deep Purple cuts like “Speed King” and “Stormbringer,” while his off-kilter lead lines rip through both Purple and Zeppelin’s discographies and beyond. Musically, he was punishing.

But aside from his constant praise for Beck’s natural talents over the years, Blackmore has remained consistent on one other matter concerning the late great. Beck, it seems, was perpetually unable to take a compliment when it came to his playing.

“He was always reaching for something he couldn’t find,” Blackmore said late last year.

It’s for that exact reason that the last known recording of Beck, who passed away in January 2023 at age 78, is likely to never see the light of day.

Former Manfred Mann’s Earth Band guitarist Mick Rogers, who owns the recording, wasn’t the only one whose plans to record together were dashed by Beck’s passing, with Mark Knopfler revealing he was lining up a project with the maverick six-stringer.

“Jeff was just something other, y’know?” he told Guitar Player in 2024. “I’m really sorry we didn’t get to work together.”

Elsewhere, Blackmore has reflected on losing the musician he was closest to, and what caused them to fall out. This same musician was also Steve Morse’s saving grace during their time in Deep Purple.

Last week, Ritchie Blackmore ruffled a few feathers in the guitar-playing community when he claimed that “most guitarists aren’t nice people.” He may have also listed an exception to the rule, but there is one other player you’ll never hear the former Deep Purple man bad-mouthing.

Of course, Blackmore’s offhand comment quickly became headline news. In that moment, memories of him taking digs at his Deep Purple successors Joe Satriani and Steve Morse, and his claims that he was “not too struck” by Jimmy Page and that he “never saw what was in Eric Clapton at all” came flooding back. He has a track record for not always waxing lyrical about his peers.

But there was one player whom the guitarist — who has, in turn, been called a “dick” by Billy Corgan — has only kind words for.

“I was in Hamburg, Germany, when I first heard ‘Shapes of Things,’ with Jeff Beck playing,” Blackmore once said. “And I thought, ‘My God, who the hell is this?’ This shouldn’t be allowed. It’s too good. I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since. They were way ahead of all the other bands.”

Yet the pair had already crossed paths when Blackmore and Beck were playing on a track being produced by Jimmy Page, long before they all became guitar heroes in their own right. And though Blackmore accepts that Page’s Led Zeppelin and, to an extent, his own Deep Purple were the front-runners of the heavy blues-rock sound of the early ’70s, it was Beck who “got the ball rolling” during his time in the Yardbirds.

When the band disbanded, Beck and Page would team up for a short-lived project that yielded the first-ever metal guitar riff — and the pair argued over who wrote it for decades afterward. It was what came next — Beck’s sonically tumultuous 1968 solo debut, Truth — that set the scene for the next decade of blues-rock evolution.

“Jeff cheats on the guitar because he has notes that I don’t have on my guitar,” Blackmore jokes. “But he knows how to ring a note. His soul comes through his tone as well as his notes. And a great player — my favorite guitar player. Ever since ‘Shapes of Things,’ we’ve kind of just followed that style.”

It’s easy to hear the song’s hammering intro in a score of Deep Purple cuts like “Speed King” and “Stormbringer,” while his off-kilter lead lines rip through both Purple and Zeppelin’s discographies and beyond. Musically, he was punishing.

But aside from his constant praise for Beck’s natural talents over the years, Blackmore has remained consistent on one other matter concerning the late great. Beck, it seems, was perpetually unable to take a compliment when it came to his playing.

“He was always reaching for something he couldn’t find,” Blackmore said late last year.

It’s for that exact reason that the last known recording of Beck, who passed away in January 2023 at age 78, is likely to never see the light of day.

Todd Rundgren has made a career of surprising and sometimes confounding his fans. The first time was in 1973, when he abandoned the three-minute pop stylings of hits like “I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me” to create the prog-psychedelic album A Wizard/A True Star.

The second occurred three years later, when he released his seventh solo release, Faithful.

Coming 12 months after his progressive-rock album Initiation, Faithful raised Toddophiles’ eyebrows with its first side, which included covers of songs by the Yardbirds, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. True to the title, the tracks were recorded to sound as faithful to the originals as possible, right down to the electric guitar tones of "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” and the layered harmonies of “Good Vibrations.”

For Rundgren, who produced the set and recorded it with members of his group Utopia — keyboardist Roger Powell, bassist John Siegler and drummer John “Willie” Wilcox — Faithful was both an exercise and a tribute.

“I was, in a sense, 10 years in the business at that point, and so much had changed,” he tells us via Zoom from his home in Hawaii. “When I turned 18 and graduated from high school, that was for me a banner year. It was the year Sgt. Pepper’s came out, so there were all kinds of cultural shifts going on.

“The most important thing from my standpoint was radio was not yet syndicated, before everybody was playing the same thing from the same playlist. So it was all local, and the local DJs and program directors had control over what got played.

“I remember listening to the radio in Philadelphia and you’d hear anything at all; it would be Judy Collins and then Bill Evans and a symphony orchestra and then the new Beatles single, then a blues record or something like that. There was a sort of freedom — and a lot of it was due to the Beatles, because they would constantly genre-hop and invent a new thing.

“So I wanted to pay tribute to that. That’s why all the songs are so different — a Bob Dylan song and a Beatles song, a Yardbirds song — all the bands I liked to hear. That’s also why it was all covers on side one, and why they were so sort of literal in terms of production. It was supposed to put you in a place 10 years prior.”

Two of Rundgren’s choices for Faithful — particularly the Yardbirds’ “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” and the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “If 6 Was 9” — also provided a fascinating primer in the evolution of his guitar approach and orientation. He had already imitated Hendrix on the track “Little Red Lights,” from his 1972 album Something/Anything?

“‘Little Red Lights’ is kind of my version of ‘Crosstown Traffic,’ and I use all of those Jimi techniques to make motorcycle noise and car rumbling noises and things like that.” He applied the same effect on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell when producing it in 1975 and ’76. “It was just a fun, goofy trick that doesn’t have anything to do with playing — just kind of noise you make. It became a signature thing for Jimi Hendrix.”

But Rundgren says Hendrix wasn’t his initial influence.

“In those days there were kind of two camps. I came out of the Yardbirds camp — the Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck kind of things — and you played a Gibson guitar. I played a Les Paul, which had no wangle bar on it — no tremolo tailpiece on it. Jimi played a Stratocaster and made full use of the wangle bar. I personally didn’t have the sense of freedom that Jimi Hendrix had in the sense that he might not play the same thing every time.

“A lot of what I was listening to before that were kind of classical guitar solos that Beck and Clapton would play, and you would learn those literally in the same way you would learn every George Harrison guitar solo — literally. They’re like primers in guitar playing; you’d learn how to play this melody and be expected to play it at the drop of a hat.”

That was no easy feat, he adds.

“One of the seminal listening moments in my lifetime was when I heard ‘Shapes of Things’ on the radio. The way Jeff Beck played guitar wasn’t, like, playing guitar; it was imitating a sitar guitar, all weird kinds of intervals and weird kinds of pushes and trills and things like that.

“And I was totally freaked out: ‘This is a guitar? Wait a minute!’ It was one of the things that kind of cemented my love of the instrument: ‘You can do that with it as well?’ So, yes, I strove, like everyone else did, to try and figure out how that was done.

“And ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ was kind of like the same sort of thing. The remarkable thing was they did them in different studios. It wasn’t like a thing that they worked on and developed; they just extemporaneously would start flipping the tape around and splicing solos together and all sorts of nonlinear ways of creating a texture that was sort of mysterious, in that you weren’t sure what the melody was. Little fleeting bits of melody would come in and out of drones and whistles and all kinds of other effects.

“The Bluesbreakers album was also sort of a revelation, because nobody had completed a transformation like that in the way Eric Clapton had in his so-called woodshedding period. He went away as one kind of guitar player and came back as a completely different guitar player.

“And the combination of how he got that sound and the soloing on the record — suddenly that was my new god. Now I had to learn every single one of those solos and strive for that tone and play that guitar, the Les Paul.”

On his way to Hendrix and “to start thinking in other ways,” however, Rundgren crossed paths — literally, in this case — with Hendrix just once.

Living in New York during the late ’60s, he was a regular at Steve Paul’s The Scene, a famous no-alcohol club that hosted a who’s who of burgeoning rock bands. It was here Rundgren met brothers Hunt and Tony Sales, the drummer and bass guitarist, respectively, who backed him on his first two solo albums after he departed Nazz, the Philadelphia-based quartet he formed in 1967.

“It was notorious for having jam sessions after the regular show,” he recalls of The Scene, “so every night there’d be a jam session. That would often be the reason why you were there. Some nights you’d get up and jam; some nights you’d just watch.

“I was there one night and some kind of jam was going on. It might’ve been Duane Allman and Buddy Miles. If Duane’s got a guitar in his hands and he’s onstage, nobody gets a note in edgewise. He just never stops. He ignores every other guitar player. It’s not really a jam session when he was there.

“I was leaving one of these things, and as I’m walking out this kind of short guy with a big Afro walks by. I didn’t pay attention to who it was, and I heard later it was Jimi Hendrix. I guess the reason I missed him was I expected him to be taller. He was a relatively petite guy; even with his hair he wasn’t as tall as I was.

“So I guess I was expecting somebody else. We just walked right by each other. His Afro might have brushed my shoulder. That probably would’ve been my only opportunity to meet him.”

Rundgren, of course, has stayed busier than most artists since the release of Faithful. That includes touring; after a stretch last year as part of the Burt Bacharach Songbook in Concert trek, he’s heading out with his own Damned If I Do Tour, starting June 11 in St. Charles, Illinois, and running through July 19.

He’ll be joined by his regular crew of Kasim Sulton on bass, Prairie Prince on drums, Gil Assayas on keyboards, Bruce McDaniel on guitar and Bobby Strickland playing horns. The itinerary and other information can be found at todd-rundgren.com.

More than 65 years after it began, Carmine Appice still takes pride in the legacy of his band Cactus.

“I always knew Cactus was a musician’s band,” the drummer says.

Appice would know. Over a career that’s taken him from Vanilla Fudge to Beck, Bogert & Appice and a long run in Rod Stewart’s band, he’s played alongside some of rock’s biggest names while co-writing hits such as “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Young Turks.”

Cactus, meanwhile, is still alive, with Appice the only original member remaining. Under the moniker he’s just released a new album, Temple of the Blues II, a follow-up to the 2024 all-star set that features guest appearances by Bumblefoot, Steve Morse, Pat Travers, Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, Ted Nugent, Billy Sheehan, Joe Lynn Turner, Dug Pinnick and many more. The album includes a variety of covers, among them a rendition of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Purple Haze,” sung by Melanie.

The Brooklyn-born drummer, who now resides in Florida, has built a résumé that also includes stints with Mike Bloomfield’s KGB, King Kobra, Pat Travers, Paul Stanley, Blue Murder with John Sykes, a tour with Ozzy Osbourne and extensive work with the late Rick Derringer. His love of guitar greats also led to a series of Guitar Zeus albums collaborating with his friends.

It’s a lot — and Appice wrote extensively about it in his 2016 memoir Stick It!: My Life of Sex, Drums & Rock ’n’ Roll. With a new Cactus album hitting, he shared additional memories via Zoom during a promotional visit to New York City.

Jimi Hendrix

“I’ve got Jimi stories from before he was Jimi Hendrix.

“We used to play the clubs in New York together when he was Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Right up the block, 72nd Street and Broadway, there was a club called the Lighthouse. Back in the day it was all hookers and drug addicts who used to hang out there.

“We’d play these gigs — I would play 30 minutes with my band, he’d do 30 with his band — and at midnight there’d be a DJ to give us a break for an hour.

“We’d go across the street to a Black prostitute’s apartment and we smoked pot and we looked out the window at Broadway. Jimi would say, ‘Man, I want to make it. I want to get out of this stuff.’ I didn’t know what making it meant — but he really wanted to make it.

“Then when I had Vanilla Fudge and he was Jimi Hendrix, we were over in England and I went to this club called the Speakeasy. And there he was! He goes, ‘Who you with?’ I said, ‘Vanilla Fudge.’ He said, ‘Man, I love the Fudge,’ and that was the start of reuniting our friendship.

“We played I don’t know how many shows with Hendrix. The very first Cactus show was at a festival, I think in Philadelphia, with Jimi. We hung out with Hendrix all the time, and Jim McCarty went to London and hung out with him a day or two before he died.”

Jeff Beck (Beck, Bogert & Appice, aka BBA)

“Vince Martell was a great rhythm guitarist for the Fudge, but it was more of an organ band. Nobody played like him, and he had a really great feel for that.

“The thing that changed it for me was when we did a Coke commercial. They hired us to play a song for a radio commercial. Vinnie got sick, so Jeff Beck played with us. And he was freakin’ amazing.

“That’s when me and Tim said, ‘Wow, we’d love to play with Jeff Beck.’ A few years later we played on a bill with the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Ten Years After and the Jeff Beck Group, with Vanilla Fudge headlining. But then Led Zeppelin went up and jammed with the Jeff Beck Group — how do you follow that, right?

“But it was at that show [Led Zeppelin drummer] John Bonham came to me and said, ‘Hey, Jeff Beck wants to play with you and Tim [Bogert]. Here’s his number.’ And that’s what started it.

“I helped develop the jazz Jeff Beck. When we would drive in the car I would listen to Billy Cobham, Mahavishnu…. He didn’t know anything about that at the time. When Beck, Bogert & Appice broke up, I went to England and I played on Blow by Blow, but it didn’t work out ’cause they wanted it to be a Jeff Beck album, not Jeff Beck and Carmine Appice. [Appice’s parts were edited out and re-recorded due to the dispute.]

“Then I was jealous that the album sold two million copies. But I realized recently, in the last couple of years, that if I would’ve done that with Jeff Beck I wouldn’t have played with Rod Stewart. And Rod Stewart reinvented my whole career.”

Rod Stewart

“My friend Sandy Gennaro, who played with Cyndi Lauper and a bunch of people later, told me he’d just auditioned for Rod Stewart and didn’t get it. He said, ‘You should do it,’ and gave me the number for this guy Pete Buckland, who was the tour manager. We’d just done 30 shows with Cactus and the Faces, so I knew Pete Buckland. So I called him.

“I went to Rod’s house and went in. There was [guitarist] Jim Cregan and [bass guitarist] Phil Chen, who I knew from Blow by Blow. We played, and it was like magic. Rod was coming back the next day and we had a play with Rod, and he said, ‘Look, you got the gig if you want it. Just play like you played in Cactus.’

“That exploded my career again. I ended up co-writing ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy,’ the biggest song Rod’s ever had, and I co-wrote ‘Young Turks.’ I started doing clinics. Rod used to say, ‘Don’t just do clinics. Make them an event.’ So I did, and I started giving money to charity. It made it bigger. It just exploded my career again.

“I had a solo album come out, on Rod’s label, and he had already fired me from the band. When he wrote the intro for my autobiography, he said, ‘I fired Carmine. Fuck knows why.’ We ended up being friends again. We email each other; he doesn’t answer all the time — he’s Rod Stewart.”

Rick Derringer

“He was my friend from 1970, when he was working with Johnny Winter And. He lived in L.A., and we did a lot of stuff together. He produced Weird Al [Yankovic], and he wanted a better bass drum sound. He said, ‘Carmine, can you give me one or two of your bass drums?’ It’s funny that my bass drum’s on a Weird Al song — a bunch of ’em.

“We did the Derringer and Appice album. Later on I took Rick to Japan with me; it was me and Rick Derringer, [keyboardist/guitarist] Duane Hitchings, [Cheap Trick bass guitarist] Tom Petersson and Eric Carmen. That was such a weird combination with all of us playing [Carmen’s 1975 hit] ‘All by Myself,’ with Rick on guitar and all that. And we did another album, called Doing Business As, under the band name Derringer Bogert Appice.

“I was in touch with Rick and his wife a lot about some business stuff, and then he got really sick in January of last year. He had a triple bypass, he had diabetes — his toe had to be cut off. He wasn’t playing. The last conversation I had with him I said, ‘Don’t you miss playing?’ He said, ‘No, not that much. But I just ordered a new B.C. Rich electric. I’m looking forward to getting it.’ And he died the next day. That was terrible.”

With members that included singer Rod Stewart, future Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood and drummer Aynsley Dunbar, the Jeff Beck Group looked like one of the most promising new acts when it arrived in 1967.

Following a brief but stunning turn in the Yardbirds, and a follow-up project with Jimmy Page that went sour, Jeff Beck turned down a gig with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers to do things on his own terms.

But as Stewart later revealed, the band’s brief lifespan was anything but rosy — largely because Beck struggled as a bandleader.

“Let me put it this way, he wasn't a good band leader,” the singer told The Howard Stern Show in 2023. “He didn't have the personal touch with the musicians. Ronnie and I sometimes had to steal eggs here in New York to survive. We weren’t given any money. We didn’t get any wages.”

The group released two albums — Truth and Beck‑Ola — before splitting in 1969. Stewart and Wood departed to form Faces, while Beck later revived the band with a new lineup for 1971’s Rough and Ready and 1972’s Jeff Beck Group.

It wasn’t until Beck struck out under his own name with the instrumental electric guitar masterpiece Blow by Blow that the version of Jeff Beck revered by players today fully emerged. Armed with his famous “Oxblood” Gibson Les Paul, Beck entered a new creative era — one that helped cement his reputation as one of rock’s most expressive players. No wonder that guitar sold for an eye-watering sum at auction last year.

Still, Stewart didn’t hold their floundering bandleader responsible for the band’s financial woes.

“It wasn't his fault,” he insisted. “It was Peter Grant, who was managing at the time.”

Grant, of course, was also managing Page’s new band, Led Zeppelin, who were busy pushing the blues to thunderous new extremes — leaving little time to further Beck’s career. Which is where the bizarre Woodstock situation enters the story.

The Jeff Beck Group had been booked to perform at the festival — now one of the most mythologized events in rock history — but they never made it. A rumor began circulating that Beck’s wife was having an affair, prompting the guitarist to abruptly return home.

“He thought the gardener was shagging his wife,” Stewart quipped bluntly. “It was bullshit.”

There’s even a fan theory floating around on Reddit that Page himself started the rumor to scupper Beck — despite the two guitarists being longtime friends and occasional collaborators. It’s a bold theory, though the poster doesn’t appear to have convinced many commenters.

Either way, Stewart doesn’t dwell on what might have been. In fact, he believes skipping Woodstock may have spared them from being “labeled a Woodstock act for the rest of our lives” — a fate he suggests befell Ten Years After.

Stewart was also asked who the better guitarist was between Beck and Wood, but the “Maggie May” songwriter refused to take the bait.

“You can't compare the two,” he said. “Ronnie's got an innate sense of rhythm and riff writing, whereas Jeff — the sounds he gets out of his guitar. He's an entrepreneur of the guitar.”

Beck, who died in 2023, left behind a singular legacy — from his groundbreaking work with the Yardbirds to the genre-defying solo career that followed (including an album’s worth of unreleased recordings).

After building a career as a pop and jazz session guitarist in 1960s London, John McLaughlin crossed the Atlantic in 1969 to join Tony Williams’ group Lifetime.

The move dropped him in the center of New York’s music scene, where he would spend time in Greenwich Village jamming with Jimi Hendrix and absorbing the city’s jazz culture.

It also resulted in him performing on an album that would become the foundation for the 1970s jazz-fusion genre: Miles Davis’s 1969 release, In a Silent Way.

As McLaughlin recalls, that session date came a mere two days after he arrived in America. It proved to be a decisive moment in his career when, at Davis’s urging, he was told to take the lead on Joe Zawinul’s title composition.

“Miles just happened to scoop me up, because he wanted a guitar player,” McLaughlin explains. “I was just at the right place at the right time. I’d been in New York for 48 hours, and suddenly I was in a studio with Miles, and, man, it was just unbelievable.

“This was a pivotal moment for Miles, and he’d never heard me play. But since I was playing with Tony Williams, I guess that encouraged Miles.”

Even so, McLaughlin admits he arrived at the session unnerved by Davis’s reputation.

“I came into the studio, and I was shaking," he recalls. "There were all these heavyweight session guys there. They looked at me and said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I’m the guitar player,’ and they said, ‘We’ve got another guitar player on this session.’”

Assuming Davis had a reason for bringing him in, the musicians handed McLaughlin a photocopied piano score. ”Which I couldn’t read,” he adds.

“And then Miles came in. We tried ‘In a Silent Way’ a couple of times, and he didn’t like it. I could feel the sweat pouring down. I knew there was no way I could do this piano score on guitar.”

Then, unexpectedly, Davis turned to him.

“He asked me to play it alone on the guitar.”

The only instruction he offered was characteristically opaque.

“Miles goes, ‘Play like you don’t know how to play guitar.’ It was the kind of thing he was known for saying. He’d make these cryptic statements and never really told anyone how to play.

“But it wiped my mind, and from that point I thought, ‘I’m here in a Miles Davis session. It’s do or die.’

“I basically threw out all the harmony and played it in E major. The recording light was already on, and the tune just went its own way from the start.

“I sweated a lot, but in the end, the actual direction of the recording of the tune was left to me by Miles himself.”

The result shocked even McLaughlin.

“Afterward, I was not only surprised that Miles really liked what I had done, I was astonished that he had been able to pull something out of me that I would never have imagined.”

McLaughlin would go on to appear on a run of Davis’s landmark recordings from the 1969–1972 fusion era, including Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner.

Despite his own groundbreaking work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, he still credits Davis as the pivotal force in his career.

“Where would I be without Miles? I don’t even want to think. He’s been my hero since I was 15 or 16. He was my hero of heroes. The last thing I expected was to be playing with him.

“He was beautiful. I know he has a reputation for being very caustic, but he was just honest with everybody. He loved his musicians, and he took care of them.”

When John McLaughlin’s prized double-neck guitar split in two on tour, Jeff Beck stepped in with a loaner. By the end of the run, McLaughlin repaid him with a white Stratocaster — one that would change Beck’s playing forever.

