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.

As drummer for the Yardbirds — the only one in the British band’s history, in fact — Jim McCarty spent six years during the ’60s staring at the backsides of three of the greatest guitarists in rock history. That, in turn, gave him a front-row seat in the early careers of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? And with time it gets better and better,” McCarty, who still leads the band, tells us from his current home in France. “Going back to the time, they were all learning how to do it. They were all part of the team, as I say. We were all trying to play and having good fun playing that sort of music. And they were all very different.”

“Very,” of course, may be a vast understatement, of course, and McCarty not surprisingly has a keen view of each of his former bandmates, as well as others who have played guitar for the Yardbirds during the past 62 years.

Here he shares his recollections of working with Clapton, who performed with the group from October 1963 to March 5, 1965, the day their first hit, “For Your Love,” was released. Unhappy with the group’s pop direction, Clapton signed up with John Mayall’s Bluebreakers.

“Eric was coming from a difficult upbringing, because he wasn’t really brought up by his parents,” McCarty says. “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.

“He was totally dedicated to the blues, and also seemingly very ambitious and very much into fashion and how he looked. He made sure he was dressed in the latest gear, and the coolest clothes. Even when he came to the audition, he was very well-dressed. And he would change. First of all it was an Ivy League style, and he had a crew cut, and then he’d suddenly grow his hair and grow his sideburns and have different clothes and become like a different person.

“Eric was obviously gonna go somewhere. You knew that yes, one day he’ll be a big star, ’cause he was driven to do that, and he was getting a reputation while he was playing with us. He used to copy blues solos — Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy or Buddy Guy or somebody — and copy them note for note before he got his own thing going. But he loved blues and he was very, very serious about it, even though he did actually mess around quite a lot with us in terms of jokes and funny voices and impersonating weird people.

“But he was a very moody sort of guy. We’d be traveling in a transit van, going to the shows, and he would sit in the corner and not talk to anybody. The rest of us would be messing about, and he'd be in a little world of his own, obviously quite unhappy with the way it was going.

“We were trying to get a hit single. We were quite desperate, actually. We tried some of his ideas for singles, various songs he suggested. I think there was a song called ‘Putty in Your Hands’ that the Shirelles did, and a Major Lance song which I can’t remember. And ‘Hang on Sloopy’ was another one he suggested, before the McCoys. [The Vibrations released the original version in 1964 prior to the McCoys'’version, which featured the late Rick Derringer on guitar and vocals].

“They were all good songs but they weren’t gonna be hits. They didn’t stand out like ‘For Your Love’ did, and when Paul Samwell-Smith suggested we do it like with the harpsichord and the bowed bass and everything, Eric didn’t like the way that was taken over. He thought we were selling out. But he was seemingly quite happy with John Mayall.”

Clapton joined Mayall within a month of leaving the Yardbirds, and went on to build his reputation as Britain’s leading blues electric guitar player with the release of Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton in July 1966.

By then, he was already gone, having formed Cream with bass guitarist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker the prior month. Clapton would bounce from band to band over the next years, forming first Blind Faith, then Derek and the Dominos, the one group he thought would last years. They broke up less than a year after releasing their studio album, Layla.& Other Assorted Love Songs.

“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.”

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.

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!”

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.”

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!”

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.

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.

In the mid '60s, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers was a potent breeding ground for some of Britain's best blues guitarists, with Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor all cutting their teeth in the band.

Given his reputation, Mayall was always on the lookout for the next sensation when it came to replacing the sizable shoes each of his lead guitarists left behind. As it turns out, Jeff Beck was in Mayall's crosshairs sometime after the guitarist departed from the Yardbirds, whom he played with from 1965 to 1966.

“John called my mum several times,” Beck said in a recently republished interview with Guitar World from 2010. “He found my mum’s number, and she said to me, ‘Oh, that John Mayall sounds very nice!’ [laughs]”

Considering what a spot in Mayall's group could do for a player's career, the offer had to be tantalizing. Beck, however, had his reasons for turning down the bluesman.

“I didn’t want to be playing blues all of the time,” he said. Beck also acknowledged the weight of expectation that would be on whomever took up the role.

“I’d seen Eric with them, and he was fantastic, really. He did the job better than I could have, and I just didn’t want to have that challenge. My musical taste was changing radically from 12-bar blues.

“I might have done better in that band than in the Yardbirds," he added. “But I certainly would not have been given the same kind of free rein to do the experimenting that I did in the Yardbirds.”

Mayall had seen Beck strut his stuff in the band, itself a production line for hot-shot blues players, and he didn't mince words when he spoke to Beck afterward.

“He was very straightforward," Beck recalled. "He never embellished or gave us any flowery comments about the gig. He said, ‘The audience loved it, but there was not much blues, was there?’ And I thought, Excuse me, but this isn’t a blues band. It sort of was, but he’s a purist.

“I didn’t want to be mimicking Chicago blues musicians forever. My thinking was, ‘We’re not them, we’re not Black. We’re British middle-class kids and let’s get on and do our own music.’”

It's not clear at which point in the band's revolving door of lead guitarists Mayall pursued Beck. The mention of Clapton, who saw Beck as a rival, suggests it may have been around the time Peter Green talked his way into a spot in the band, or just after his short reign.

Certainly, the period following his departure from the Yardbirds was difficult for Beck. He was caught off guard when Jimi Hendrix arrived in London in late 1966 and began forging a heavy, experimental blues rock that pointed the way forward for rock guitarists.

“For me, the first shockwave was Jimi Hendrix," Beck said. "That was the major thing that shook everybody up over here. Even though we’d all established ourselves as fairly safe in the guitar field, he came along and reset all of the rules in one evening.”

Hendrix, then, nearly derailed Beck's career entirely. Beck was desperate to prove his worth against the run of the current.

“Next thing you know, Eric was moving ahead with Cream, and it was kicking off in big chunks. But me, I was left with nothing,” he says with an air of sadness. “That was the hurtful part because I didn’t have anything to come back at them with.”

Beck previously spoke about this period in his life, telling Guitar Player, “I'd lost my girl, Hendrix had come and smeared everybody across the floor... it wasn't looking too rosy.”

Dusting himself off, he told Guitar World that he “scraped by” with drummer Cozy Powell for 1971’s Rough and Ready and 1972’s Jeff Beck Group albums, and compared his power trio with bass player Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice to “Cream on acid”.

It wasn’t until 1975’s now iconic Blow by Blow album that Beck found the groove that established him as a solo artist and guitar icon in his own right.

For a brief period in 1966, the Yardbirds had not only one of the most formidable electric guitar tandems of their day, but what to this day remains one of the most formidable two-guitar attacks in rock history.

Amidst a series of personnel shuffles, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck would serve as the band's two guitar players, touring together with the group and recording the seminal single, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.

Though the two budding virtuosos had plenty of mutual respect for one another – indeed, their friendship would extend far, far beyond their time together in the Yardbirds – it perhaps isn't a huge surprise that their respective styles occasionally clashed in the band.

“Sometimes it worked really great, and sometimes it didn't,” Page said of his musical interaction with Beck during that time in a 1977 interview with Guitar Player. “There were a lot of harmonies that I don't think anyone else had really done, not like we did. The Stones were the only ones who got into two guitars going at the same time, like on old Muddy Waters