It was 1974 when McLaughlin and Beck decided to tour together with their quartets. Beck was riding high on the success of his album Blow by Blow, while McLaughlin was enjoying fame for his pioneering jazz-rock fusion group the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

He was also well known for playing an impressively elaborate guitar: a Gibson EDS-1275. Already a striking guitar, it was further customized by luthier Rex Bogue with intricate tree-of-life inlays running the full length of both fingerboards.

Unfortunately, shortly into the tour, the guitar was destroyed.

“I was alone with it when it fell over,” McLaughlin recalls. “It was laying flat on a table. There must have been a tremor that caused it to fall. It hit the floor on its face, but it was so heavy that the body split down the middle!”

Beck stepped in to help.

“I didn’t have a second guitar, but Jeff did,” McLaughlin continues. “He was playing Gibson Les Pauls at that time, and he loaned me that Oxblood Les Paul that later sold for something like $1.3 million.”

Indeed, the modified 1954 Les Paul — which Beck acquired for $300 in 1972 to replace his damaged 1959 “Yardburst” Gibson Les Paul — became the most expensive Les Paul sold at auction when it went on the block at Christies on January 22, 2025 as part of the Jeff Beck Collection auction.

“So I played it for the rest of the tour,” McLaughlin continues. “And just to say thanks, at the end I gave him a white ’60s Strat.

“He’s played them ever since. Isn’t that nice!”

It wasn’t Beck’s first Strat — he had begun experimenting with the model around 1969 — but the gift marked the moment he fully committed to it.

“The Strat changed the way he played,” McLaughlin says. “From that point, he dropped the pick and started working with his fingers, and the tone he got was unbelievable. It was like butter. It was beautiful.”

Beck put the Strat to immediate use on his next album, Wired, where it also appeared on the cover. That particular guitar was later stolen, and Beck went on to experiment with other finishes — including a “Graffiti Yellow” prototype in 1986 — before ultimately settling on Olympic White as his signature look.

For the final decades of his career, his main stage instrument was typically a Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster in Olympic White, most often paired with a rosewood fingerboard — the version most closely associated with him today.

Reflecting on the 1974 tour, McLaughlin recalls the musical chemistry the two guitarists shared.

“The thing I enjoyed about Jeff on that tour was that we both played a 45-minute set each night, and we both had a quartet,” he says. “After that, we’d come together for a one-hour jam with both bands. We did that every night.”

Sadly, McLaughlin’s EDS-1275 wasn’t the only casualty of the tour. As he explains, those performances from his tour with Beck are gone forever.

“I don’t have a single recording from those shows,” McLaughlin says with regret. “Unlike now, people didn’t walk around with portable recording devices then. But you never know —maybe something will surface.”

He does have his memories, however.

“And so did Jeff. We used to talk about those days whenever we met. He was a beautiful guy. I really do miss him.”

He also misses his old guitars. McLaughlin attended Christie's Beck auction and was struck by how much of his gear Beck had preserved over the years.

“I really should have kept all the guitars I’ve had, like Jeff did!”

“I play from emotion. I’ve never consciously tried to be a flash. Emotion rules everything I do.”

Jeff Beck’s admission to Guitar Player in 1973 didn’t surprise anyone. There was always something volatile about Beck’s playing — and about the battered blonde 1954 Fender Esquire he favored during his years with the Yardbirds.

Purchased in 1965 and fitted with a ’55 Fender Telecaster neck, the single-pickup guitar powered hits like “Heart Full of Soul.” It also proved nearly impossible to destroy, despite Beck’s occasional urge to try.

That impulse wasn’t entirely theoretical. It may help explain why Beck — rather than the cooler Jimmy Page — was chosen to stage the famous onstage freakout in the film Blow-Up.

As Beck later recalled, smashing an electric guitar sometimes felt like the only release — especially when equipment failed or Yardbirds singer Keith Relf interrupted a solo with his asthma inhaler.

“He used to use a respiratory spray, and right in the blues solo he’d give this sssss, sssss, sssss with his respiratory thing, you know. There’s nothing more frustrating than going on with so much to say and so much on your mind and not being able to put it out. There’s only one way out — break that guitar!”

Figuratively speaking, that is. As Beck explained, actually destroying the Esquire proved far more difficult.

“You can’t break Fenders unless you swing them around full blast,” Beck said. “I used to just give angry little jabs at the speaker, and if it went up in a cloud of smoke then I was happy. But if it just stayed there stubbornly and wouldn’t move and was still crackling at me, I’d give it some stick.”

By the time Beck left the Yardbirds and formed the Jeff Beck Group, he had moved on to a Gibson Les Paul — inspired by hearing Eric Clapton with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers.

“Yeah, that was from hearing Eric with the Bluesbreakers,” he said.

The change had an immediate impact.

“The difference was the amazing quality of the instrument. You know, the Fenders are so cheap in feel; you pick up a Les Paul and it’s heavy and it really means something; it means business. And then I found that I was doing things that I never dreamed I could.

“The Fender was nice because you could grip it like a weapon and really chunk out the chords. But when you came to the more subtle stuff it wasn’t there; there was just no sustain. You kind of fluffed up a few runs.

“But on the Les Paul you couldn’t. You’d fluff because you’d attempt something really hard, but you knew damn well that with a little bit of practice you’d get it. And then after a while I got so used to the Les Paul there was no turning back. I picked up the Fender and thought, How the hell did I ever play this?”

Of course, Beck eventually returned to Fender — most notably the Fender Stratocaster. Around 1980 he began working with Ibanez on a signature model that combined aspects of both the Strat and the Les Paul: a double-cut body, dual humbuckers and a complex control layout with six knobs and three mini toggles.

Fender ultimately brought Beck back into the fold before the guitar could move beyond the prototype stage, later issuing a signature Strat model that, at the time, featured a bridge humbucker and his preferred U-shaped neck.

When asked to compare the Strat with a Les Paul in a 2009 interview with Guitar Player, Beck said, “It’s a totally different animal. One is for very subtle and, I would say, more musical things that you can distract and abuse. You can’t do it with a Les Paul. It’s too delicate. It’s got a very delicate tone.”

Despite building his early reputation on Gibson Les Pauls, Jeff Beck became one of the most celebrated Stratocaster players from the 1970s onward. But his affinity for Fender’s flagship model didn’t always translate into gentle treatment.

Dweezil Zappa learned that firsthand when he attended a costume party at the virtuoso’s house and saw a priceless vintage Strat damaged before his eyes.

As the son of Frank Zappa, and a fine guitarist in his own right, Dweezil has had many memorable meetings with guitar greats, from Eddie giving Eddie Van Halen a guitar lesson, to tapping up a ridiculous cast of shredders for his still unreleased track, “What The Hell Was I Thinking?”. This is another pearler, and it shows that, while to others, electric guitars can be near-mythic artefacts of great import to Beck, they’re simply tools of the trade.

“I was at Jeff Beck’s house for a costume party, of all things,” Dweezil Zappa says while guesting on the No Cover Charge podcast. “I went there dressed as King Arthur, in real chainmail, so it weighed [a lot]. It was heavy!

“I get to the door, he opens the door, and he’s also like King Arthur, but he has a sword, and he knights me at the door!”

They say that great minds think alike, so perhaps Beck respected the fact that they went to the same place when deciding on their costumes. Either way, the Blow by Blow riffsmith proved an accommodating host.

“Later in the party, he’s like, ‘Oh, let me show you this guitar,’” Zappa goes on. “And he had this Stratocaster. He’s like, ‘It’s a really early Stratocaster. I don’t remember exactly what number.’

“As he picks it up, he hits the corner of a stone table and puts a huge ding in it. He looks at it, and then he hands it to me, ‘cause he just didn’t care. And the serial number was #000001. He said, ‘I got this from Steve Marriott.’ And it was a crazy early version. It had some Jeff Beck grease at that point.”

As Guitar World points out, the guitar was unlikely to have had that exact serial number, given that the first serial-numbered Strat bore 0100 on its neckplate. But the point remains; Beck had dinged one of the oldest Stratocasters in the world, and was nonplussed by the incident. Indeed, as his time in the Yardbirds attests, he wasn’t against smashing six-strings to smithereens from time to time, either.

The onetime Yardbirds guitarist had an interesting history with the Fender Stratocaster. Speaking to Guitar Player in 1973, he slammed the guitar for being “cheap in feel” among other complaints.

A year later, he released his breakthrough album, Blow by Blow, which was predominantly tracked using his “cobbled together” Oxblood Les Paul, which sold for a record amount last year. Not long after, he ditched Les Pauls for the Strat. When asked why he loved the model so much during a 2013 interview, his answer hinted at a former naivety about what the instrument could do.

Elsewhere, Beck drummer Narada Michael Walden says the guitarist left behind a treasure trove of tracks they recorded together, and that he hopes to release them.

Narada Michael Walden couldn’t have known that touring with the Mahavishnu Orchestra during the mid 1970s would lead to a long friendship and association with Jeff Beck.

And now that, in turn, may lead to the release of a Beck album that’s sitting in the drummer and producer’s vaults.

The Michigan-born, San Rafael, California–based Walden is a Grammy award winner for his hit-making work for artists like Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Starship and others. His rock résumé includes not only Mahavishnu and Beck but also Tommy Bolin, Santana, Robert Fripp and even a brief membership in Journey.

Mahavishnu was his first big gig — he was with the band for three years and played on three albums, starting with 1974’s Apocalypse. It was while touring for its follow-up, 1975’s Visions of Emerald Beyond, that Walden met Beck.

“Jeff had just done Blow by Blow and was hotter than pancakes,” Walden tells Guitar Player. “Both bands toured together across America, so I had a chance to watch Jeff firsthand and realized what his sound was that people were going crazy for. It was funky on the bottom, with sweet melodies on top, and he could break into blues-rock whenever he wanted to. Both bands would jam together every night, which was really great.”

In late 1975, as he was wrapping up Inner Worlds with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Narada heard from Beck.

“I got a call: Would I come to London to make an album with him?” The album was Wired, Beck’s celebrated follow-up to Blow by Blow.

“He only had the song, ‘Led Boots,’” Narada recalls. “We sat in the basement. He showed it to me, and we played and recorded it on cassette.”

Narada says that, while McLaughlin continued to mix Inner Worlds, “I’m down on the piano, banging out compositions for Jeff. ‘Come Dancing,’ ‘Sophie,’ ‘Play With Me.’ I already had ‘Love Is Green,’ which was called ‘Mother’s Love.’ I showed that material to Jeff and he loved it.”

Like Blow by Blow, Wired was cut with producer George Martin. “It was just a magical time in my life,” the drummer says.

After years of playing with McLaughlin, Walden found working with Beck a welcome change.

“Playing with Jeff was like high school,” he says. “John McLaughlin is professorial; Jeff was more of the blues-rock Hendrix thing that I love so much, mixed in with what I love about fusion. It was like kissing a girl in the back seat of a car; you get sexy on it.

“With Jeff, the blues always came through, and it was so easy to play with him because of that. It wasn’t as taxing as Mahavishnu was. With Vishnu, you were not sure what he was gonna do, and with Jeff you had a pretty good idea where he was going, and I enjoyed playing with him because of that. It was almost like peanut butter and jam.”

Walden was surprised, however, by what came next.

“I went to his house after we made Wired to make another album, and he wouldn’t touch the guitar.”

An avid collector of vintage hot rods — and a skilled mechanic as well — Beck was more interested in tinkering with his race cars than picking up an electric guitar.

“He came out and his hands were full of car grease,” Narada recalls. “He wanted nothing to do with the guitar.”

“Later on I asked him what happened. He said, ‘I lost confidence.’ You can’t imagine Jeff Beck losing his confidence — y’know, the kind of guy he is, just high on life. But way back then, ’75 or ’76, he could lose his confidence.”

That wasn’t the case 35 years later, however, when Walden toured as part of Beck’s band between 2010 and ’12 on the Emotion & Commotion tour.

“I realized Jeff had grown,” he says. “Jeff, toward the end of his life, was consistent. Every show he’d go to 10 and the Marshall would be screaming. He’d come to life in the show, and I learned I could lean on him. It wasn’t like earlier in his life, where I wasn’t sure how consistent he would be. Now he was on fire every show, and it was a great thing to do, to be with him.

“I really loved that people love Jeff and can open their hearts to that cat. Even John McLaughlin would say he was his favorite guitarist.”

Through their music, Narada says, he and Beck got closer and connected.

“Jeff and I became good friends,” he explains. “He would tell me things people didn’t hear about — like he almost died fixing a car. A car fell down on him and he barely got out in time. And he loved Sandra, his wife, so much it made him shake in his boots.

“He was very sentimental, too. He’d hear a song like ‘The Long and Winding Road’ on the tour bus and get teary-eyed, sentimental. You’d hang out with him at his house and he’d be playing old ’40s swing band stuff. He was just a sentimental cat. I don’t think people really know that about him.”

And in a revelation that will certainly whet fans’ appetites, Walden says Beck “came to my studio and recorded things that are in my vault — a blues album he wanted to make. It’s an album’s worth of stuff, just playing some blues parts, things he loved from a parts standpoint.

“It’s great, as you’d expect. There’s a version of ‘Little Wing’ that I sang on. I think it would be nice to get Rod Stewart to be on one of the songs. I’ll work on it this year. I’d love to get it out. It’s all up to Sandra. I always want to respect Sandra.”

Eric Clapton’s departure from the Yardbirds was a touchstone moment in the history of electric guitar. It opened the door for future members Jeff Beck and, later, Jimmy Page, both of whom brought a more energetic and sonically innovative sound and style of playing to the group. And it was Clapton’s follow-up stint with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers that brought him acclaim and set in motion his move to form Cream, rock's definitive virtuoso power trio.

But while it’s often said Clapton left the Yardbirds out of a desire to play in a bluesier style, a former bandmate reveals there was another catalyst.

“That is partly the reason,” former Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty told Forbes in 2019. “But he also had a bit of aggravation with the bass player, Paul Samwell-Smith.

“The two saw life differently. Eric aligned himself with the lower class, the working class, at that time. Paul wanted to be much more upper-crust, even though he was from the working class as well.

“His parents adopted the last name Samwell-Smith — they put their two names together so his mother would not have to be Mrs. Smith. From that, Paul wanted to be upper-class. I think that was the basis of their differences.”

Clapton's roots were indeed working class. He was raised in Ripley, Surrey, by his grandmother and her second husband, whom he believed were his parents. HIs discovery around the age of nine that his “sister,” Patricia, was actually his biological mother left him feeling unwanted and abandoned.

“Eric was coming from a difficult upbringing, because he wasn’t really brought up by his parents,” McCarty told Guitar Player. “He was brought up by his grandmother, who he thought was his mother. We met her, and she was a lovely woman, very chatty and very friendly. But that gave him a challenged outlook on things, and I think he took the blues up as his personal crusade.”

McCarty also compared and contrasted the Yardbirds’ three most famous guitarists for Forbes, noting, “Eric was a great purist. If he ever stayed with you, he’d be up early in the morning, playing before he even had breakfast. He was very dedicated and also very much into clothes.

“Jeff was completely different from Eric,” he continues. “He couldn’t care less what he wore. He’d just wear dirty old jeans that he could lie under his car with. His playing had much more variety to it. He liked jazz, rockabilly, and old-time electronic music. He loved Les Paul, double-tracked stuff. He would play much wider than Eric, who stuck to B.B. King and Buddy Guy.

“Jimmy was different again. He was the ultimate professional because he used to play in studios in London on other people’s records. He did what people asked him to do, very exact and businesslike. He was a session man.”

Beck and Page worked together fleetingly after Beck left the Yardbirds, while Page went on to form Led Zeppelin from the ashes of the Yardbirds.

Clapton, meanwhile, features on Joe Bonamassa’s new B.B. King tribute album after a singer demanded his presence on a cover of his most challenging track.

David Bowie had an uncanny talent for picking guitarists. He worked with numerous greats over the course of his long career, including Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick, Adrian Belew, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Reeves Gabrels.

But he never got the one player he always wanted: Jeff Beck. Reportedly, the guitarist was at the top of Bowie’s list in 1969 when he was selecting members for a band in the wake of his success with the single “Space Oddity.”

As Beck told Guitarist magazine, “Bowie originally wanted me to be in the band, but he got Mick Ronson, who he always said was his own Jeff Beck.”

Bowie considered a few players, including Tim Renwick, before deciding on Ronson. The two connected through John Cambridge, who played drums on “Space Oddity” and performed with Ronson in the Rats, a rock group from Hull, fronted by the singer Benny Marshall.

“He was the bloke who went back to Hull in January 1970 with the brief to find Ronson and bring him to London,” Marshall recalled of Cambridge. “He found Mick marking out the lines on the municipal football pitch.”

Bowie and Ronson met the next month at London’s Marquee club, where Bowie was playing, February 3, 1970. As it happened, both men were fans of Beck’s 1968 album, Truth.

“[Mick] knew all the licks,” Marshall said, “except ‘Beck’s Boogie,’ which he dissected but couldn’t master. It infuriated him.

“In 1968, the Rats had supported Beck at the Cat Ballou in Grantham, and afterward Ronno asked him to show him the fast run at the beginning. So Beck plays it, and Mick says, ‘No, play it slower.’ Beck said, ‘If I play it any slower, I’ll stop!’ But he was patient, and Mick learned that riff.”

Although Bowie wasn’t able to get Beck as his guitarist, he did secure him for one very important gig at London’s Hammersmith Odeon on July 3, 1973: the last night of the tour for his breakout album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

It was Bowie’s first major tour, taking place from January 1972 to July 1973. Initially intended to promote Ziggy Stardust as well as its predecessor, Hunky Dory, the tour eventually included songs from Ziggy Stardust’s follow-up, Aladdin Sane.

Beck came out for the encore at the Hammersmith show, playing his Oxblood 1954 Gibson Les Paul, and adding his own electric guitar stylings to those of Ronson, who was playing his modified 1968 Les Paul Custom. The group performed “The Jean Genie,” the debut hit single from Aladdin Sane before segueing into a snippet of the Beatles’ classic “Love Me Do” and concluding with Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around.”

The concert was filmed by director D.A. Pennebaker for the documentary Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

“I remember they were filming, and the cameras panned in on my wah-wah pedal during The Jean Genie and I was wearing these dirty white platform shoes. I went ballistic when they said they were using me in the film, so I refused to sign the release.

“Bowie goes, ‘Oh, you might as well agree, they’re already showing a bootleg version at the XXX theaters on 42nd Street, and you didn’t look any dafter than me.’ In the end I agreed.”

Except he didn’t. When Pennebaker’s film was finally released in 1979, there was no sign of Beck or the songs on which he performed.

As the guitarist recalled, the Ziggy Stardust show was his first time playing before such a large audience.

“The pitch of teenage screaming at that gig was unbelievable. I’d never experienced that,” he said. “I recall it was someone’s birthday in the group, and I thought I was like a little mascot pressie [present]. But actually Bowie is a big fan, so…”

Beck’s performances were finally reinstated for the 4K remaster of the film released in 2023.

Bowie wasn’t the only artist who Beck rejected. He also passed up opportunities to work with John Mayall, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones when they were seeking a replacement for Mick Taylor following his 1974 departure.

As Beck told Guitarist, “I’m not a ‘joiner,’ really. Pink Floyd wanted me but they didn’t have the nerve to pop the question.

“And then there’s the Rolling Stones. I told them I don’t do auditions. And I wouldn’t have fitted in. I never had any regrets.”

Jimi Hendrix changed the music so entirely in 1966 that, within months of his arrival in England, established guitarists were wrestling with how to respond. Jeff Beck told Guitar Player, “It was a horrible time, really. Not because of him, but because of the fact that he swept us all aside and put us in a bin.”

Pete Townshend, realizing he could never better or even equal Hendrix’s guitar talents, decided to focus on his song craft. “He came along and, kind of like in early punk, just swept everything aside,” Townshend told Guitar Player in 1989, in terms remarkably similar to Beck‘s. ”I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.” The results were revealed in the Who’s pioneering 1969 rock opera, Tommy.

But what about Clapton? From the start, he knew he’d met his match in Hendrix. When, just a few weeks after his arrival in London, Jimi crashed a Cream gig and asked if he could play, Clapton was so stunned by what he heard that he had to leave the stage.

Rather than run from his challenger, Clapton forged a friendship with him. He also permed his hair and plugged his electric guitar into a wah pedal, making him the first, and most visible, guitarist in rock to try to channel Hendrix’s mojo.

But inside, Clapton was as frustrated as Beck and Townshend. That was partly because Hendrix had achieved what he had hoped to when he first saw Buddy Guy perform with a trio in London. Clapton had been so thoroughly convinced by Guy that he left John Mayall and the Blues Breakers in July 1966, at the height of his fame, to form Cream, with the intention of following in Guy’s footsteps with his own power trio.

But Hendrix got their first. What’s more, Hendrix was the real deal, not a copy.

“Although I was with Cream, I had fantasies of incorporating all of that Buddy Guy–like showman stuff into my act,” Clapton told Guitar Player in 2004. “But when Jimi showed up and did it all for real, it burst my bubble. I realized then that I had to look at Cream as a band, and forget about my little solo odyssey.”

Clapton was also floored that Hendrix, an American, had come to England to find fame. Like his fellow British musicians, Clapton was looking toward America as the place to stake his claim in rock.

“What was even more of a shock was that Hendrix was part of America coming to England to take over, while we were all going to America trying to take it by storm,” he said. “Cream was cutting Disraeli Gears at Atlantic Studios in New York while he was cutting Are You Experienced in London. Then, when we came back to England with that album, no one wanted to know, and I was pissed for a little while.”

Speaking of which, Disraeli Gears is the album that most shows Hendrix’s influence on Clapton. “I was full-tilt on the wah pedal for a year-and-a-half,” he says.

But Clapton was also cutting his own path. It was here that his famed “woman tone” came about, the result of rolling off his Gibson SG’s tone control.

“I used the bridge pickup, but with the tone control all the way off, so it was all just bottom end, and then I played on the high strings, getting a really fat tone and feeding back,” he explained. “I just played like that all the time. Even with power chords, there was never any variation in my tone.

“It was much later that I came to the Stratocaster, and I think that was because of Jimi. He could get more tonal variation out of that instrument than I ever thought possible. I knew about the Buddy Holly, thin bridge-pickup sound, but I didn't know that it was possible to get the Strat to sound really big, or get it to feed back in tune-which was very easy with a Les Paul. And then, when I started playing around with the Strat, I realized it was nice to be able to play clean, too.”

Like Beck and Townshend, Clapton eventually found a path through Hendrix’s scorched earth. Through the stripped-back roots music of Band guitarist Robbie Robertson and the influence of American country guitarist Delaney Bramlett and his group, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, Clapton was led to the birthplace of the blues and the music of Robert Johnson. Unlike the world of late 1960s blues rock, there was nothing to compete with — just music from which to live and learn.

“The blues is a strange phenomenon,” he concluded in his 2004 chat with Guitar Player. “I’ve always thought it was rather funny and ironic when I'd see footage of interviewers actually asking people like John Lee Hooker what the blues is. I've heard those old guys say some really funny things — either profound or ridiculous.

“My way of putting it is that it's a set of rules imbued with deep emotion. But, of course, that doesn't really describe anything at all. The blues is a strange phenomenon, and I'm certainly not bigger than it.”

When Jimi Hendrix traveled across the Atlantic to Britain, he made a monumental impact on London‘s blues-rock scene. But while native stars like Jeff Beck have famously explained how Hendrix “swept us all aside and put us in a bin,” Hendrix's tradition-shattering antics made it possible for guitarists to play and perform in ways they previously hadn't dared to.

“He was extreme with everything, and he pushed it,” Beck says in an interview clip posted to YouTube. “He made it possible for everybody to see what could be done with an electric guitar.

“I was doing similar things, but not in such an ostentatious way. I used to use a tape echo [a Klemt Echolette S NG51]. I never paid for it — I think I fell behind on my payments — but it was part of my act. I used to make a sample of a phrase, and then play it over and over, and play harmonies over it. Then I’d just put the guitar on top of the amp and let it do its own thing.”

Hendrix was said to be a great admirer of Beck, and was certainly well aware of his talents, particularly his work on the Yardbirds track “Shapes of Things.” And as Beck noted, when the dust settled, the world was a better place for a maverick like him.

“Hendrix came along and made it much more theatrical,” he explains. “He had bigger amps, and he made it possible for me to move in within those parameters with big amps and start getting a bit dangerous with it.”

In fact, Beck struggled to find his place in the scene for many years after Hendrix died. His time in the Yardbirds yielded success, but his early attempts at a solo career were hit and miss.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that he found his footing with 1975‘s Blow by Blow, a melting pot of trad blues and jazz fusion on which Beatles producer George Martin challenged him every step of the way. It was there that the real Jeff Beck emerged. It’s no wonder, then, that his famed Oxblood Les Paul, his weapon of choice during this era, smashed records when it went to auction last year.

Sadly, Beck‘s 2023 death left behind a pair of mysteries. There's the question of his prospective collaborative album with Mark Knopfler, as well as the now-missing PRS guitar Paul Reed Smith says Beck was head over heels about. .

Meanwhile, Mick Rogers claims he owns the last recorded work of Beck’s lifetime, but says there’s no issue stopping it from being released.

Guitar Player is closing out 2025 by republishing 25 of your favorite stories from the past year. We thank you for spending the past year with us and look forward to bringing you more of the stories you want in 2026.

Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page had been close friends ever since they met in their teens. It was Page who recommended Beck as Eric Clapton's replacement in the Yardbirds in 1965, after Clapton flew the nest to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Beck and Page would even work together in the Yardbirds for a brief period, before the former departed and began to build his solo career.

Despite being as close as brothers, the two never saw eye to eye on one thing: who should get writing credit for "Beck's Bolero," the 1966 instrumental featuring Beck, Page, Who drummer Keith Moon, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins and future Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. .

Beck's decision to create a group was inspired in part by the guitarist he replaced in the Yardbirds — Eric Clapton. Following his brief spell with the Bluesbreakers, Clapton departed in mid 1966 to form the supergroup, Cream.

Although Beck was invited to take Clapton's place in the Bluesbreakers, he opted instead to follow the guitarist's lead and form his own supergroup, doing so just days after Cream was formed.

With Page's help, Beck put together his ad hoc group to record “Beck’s Bolero,” a riff-driven instrumental inspired by French composer Maurice Ravel's 1928 orchestral piece, Boléro. The final result was considerably heavier than Ravel's, thanks to the pair’s electric guitar talents — featuring Page slashing away at the chords on a Fender Electric XII 12-string — and proto-heavy metal panache.

In the years after, Beck would say of "Beck's Bolero" featured “the first heavy metal riff ever written,” and I wrote it.”

Page disagreed and said so in his 1977 cover story with Guitar Player.

“Even though he says he wrote it, I wrote it," the guitarist insisted. "I’m playing the 12-string on it. Beck’s doing the slide bits, and I’m basically playing around the chords.”

“It’s got a lot of drama to it,” Page added. “It came off right. It was a good lineup too, with Keith Moon and everything.”

Of course, Page has been involved in other, more famous disputes over songwriting credits. In 2020, he won a long-running lawsuit alleging his famous 1971 Led Zeppelin track "Stairway to Heaven" infringed on the copyright of the 1968 instrumental "Taurus," composed by Randy California and recorded by his band Spirit. This past May he faced a fresh lawsuit over "Dazed and Confused" from its songwriter, Jake Holmes.

However, he handily won authorship of "Beck's Bolero" without litigation, much to Beck's dismay. Although he believed he had changed Page's core ideas enough to earn at least a co-writing credit, Beck stepped aside and let Page take the honors.

“No, I didn’t get a songwriting credit,” the guitarist conceded, “but you win some and lose some down the years.”

He was likewise unlucky with the formation of his supergroup. Despite the promising results of "Beck's Bolero," the band never gelled.

“I don’t know if it would have worked or not, but it sounded so great in the studio,” Beck once said (via Far Out). “I couldn’t believe it when we went back and listened to it in the control room. We were going: ‘This is amazing. What can we do with it?’

“You can hear Moon screaming in the middle of the record over the drum break. If you listen, you can only hear the cymbal afterwards 'cause he knocked the mic over.”

Ultimately, the band disintegrated once recording wrapped.

“The next thing we know, Keith is back with the Who, and the whole thing never got off the ground,” Beck sighed. “But all we needed was a singer.”

There were even disputes over the production credits, perhaps given the song's success when it was eventually released. During his GP chat, Page said producer Simon Napier-Bell ghosted the band during its recording.

“The producer just disappeared,” he said. “He was never seen again; he simply didn’t come back. He just sort of left me and Jeff to it.”

Conversely, Mickie Most, who Beck later employed for his debut solo album Truth and 1969 follow-up, Beck-Ola, claimed he was the man behind the desk.

"Beck's Bolero" wouldn't see the light of day for another year, when it became the B-side to Beck's U.K. debut solo single, "Hi Ho Silver Lining." The guitarist handled the bulk of the vocals, with Rod Stewart, who would go on to front the Jeff Beck Group, providing backing vocals. When John Paul Jones left to form Led Zeppelin with Page, Ronnie Wood took his place, and Beck finally got his supergroup of sorts.

“I was using a Les Paul for the lead guitar and for the backwards slide guitar through a Vox AC30,” Beck says of his gear on the track. “It was the only amp I had, and it was covered with beer! Actually, I think it was the beer that gave it its sound!”

Though he’s been on the road with the Joe Perry Project, guesting at the VMAs, lending a hand to Bad Company at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and recording the newly released One More Time EP with old friend Steve Tyler and new pal Yungblud, Joe Perry still craves more.

He’s 75, but he refuses to rest on his laurels. The guitarist — who told us the top 10 records that changed his life — insists that, while he might take a moment to catch his breath at the end of 2025, he’s looking ahead to 2026.

Unfortunately, it may not include Aerosmith, whose future is uncertain. There are whispers of a final show, and maybe even a documentary about the band’s journey, neither of which Perry will dismiss. But in the meantime, his focus is on One More Time,.

Beyond that, he managed to find time to dig in with Guitar Player, where he peeled back the onion on lessons learned from — and friendships with — Alice Cooper, Johnny Winter, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Slash.

Alice Cooper

“The first time I met Alice was when we were making the Sgt. Pepper movie [Aerosmith recorded a highly praised cover of the Beatles’ “Come Together” for the star-studded 1978 feature film, in which Cooper appeared the character Father Sun]. Around 1980 or ’81, when I was away from Aerosmith, my manager got us together to see if we could write some music for Alice’s next album.

“So we got to hang out and got to be friends. When they were working on the first Hollywood Vampires record, they asked me to sit in on a couple of songs. I ended up becoming part of the nucleus of the band.

“Years before, I remember reading that he was supposed to be the reincarnation of a 400-year-old witch — you know, that was part of his thing. But that paved the way for a lot of bands to make performance art part of their show, on top of playing great rock and roll.

“The nice thing about the Vampires is that he didn’t have to put on that persona. He got a chance to just be a real rock singer and talk to the audience, so it was a whole different thing for him.

“The process of making albums with Alice was really easy. He’s not interested in ego; his ego is in his back pocket. For him, it’s about whatever is best for the band. It’s a reflection of his personality, and he's just a really good guy.

“Of all the lead singers that I’ve worked with, I have to say that he’s neck and neck in terms of most fun. And that’s not to cast aspersions on some of the other guys. He's just got a great sense of humor.”

Johnny Winter

“I remember seeing him live with Rick Derringer. That band was killer, and I remember seeing him play at the old [Boston] Tea Party club, which was probably 800 seats, and he just killed it. He played slide most of the night.

“Back then, our paths never crossed, but the bus driver that we had for almost 11 years had been Johnny’s bus driver, so I had a couple of secondhand stories about him.

“When he was in L.A., I had a chance to meet him. He remembered that we had played our first big gig at the Academy of Music. They put us on the bill with Humble Pie and Edgar Winter and Johnny. I think this was his first appearance since he’d gotten out of rehab, and that was an amazing show to watch. We got to watch him, and when his brother announced that he was coming out to play, the roof just came off the place.

“Johnny was really personable and really nice. When you get a chance to meet somebody like that, who you’ve worked up to and admired for decades, it was just really great to be able to shake his hand.”

Jimmy Page

“I’ve been influenced by Jimmy. I mean, he was a real pioneer, not only with the music he was making but with his production and writing. Jimmy was at the forefront of all that was happening in rock.

“For a while in the 1960s, he was like the most sought-after young studio guitar player. That’s how he made his living and learned to produce from being in the studio all of the time. He knew how to get what he wanted out of a recording session. I don’t think he gets enough credit for that. Everybody puts him in the guitar hero bag, but his production skills… there aren’t many guys who can do what he was doing.

“That’s one of the things that I learned from him, along with how used instruments and wrote those songs and use the blues format — although there’s a lot of Zeppelin that doesn’t sound anything like the blues. They were into world music from Morocco and India, and they brought those sounds into the mainstream.

“It meant a lot to befriend Page. When they don’t have guitars in their hands, these guys are just another person.”

Jeff Beck

“When it came to using the whammy bar, Jimi [Hendrix] was at the forefront of that, but Jeff took it further. You know, you put some Super Slinky strings on there, and you adjust the whammy bar, and you can do things and get sounds that no one ever heard before from not just the electric guitar but any instrument.

“Jimi used it for an effect, but Jeff used it more as a musical tool than anybody. He was two steps ahead of everybody else.

“That’s just what Jeff was about. He had a sense of melody and dynamics, where some of the most beautiful music on any instrument was played by Jeff Beck on a Stratocaster. And I think that when he put down the Les Paul and really started using the whammy bar, that’s when he started finding his voice.

“But he never could really work with a singer. He tried once in a while, and would play some one-off stuff as his career went on, but really, in the last 20 to 25 years of his career, he really started doing things with the guitar that no one had ever heard before.

“But they’re all people. You know, they say that you should never meet your heroes because you might not find the person that you think they are. It’s like, ‘Wow, man, if I could just get in a room with him, and party with him…’

“I’ve been lucky to meet some of the guys that I really respected in terms of ability and their career, and they were also really nice guys — like guys I would give the keys to my house to. Jeff was one of those guys.

“So it was really cool being able to meet Jeff. He had a wicked sense of humor, but he was quiet for the most part. I got a chance to spend enough time with him to find out what kind of person he was, and he and his wife are pretty cool and a really nice couple.”

Slash

“And Slash is one of those guys I’d give the keys to my house to. When I first heard Guns N’ Roses’ music on Appetite for Destruction, I was like, “Okay, this is it. This is a great fucking record.” They paid their dues, and that summer they opened for us, and we saw them going from learning and being a club band to becoming an arena band.

“They learned how to carve their own space, because you can do things really differently, like Kiss or Alice [Cooper], you know, by bringing performance art, but still rock out. And I hand it to Kiss — they were fucking amazing, and different. But we just wanted to play rock and roll, and that’s what Guns ’N’ Roses was all about, too.

“They were all about just getting out there and rocking and giving the audience something to fucking see. And then they left the arena, or club, or theater, or whatever; they were two feet off the ground, you know? I could always tell if we did a good show or not — because we always thought that we weren’t as good as we should have been — was we’d be sitting in the dressing room, and as the kids were leaving, if I heard bottles breaking, and kids laughing, I knew we did a good show.

“Slash and Axl Rose would come into our dressing room, and they’d just rocked the shit out of the audience, and they’d talk with us and ask us questions about this, and that. That’s how I got to know Slash. They were still young, and trying to find their place in the hierarchy, and you’re always wondering if you’re ever gonna be as good as the headliner, you know?

“I mean, jeez, we opened for so many bands, and a lot of them were bands we really liked. We’d always wonder if we were ever going to be able to keep doing it, thinking, How long will it last? But they were finding their way, and they did, and they came out of that by the end of the summer and were ready to blow the top off the world, which they did, and still do.

“And a lot of that has to do with Slash and his guitar playing, you know? You can tell that with the kind of guy that he is, he never gives it up. You can never accuse him of phoning it in. I can’t say that about all the people that I’ve bumped into.

“You gotta have respect for someone who can make it in this business as a career, but the music business is a bitch, man. You can have talent dripping out of your fingers, but you can get passed right by. But getting to know Slash over the years, and finding out what he’s all about, even with their ups and downs, and breaking up and all that, it’s been really cool.”

Depending on what era of Jeff Beck’s unique guitar playing one prefers, he’s typically imagined with either a Gibson Les Paul or a Fender Stratocaster in his talented hands. Or perhaps his love-it-or-hate-it Les Tele-Gib hybrid springs to mind?

Certainly not a PRS.

However, Paul Reed Smith has now claimed that, in his final years, Beck was glued to one of his electric guitars. And he's desperate to get it back.

In the Yardbirds, Beck played a sunburst Les Paul that, since his passing, has been loaned out to Lenny Kravitz’s foil, Craig Ross, and Marcus King. Later, his Blow by Blow era — which saw him butting heads with Beatles producer George Martin — was underpinned by his Oxblood Les Paul.

But, after once claiming that the Gibson axe “means business,” he pivoted to the “endless color” of the Fender Stratocaster, an instrument he was deeply associated with until his death.

Smith’s claim, then, that PRS had pulled him over to the dark side comes as quite the surprise.

So what’s going on?

“People don’t know this, but Jeff Beck had a PRS at home, and he loved it,” he says in the new issue of Guitar World. “He told me I’d never see him with it, but he used it to record.”

Unfortunately, Smith remains tight-lipped about what model of PRS it was. Educated guesses include an early prototype of John McLaughlin's signature, a Private Stock McCarty, or even a semi-hollow model, but those could all be way off the mark.

The important thing for Smith is tracking the guitar down.

“We’ve been trying to get it back,” the luthier and businessman explains. “It wasn’t part of the auction this year, but I know he loved that guitar.”

That auction saw big hitters like the Yardburst Les Paul that went for $496,484, and the OxBlood model became the world’s most expensive LP and smashed a series of auction records. But the PRS never made it so far.

So did it leave his possession before his death, or is it somewhere in the Beck family vault still?

In March, Manfred Mann's Earth Band guitarist Mick Rogers claimed he owns Beck's last-ever recording, but added that it is unlikely to ever be released. Going off Smith's words, Beck may have tracked the song with his PRS. But, of course, this is pure speculation.

It’s a fascinating mystery either way. Let’s hope the truth soon reveals itself.

In related news, Buddy Guy has been reflecting on how Jeff Beck and the British blues guitarists of the 1960s gave his career a shot in the arm, and Ronnie Wood has revealed why he switched from rhythm guitar to bass in the Jeff Beck Group.

After leaving the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck turned to Ronnie Wood to help get the Jeff Beck Group off the ground. Although the future Rolling Stone initially formed part of the act's two-guitar lineup, he had swapped his electric guitar for bass by the time the band recorded their 1968 debut, Truth.

For anyone who knows Wood as a guitarist with one of the world's biggest bands — and the former guitarist of the Faces — seeing him on bass can be a little confusing.

However, in a new video on his YouTube channel, Wood reveals that he was excited by the “challenge” of the instrument change — and names the member of the group Deep Purple who inspired his move from six strings to four.

“I used to see the Yardbirds a lot at the Crawdaddy Club,” he recalls. “People were swinging from the rafters in there, sweat dripping from the ceiling; the atmosphere was incredible with the crescendos they used to do. They used to do a fast version of a Muddy Waters song called 'Mannish Boy'. Everybody would go crazy.

“So I said to Jeff, ‘If you ever think about leaving the Yardbirds, we should get together.’ And sure enough, he did leave, and he did ring me up and say, ‘Let's get together.’”

The first line-up saw Wood on rhythm guitar, with Dave Ambrose on bass, and various different drummers.” But it was a man who would later make his name in Deep Purple that seemingly — and inadvertently — put an end to the Beck-Wood guitar duo.

“One day after playing the 100 Club [in London], John Lord, who was living with me at the time — he was a in my brother's band the Artwoods — said, ‘It sounded really great with with two guitar players.’

“And Jeff said, ‘Ronnie, if you don't mind, would you consider playing bass?

For many, such a might have been a blow to the ego, especially given that Wood was far from a second-rate guitarist (even if Harvey Mandel somewhat bitterly maintains he should have landed the Stones gig instead). Wood, however, took it in stride.

“I said, ‘I love a challenge, I don't mind.’ When we went to America, we used to jam with Jimi Hendrix, and he’d say, ‘Hey Jeff, let the bass player have a solo!’ He loved my bass playing, so that was a feather in my cap.”

When Hendrix moved to the U.K., he’d briefly share a flat with Wood in Holland Park, London as theuir friendship blossomed. Wood, however, would return to his beloved six-string after two albums, forming the Faces with Rod Stewart in the early ‘70s. The band is now expected to release their first album since 1973 next year, after Kenney Jones, having written 11 new songs with Stewart and Wood.

It was his exploits in the Faces that helped Wood get the Stones gig, forming a near-telepathic partnership with Keith Richards.

“When Ronnie became available and suddenly walked in, that was it. There was no doubt,” Richards tells Guitar Player. “We pick it up and cover each other so that sometimes you can't really tell who's playing.”

Jeff Beck’s formative years were defined, predominantly, by his use of a Gibson Les Paul. But as he went from fresh-faced Yardbird to solo artist phenomenon, the Fender Stratocaster became his weapon of choice.

A recently resurfaced clip of him showcasing the Fender flagship axe’s versatility shows why he made the switch, and it has stark parallels with one of Joe Bonamassa’s viral guitar lessons.

The Yardburst LP, given a Custom Shop reissue in 2024, is a highly storied electric guitar. It was his go-to instrument during his Yardbird days, including his brief tandem with Jimmy Page, and has since been played by Lenny Kravitz's guitarist Craig Ross and Marcus King following the record-breaking auction of Beck’s gear last year.

When Beck teamed up with Beatles super producer George Martin for Blow by Blow, it was a peculiar and “cobbled together” Oxblood Les Paul that he coaxed his magic out of. But soon after that, he turned his back on Les Paul’s altogether.

After slamming Fenders as being “cheap in feel” during a Guitar Player interview in 1973, he countered it with, “You pick up a Les Paul and it's heavy and it really means something.” But, in his own words, Blow by Blow was the end of his Les Paul “fling.”

Speaking to Malcolm Gerrie on Sky Arts' "Jeff Beck Talks Music" in 2013, the avant-garde virtuoso preluded his glowing review of the Strat by addressing his lineage.

“I did play Les Pauls because, to be honest, I loved the way Eric [Clapton] sounded with [Cream],” he says. “You need the richness, and the Strat was too thin-sounding; the Tele was definitely too thin. The fatness of the Les Paul low-end was amazing.

“Then Jimmy [Page] came along and he almost had his fatter sound as Eric with the Strats, I thought ‘That's it.’”

Gerrie then asks him the eternal question: “What is it about the Fender Strat that you love so much?”

“Because it's endless color,” he replies, before mutating the guitar's voice in a myriad of ways, from snarling, overdriven bite to gentle, rolled off cleans, all achieved through manipulating its Tone and Volume controls.

“It's the same guitar,” he adds after showcasing the first two wildly different sounds before continuing the unfurl a range of different tones.

While the clip has its similarities with JoBo’s viral lesson, where he showcased the range of sounds one can get out of a Les Paul’s on-board controls, there are also similarities with the bluesman’s claim that the Strat is the “Swiss army knife of guitars.”

“You can do anything with a Stratocaster,” he explains to Guitarist. “I‘ve seen Strats perform all kinds of guitar music and flourish in that environment because of the third pickup.”

Beck, though late on the uptake, was prone to agree. He made the instrument sing like no one else.

Since his passing, Beck's Custom Shop Strat has ended up in the hands of John Mayer for a one-off performance, and Ritchie Blackmore has recently reflected on his genius, revealing that he wasn't always as positive-minded about his craftsmanship as his peers.

Meanwhile, Mick Rogers claims to own Beck's last-ever recording, but says there's one matter keeping it from being released.

Ritchie Blackmore was very much on the scene in London in the years before he helped form Deep Purple. In addition to serving as a regular tour guitarist for Jerry Lee Lewis when the rock and roll pianist came to town, Blackmore did plenty of session work.

Which is how he came to meet Jeff Beck, where they were both hired to play in a session produced by Jimmy Page.

Blackmore rarely gives interviews, but in a new one on Rock of Nations With Dave Kinchen and Shane McEachern, the legendary electric guitar shredder pays tribute to Beck and recalls the pain he felt upon hearing about the virtuoso’s death on January 10, 2023 after he contracted bacterial meningitis

“Jeff was a great guitar player. That was a big blow, him going,” Blackmore says. “I mean, he was vegetarian and he didn't take drugs particularly or anything. I was very shocked to hear about him dying that way. That was terrible."

Having witnessed Beck up close in performance, Blackmore had excellent insights into his style and technique.

“He had a very special way of playing. It was so different from anybody,” he notes. “I always used to go and see him play, because I found him very refreshing.”

He was also modest. Blackmore recalls Beck constantly referring to his recordings as “rubbish.”

“He would always put himself down,” Blackmore recalls. “I’d say, 'How is your latest record, Jeff?' And he'd go, 'Oh, it's a lot of rubbish.' And he would always say that about anything he put out. He was always reaching for something he couldn't find."

In a social media post made shortly after Beck’s death, Blackmore recalled meeting the guitarist and acknowledge his impact on him.

"First met Jeff Beck around 64-65 and it was a session where we were both playing guitars and Jimmy Page was producing. I couldn't believe how incredible he was, not only with his technique but his sound too. I became a fan of his ever since. He could reach up into the stars and make magic with his playing. His choice of notes were always absolutely perfect.

"This whole thing is a shock. We shall always remember Jeff as the best rock and roll player."

Beck launched his solo career after leaving the Yardbirds. His electric guitar playing in the group was both innovative and a key part of the group’s fame in the mid 1960s. But Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty recently told Guitar Player that Beck was difficult and unpredictable, and once smashed a guitar in frustration.

Although he regarded his albums at times as missed opportunities to create something great, there’s no argument that he recorded numerous classics in his lifetime, from “Beck’s Bolero” to the Jeff Beck Group album Truth to his solo masterpiece Blow by Blow, his first bona fide success. Years after recording the latter, he confessed that he frequently confounded Blow by Blow producer George Martin with his cacophonous soloing.

“Some of my favorite solos got trashed because he thought they were hideous — not musical,” Beck said. “He’d say, ‘That’s really the most dreadful noise I’ve ever heard.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s what I want!’

“But I’d usually come round to his way of thinking.”

Beck was similarly deferential when it came to “Beck’s Bolero.” Although he insisted he composed it, Jimmy Page ultimately took credit for it.

“No, I didn’t get a songwriting credit,” Beck conceded, “but you win some and lose some down the years.”

Even after achieving status as a living legend, Beck continued to be modest about his talents, noting that he chose working on his vintage car collection to practicing. His 1989 tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan proved an opportunity for Guitar Player to sit down with both guitarists. Jeff, as always, came off as humble, preferring to reflect glory on Vaughan, whom he said reminded him of his old friend Jimi Hendrix.

“I felt very amateurish alongside him, because he lived and breathed it. You’re very similar to Jimi in that way,” Beck told Vaughan. “I’m just a part-time employee.

“I’m not in love with the guitar as much as you are or Jimi is — was. I just pick it up and play it sometimes.”

British folk singer Donovan had a steady stream of hits in the final years of the 1960s. Released in 1966, “Sunshine Superman” and “Mellow Yellow” were but a warm-up for a three-year period that would see him release timeless hits like “Epistle to Dippy,” “There Is a Mountain,” “Jennifer Juniper” and — the song the purportedly helped launch Led Zeppelin — “The Hurdy Gurdy Man.”

By May 1969, Donovan was ready to cut what would become his last big hit: “Barabajagal,” a funky tune with a tongue-tripping title. As it turned out, the song would feature Donovan playing alongside a remarkable group of musicians, including Jeff Beck on electric guitar and two members of the Jeff Beck Group: bass guitar player Ron Wood and drummer Micky Waller, along with Nicky Hopkins, best known for his work with the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Kinks. (He also became — along with Eric Clapton — one of the first rock musicians to perform on a Beatles song when he played electric piano on their single “Revolution.”)

As Donovan tells Music Radar, he had a trio of new compositions ready when he approached Micky Most, his producer. Most liked “Barabajagal” — both the song and its unusual name — and chose it first for recording. The tune is a repetitive two-chord jam with an infectious beat and ear-catching refrain: “Goo-goo, goo-goo, Barabajagal / Was his name, now.”

“We knew that people were gonna go crazy listening to this amazing thing,” Donovan explains.

Because he was busy recording the Jeff Beck Group’s album Beck-Ola, Most suggested asking the band to assist with Donovan’s new songs. The singer was all for it. Not only was he a fan of Beck’s guitar talents but he knew him well.

"I felt kind of close with Beck," he says. "He was living with Celia Hammond, the model, and she was best friends with my wife, Linda."

But Beck was notoriously unreliable and moody, qualities that had led to his departure from the Yardbirds in late 1966. When the day for recording “Barabajagal” arrived, the band showed up one member at a time.

Eventually everyone, including the backup singers, was there — except Beck.

“And then Mickie says, ‘Where the fuck is Jeff?’

“And right at that moment Jeff strolls in, and it's like Spinal Tap. It really is,” Donovan says. “He walks in, and we're all sitting around waiting, and he sits down and nobody says a word. And finally Mickie says, ‘Jeff, where's your guitar?’

“Jeff looks around and says, ‘Yeah, where the fuck is it?’

“And then he remembers. He’s like, ‘Oh, shit! It’s locked in the van on its way to Leeds for our gig tomorrow.’

“But then he says, ‘Just call up any of the rental agencies in town, and order a Fender Strat, and tell them who it's for.’

“And that was it. We made the call and Jeff got the Strat.

“So we play the song once, we play it twice, and then Mickie says, ‘That's it. No more rehearsals. I’m recording the next one!’

“And we kick in, and everybody is in order, and we’re doing it — but…”

As Donovan explains, Most suddenly realized that, because the song was so repetitive, it required a break — something to add variety.

"So at one point Mickie says, ‘Stop!’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ’It's a train, and it’s going helter-skelter down the fucking track. We've got to stop it somewhere.’”

Most had the idea that Waller should play a drum break while Donovan rapped over it.

“So Mickie tells Micky the drummer, ‘We've got to stop this train and then start it again.’ Then Mickie says, ‘What's going to happen after that?’

"Well, I had a pal with me, Julian, who played harmonica, and he said, ‘I’ve got a poem that Don can read.’ And I looked at it, and Mickie looked at it, and he said, ‘Can you do this?’ I said, Yeah.’

“So we stopped the train, and then the train started again. That’s the coda for the song.

“And Mickie went, ‘Jesus Christ, this is unbelievable!’”

“Barabajagal” was released as a single in June 1969. Although it reached number 12 in the U.K., it only made it to 36 in the U.S., marking the end of Donovan’s run of hits.

Given the novelty of Beck and Donovan performing together, fans began to question if they were forming a group. Within months of the record’s release, many believed it was a done deal.

Beck set the record straight in an interview with The New Music Express in August.

“Obviously we just came together because we both record for Mickie Most,” he explained. “And when we did ‘Barabajagal,’ we were just in there killing an odd weekend. There’s no big Donovan–Jeff Beck permanent tie-up thing underlying it.

“Everyone thinks Donovan and I are friends and brothers-in-the-business never-to-part, but this is rubbish.”

The rumors had been fueled in part by the news that the Jeff Beck Group were breaking up.

“We’re disbanding very shortly,” Beck revealed to the NME. “Ronnie Wood is leaving because he wants to play lead guitar instead of bass, and I wish him the best of luck. There’s no bad vibes or anything like with most groups.”

As for working again with Donovan, Beck said, “The question of us doing shows together have been spoken about, but since then a lot of things have happened — like my group splitting. I think us doing the record was a nice idea, though, and I suppose the future is just an open book.

“I don’t really see a follow-up to ‘Barabajagal,’” he concluded. “It’s up to Don. If he wants to do something again, I’m easy. But I wouldn’t like to scream at him and say, ‘Come on, Don, let’s do another one.'”

They never did. And while “Barabajagal” marked the end of Donovan’s chart run — making it noteworthy for the wrong reason — it remains one of his favorite songs, and one he considers a tribute to Beck.

“Jeff was incredible on it,” he says.

With Chris Dreja’s death this past September 25, Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty is the only member left who knows what each phase of the band was like with its three most famous guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

As he shared with us recently, Clapton’s tenure was marked by a lack of commercial success. Once it ended, Clapton departed to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, opening the door for Beck’s arrival and the group’s most commercially successful period, from March 1965 to October 1966.

For a brief period, the Yardbirds sported not only Beck but also his good friend Jimmy Page, who originally joined as bassist when Paul Samwell-Smith left he group. Once rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja got his bass chops down, Page was freed up to fire up the band’s two-guitar tandem, featured on “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”

Unfortunately, the pairing wasn’t ideal, as Page indicated.

“Sometimes it worked really great, and sometimes it didn't,” he said in a 1977 interview with Guitar Player. “The point is, you've got to have parts worked out, and I'd find that I was doing what I was supposed to, while something totally different was coming from Jeff.”

Part of the problem was down to Beck’s erratic behavior, which led him to abruptly depart the group in late 1966. (He briefly considered following Clapton’s path and joining Mayall’s group, but ultimately decided to form his own band.)

Page continued with the Yardbirds, seeing them through some of their least commercial recorded output, while their live performances became increasingly more experimental. As band members peeled off, Page reconfigured the group into the New Yardbirds and, eventually, Led Zeppelin.

Continuing in the vein of his earlier comments about Clapton, McCarty here talks us his views of Beck and Page, as well as the late Dreja, singer/guitarist Keith Relf and Gypie Mayo, who played guitar in the revitalized lineup from 1996 to 2004.

Jeff Beck

“Jeff was very amenable to what we wanted. He wasn’t so dedicated into the blues, first of all. He gave the band more than we ever thought, ’cause he was so out there in terms of sounds. He loved all the weird and wonderful sounds, and he would create them all and really go for it and pull out all the stops and really took it into that next chapter and really took the Yardbirds sound to what people remember of it.

“It must have been quite incredible when we first came to the States and were playing all these little clubs and people were seeing us. We heard so many reports — ‘What an amazing sound! I’ve never seen anything like it!’ — and that was a lot down to Jeff creating those weird and wonderful, supersonic type of sounds.

“Also, Jeff was very good at improvising. It was never the same; each and every night was different, a bit touching on the jazz thing where we’d improvise with each other. It was nice when it happened. When it took off it was great, and we did all those build-ups... We’d been doing those already with Eric but with Jeff it went even further.

“Jeff was also very different in that he didn’t care what he looked like. He would wear these sort of dirty jeans with oil on them from working on his cars, sort of a leather jacket and long, greasy hair — when we first met him, anyway. He and [Clapton] were totally different sides of the coin.

“I remember doing a show at the Hard Rock Cafe years later and they were both there and Jeff had great big sort of dirty boots on and jeans and Eric had a suit on and they were on the stage playing together, totally from different sides of the coin.

“He was a very, very nervous person — very nervous when he played and he got really worked up and more and more stressed out. You never knew what Jeff was going to do. He’d lose his temper and kick his amps offstage and things like that.

“And he was sacked, which is a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? We were doing this Dick Clark Caravan of Stars tour, which was a terrible mistake, going around the States in this Greyhound bus filled with all these sort of groups that were playing pop... nothing like what we were doing, and it was hard going.

“Beck thought, Oh no, this is terrible, and he just lost his rag and he smashed up his guitar in the dressing room. He said to Jimmy Page — or maybe it was Keith — ‘You could’ve stopped me doing that!’ [laughs]

“Then he just disappeared. He said, ‘I’m going off to stay with my girlfriend in L.A.,’ and that was it. He disappeared, and we were stuck doing the tour as a four-piece.”

Jimmy Page

“Of course we realized then that Jimmy was okay. It was fine with him playing lead, and it sort of worked. There were no antics or funny business going on.

“Jimmy brought a certain stability; I know it’s mad when you think of Zeppelin, but he did. Beck was very happy to accept Jimmy in the band; Jimmy was his old friend, and they’d been mates for years. And Jimmy was totally different. He was used to playing in sessions and playing for producers and doing what people wanted him to play, so he was listening to what we wanted him to play and he worked it all out.

“Jeff was the opposite; he’d just play off the top of his head, so with the two of them playing together I think it was very difficult for Jeff because Jimmy was always steady and always played a good show.

“So when we were a four-piece touring, it was a lot easier than it had been. It was a bit more professional in a way. It was stable and you knew what was gonna happen, and Jimmy was always playing the same.

“But there was something missing, that sort of creativity that we’d had with Jeff and the five-piece. I knew Jimmy went on to do some great stuff with Zeppelin, but it didn’t seem to work as well with us.

“And we were very much stuck looking for the next hit single. That was the real stress. Then we went with [producer] Mickie Most, and of course that was the kiss of death. He brought in these songs from other writers that never quite worked with us. It’s very easy to look back and say it was the pressure of constant touring. There wasn’t enough time to do an album, and you always had to have a hit single.

“The answer would’ve been to have six months off or something just to calm down and have a rest, maybe write a few songs and see what happened. But you couldn’t do that. You couldn’t step out of the public eye.”

Chris Dreja

“He was very solid, very reliable, very steady, and he was always there and he always looked the part. He was like a rock in the band. And he adapted; he went from rhythm guitar to bass, which wasn’t really easy, ’cause Paul Samwell-Smith’s bass parts were quite tricky, with all that doubling up. I thought Chris played really good bass, especially when we became a four-piece, without rhythm guitar, and he really did a great job. And of course he made up that middle bit of ‘Dazed and Confused’ — that bass riff that comes out of nowhere. He made that up and got no credit for that.

“He always looked the part, too — very smart. I remember going on a Greyhound bus overnight; we were all unshaven, greasy hair and everything — except for Chris. He always had nicely cut hair and good clothes. He didn’t take any drugs or anything; maybe he smoked a bit of dope later on, but I don’t think in the band he did anything like that. And he didn’t drink. He was just pretty reliable.”

Keith Relf

“He was a good musician, Keith. He could play good rhythm guitar. He had great timing. He played on some of the records; I think on ‘Heart Full of Soul’ he played the 12-string acoustic. When he was in Renaissance with me he played an electric guitar but didn’t play crazy solos, just quite nice little things he worked out.

“We were doing a show one day in Finland and John Mayall was on the show and showed up with only the bass player and him, and he said, ‘Can I borrow the drummer and the guitar player for my act?’ So Keith and I played with him, and of course Keith was very embarrassed that he had to play little solos and things, but he did pretty well. He played good harmonica as well.”

Gypie Mayo

“Gypie was great. He was very creative, a bit more like Jeff Beck. Some of those songs on the Birdland album, like ‘Crying Out for Love,’ two or three songs on there, he really made them into great songs with his guitar playing. He had a lovely feel, and he would sometimes come around my house and stay the night when we all lived in London; in the morning he’d go into the music room and play guitar, and it was really beautiful.

“He’d get this lovely sound going, just doodling and noodling. He wasn’t a particularly healthy guy [Mayo died in 2013 at the age of 62], but he was a lovely guy — very nice, and a great player.”

The Gibson Les Paul has been a mainstay of Warren Haynes’ guitar arsenal since his days as a fledgling player in his native Asheville, North Carolina.

And it’s partly thanks to Haynes that the company has a Les Paul 12-string in its catalog. The model dates back to approximately 1990, when Haynes was performing at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

“Rick Gembar, who was head of the Gibson Custom Shop at that time, was at the show and sitting next to one of his employees,” Haynes tells Guitar Player. “I played an Epiphone 12-string — it was a 335 shape, not even a Les Paul — and Rick turned to his employee and said, ‘Uh, what the hell is Warren doing playing an Epiphone?!’ kind of half-joking.

“The guy with him, also half-jokingly, answered, ‘Well, we don’t make a 12-string Les Paul.’ And Rick said, ‘We do now!’

“They came backstage and Rick walked straight to me and said, ‘Warren, if you’ll put that Epiphone away, I’ll build you a 12-string Les Paul.’ And I said, ‘You got a deal!’”

Gibson handed over a pair of the guitars to Warren in 1990. In 2012, more than 20 years later, the company finally added the model to its lineup.

“I think they only made two of them for a long time, so that conversation turned into me having a one-of-a-kind — or two-of-a-kind — instrument,” Haynes explains.

Differentiating Haynes’ 12-string from the mass-production model, he says, is that “the headstock is enormous, and in return it’s fairly heavy.” But like any of those instruments, he notes, it has a unique sound from others.

“Most 12-strings are a little airier, or brighter,” Haynes explains. “Twelve-strings in general are designed to get that kind of shimmery sound, like the Rickenbackers or the Epiphones, which is great. Having a 12-string Les Paul, you get that thick, chunky Les Paul sound. And so to offset that a bit, there’s a coil-tap switch for the pickups that turns them into single-coils and makes it a little brighter, if you want that sound.

“I use the brighter setting quite a bit, but I also use the chunkier setting. It’s more like a throaty sound— bluesier and heavier.”

Haynes used the 12-string to record Gov’t Mule’s “Railroad Boy” and “So Weak, So Strong,” among others. These days, he says, he keeps it “in the truck” whenever he hits the road.

“I play it every now and then,” he notes, “but not a ton, because the set’s different each night. It’s there for when we need it, and I really enjoy playing it. And everybody that’s played it really loves it.”

Through a career that’s included the Allman Brothers Band, Gov’t Mule and his own projects, Haynes has never been short of interesting electric guitars to play — his own and others’.

“It’s cool to play some of these different instruments,” he acknowledges. “I’ve played a bunch of iconic guitars here and there, and there’s something there that’s different and inspiring. They all have unique sounds that inspire you to play differently, which is always a nice challenge. Just to have that opportunity is very cool.”

Haynes outdid himself, in a way, when Gov’t Mule — teamed with the Tedeschi Trucks Band — played in Chicago recently, on September 9. The night before the show, he visited Timeless Gem Studios to sample some of its collection and wound up taking Jeff Beck’s 1959 “Yardburst” Les Paul to the venue for a rendition of “Freeway Jam,” as well as Doug Irwin’s #24, which he used for “Ruby.”

“I really loved playing it,” Haynes says of the Beck guitar. “There’s some serious energy in that guitar. They told me that Beck apparently took the original pickups out, which in hindsight would’ve been PAFs, and replaced them with ’60s pickups, so it sounds different than a normal ’59 largely due to that.

“Back then,” he continues, “nobody knew that those guitars were going to be worth a fortune, so people were just making changes based on what they were hearing and what they wanted it to sound like. I guess he was looking for a little different sounds. The ’60s pickups probably have a little more aggressive midrange or something. Usually the ’57, ’58, ’59 pickups are pretty smooth-sounding and beautiful, so maybe he was looking for something a little different.”

The Irwin guitar, meanwhile, was not one of those ever owned by Jerry Garcia but did serve as a prototype for the iconic Tiger, Wolf and Rosebud that came in its wake.

“It was on its way to being similar to Tiger, but not there yet,” Haynes says. “I don’t mean as far as quality or good or bad. Some of the main elements that made Tiger had not been established yet.

“I played the actual Tiger at one of my symphonic shows, at Red Rocks. It’s a fantastic instrument. I also played Wolf on a whole tour, which was fantastic.

“Those guitars instantly sound like Jerry Garcia — they put you one step closer to that sound. Whatever they did in designing those guitars to work for him became just an iconic thing.”

The #24, Haynes adds, “was still a little bit more like a Gibson, so it was kind of like in between a Gibson and Tiger. It still has some of that chunky, meaty Gibson sound, but it also had some of that high-fidelity kind of Garcia-esque Tiger sound as well.”

The Chicago experiences add to Haynes’ formidable checklist, which is likely to only grow over the years. Among his other greatest memories are playing Eric Clapton’s Fool SG from his Cream days, as well as a Jimi Hendrix Fender Stratocaster the guitarist gave to producer Al Kooper, which now resides with a collector in Japan who brought it to a show for Haynes to play. Haynes calls it “a beautiful-sounding guitar.”

And then there’s the litany of vintage Allman Brothers axes that both he and Derek Trucks have had access to over the years. They include the Les Paul goldtop that Dickey Betts stripped and painted red, and the 1957 goldtop Duane Allman played on Derek and the Dominos’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album that was brought to the Allmans’ performance at Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival during 2013 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

“It had a bite and this midrange that was different than a lot of them. It was very aggressive,” Haynes reports. “I walked back into Eric’s dressing room to show it to him, and he turned around and said, ‘Wow, is that a replica of Duane’s old guitar?’ and Derek said, ‘No, this is Duane’s guitar.’ And Eric played it and was just fascinated. He said, ‘I haven’t seen this guitar since we made Layla.’”

“They all sound different and they all have a unique thing about them. All those guitars from that time period did sound a little different, and they all sound unique — mostly great. Occasionally you hear one that doesn’t sound great, but not very often. Mostly those eras’ guitars sound fantastic.”

Members of Iron Maiden and Tool have formed a surprise supergroup for a one-off performance of a Jeff Beck classic, and video footage has made its way online.

Two Iron Maiden alumni, guitarist Adrian Smith and retired drummer Nicko McBrain, united with Tool bassist Justin Chancellor for a cover of “Going Down”. The trio were suited and booted for the show, which took place during the wedding of Smith’s daughter, Natasha.

As one fan noted, "What a wedding band!"

Smith, who also handles vocal duties, employs a sunburst Fender Telecaster for the spot, with Chancellor also playing a Fender, in the form of a Precision bass.

This is one of the first clips of McBrain, who retired from touring last year, behind a kit since the announcement. Steve Harris’ British Lion bandmate Simon Dawson is assuming the vacant drum throne for live dates. The 73-year-old, who first appeared on 1983's "Piece of Mind," will remain “firmly part of the Iron Maiden family,” with the belief that he will still feature on studio material.

Released in 1972, "Going Down" featured on the Jeff Beck Group album, which featured Cozy Powell on drums and Bobby Tench on vocals. It was the guitarist's second attempt at a supergroup in the wake of a failed attempt to start a band with Jimmy Page. Their one jam session resulted in what Beck believes to be the first ever heavy metal riff, and he and Page have since argued over who penned it.

The pair had endured a short and fairly tumultuous partnership in the Yardbirds together, with Beck ultimately rejecting the chance to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers later on as he turned his back on being in someone else’s band.

After the Jeff Beck Group disintegrated, he turned to Beatles super-producer George Martin to create Blow by Blow, his breakthrough instrumental record. But the pair often argued over his guitar solos. Those arguments usually ended with Beck yielding to Martin’s wisdom.

Speaking of his love of Strat-shaped electric guitars in 2020, Smith had used Beck, whose Yardburst and Oxblood LPs have become the stuff of legend, as an example for how the Strat will always come calling.

“The great players to me all use Strats, and even if they played a Les Paul like Jeff Beck, they'll go back to a Strat because it has so many options,” he had said (via Ultimate Guitar). “A Les Paul is probably better built, but I think a Strat just has something about it.”

“Fenders are cheap in feel,” Beck had told Guitar Player in 1973, at a time when the Les Paul was the highest in his rankings. “You pick up a Les Paul and it's heavy and it really means something – it means business.”

By the turn of the decade, however, Beck had become disenchanted with the Les Paul, and after a brief sojourn with Ibanez and aborted plans for a signature guitar, returned to Fender's flagship axe.

When asked to compare the two in 2009, he said, “It’s a totally different animal. One is for very subtle and, I would say, more musical things that you can distract and abuse. You can’t do it with a Les Paul. It’s too delicate. It’s got a very delicate tone.”

His 2014 Custom Shop white Strat has since ended up in the hands of John Mayer, who played it with Dead & Company last year.

Elsewhere, Smith has recently spoken about the Ibanez Destroyer that he got for free and still plays live to this day, and how two lucky breaks resulted in him writing Iron Maiden classics.

“If you call me up to play, I’ve got to give you my best,” says Buddy Guy, whose ready-to-rumble attitude and no-holds-barred Strat attack have earned him eternal icon status.

Since B.B. King’s passing on May 14, 2015, Guy may have inherited the mantle of “Elder Blues Statesman,” but his in-your-face stage presence is a far cry from King’s gracious and kindly “grandfather” persona. Guy carries the torch with the devil-may-care attitude of a punk rocker.

“Thanks to the rappers, I can say whatever the fuck I damn well please these days,” announced Guy from the stage of the San Francisco Masonic while supporting Jeff Beck in 2016.

A few folks probably don’t appreciate Guy’s litany of f-bombs — or his over-the-top guitar antics — but most people find Guy’s firebrand blues a welcome presence in a genre watered down with each passing cliché. On his recent tours — Guy’s Damn Right Encore Tour wrapped this past August — the 89-year-old came across like a man possessed, as if he’s making up for lost time in the spotlight.

Throughout much of the ’70s and ’80s, Guy couldn’t even land a record deal, much less fathom being honored as a living legend at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors by an African-American president.

No one can deny that Guy — who was born George Guy in Lettsworth, Louisiana — represents the ultimate long shot. The atomic energy he channels through a Fender Stratocaster and a Fender Bassman would be thrilling and impressive at any age, but it’s almost supernatural for an octogenarian to rock so hard.

In 2017, Guy sat down with Guitar Player to discuss the blues’ legacy, Jimi Hendrix and the finer points of his guitar tone. Here's what he had to tell us.

B.B. KING

Most blues musicians I learned my lessons from are no longer with us, and they didn’t print a lot of stuff about those guys. Every night I go to the stage, I stop and imagine the history of some of the guys like Lightnin’ Hopkins and T-Bone Walker.

The media didn’t get us until the British started playing blues. That’s when major newspapers started interviewing Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and people like that. Before then, we were playing to a 99.9 percent black audience. When the British started playing blues, the audience completely changed.

My late friend, B.B. King, and I were in Memphis once, and this lady ran up to him, and said, “Hey man, these white people are taking the blues from us.” B.B. said, “No, ma’am. They didn’t take it. You just quit listening to it.”

It’s a little lonesome now. B.B. and I talked about it before he passed away. As a matter of fact, we used to talk about it before Muddy and all of them passed away. They would tell me, “Man, if you outlive me, don’t let the blues die.” That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.

STRATOCASTERS

When I was coming up, it was Lightnin’ and T-Bone, and then up stepped B.B. King, Gatemouth Brown, and, of course, Guitar Slim. There weren't many guitar players way back when, because it was unheard of. You literally couldn't hear an acoustic guitar onstage. The guitar was getting obsolete until Leo Fender and Les Paul electrified it

When Leo Fender came up with that Strat, man, I didn’t know what the hell it was! Guitar Slim was the first I saw play one, and I thought it was a joke. But you had to keep the acoustic guitar out of the weather, and this solid piece of wood Leo came up with took more wear and tear. Guitar Slim’s Strat had scratches all over it. Well, you can’t do an acoustic like that. I’m not sure if Leo made the first solidbody, but his was the one that exploded. The Stratocaster got the guitar heard.

THE BASSMAN THAT GOT LEFT ON THE RUNWAY

Some people tell me I have a tone. I barely pay attention to that. Back when the British guys started mentioning my name, players like Jimmy Page would come up to me, and say, “Man, I didn’t know anyone could play blues like that on a Strat. What are you doing?”

The Chess brothers used to say, “If you want it played right — go get Buddy.” But even I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I got my tone from a ’57 Strat and an old Fender Bassman. You can’t get that tone anymore. The Fender people do a good job at trying to replicate that ’57 tone, but there’s something different about the wood, or something else that Leo took with him. I’ll tell you what else Leo took with him: whatever he had in that [original] Bassman transformer.

I turned the bass [control] all the way off from day one. There was no reason to do anything else, because that was exactly the sound I wanted. I never had to worry about changing the tone. All I would do was wrap up the guitar cord and come home. Nowadays, you get different tones at different clubs, but that thing had the same tone wherever I played — except some of the smaller clubs where grounding issues would produce a scratchy sound that you hardly hear anymore.

I’ve still got that old Bassman. I almost lost it when I went to Africa around 1969. I was sitting by the window watching my bags being loaded, and my amp was just sitting there. As the plane was going to take off, I jumped up. The stewardess said, “Mister, sit down. You’ve got your ticket for your bag.” I said, “My amp is out there past the wing of the plane!” They kept that amp for five years. When it finally came back to me, it was all rusted out.

JIMI HENDRIX

There’s a video clip of the night we met. When I first went to New York in 1967, I was into a solo with the guitar behind my head when somebody started hollering at me, “There’s Jimi Hendrix!” I was like, “Who in the hell is Jimi Hendrix?” And he came up and said, “Can I tape your show?” He had a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I was into Arthur Crudup, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and all the old blues guys. I wasn’t into all the special effects. If I had been [into Hendrix], I probably would have got hooked myself. I liked what Hendrix was doing when I heard it. But I decided to let him have that. I figured my time would come.

THE WHAMMY BAR

I used a whammy bar. Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix would tell you that if you check your history. I cut a side at Chess [Records] using a whammy bar, but they weren't ready for it. They were like, “Nobody wants to hear that.”

These days, though, I don’t put a whammy bar on my guitars. Honestly, I stopped back when I was using very light strings because it made them break easier, and I couldn’t afford to keep buying new ones. Beck puts that whammy in the palm of his hand, and Stevie Ray Vaughan was good with that, too. Stevie, Beck, and Jimi are the best I’ve ever seen with that. A lot of guitar players couldn’t figure out how to work with it, but if you do it right — like Hendrix — it works.

ERIC CLAPTON, JIMMY PAGE & THE BRITISH BLUES BOOM

I couldn’t be B.B. or T-Bone, but they kept telling me, “Man, you got something there. You got a Buddy Guy tone.” I was so dumb. I didn’t even know that.

Even the Chess brothers told me. When I first went in there, they didn’t want to hear my noise. But when Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton all said, “I’ve been listening to Buddy,” the Chess brothers said, “Wait a minute. Let him come in and do what he wants.”

I was surprised. I said, “Man, what are you talking about?” They said, “These British guitar players are selling millions, and they’re eating up the shit you’ve been playing!”

By the early years of the 1970s, Jeff Beck was a man without a mission. Following his departure from the Yardbirds in 1966, he had attempted to form several groups, with little to show for it.

His initial effort, made with assistance from Jimmy Page, resulted in “Beck’s Bolero,” a blistering instrumental featuring Beck and Page on electric guitar, future Led Zeppelin bass guitarist John Paul Jones, pianist Nicky Hopkins and the Who drummer Keith Moon. Although the group enjoyed the session and spoke of forming a band, nothing came of it. Beck couldn’t even claim a writing credit for the tune, as Page insisted he wrote it.

His few initial solo singles were followed by the formation of the Jeff Beck Group in 1967, which went through two different lineups — including an initial band that included singer Rod Stewart and future Faces/Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood on bass — before evolving into Beck, Bogert and Appice, featuring the bassist and drummer, respectively, from Vanilla Fudge and Cactus.

Despite some chart success with his acts, Beck suffered from a lack of original material, musical direction and his own volatile behavior. By 1974, he was solo once again, but he was anything but idle. Following a half-hearted audition with the Rolling Stones following the departure of their guitarist Mick Taylor, Beck decided to try again. Along with keyboardist Max Middleton, bassist Phil Chen and drummer Richard Bailey, he began recording his first proper solo album with former Beatles producer George Martin.

The result was Blow by Blow, his first bona fide success. Unlike other guitarists of the day, he had managed to create a work that distilled his virtuoso talents into a set of engaging jazz-fusion tracks that fit neatly into the mid 1970s’ diverse spectrum of popular music.

“A lot of people liked Blow by Blow because it simplified [John] McLaughlin, and it complicated rock and roll,” Beck once said. “That album was just one of those things that was so easy. There were great players, willing to play, and decent material. And in four days, we’d track all the songs.”

As one might expect, Beck’s unusual musical sensibilities were at odds with the mindset of his more traditionally minded producer. Beck and Martin clashed over their session work, but Beck ultimately proved willing to listen to the older and more experienced studio magician.

“Some of my favorite solos got trashed because he thought they were hideous — not musical,” Beck reflected. “He’d say, ‘That’s really the most dreadful noise I’ve ever heard.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s what I want!’ But I’d usually come round to his way of thinking.”

Released in March 1975, went on to reach number four on the Billboard 200 album chart, a remarkable achievement for a jazz-fusion album and was eventually designated Platinum for selling more than one million copies. Beck’s mainstream success opened the door to new performance opportunities, one of which included a spot on The Midnight Special, one of the era’s premier TV shows dedicated to live music performance.

The show’s archives have been slowly released online, with Jeff Beck’s energetic live version of “You Know What I Mean” from 1975 being the latest released into the wild.

The late-night musical variety series ran throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, and featured performances from AC/DC, King Crimson, Chuck Berry, and plenty more beyond. In recent months, a raft of standout performances have been uploaded to the show's YouTube channel, which was launched in late 2022.

Beck, promoting his newly released Blow by Blow album, wielding his infamous Oxblood Les Paul – which sold for $10.7 million at auction last year — leads the performance’s charge with slinky, funk-laced playing.

“You Know What I Mean,” the record's opening track, was written with Middleton, whose dueling lines feature throughout as Beck mutates from a spiky clean tone to a thick fuzz sound. Middleton had featured in the Jeff Beck Group and survived Beck's stylistic shakeup as he pivoted towards instrumental music and life as a solo artist.

The spasmodic performance showcases how Beck’s talents walked the tightrope between melodic and memorable, and left-field oddisms. The guitarist’s voice always had a unique vocabulary, hence him regularly being headhunted by other acts, but it was during this period that Beck truly came into himself in an unapologetic way.

Aside from Middleton, Beck’s live band at that time also featured percussionist Buddy Miles, famous for his work with Jimi Hendrix, who also present at John McLaughlin’s ill-fated late-night jam session with the late virtuoso. Beck's Midnight Special bandwas completed by bass player Willie Weeks, onetime Beatles keyboardist Billy Preston, and drummer Ollie Brown.

“You Know What I Mean” was released as a single but failed to chart. Other singles, including “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers”, “She’s a Woman” and “Freeway Jam” fared much better, getting extensive radio airplay.

In related news, Mick Rogers has claimed that he owns the last known recording of Jeff Beck's playing, but admits that releasing it is another matter entirely.

South Carolina blues-rock guitarist Marcus King was still a teenager when he released his 2014 debut LP, Soul Insight. Five albums and a signature Gibson guitar later, King and his reputation remain as big and bold as ever.

He has a pretty good relationship with luck as well. As King recently revealed, he bought a guitar while he was drunk.

How drunk was he?

Let's just say he didn't even remember making the purchase.

As for the guitar? It was a 1966 Fender Esquire. Despite being four sheets to the wind, King was sharp enough to know a good thing when he played it.

“I was drinking a lot and forgot that I bought it,” he tells Guitar World. “The folks at Carter Vintage called me and were like, ‘You gonna come get this guitar?’

“It's probably the only good thing that ever came from my drinking.”

Thankfully, unlike Yvette Young, who bought a banjo to counter the awkwardness of third wheeling on a date, he hasn't suffered buyer's remorse. The Esquire, alongside his signature ES-345 Sixties Cherry, became a big part of his rig — once he got around to picking it up, that is.

However, he’s also confessed to barely playing any of his electric guitars when he’s at home and off the clock.

“Guitar is so deeply rooted in me. I like to play different instruments, and it helps my playing when I go back to the guitar,” he believes. “I read [bass guitarist] Victor Wooten's book [The Music Lesson], and he harped on the importance of being a musician, not a bass player. I have always been influenced by that idea. It’s a holy experience to be able to sit at a guitar and say exactly what I have on my mind.”

King’s talents have, in recent months, allowed him to play some rather historic guitars. In May, he took Jeff Beck's “YardBurst” Les Paul for a spin at Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheatre, to “keep its story going.” Its owner, Matthieu Lucas of Matt's Guitar Shop in Paris, France, bought the guitar at last year's record-breaking auction of the late guitarist's gear, parting with $490,000 for the honor.

In support of Sandra Beck's desire that her husband's guitars would go on to be loved and played by a legion of other players, Lucas loaned it to Lenny Kravitz's foil, Craig Ross, for a full European tour earlier this year. King was the next recipient of Lucas' legacy-extending project.

Just two months later, he had Rory Gallagher’s Fender Telecaster, immortalized at during his Isle of Wight set in 1970. Lucas is also the owner of that guitar, having raided Rory Gallagher's gear auction last year, where his infamous relic'd Strat was sold for $1.16m.

“When you look at that guitar, you think about Rory's first band, Taste, most notably at Isle of Wight and all his career and legacy,” Lucas tells Guitar World. “I think Rory was one of the best guitar players that ever lived, and so is Marcus today. The feeling of having that legendary guitar being played so beautifully is an incredible sensation.”

King is now readying the release of his next album, Darling Blue, later this month. It sees the Grammy-nominated guitarist reuniting with his live band in the studio for the first time since 2018's Carolina Confessions.

“This album felt like a real concerted effort to make music for myself, and for ourselves as a band — creating for the love of creating and being as honest as we possibly can,” he says. “We put everything we had into making something that we love, and we have faith that the audience will feel that and love it too.”

His drunken purchase is likely to have played a key role in the record's creation. If buying a '66 Esquire is the worst thing he's done after a few tipples, he's gotten off lightly.

Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page had been close friends ever since they met in their teens. It was Page who recommended Beck as Eric Clapton's replacement in the Yardbirds in 1965, after Clapton flew the nest to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Beck and Page would even work together in the Yardbirds for a brief period, before the former departed and began to build his solo career.

Despite being as close as brothers, the two never saw eye to eye on one thing: who should get writing credit for "Beck's Bolero," the 1966 instrumental featuring Beck, Page, Who drummer Keith Moon, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins and future Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. .

Beck's decision to create a group was inspired in part by the guitarist he replaced in the Yardbirds — Eric Clapton. Following his brief spell with the Bluesbreakers, Clapton departed in mid 1966 to form the supergroup, Cream.

Although Beck was invited to take Clapton's place in the Bluesbreakers, he opted instead to follow the guitarist's lead and form his own supergroup, doing so just days after Cream was formed.

With Page's help, Beck put together his ad hoc group to record “Beck’s Bolero,” a riff-driven instrumental inspired by French composer Maurice Ravel's 1928 orchestral piece, Boléro. The final result was considerably heavier than Ravel's, thanks to the pair’s electric guitar talents — featuring Page slashing away at the chords on a Fender Electric XII 12-string — and proto-heavy metal panache.

In the years after, Beck would say of "Beck's Bolero" featured “the first heavy metal riff ever written,” and I wrote it.”

Page disagreed and said so in his 1977 cover story with Guitar Player.

“Even though he says he wrote it, I wrote it," the guitarist insisted. "I’m playing the 12-string on it. Beck’s doing the slide bits, and I’m basically playing around the chords.”

“It’s got a lot of drama to it,” Page added. “It came off right. It was a good lineup too, with Keith Moon and everything.”

Of course, Page has been involved in other, more famous disputes over songwriting credits. In 2020, he won a long-running lawsuit alleging his famous 1971 Led Zeppelin track "Stairway to Heaven" infringed on the copyright of the 1968 instrumental "Taurus," composed by Randy California and recorded by his band Spirit. This past May he faced a fresh lawsuit over "Dazed and Confused" from its songwriter, Jake Holmes.

However, he handily won authorship of "Beck's Bolero" without litigation, much to Beck's dismay. Although he believed he had changed Page's core ideas enough to earn at least a co-writing credit, Beck stepped aside and let Page take the honors.

“No, I didn’t get a songwriting credit,” the guitarist conceded, “but you win some and lose some down the years.”

He was likewise unlucky with the formation of his supergroup. Despite the promising results of "Beck's Bolero," the band never gelled.

“I don’t know if it would have worked or not, but it sounded so great in the studio,” Beck later pondered (via Far Out). “I couldn’t believe it when we went back and listened to it in the control room. We were going: ‘This is amazing. What can we do with it?’

“You can hear Moon screaming in the middle of the record over the drum break. If you listen, you can only hear the cymbal afterwards 'cause he knocked the mic over.”

Ultimately, the band disintegrated once recording wrapped.

“The next thing we know, Keith is back with the Who, and the whole thing never got off the ground,” Beck sighed. “But all we needed was a singer.”

There were even disputes over the production credits, perhaps given the song's success when it was eventually released. During his GP chat, Page said producer Simon Napier-Bell ghosted the band during its recording.

“The producer just disappeared,” he said. “He was never seen again; he simply didn’t come back. He just sort of left me and Jeff to it.”

Conversely, Mickie Most, who Beck later employed for his debut solo album Truth and 1969 follow-up, Beck-Ola, claimed he was the man behind the desk.

"Beck's Bolero" wouldn't see the light of day for another year, when it became the B-side to Beck's U.K. debut solo single, "Hi Ho Silver Lining." The guitarist handled the bulk of the vocals, with Rod Stewart, who would go on to front the Jeff Beck Group, providing backing vocals. When John Paul Jones left to form Led Zeppelin with Page, Ronnie Wood took his place, and Beck finally got his supergroup of sorts.

“I was using a Les Paul for the lead guitar and for the backwards slide guitar through a Vox AC30,” Beck says of his gear on the track. “It was the only amp I had, and it was covered with beer! Actually, I think it was the beer that gave it its sound!”

"It was a pivotal moment for my sound," Jimmy Page has said of when he met electronics wizard Roger Mayer at Surbiton, a suburb in South West London not far from his home in Epsom and Jeff Beck’s in Wallington. It was the early 1960s, and Mayer, who had worked for the Admiralty, had begun turning his attention to electric guitar effects.

“He asked me if I needed anything for my guitar,” Page continued. “He came over to my house one day and I played him a song with electric distortion and said, ‘I want to find a way to sustain it.’ He went away and came back with this box with an on/off switch — that meant you could control the distortion.”

As Mayer told Guitar Player in 2023, Page and Beck were among his earliest customers.

"I met Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the same time when I first started going to local music venues where they played around here — what we called the ‘Surrey Delta’ — in ’62, ’63, when I was a teenager. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page started out playing what you might call youth clubs, where kids used to get together.”

Both were interested in fuzz, which they’d heard on that record Page had spun for Mayer: the Ventures’ tune “The 2000 Pound Bee.”

“We sat there listening to it and Jimmy said, ‘Can we do this?’ I think they went up to a music shop in Shaftsbury Avenue to have a look at a Maestro [FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone], but it didn’t have enough sustain. I said, ‘I can improve it,’ so Jimmy said, ‘Okay, Rog. See what you can do.’”

Mayer tweaked the circuit, he said, “from square one, really. As a scientist, I could come up with an alternative solution — one that’s better.”

As Page told Uncut, Mayer’s invention revolutionized the guitarist’s sound. "It was phenomenal," he says. "When I started taking it to sessions, the other guitarists were blown away. The blood drained from their faces. But the guys doing the arrangements loved it."

Page was less interested in what he called Mayer’s "other box,” an octave-doubler with fuzz. "It was difficult to control in the studio from the guitar, so I said it wasn’t for me," he recalled.

Another guitarist would put Mayer’s octave-doubler to use: Jimi Hendrix. The American guitarist was making waves in England by the time Mayer met him at a club in 1967. According to the inventor, two weeks later he was in the studio as Hendrix was overdubbing the solo to “Purple Haze,” using his “other box,” the Octavia.

Mayer — who would famously help another guitarist, Bob Marley, completely revamp his tone — subsequently worked with Hendrix on his next album, Axis: Bold as Love, and then accompanied him and his group on their 1968 tour of America.

As Mayer told Guitar Player in our May 2012 issue, in the days before the effects box explosion, inventors like himself often worked directly with guitarists and studio engineers to create effects to their specification, a truly bespoke approach that was essential to the development of both new sounds and the pedal market that would emerge in the 1970s. He gave us insights into his method of working with Hendrix, the guitarist who was perhaps most interested in new sounds at the time.

What were some of the sonic goals you and Hendrix discussed when you started working together?

We talked about creating new soundscapes. Jimi was most interested in making new sounds for the records, because if you were going to be successful back then, you had to have a hit record. He felt he needed to be on the cutting edge with new sounds, so we were following a sort of Formula One racing approach, where you had constant development to keep moving on.

After Hendrix’s success with the Octavia, did you think the effect should be available to other guitar players?

No. This was a time when most recording studios manufactured their own consoles and other gear, and the electronics side of it was highly proprietary and quite secretive, really. When I was making effects for Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Jimi, I was one of their best-kept secrets.

Did Hendrix express interest in having a definitive sound?

Jimi wasn’t as interested in having a definitive sound as he was in having the right sound for the soul. His sounds had to be crafted for each particular song, and Jimi knew that if he got the right tone, it could be almost magical. He and I talked about what hadn’t been done, and one of the main things was panning the signal so as to move the sound around in the mix while manipulating the echo to create different spatial awareness.

To our way of thinking, echo was a way of adding more information and color to the sound in order to create ambience and a sense of mood alteration. Like if we panned the echo left to right while changing its EQ, suddenly the guitar could sound like a spaceship coming toward you. So using a combination of tape delay and EMT echo plates, and by manipulating the delay, the panning, and the EQ, we were able to make the music move and sound more three-dimensional.

Jimi was the happiest when he was getting sounds that were spinning in his head onto records. If he had a new idea for something, it wasn’t a matter of how much it was going to cost. It was always, “When can we do it?”

Does it surprise you that the sounds Hendrix got using fuzz, wah, and feedback are still considered the holy grail by guitarists?

Well, after Jimi did “Voodoo Chile” and some other records, there really wasn’t much else you could do with a wah. Jimi was so prolific in the way he used things like feedback and distortion, so it’s pretty hard to come up with something else that sounds as fresh — especially when it has to be incorporated into the framework of a great song.

What was the most important thing you learned from Hendrix?

Dream the impossible and have the spirit to play to the edge. That’s what Jimi showed me.

Jeff Beck’s love for Jimi Hendrix was well known in his lifetime. He frequently mentioned Hendrix in interviews, sharing stories about their interactions and their occasional adventure jamming or hanging out.

It’s been equally well established that Beck felt Hendrix sidelined his career and took the shine off his rising star when the American guitarist arrived in London in late 1966. In seemingly no time at all, Hendrix was the player everyone was talking about.

Meanwhile, Beck was struggling to find his groove in the wake of his departure from the Yardbirds.

“It was a horrible time, really,” he told Guitar Player associate editor Barry Cleveland in 2003. “Not because of him, but because of the fact that he swept us all aside and put us in a bin. I think that was more the case for us than for the public at large, who were happy to have us all.

“But I know how it felt having a girl ring up and ask, ‘Did you hear Jimi Hendrix?’”

Despite the difficulty Hendrix caused him, Beck was filled with admiration for his talent and nearly obsessive commitment to electric guitar .

In 1989, Beck had an opportunity to work with another iconic Strat slinger: Stevie Ray Vaughan. Five years after they performed “Jeff's Boogie” at a CBS Records convention in Hawaii, the two legends were paired up on the Fire Meets the Fury tour, which saw them co-headline a 30-date stint put together by their label, Epic Records. The tour was as sensational as it sounds today and became one of the highest-grossing music road shows of 1989.

As it was wrapping up, Beck and SRV sat down with Guitar Player’s Matt Resnicoff and Joe Gore for a historic interview, a meeting made all the more significant when Stevie Ray died not long afterward.

The interview is filled with great moments, and as often happened where Beck was concerned, the subject of Hendrix came up. It was here that Beck made a comparison between Hendrix and SRV that was especially meaningful given his familiarity with Jimi.

Jeff, what was it like to jam with Hendrix?

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN Yeah, good question.

JEFF BECK What was it like? Well... it was awful! [laughs] The first time, I felt like a peanut, like a fucking hole would have opened up and swallowed me.

The thing that puts it right is the fact that there’s a genuine love Jimi had for my style as well, which I couldn’t believe. Then I realized that Jimi was not a messiah; he was a very genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, music-loving person. He didn’t give a damn about the reputation, the showbiz razzmatazz.

All he was interested in were the licks and what you were feeling like…. It was just sadness that we couldn’t nurture the friendship a bit more. In those days, life was just totally crazy. He would be off in a 24-hours-a-day lifestyle, and I couldn’t keep up with it. I had to have my sleep. He was a boogier — a club here, club there — and he’d be jamming ’til 5:00 in the morning.

My lifestyle was never destined to be like that, so I just had to say, “Adios, Jim, I gotta go to bed!”

I felt very amateurish alongside him, because he lived and breathed it. You’re very similar to Jimi in that way. I’m just a part-time employee.

SRV I don’t know about that one. [laughs]

BECK I’m not in love with the guitar as much as you are or Jimi is — was. I just pick it up and play it sometimes. [laughs]

Beck wasn’t exaggerating about his on-again-off-again relationship with the instrument. Much of his free time was spent working on his collection of vintage hot rods and Corvettes.

“I feel really guilty,” he continued on. “Whatever I choose to do, it always robs me of something. The guitar robs me of my time building rods, and the rods take their toll on the playing.

“But the payoff is the refreshment on both sides. By building, I’m able to completely steep myself in physical things, and all the time I’m doing that, I’m thinking of licks and music, which I’m not able to do sitting with a guitar.

“That’s probably the reason I’m able to maintain a modicum of interest in music after 30-odd years.”

Sadly, SRV would — like Hendrix — die early, leaving a void in the guitar world, and a legacy that remains vibrant to this day.

As for Beck, he would renew his solo career in earnest near the turn of the millennium and continue to amaze us all with his ability to make his guitar speak in ways no other could, using his fingers —no pick — volume control and whammy bar. Not bad for “a part-time employee” of the guitar.

Like many young guitarists in the early 1960s, Queen guitarist Brian May was influenced by the original wave of rock and roll. He was also more song-oriented in his approach, focused on rhythm rather than lead.

“I love playing rhythm and that's the way I started,” he told Guitar Player in our March 2012 issue. “When I was a kid I just played acoustic guitar and strummed and sang. I sang Everly Brothers songs, Tommy Steele songs, Elvis songs — so rhythm guitar is where I come from.”

But as music changed, so did May’s ambitions. His early lead work was influenced by the Shadows, whose electric guitar instrumentals were based in large part around the song's main melody. May said the group was "the most metallic thing out at the time.”

But by 1965, May had his head turned around by two new guitarists on the scene: Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. It was because of them that he began to look beyond the Shadows style of guitar playing he grew up on and got serious about developing his blues and rock chops.

He was particularly impressed by Clapton.

“Absolutely. Clapton from the very beginning, because I used to go and see the Yardbirds. We did a couple of their songs," he said.

“Clapton was unbelievable, just so sparkling and fluid. He was what turned me away from the Shadows style and sent me back to listen­ing to B.B. King, Bo Diddley and all those people who I'd heard.

“But I thought it was all the same: 12-bar blues, and that was it. I didn't realize the depth or emotion there was in it until I saw Eric Clapton doing it. That somehow made it accessible for me.

“After I went back and listened to his influences, I listened to Clapton very closely and people like Mike Bloomfield on the first album with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which had all those classics.

“Jeff Beck was an influence too, extremely. I couldn't believe what he could do. I remember seeing him put the guitar down, make it feedback. and play a whole tune without even touching the finger­board. That was the first time I saw a Les Paul guitar. I saw a gig at the Marquee soon after Beck had joined, and Eric Clapton came on and jammed at the end. That was pretty amazing; I'll never forget that.”

It was also around this time May caught a show by another newcomer on the London scene who would prove influential to him: Jimi Hendrix.

“I thought after seeing [Clapton and Beck], I'd seen it all. I had been playing all that time, and I could play that style. I was beginning to make the guitar sort of talk. I always wanted the guitar to play for people, to talk the same way a vocal did and have feeling in it. I didn't want it to be an accompanying instrument.

“Then when I saw Hendrix, I thought, Oh. my God. This guy is doing everything that I was trying to do. He just made me feel like I couldn't play.

“It’s a funny thing: It makes you feel very uncomfortable when you thought you knew everything that was going on, and then suddenly somebody comes along who seems to be doing all sorts of things which you hadn't even thought of, never mind find yourself able to play.

“I heard him play on a single of ‘Hey Joe,’ and on the flip side there's an amazing solo on ‘Stone Free,’ where he's talking to the guitar and it's talk­ing back to him. I thought, Well. he can't really be that good. He must have done that with studio technique.

“Then when I saw him for the first time supporting the Who at the Savoy Theatre in London, he just completely blew me away. I thought, He's it. The Who couldn't follow him in those days and they were really hot, big news in England. Any­body in the world would find it hard to follow Hendrix.”

Pete Townshend has attested to that. The Who guitarist told Guitar Player how Hendrix’s arrival in London in 1966 devastated his confidence as a guitarist. Ultimately, though, he said his inability to compete at Hendrix’s level pushed him to create more ambitious songs, which in turn led to the creation of the Who’s breakthrough album, Tommy.

“And what that actually did was provide me with records that sold in America, somehow,” Townshend said.

As for May, he would eventually find his own path and develop a signature style that remains one of rock’s most stylistically and tonally unique. As he’s explained, some credit is due to Rory Gallagher, who turned him on to the virtues of a Vox AC30 combo amp and a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster when May met the guitarist backstage at London's Marquee club following Gallagher’s performance.

“I found a Treble Booster,” he said. “I plugged it in with my guitar, turned it all the way up and it just melted my stomach. That’s my sound.”

Paul McCartney has never found himself part of the virtuoso conversation — his focus is on songwriting, not on fireworks.

As his foil, Brian Ray recently told Guitar World, his preference for memorability over technicality is what made him such a success.

“Paul's bass lines, while they're iconic and memorable and musical, they're not really technically challenging,” says Ray, whose first gig with the Liverpudlian icon was the 2002 Super Bowl.

“Because they're so listenable, they're easy to understand. Let's face it — they're in our bloodstreams. Even if you're not a bass player, you know these parts.”

As it turns out, McCartney has a similar point of view when it comes to guitarists who resonate with him. And it’s with that mindset that the former Beatle singled out one player as someone who is unparalleled when it comes to what they can do with an electric guitar.

“His unique style of playing was something that no one could match,” McCartney said of the late Jeff Beck.

“Jeff had immaculate taste in most things,” he added, noting that “his no-nonsense attitude to the music business was always so refreshing”.

Beck, who briefly starred alongside Jimmy Page in the Yardbirds, once had a shot at being in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, a band at that point that was a springboard for success.

But, as McCartney says, Beck was his own man. He wanted to do things his way.

As it happens, McCartney’s adoration for all things Beck led to the pair working together in 1994 on the track that fused their musical talents with their shared passion for environmental activism.

The instrumental appeared in a public service message about the dangers of rainforest devastation. Although it’s driven by a decidedly McCartney-like groove, enlivened with acoustic guitars, it features an instantly recognizable Jeff Beck guitar solo also features.

But it was only released 30 years later, after Beck's death, when McCartney posted it along with a memoriam.

“With the sad passing of Jeff Beck — a good friend of mine, and a great, great guitar player — it reminded me of the time we worked together many years ago on a campaign for vegetarianism,” he wrote. “It’s great guitar playing because it’s Jeff.

“Jeff Beck was a lovely man with a wicked sense of humor who played some of the best guitar music ever to come out of Great Britain," Sir Paul added. "He was a superb technician and could strip down his guitar and put it back together again in time for the show. Jeff Beck has left the building, and it is a lonelier place without him.”

In related news, Mick Rogers has also revealed he owns the last recording Beck ever made but fears it may never see the light of day. They cut the track after Rogers spent a day with Beck, as arranged by the guitarist's manager.

“We played a track called ‘Lucille’ by Little Richard," Rogers explains, "but nothing came of it because Jeff was playing through his dodgy Marshall and didn’t like the sound.

"He said: ‘We’ll do it again, later on.’"

Later on never happened, as Beck promptly went on tour with his guitar-slinging pal Johnny Depp.

"When I listen to the track now, I think, Jeff, there’s nothing wrong with your sound," Rogers says. "He could have played through a paper cup and it still would have sounded like Jeff Beck! He was just wonderful.”

When Jeff Beck’s wife put the late virtuoso’s guitar collection up for auction last year, she did so in the hope that they would be “shared, played, and loved again”.

Even before that, John Mayer used his 2014 Custom Strat during Dead & Co’s shows at The Sphere, and, now, having bought Beck’s famed Yardburst Les Paul for $490,000, Matt's Guitar Shop is ensuring the guitar’s days continue to play out on stages across the world by lending it to Lenny Kravitz’s foil, Craig Ross.

The French store and showroom, owned by Matthieu Lucas, has been getting into the habit of acquiring hsitoric six-strings and lending them out to gigging guitarists, with Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, and Sum 41's Deryck Whibley among those recently taking Steve Jones’ 1974 Les Paul Custom for a spin.

While Beck’s prized Oxblood Les Paul went for a staggering $10.7 million – making it the most expensive Les Paul ever sold at auction – Lucas felt bidders didn’t heed his Yardburst LP enough attention during the auction.

“To me, with my taste for Jeff Beck’s journey and my love for the British Blues Explosion, this guitar was the sleeper hit of the whole auction,” he tells Guitar World.

“Everyone was focused on other pieces, but the Yardburst showed up early in the sale – and that’s what made this beautiful, unexpected story possible. It felt like fate. A moment where everything aligned.”

Honored with a merticulous Gibson Murphy Lab reissue last year, the 1959 build was his weapon of choice during his short fire, but reputation enhancing, Yardbirds days, during which he enjoyed a fleeting partnership with Jimmy Page.

Ross became the first loanee of the history-steeped guitarist, putting it through its paces across the full European leg of the Lenny Kravitz’s recent Blue Electric Light tour.

“Funny thing – this is actually the first time I’ve ever lent one of my guitars out for an entire European tour,” he says. “I called Craig – I think he was in Germany – and told him the idea. He was immediately into it, super-happy.

“We locked it in a few weeks before the Paris show. Just days after the auction, I sent Craig a photo of the guitar, and he had the same reaction I did – this guitar is a living icon.

“Lending him the Yardburst meant as much to me as if it were going to Slash and Billy Gibbons” he extends, holding Ross’ talents in hig hregard. “People don’t always realize how lucky they are to hear Craig Ross live.

“Craig even mentioned that Jeff Beck used to love seeing him and Lenny play live! So it feels full circle. Especially when Craig played the Yardburst at Paris La Défense Arena – 45,000 people hearing that epic solo on ‘Bring It On’. Unreal.”

Ross, who co-wrote Kravitz's smash hit “Are You Gonna Go My Way” among many others, started his career playing days in Los Angeles, with his early band Broken Homes supporting the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Guns N' Roses before a chance meeting with Kravitz changed his course. He also guested on The Black Crowes' 2001 album “Lions” playing on “Greasy Grass River”.

Though the guitar is back in Lucas’ possession, he doesn’t want it to be for long, promising, “it will be played again. On stages. In front of people. That’s the only future I see for it.”

In related news, former Manfred Mann's Earth Band guitarist Mick Rogers beleives he owns the last recording Jeff Beck ever made, but confesses that releasing it is another matter.

There’s a great deal of symmetry to be found in the early years of Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore. Both would leave behind their small village of Heston in Middlesex to become two of British rock and roll’s most prolific guitar players.

Once they’d mastered their craft enough to join bands, each cut his teeth in similar circles. And as Blackmore reveals, he knew Page was destined for greatness when they met some seven years before Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut album.

Discussing their shared early influences in the 2015 documentary The Ritchie Blackmore Story, Blackmore says it was the guitar-wielding sidemen, rather than the star singers, who grabbed their attention from the very beginning.

“When I was 11 it was about Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly,” he says, “and they had brilliant guitar players. You had Scotty Moore [in Elvis’s band], Buddy Holly played, and you had Cliff Gallup playing for Gene Vincent. We all idolized them. It was a very exciting time.

“I think at the age of 11 or 12 we all had first our acoustic guitars and then later on we got our electrics that we’d plug into the back of a two-watt radio,” he recalls.

“But it is strange how we all come from a similar area. Jimmy Page was from the same village, it wasn’t even a town, and Clapton was a few more miles out.”

Blackmore's first Fender Stratocaster actually belonged to Eric Clapton, whose roadie sold it to him for £60 — about $523 today — in 1969.

Jeff Beck meanwhile was going through the same motions at a similar age. He idolized Gallup above all others. When Guitar Player presented him with one of his hero's picks in 1993, Beck exclaimed, “I'm having a religious moment.”

As with Beck and Clapton, that symmetry could be extended even further, but it was Page that Blackmore met first.

“I met Jimmy Page in ‘62 when I was playing with a band called Screaming Lord Sutch & rhe Savages,” Blackmore explains. “We used to dress up like cavemen. I was thin as a rail at the time, so I was totally embarrassed to have this loin cloth on and all my bones showing. I was 16 or 17, and all the rest of the guys in the band were built like Charles Atlas.

“We played with a band called Neil Christian and the Crusaders, who I played with later, and [Jimmy] was playing his Gretsch guitar,” he continues.

Interestingly, Jimmy Page’s first proper guitar is believed to be a Gretsch Country Gentleman, which he used throughout the ‘60s, but it was cast aside by the time his recording career began. He'd switched to a Telecaster for his time with the Yardbirds.

“I knew he was going to be somebody then,” Blackmore remembers. “Not only was he a good guitar player, he had that star quality. There was something about him he was very poised and confident, but not arrogant. So I thought, He's going to go somewhere that guy, he knows what he's doing.

“He was way ahead of most guitar players and he knew he was good too. He was very comfortable within himself.”

Yet, his comments contradict the scathing retorts he had for his peers in Page and Clapton some 40 years earlier.

In March 1975 he was the cover star for International Musician & Recording World magazine. Speaking to American producer/guitarist Jon Tiven for the article, Blackmore was short on compliments for the pair.

“I'm not too struck on Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton," he said. "I never saw what was in Clapton at all.” However, it could be easy to dismiss those comments as ways of shooting down the competition. Perhaps Blackmore possessed an arrogance which he didn't reckon Page had.

That being said, Beck didn't find himself in the firing line.

“I like Jeff,” he told Tiven. “He's my favorite guitarist... a very natural guitar player. Being a guitarist, I obviously know a lot of tricks of the trade, but whenever I watch Beck I think, How the hell is he doing that?”

Ironically, when the pair did play togeher in those embryonic years, it was Beck doing the hand watching.

“In ‘64 or '65 I did a couple of sessions," Blackmore recalls. "Actually, one was with Jimmy Page, and one was with Jeff Beck.

"Jeff took the solo and everybody was raving about the solo, and I thought, Yeah that was a really good solo. But I noticed when I was playing that he was looking at my hands.

"I'm like, ‘Why are you looking at my hands?’ And he goes, ‘I don't know where we are; I'm just following your chords.’”

Ritchie Blackmore turned 80 years old yesterday. To celebrate, Guitar Player reached into the archives to resurrect his 1996 interview with the magazine, in which he spoke passionately about why the world needs more guitarists like Django Reinhardt.

Last March when Mark Knopfler released his charity single “Going Home,” a song that featured an unexpected guest spot from Jeff Beck, it was widely considered to be the late guitarists' last recorded work.

Mick Rogers has now cast doubt on that.

Rogers, the English rock guitarist and singer known for his work with Manfred Mann's Earth Band, tells Guitar World he may have the last-ever recording to feature Beck, performing on a cover tune.

He says Beck’s manager, Colin Newman — “a great friend of mine” — paired them up. The two guitarists hit it off immediately thanks to their mutual love of rockabilly.

“I went down to his house… we had a play together, and I believe I’ve got the last recording Jeff Beck ever did in the studios,” Rogers says. “We got together with some rockabilly guys and did an album which still hasn’t been released.

“I spent a day with Jeff, and the famous white Strat was sitting on the couch,” Rogers continues. “I thought, Jeff, pick it up and play it! He was very sheepish, but what a guy!”

Though in his early '70s days Beck was closely associated with his Oxblood Les Paul — which became the most expensive Les Paul ever sold at auction last year — his twilight years saw him playing his 2013 Custom Shop Strat, despite having once vowed to never play a Strat again.

Rogers says he and Beck found plenty of mutuality in their musical backgrounds and taste.

“We could empty a room because we were just talking about rockabilly and how he grew up,” Rogers goes on, “[and] we were both Cliff Gallup fans.”

Indeed, Beck's 1993 album, Crazy Legs, was an homage to Gallup and Gene Vincent. Such is his high regard for Gallup that when Guitar Player gifted several of his picks to Beck that same year, the guitarist was awestruck. “I’m having a religious moment!” he exclaimed before examining at the picks and announcing, “So he did use a flatpick, not a thumbpick!”

As for that possibly final track to feature Beck? It may never see the light of day.

And it may all be due to Jeff Beck.

“We played a track called ‘Lucille’ by Little Richard," Rogers explains, "but nothing came of it because Jeff was playing through his dodgy Marshall and didn’t like the sound.

"He said: ‘We’ll do it again, later on.’"

Later on never happened, as Beck promptly went on tour with his guitar-slinging pal Johnny Depp.

"When I listen to the track now, I think, Jeff, there’s nothing wrong with your sound," Rogers says. "He could have played through a paper cup and it still would have sounded like Jeff Beck! He was just wonderful.”

Rogers says the recording session took place on August 24, 2022, a month after the release of the Beck-Depp album, 18. The extensive tour that followed wound through America. Beck died just two months after its conclusion.

Of course Rogers could be mistaken. That same year, Beck guested on two songs included on Ozzy Osbourne's Patient Number 9: the album-opening title-track and "A Thousand Shades." It's believed their recording sessions wrapped before his jam with Rogers, but no exact recording dates have been provided by Osbourne's camp. However, given the timing of Beck's session with Rogers and the final tour, it seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, Rogers’ chat with Guitar World also saw him reflecting on the strange time when Kiss, then still in their formative years, supported Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1974.

“I had to use the same microphone that Gene Simmons used with all the blood coming out of his mouth. Can you imagine that!” he exclaims.

Rogers was struck by Simmons’ cocksure attitude, much as Black Sabbath were when Simmons scared the life out of them that same year.

“I remember Simmons saying to me, ‘We’re either going to be the next biggest thing, or we’re going to die on our ass!’

“They came onstage with all the makeup and stuff. I think people were quite silent because they just couldn’t believe what they were seeing… nor could we! They were scary. I mean, Gene Simmons was a scary-looking image, but he was lovely.”

As entertaining as they are, gear breakdown videos are fairly common these days. Every time a major artist rolls into town, there's a good chance someone's there to document the latest addition to a rig or a fresh signature six-string.

But back in the mid-'70s, moments like this were a rarity — even more so when they featured one of the most important players ever to pick up the instrument.

That's exactly what happened when Jeff Beck was invited down to the BBC to take part in a show called Five Faces of the Guitar in 1974.

The hour-long show for the Beeb, which featured Beck alongside Paco Peña, John Renbourn, Barney Kessel, and Julian Bream, was hosted by Mike Harding and aimed to showcase the different characteristics and applications of the guitar across five varied musical styles, with Beck representing rock. All very highbrow.

The program happened to catch Jeff Beck at an incredibly important time in his career — just weeks away from recording Blow by Blow, his groundbreaking instrumental rock album. Beck was there promoting his new project with the jazz-fusion outfit Upp. Following a solid performance of "Get Down in the Dirt," he offered an up-close look at the tools that powered his unmistakable tone during this era.

Starting with his "Oxblood" 1954 Gibson Les Paul, it's interesting to note that even over 50 years ago, the tonewood debate was already a topic of discussion. The host, clearly curious about the impact of the former Goldtop LP's body on the overall sound as Beck plays, asks, "Now, how important is the shape?" before gently implying that a solid body wouldn't make much of a difference to the tone compared to the acoustic models featured on the show.

Beck pushes back on the idea, pointing to the quality of the wood as a key factor in its tone.

"I think probably the quality of the wood has more to do with it," Beck explains. "The seasoning is as important as the electronic sounds."

Even then — long before the vintage market became a thing — Beck fully understood the significance of materials when it came to guitars and how they aged over time.

Poor Jeff even has to justify the thickness of his guitar strings at one point, explaining that the gauge is thinner compared to an acoustic or classical guitar because he's got "very weak flesh" on his fingers, adding that "the bending I do would probably slice them up like a piece of cheese."

On the floor, Beck's modest setup features a ZB Volume pedal a Dunlop Cry Baby wah and an early '70s Colorsound Overdriver.

"If you hit it at the right point during your solo, you can sustain a note," Beck explains before demonstrating the Overdriver in a somewhat Spinal Tap-esque fashion — although it might just be the hair.

After a look at his Ampeg amplifier, followed by a quick example of how feedback works, the former Yardbird shows off the most curious part of his setup, an odd-looking device called the Bag.

As Beck explains — without exposing all the secrets of his "little toy" — "I won't tell you what's inside it," he teases. "It's too simple..." The guitar sound is fed from an almost cushion-like device through a plastic tube into his mouth, allowing him to manipulate the tone, creating vowel-like effects.

"I saw Stevie Wonder with one about four years ago, and I was lucky enough to bump into another guitar player who very kindly gave me this one," Beck recalls, before adding, "It's nice to have. No one else has got one."

And he wasn't exaggerating. The Bag was manufactured in minimal quantities by Kustom Electronics in 1969 and '70 and retailed at a whopping $100 (that's $813 in today's money). So the likelihood of every budding guitar player having one of these kicking around was slim.

As Beck demonstrates its sonic potential, he explains that it's "very hard to do unless you've got a loud mic."

And that, in a nutshell, was its downfall. As acts like Beck progressed to playing larger and larger venues, the Bag's reliance on an overly hot vocal mic made it largely unusable in a live setting. However, it paved the way for a device like the Heil Talk Box, which became a favourite of Joe Walsh, David Gilmour, and, most famously, Peter Frampton on Frampton Comes Alive! in 1976.

On January 22nd, Beck's estate auctioned his collection through Christie's in London, with the "Oxblood" Les Paul as the star of the show, fetching a staggering £1,068,500 ($1,377,000) — a world record for a Gibson Les Paul at auction. Other iconic axes, such as his longtime white Stratocaster "Anoushka" and the "Yardburst" Gibson Les Paul, sold for £1,008,000 ($1,298,000) and £403,200 ($519,800), respectively.

The auction totaled £8,727,284 ($11,245,000) in sales, with over $100,000 being donated to the Folly Wildlife Rescue in Tunbridge Wells in Jeff and his wife Sandra's name.

When GP asked Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera to name the 10 albums that changed his life, he laughed.

“How long have you got?”

Of course, time wasn’t an issue, which is a good thing, as Manzanera, who, in addition to Roxy Music, has collaborated with everyone from good pal David Gilmour to John Cale, along with embarking on a lengthy solo career. Along the way, he's become famous for playing the Cardinal Red Gibson Firebird VII electric guitar that's been a constant companion since his days with Roxy.

To that end, if you dug into Manzanera’s records, you know that his influences run the gamut, meaning they’re not strictly guitar-based. “I love Mozart,” he says. “It’s like rock and roll — it has a great beat. I’ve always been attracted to music with a strong feel and pulse to it.”

But that doesn’t mean Manzanera — who recently shared with us the stories behind his top five tracks — isn’t into guitar music, too. He holds a special place for Jeff Beck, who, like Manzanera, was never content to just be a strummer.

“Without a shadow of a doubt, Jeff Beck was the best British guitarist ever,” he says. “He could do things that nobody else could do. And technically, his sense of pitch was extraordinary.”

Before revealing his 10 choices, Manzanera continues, saying, “I can keep going. I could go on forever. There’s just so many great albums in so many different genres. There’s just been so much great music over the last 50 years. I love all different kinds of stuff.”

Revolver — The Beatles (1966)

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise that when Brian Eno and I had a chance to do an experimental record called 801 Live with our band 801, we chose ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ It’s a track you should never attempt live, because it’s an amazing construction made in the studio using tape loops. But we did it a live version anyway and made it the first track on the album.

“Revolver was important as the first album where the Beatles used the studio as an instrument. It showed what was possible.”

Are You Experienced — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)

“You have to remember, there was nothing like him when he arrived. It was just a mind-blowing thing to guitarists. When I first saw him on Top of the Pops in England, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was just so incredibly exciting. He was doing things that defied anything that I’d seen before or read about in any ‘teach yourself guitar’ books. He showed us all what could be done.”

My Generation — The Who (1965)

“Roxy Music was an art rock band, and at the time of this album, the Who made their statement that they were the first art-rock band. Pete Townshend played with feedback, and what he did was a statement of art that really appealed to me. The interesting thing was the person who taught him at art school was the same person who taught Brian Eno when he was in art school. What they got from it was a way of thinking and a sort of attitude toward music.

“But, obviously, the great thing about Pete is that he could write amazing songs and lyrics as well as put them across with the real strength of the sound of his guitar playing. And it was also at this time that you get the arrival of the big Marshall 4x12 speaker cabinets, as well as Pete Townshend, Clapton, and soon after, Hendrix. These were all guitarists who were able to control feedback from their guitars.

"And My Generation is where it started. It really wasn’t much in evidence before they unleashed sonic experience.”

In a Silent Way — Miles Davis (1969)

“The thing that I took from Miles was his sonority, his idea of what pitch was. It’s a different kind of in-between-the-cracks kind of attitude, with space and improvisation. It’s not as if you stuck a tuner on his trumpet said, ‘That’s out of tune’ — because it’s not. And as far as I know, with those sessions, he would just play and then choose the bits he liked and stick it all together.

“I was thinking about this the other day: You can give any title to an album you like, but it doesn’t describe that album. And that’s true here, especially the title track itself. There’s a sort of calmness about it, and with beauty; it’s very much like a sort of painting. The sounds Miles painted are the absolute essence of less is more and are about tone and texture. That’s what I took from him.”

Sketches of Spain — Miles Davis (1960)

“Sketches of Spain is based on Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Miles didn’t just copy what Rodrigo wrote but did an impressionistic version of it, so you almost get abstract art. In that period, with how things worked in the ’60s, there was a lot of improvisation and experimentation of sound — and that’s what I love about it all.

“Funnily enough, that’s what we’ve returned to now with my new project with Andy Mackay. It’s about 80 percent of his input, though it’s not jazz. It’s about sound, texture and space, and it’s about being in the moment. So we don’t expect big audiences for that, but we’re very happy to get small again, make it intimate, and connect with the audience.”

Canciones de Mi Padre — Linda Ronstadt (1987)

“I love this album, which is Linda Ronstadt singing in Spanish, and it was beautiful. I had no idea of her Mexican background and no idea that she could speak Spanish. So in a lot of those songs — and remember, the title of the album is ‘Concerning songs of my father’ — they’re like classic, evergreen songs, and she does them so incredibly well. And those are songs that I grew up listening to and knowing while in Cuba. I come back to this album a lot, actually. I love her voice.”

Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin (1969)

“Jimmy Page’s playing on the first Led Zeppelin album — we just hadn’t heard someone let loose like that. And John Paul Jones and the power trio, with, of course, Robert Plant, whose voice was just absolutely, well, you just can’t do a three-piece without having an incredible singer.

“Those guys had so much experience, meaning John Paul Jones and Page playing sessions, and they could really play. It’s not easy to play those twelve-string parts on double-neck guitars, and the way they looked was just exciting, and it was a very exciting kind of music. I mean, you could say that about Jeff Beck with Rod Stewart, too. That was a little bit like what they could have been like.”

Pablo Honey — Radiohead (1993)

“Some of the guitar playing was just jaw-dropping. They’re doing these crazy things, and you’re thinking, How did you do that? That is very, very rare. You could hear people making technically brilliant sounds and things like that, but the combination of this sort of very advanced level musicianship and the songs they brought to a musical environment was great. They were definitely a unique band.”

Fresh Garbage — Spirit (1968)

“I loved the band Spirit from the West Coast of America. I love Randy California’s guitar playing and the way he seemed to be able to play with harmony. It still baffles me how he did it. One of my friends came back from being over in LA, saw them, and came back raving about them. But for me, with Spirit, the most important album was Fresh Garbage, which was just fantastic.”

The Soft Machine — The Soft Machine (1968)

“The first Soft Machine album was fantastic. I loved the way that Mike Ratledge played the Hammond organ through a fuzz box so that it sounded a bit like a guitar. And in the end, it sounded like the guitar playing that Robert Fripp ended up doing. So that was my ultimate ambition: to sound like the organ playing of Mike Ratledge on Soft Machine’s albums.”

Phil Manzanera's memoir, Revolución to Roxy, was published in 2024 and is available for purchase.

Jimi Hendrix’s arrival in London in September 1966 was a storm no one had forecast. Within months, he had assembled the Jimi Hendrix Experience and released three top-10 singles. In doing so, he reshaped England's rock and roll hierarchy, which until then had been dominated by players like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend

As Townshend told Guitar Player in his September 1989 cover feature, Hendrix forced guitarists like him and Eric Clapton to find new relevance and re-think their approach to music.

“It did shift my emphasis,” he told us. “I suppose like a lot of people — like Eric — for a while there I think we gave up. And then we started again.”

The result would lead Townshend to craft Tommy, his first of several rock masterpieces and the Who's critical and commercial breakthrough in the U.K. and America.

But long before that happened, Townshend was reeling from the impact of the Hendrix juggernaut. He and Clapton weren’t the only electric guitar heroes of the day floored by the American guitarist. Jeff Beck also revealed how Hendrix “swept us all aside and put us in a bin.”

Townshend’s circumstances were unique, however. For a start, Hendrix was too close for comfort. Literally.

“We were on the same record label,” Townshend told Guitar Player. “He was discovered by [Animals bassist] Chas Chandler and brought over and went onto Track, which we co-owned at the time. So he was actually on our record label!”

Moreover, Townshend — unlike Clapton and Beck — had developed his own highly physical guitar style: windmilling his strumming arm, stalking the stage and destroying his guitars and amps at the end of a show. Hendrix put all these to use in his performance, and went further by setting his Fender Stratocaster on fire at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. In doing so, he co-opted the key elements of Townshend’s identity as a performer.

While Townshend recognized that Hendrix was “dealing in other people's ideas, old blues things and tricks” and employing “the pyrotechnic things that he had caught off watching me,” the effect on him was devastating.

“It destroyed me,” Townshend said. “Absolutely, completely destroyed me.”

But it was Hendrix’s impact on the music itself that affected Townshend most. As successful white artists playing music inspired by Black musicians, the Who — like other British Invasion acts — had built entire careers and identities. Hendrix reclaimed the music inspired by Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and other Black rock and roll originators, leaving Townshend feeling like a pale imitation.

“I mean, I was glad to be alive, but it was horrifying. Because he took back Black music,” Townshend said. “He took R&B back. He came and stole it back. He made it very evident that that's what he was doing. He'd been out on the road with people like Little Richard, had done that hard work, and then he'd come over to the U.K. And when he took his music back, he took a lot of the trimmings back, too.”

Those trimmings — the physicality and equipment destruction — had until then been Townshend's alone. Seeing a guitarist as skilled as Hendrix come along and claim it all for himself caused Townshend to retreat and recalibrate, as it did Clapton and Beck.

“It was very strange for Eric and me,” he says. “We went and watched Jimi at about 10 London shows together, and [Clapton] wasn't with a girl at the time, so it was just me, my wife-to-be Karen, and Eric, going to see this monstrous man."

Townshend was further intimidated by Hendrix's obvious love for Clapton, and his apparent disregard for him.

"It got to the point where Eric would go up to pay his respects every night, and one day I got up to pay my respects, and he was hugging Eric, but not me — he was kind of giving me a limp handshake — just because Eric was capable of making the right kind of approach to him. It was a difficult time.”

If Hendrix intended to demoralize Townshend, he didn’t need to try. Jimi’s innate confidence left other men feeling inadequate.

“You have to remember the other thing about him, that he was astonishingly sexual,” Townshend said, “and I was there with my wife, you know, the girl I loved. And you could just sense this whole thing in the room where every woman would just [claps] at a snap of a finger. I mean, there were situations sometimes where Jimi would do it. He wasn't particularly in control of his ego at the time. There was this slightly prince-like quality about him, this kind of imp at work. I found him very charming, very easy, a very sweet guy.

“You know, I just kept hearing stories. I mean, one story I've heard — I think I might have been there — was the night that he went up to Marianne Faithfull when she was there with Mick [Jagger], and said in her ear, ‘What are you doing with this asshole?’ There were moments like that when he would be very, very attracted to somebody and felt that he would actually be able to get them, and he just couldn't resist trying. There were no boundaries, and that really scared me.

“And slowly but surely, Jimi became sure of himself. I'm talking about the first two weeks he was in London. You know, it was a new band, and they were just taking London by fucking storm! You can't believe it. You'd look around and the audience was just full of record company people and music business people.”

Eventually, Hendrix’s effect on Townshend cut to his core, impacting his identity as a man and creator, and even his psyche.

“I suppose I went away and got very confused for a bit. I kind of groped around, I had a lot of spiritual problems. I asked my wife to marry me before it was too late [laughs], and started work on Tommy a bit later. I just sort of felt that I hadn't the emotional equipment, really, the physical equipment, the natural psychic genius of somebody like Jimi, and realized that what I had was a bunch of gimmicks which he had come and taken away from me and attached to not only the black R&B from whence they came, but also added a whole new dimension. I did actually feel stripped, to some extent, and I took refuge in my writing.

“The weirdest thing of the lot is that, although people really, really value those early years, the Who was not a particularly important band at that time. We were at the end of an era; under normal circumstances the band should have just disappeared. But because he came along and, kind of like in early punk, just swept everything aside, I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.”

But Hendrix’s success in England and, eventually, America would also help pave the way for the Who to find success in the States. Both acts made their debut at Monterey Pop in June 1967, after which they went on to become established recording artists in America. For the Who, it began shortly after Monterey with the September 1967 release of "I Can See for Miles," Townshend's psychedelic-rock masterpiece and the group's first top-10 single in the U.S. Townshend understood that, as much as Hendrix stripped him of the music and trappings he used in the Who’s first era, he also laid a way for the group to move on and build a new audience.

“And what that actually did was provide me with records that sold in America, somehow,” Townshend said. “I don't know why that is.”

Since its inception in 1996, Joe Satriani’s G3 tour has seen him lock horns with some of the best guitars in the business. From Steve Vai to Robert Fripp, John Petrucci, and Eric Johnson, Satch has engaged every guitarist on his wish list for each of the G3 tour's jaunts.

But as he's revealed. one guitarist managed to elude him, even though he initially looked ready to make it a reality.

Jeff Beck is arguably the biggest name among the most likely candidates to have not featured on a G3 tour, but that’s not for a lack of trying from the Surfing with the Alien maestro. He says a Beck-powered G3 looked to be on the cards, only for a last-minute change of heart to ruin his plans.

“The one that was so close to really happening was me with Jeff Beck and Billy Gibbons," Satch told the UCR Podcast. "I think we were a week away from actually putting it in ink in the books. It was so close to happening.

"Then, Jeff bailed at the last moment.”

The guitarist tried to use his humility as te reason for pulling out, but Satriani wasn’t convinced that was the real reason.

“He used the excuse that he thought it would be better if we toured with Prince,” he says. “I took that as a really good joke, like, he just didn't want to do it, so he came up with the most ridiculous suggestion.”

Back in 2018, Satriani spoke about his hopes of building a dream G3 line-up of his “heroes,” Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, Brian May and Billy Gibbons, which seems to be the same tour he was alluding to in his UCR Podcast conversation. And what a tour it would have been.

Satriani only crossed paths with the late great twice, so he never felt comfortable enough to ask the burning question and get closure on the real reason for his pivot.

“There was no way for me to ever talk to him about it, like, ‘Why didn't it happen?’” he says. “I've always thought in my mind, ‘Let's call up Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck!’ You know, let's get all of your favorite guitar players out there.”

His theories of why he pulled out center around the generational divide between the two players.

“I could see them just wondering, ‘Who is this kid? We don't know who he is. [He] plays instrumental guitar, who cares.’ So I never really thought it would happen, but I'd ask anyway.”

It’s a strategy that has worked for him before; other players haven’t felt that generational void the same.

“Once in a while, somebody would agree or just show up and say, ‘I want to play,’ like Brian May, Neal Schon, or Robert Fripp,” Satriani adds. “So we've been really fortunate in that respect.”

Fripp joined the G3 tour in 2005, and to this day remains one of the most “interesting characters,” that Satriani has shared the stage with.

“When he joined up, he insisted that he not be listed, and he wanted to play before the show,” he told Guitar Player in 2022. “He said, ‘Look, don’t turn the lights on. I’m going to sit behind all the amps, and I’m going to play music as people walk into the venue and find their seats. And don’t mention my name.’ It’s what he wanted to do.

“We did a couple of other tours together, just me, Steve and Robert playing blues guitar or something. It was hysterical, and he was fearless about that. He was Robert Fripp to the very end.”

Satriani will link up with Steve Vai, Peter Thorn, and ever-busy bass player Marco Mendoza as part of the SatchVai band later this year.

he's also defended Kurt Cobain's guitar skills and says he wants the next generation of players to wipe the floor with him.

Part of the beauty of Jeff Beck’s late-era electric guitar work is his combination of vibrato-arm pitch bending and left-hand string bends. Using them together, Beck made his guitar playing as expressive as that of a vocalist.

Taking it further, Beck — whose guitar collection sold in London last week for a record smashing $10.7 million — had stopped using a pick by this point in his career. With all the fingers of his right hand available to him, he could execute a remarkable range of dynamics and plucking techniques that, together with the “between the notes” approach of his string bending, allowed him to evoke the sounds of Eastern music and bring a degree of harmonic mystery to his music.

As he explained to Guitar Player in an interview in our May 1999 issue, the Eastern influence in his music was in part down to the influence of others.

“That's because I've been so impressed by Eastern music and John McLaughlin,” he explained. “Guys like that are sent here for a purpose — besides to piss you off — as the standard that you have to look at. They exist — they're not figments of your dreams. You can go out and buy the records, listen to them, and learn from them. That's exactly what I did.”

The record that made the most dramatic impression on Beck — completely altering his approach to the guitar — was not by McLaughlin but by the Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir. The internationally renowned ensemble became famous in the 1980s for their modern takes on traditional Bulgarian folk songs.

In addition to their use of non-Western scales, the choir has uncanny microtonal precision, which they employ not only in their vibrato but also in harmonic development of their melodies. The resulting melodies, combined with the pureness of their voices, is mesmerizing and at times haunting, and it captivated Western audiences when they were first exposed to the choir on the 1986 Nonsuch album Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices). The record was actually a reissue of an album first released in 1975 by Disques Cellier, the label of Swiss ethnomusicologist and producer Marcel Collier, who spent 15 years gathering the recordings.

Beck was among those who was inspired by the album.

“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,” he told Guitar Player. “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.”

As Beck told Paul Guy in a 1999 interview for Fuzz magazine, he attempted to have the album transcribed. “I was trying to get somebody to transpose that on to sheet music, so that I could play all the parts on guitar. And then I suddenly thought, What a wasted effort, why not just listen to them.”

Better still, Beck began bringing the most evocative elements of the choir’s music — non-Western scales and microtonality — into his music. His uncanny precision with his Fender Stratocaster’s tremolo bar allowed him to sound notes and glide between them.

“From a technical standpoint, I inadvertently discovered a way of getting microtones and such out of the Strat and making music out of them,” he told Guitar Player. “Up to that point, the Strat was Buddy Holly's guitar — and Cliff Gallup's of the Blue Caps — and was played very conventionally.”

An excellent example of Beck’s whammy-bar precision can be heard on the Nitin Sawhney composition “Nadia,” from the guitarist's 2000 release, You Had It Coming. Although it sounds like Beck is using a slide here, it’s all done with whammy bar.

As Beck revealed in that same Guitar Player interview, it takes a special setup of his tremolo bar to keep the strings as close to proper pitch as possible. When asked how he keeps his strings in tune with the technique, Jeff had a colorful, but helpful, answer.

“What makes you think they stay in tune?” he asked. “Fender has come a long way in keeping the tuning problems at bay, but a new string will still always go off until you've stretched it. The roller nut on my guitar has a twin roller on the first three strings — which helps to keep those strings in check — and the tremolo is a standard spring tremolo.

“It's not like the Floyd Rose which slackens them off until they're dangling on the floor. I think that's a complete waste of time. I just make sure that the spring tension on the tremolo arm is exactly what I want. If that isn't right and there isn't enough upward motion — or if it goes down and bottoms out — I'm in trouble. It's basically down to the string thickness — if the thickness of one string is off, it throws the whole thing out."

Although Beck was rarely seen without a Fender Stratocaster in his hands later in his career, early on he used a range of models, including a Gibson Les Paul. Beck's "Oxblood" Les Paul — feature on the cover of his 1975 album, Blow by Blow — was among the guitars that sold at Christie's auction. It fetched more than $1,315,708, making it the most expensive Gibson Les Paul ever sold. Duane Allman's 1957 Gibson Les Paul previously held the record. It sold for $1.25 million in 2019.

The sale of Jeff Beck’s gear collection has generated $10.7m at auction, more than eight times the estimated pre-sale figure.

Over 130 guitars, amplifiers, and pedals were sold off by London auction house Christie’s after the late guitarist’s wife, Sandra Beck, said she wanted his gear to be played and loved once more. The full final price is $10,746,430 (£8,727,284)

Beck died in January 2023 at age 78, after a career that saw him play in the Yardbirds alongside Jimmy Page, search for reinvention in the wake of Jimi Hendrix’s meteoric rise, and establish himself as a one-of-a-kind solo artist, producing 11 studio albums.

He’s also proven a versatile gun for hire thanks to a host of superlative guest spots, writing and playing on tracks by Ozzy Osbourne, Bon Jovi, and Paul Rogers.

Underscoring Beck's global appeal, bids for his equipment came from 40 countries, with his rare Oxblood Gibson Les Paul, which featured on the Blow by Blow album cover, sold for just over $1,315,708 (£1,068,500).

The strangely modified ‘54 build was bought by the guitarist in 1972 after the original owner, who had requested the Memphis guitar store to make, never returned for it. Legend has it that Beck purchased the guitar for $300, ending his search for an LP with a tone “parallel to a Telecaster.”

Its final price doubled its estimate, making it the most expensive Gibson Les Paul ever sold. Duane Allman's 1957 Gibson Les Paul, sold for $1.25 million in 2019, had previously held the record.

Beck's 1959 ‘Yardburst’ Les Paul, which received a limited-edition $10,000 reissue last year, sold for $496,484 (£403,200), a huge upgrade on its $49,000-74,000 pre-sale estimate.

A hot-pink '83 Jackson Soloist, gifted to him by Grover Jackson and used on Tina Turner's Private Dancer album, broke another record as it fetched $543,029 (£441,000). It's now the most expensive Jackson ever sold.

The pedalboard used on his final tour in 2022 sold for $155,151 (£126,000) and Anoushka, a 1990/1993 Custom Shop Stratocaster was another big hitter as it sold for $1,241,211 (£1,008,000). It was named after the virtuosic sitar player Anoushka Shankar and features heavy wear from years of playing.

The guitar, which Christie’s Amelia Walker says represents “the power of Jeff’s live performances,” was subject to a nine-minute bidding war, ultimately selling for 50 times the pre-sale estimate.

Another oddball electric, the Tele-Gib — a crude hybrid of ‘59 Les Paul and Telecaster builds — went for a figure far higher than expected. It was gifted to him in 1974 by a luthier working near CBS Studios, where Beck was recording with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice. By the way of thanks, Beck's manager offered the luthier the choose one of three disassembled guitars, opting for a Fender Esquire.

The six-string sold for $853,332, eight times its estimate, while his all-white 1960 Strat went for $543,000 (£441,000).

Proceeds for the final four items, which included a signature Strat, are set to be donated to Folly Wildlife Rescue in Tunbridge Wells, U.K. The charity has long been supported by Jeff and Sandra Beck, as well as their close friend, actor-turned-guitarist Johnny Depp.

The Strat was signed by the stars who featured at 2023 tribute concert to the guitarist at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Signees include Eric Clapton, Susan Tedeschi, and Kirk Hammett

As per the BBC, Sandra Beck has spoken positively of the experience, which will likely see his collection return to the stage, and several museums, in the long run.

“I am so happy that Jeff's guitars have been so popular amongst his fans and friends,” she says. “Thank you so much for your belief in Jeff's legacy.”

“We are thrilled with the results of Jeff Beck’s incredible collection, which pay testament to the legacy of a genius — a globally revered true rock legend,” adds Amelia Walker, Christie’s Specialist Head of Private & Iconic Collections, London. “Passionate bidders competed for every lot in the sale, with each achieving many multiples of their pre-sale estimate.”

When Jeff Beck passed away at 78 in early 2023, his wife, Sandra, was left to take charge of his extensive guitar collection.

She’s since spoken about her late husband’s desire for her to share his love of music, which is why John Mayer was afforded the chance to play his 2014 Custom Strat during Dead & Co.’s event-filled Sphere residency last year.

Now, with that spirit in her heart and mind, she’s made the difficult decision to part with them: “These guitars were his great love and after almost two years of his passing it’s time to part with them as Jeff wished," she says. "They need to be shared, played, and loved again.”

Impressively, most of his assembled collection of electric guitars has stood the test of time. Sure, there have been casualties throughout Beck’s distinguished life — he famously swapped his Yardbirds-era 1954 Esquire with Seymour Duncan in 1973 — but the collection that was handed over to Christie’s auction house in London is vast and full of remarkable stories.

There's a ‘54 Stratocaster with a tonal identity “parallel to a Telecaster,” and the pink Jackson gifted to him by Grover Jackson that toured heavily in the ‘80s. Then there is his other Yardbirds workhorse, the Yardburst, which tells a story in itself. “You can kind of see him making decisions of what he wanted to change, step by step through his very early career,” Amelia Walker, specialist head of Private & Iconic Collections at Christie's, tells Guitar World.

Yet few guitars are as strongly connected to Beck as his Oxblood Les Paul, which came into his hands in 1972 and is immortalized on his Blow by Blow album cover.

“He was on tour with Beck, Bogert & Appice in late 1972, and I think his search for a new Les Paul coincided with the ‘Yardburst’ getting damaged again — because it has had a few fair breaks,” Walker explains. “So he was really looking for a guitar that could replicate that fat Les Paul sound. BBA was a loud band and that was their signature [style] — a power trio with a lot of volume.”

He soon found what he was looking for. When passing through Memphis, Beck called his friend Buddy Davis, who had previously shown him a number of guitars.

“The way Buddy has told the story is that Buddy drove Jeff around various hot-rod shops in Memphis, where he bought things for cars, but in his car he also had his guitar, the ‘Oxblood’, which Buddy had acquired from Strings & Things,” Walker says. “It was on sale because it’d been unwanted by its previous owner.

As the story goes, the owner had asked the shop to respray the goldtop to match his shoes, to swap its P90s for humbuckers and to shave the neck down for a slimmer profile.

"So they did all the modifications that we see now," Walker says.. "When he went back to pick it up, he decided he didn’t like it anymore. And then Buddy Davis walks in and says, ‘I love it.’”

Davis paid about $300 for the guitar via a finance deal, and took the guitar home. At the time that Beck fell in love with the Les Paul and purchased it from him, Davis reportedly hadn't even made a single payment on it.

“That’s the legend,” Walker says. “It’s a legend that has changed over the years.”

While the guitar became Blow by Blow's cover star, a Fender Stratocaster and Beck's Tele-Gib — a somewhat crude hybrid of a Tele and a Les Paul — were used far more frequently during the album's sessions. But the Oxblood Les Paul's prominence would soon grow.

Today, “it’s still in the condition that he left it,” says Caitlin Graham, a consultant and expert in entertainment memorabilia. “We haven’t cleaned it, which is lovely. It has definitely got an aura to it.”

Yet, for a guitar so revered, it's been modified almost as many times as its origin story over the years. According to Kerry Keane, Christie's international consultant and specialist for musical instruments, the guitar is nearly as crudely put together as Beck's Tele-Gib. "The bridge humbucking pickup is sort of jammed right up next to the wraparound bridge," Keane says. "There’s not even room there for the [pickup] surround. Even the surround is bent so it can fit there.

“It was late ’53 when you first started to see these wraparound bridges. When you look inside this guitar, I don’t fully embrace the potentiometers as original, yet the ‘speed’ knobs appear from the period,” he continues. “The capacitors have certainly been changed, and there has been quite a bit of rewiring.”

Its neck is much thinner than a ‘54 Les Paul should be, too, possibly because of the original owner's alterations or because the neck was swapped out at a later date. "It’s certainly cobbled together," Keane says. "But at the end of the day, it’s a great-playing axe, no doubt about it.”

In truth, this Frankenstein-ed guitar best typifies Beck’s legacy. Here was a man who played guitar like no other, so it’s only right so many of his go-to instruments were like no other, either.

Whoever takes this guitar under their wing is sure of having two things: deep pockets, and a one-of-a-kind guitar with a rich history. Let’s hope it has plenty more stories to tell.

Whether smashing guitars or popularizing the concept album, the Who’s Pete Townshend has always done things differently. In a newly resurfaced 1990 interview with Guitarist magazine, he sheds light on his change-making use of feedback. At the same time, Townshend takes the opportunity to point out that Jimi Hendrix wasn't doing anything with guitar that he and Eric Clapton hadn't already made part of their repertoires.

Townshend credits three factors for influencing his use of amplifier feedback during his early playing days. The most relevant force was the sheer volume of the British group's stage show, which was in part an effort to impress his art school peers.

“I'm afraid I was an arty little sod and I was actually experimenting,” he said when asked if his feedback shenanigans were calculated or a happy accident. “I was at art school, surrounded by real intellectuals, people that were experimenting all the time. I was greatly impressed by all this and wanted to please these people.

“A lot of it was posing, trying to drag something out of the band that it was resisting. As I got louder, [bassist] John Entwistle got louder by inventing the 4x12 speaker cabinet, which he did with somebody up at Marshall. Then I got a 4x12 cabinet and put it on a chair, so then he invented the 8x12 cabinet, to get louder than me, and I invented the stack by getting two 4x12s and stacking them up."

But there was more to it than a volume war. Townshend says it was also a way to drown out the loudmouths in their audience.

“Our experimentations were all to do with our irritation with the audience, who heckled if you played a rhythm-and-blues song that they didn't know," he says. "You'd get blokes in the back with their pints of beer shouting, 'What's all this rubbish? Play some Shane Fenton!' And we just got louder as a result."

The upside to it all is that Townshend and the Who became known as rock's loudest band, a label that served them well as bands moved from clubs to arenas to stadiums in the 1970s and '80s.

“It shows that radical experimentation really is worth pursuing," he says. "Because even though it might feel stupid and pretentious if you do discover something new, it's your property and you're identified with it forever.”

Townshend accepts he wasn’t the only player who found feedback worth embracing, although not all players can agree on who got there first. Some point out that John Lennon was perhaps the first to use it intentionally and creatively when he employed it on the opening of his 1964 Beatles song "I Feel Fine." But Townshend says the use of feedback was gaining popularity with bands as early as 1963, when Jeff Beck used it with the Tridents, two years before he joined the Yardbirds.

“Other people stumbled on feedback at the same time as me,” Townshend says. “Jeff Beck was using it when Roger [Daltrey] went to see the Tridents rehearsing.

“He said, 'There's a shit-hot guitar player down the road and he's making sounds like you.' Then later, when we supported the Kinks, Dave Davies was adamant: 'I invented it, it wasn't John Lennon and it wasn't you!' ”

But Townshend pours cold water on Davies’ claim.

“I believe it was something people were discovering all over London. These big amps that Marshall were turning out — you couldn't stop the guitars feeding back!”

The origin of using feedback as a tactful play is admittedly blurry. But one thing Davies and Townshend can agree on is how their use of it differed. Davies was more animalistic. Townshend’s art school background, meanwhile, saw him longing for a more musical application.

“On 'Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,' during the solo, on the note A I would flick a harmonic, get it feeding back, and then go 'dit-dit-dit-dar-dar' with the switch. And by standing at certain angles I could get incredible sounds out of it, some of which were just characteristics of the Rickenbacker body, which I stuffed with paper.

"You could control it and it could be very musical,” he goes on. “Certainly that sort of thing where you hit an open A chord and then take your fingers off the strings... the A string is still banging away but you're hearing the finger-off harmonics in the feedback.

"Then the vibrating A starts to stimulate harmonics in other strings, and it's just an extraordinary sound, like an enormous plane. It's a wonderful, optimistic sound and that was something that happened because I was posing — I'd put my arms out, let go of the chord then find that the resulting noise was better.”

The interview also saw Townshend discussing Jimi Hendrix’s talents. His fellow feedback-loving guitarist Jeff Beck said Jimi's arrival on the scene nearly ended his career. While Townshend was impressed by his chops, he didn't find him to be an original when it came to his more blues-based guitar playing and some of his stage antics, which included destroying his instruments as Townshend had been doing for years.

“Hendrix was a great player,” he says, “but he wasn't really creative. He was dealing in other people's ideas, old blues things and tricks that were either borrowed from Eric Clapton or the pyrotechnic things that he had caught off watching me.

“He used to follow the band around, watching, and then he suddenly appeared on stage doing all this stuff. But it was something else that made it extraordinary. Talk to the women who came in contact with him — he literally enchanted them. He was a pretty unremarkable kind of gnarled-looking guy, but he was a real enchanter.”

Vox guitar amps and the Beatles' early years are as synonymous with one another as peanut butter and jelly.

In keeping with the group's gradual splintering during the late '60s, though – and simultaneous pursuit of more individual musical paths – the Fab Four experimented with a wider range of gear as the years went on.

As Paul McCartney told GP in a 1990 interview, though, his personal fondness for the Vox amps of the Beatles' early days never faded.

Asked by GP if he ever spent time at home toying with tones, Macca said, “I do that mainly in the studio, which is almost like home. I can go in and just goof, and sometimes I just work on guitar sounds. I can get a nice clean sound fairly easily.

“It's the pumped-up sounds that I like to experiment with,” McCartney continued, “I've got one of the old Vox AC30s that Jeff Beck used to call ‘the old Beatle bashers.’ I once asked him if he used them, and he said, ‘What? Those old Beatle bashers?’ Then he realized what he'd said [laughs].”

In the same interview, McCartney – typically pigeonholed as the Beatle most inclined to buttoned-up, more old school pop – expressed his personal preference for gnarlier rock tones, despite his reputation.

“I love the sound of them [Vox AC30s],” he said. “I actually love the straight sound. It's pokey. It's not too clean. I'm not a big fan of clean in rock and roll. It's funny, in a way, because I guess I've got a reputation for being a fairly clean rock and roller. But my taste doesn't extend that way.”

Just as so many guitarists were in the mid-1960s, McCartney – not to mention John Lennon and George Harrison – found himself influenced by the ferocious tones achieved by Eric Clapton in his work with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Cream.

That aggression, in turn, influenced perhaps McCartney's finest guitar moment in the Beatles' catalog, his fiery guitar solo on the Harrison tune, Taxman.

“Turned on” – as he put it to GP in the same 1990 chat – after his exposure to the nascent British blues-rock scene, McCartney “went and bought an Epiphone. So then I could wind up with the Vox amp and get some nice feedback.”

Whenever a list of the world’s greatest guitar players is compiled, Jimmy Page makes the top bracket.

But who does he put in the upper echelon of his own greatest-guitar roster?

We know a few already. The Led Zeppelin guitarist, who was honored with a new Gibson signature SJ-200 acoustic guitar last month, has referred to many of his guitar heroes in various interviews over the years.

For example, Page was influenced early on by Elvis Presley guitarists Scotty Moore and James Burton, Gene Vincent, and blues guitarists Elmore James and Muddy Waters, to name a few.

But who among his peers did he feel was outstanding?

“Out of all the guitarists to come out of the 1960s," he once offered when asked about his contemporary favorites, "Beck, Clapton, [Alvin] Lee, Townshend and I are still having a go. That says something."

Page has also had praise for the great Elliott Randall, who played the solos on Steely Dan's "Reelin' in the Years."

And, “in a totally different style,” Page offered “the guy who played on the Maria Muldaur single, "Midnight at the Oasis," Amos Garrett. He’s Les Paul oriented, and Les Paul is the one, really. We wouldn’t be anywhere if he hadn’t invented the electric guitar.”

But if one player tops Page's list — a guitarist who was at one point his contemporary — it's Jimi Hendrix.

“We’ve lost the best guitarist any of us ever had, and that was Hendrix,” he told Rolling Stone in March 1975, just five years after Jimi's death. “It is just kind of a shame that I never really had a chance to talk with him or hear him. I heard his records, naturally, but it would’ve been a thrill to see how he worked things out onstage. That’s quite another ballgame, as you know."

In his Rolling Stone chat, the guitarist, who helped launch London's new Gibson Garage earlier this year, singled out the one word he hates hearing when it comes to guitar players.

“The only term I won’t accept is ‘genius’,” he said. “It gets used far too loosely in rock and roll. When you hear the melodic structures of what classical musicians put together and you compare it to that of a rock and roll record, there’s a hell of a long way rock and roll has to go.

“There’s a certain standard in classical music that allows the application of the term ‘genius’, but you’re treading on thin ice if you start applying it to rock and rollers.”

There are plenty of musical "what ifs" out there in the ether. From the possibilities of the Beatles continuing to make music together throughout the 1970s, to a world where Bob Dylan never went electric, to the debated direction that Jimi Hendrix's music may have taken had he lived beyond 27. However, a scenario where Jeff Beck joined the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd probably wasn't on anyone's bingo card.

But that's exactly what the British guitar icon revealed to Alice Cooper in a chat in 2010.

As Beck explains it in the recently resurfaced video clip, he was completely unaware that the remaining members of Pink Floyd were hesitant to approach him about joining the band. He tells Cooper he "didn't know until about a week ago that they were after me," and said they were "all afraid to come and ask me to be in the band."

This all seems to have occurred during the mid to late 1960s, when Beck, following his stint with the Yardbirds, was already a legend on electric guitar. The band found themselves at a crossroads due to fragile frontman Syd Barrett's declining state caused by a combination of psychedelic drug use and mental health problems.

Surprisingly, Beck wasn't sure if he'd even seen the band perform at the time. "I may have seen them at the Speakeasy Club in London," he tells Cooper. "But because it was so dark in there, and they were all prismatic, they could have changed personnel every day, and you wouldn't have noticed."

David Gilmour, of course, ended up being the perfect fit for the role, but considering Pink Floyd's psychedelic and somewhat cosmic soundscapes of the time, Beck's scorching solo work could have fit right in — and then some.

Of course, the Floyd collab happened in part with Beck when he contributed guitar parts on Roger Waters' 1992 album, Amused to Death. He also shared the stage with David Gilmour on more than one occasion.

Later on in the short video clip, Beck reveals that he found himself flirting with another legendary band only a few short years later, as the Rolling Stones were hunting for a new guitarist after Mick Taylor's departure in 1975. However, as he tells it, it was a nonstarter and clearly never truly in the cards.

"I'd already agreed to do the Blow by Blow album. It was all set," Beck explains. "They said, 'Come over and play a couple of tracks.' That's what I did. And then when I went to go, they went, 'Where are you going?!'"

Despite the opportunity, Beck knew it wasn't the right fit. "Me and Keith would never have got on," he tells Cooper bluntly. "They were gloriously sloppy... on an Olympic scale. But that's the miracle of the Stones. I kind of like the fact that they're a sloppy bar band. I think that makes it cool."

"I asked Charlie at the end, 'Do you guys know any endings?' He says, 'No, we really don't. We never practiced. We just stop the song somewhere.'"

Ultimately, Beck clearly had no regrets about any missed opportunities, and even suggested his old bandmate Ronnie Wood for the job. "It's a good job I recommended him, isn't it?" he says before sharing one final amusing interaction with the band's bassist, Bill Wyman. "I actually picked Bill's bass guitar up and started playing like Larry Graham, and dust flew off. It smelled like an antique shop. And he said, 'Oi, you're going to break a string!' I went, 'All right, Bill.' Yeah, I'll leave that one alone."

"I couldn't feel the calling," Beck says. "There was something going on up there that definitely would have prevented either of those from happening."

In the end, we all benefited musically from the direction that all of the parties involved went. However, you still can't help but wonder what Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" or the Stones' "Start Me Up" would have sounded like with Beck's unique approach to the instrument—and unfortunately, we'll never know.

You have to hunt through Beck's YouTube channel for more from this candid interview with Cooper. However, another clip from the sit-down shows the guitarist discussing his love of Les Paul, whom he had described as his "hero" and a "musical pioneer" on more than one occasion, stating:

"He was the first guy that came out with a fast, very trebly-sounding guitar with a slap echo, you know, in '49 or something," Beck explained, feeling that he's had to defend Paul's legacy at times.

Beck also recounts a story where he was being interviewed. "I remember some snotty journalist laughing when I said Les Paul because he was so passé," Beck recounted. "And I said, 'Excuse me, pal, without him, I wouldn't be here, and a good many of you bastards wouldn't either.'" Well said, Jeff. Well said.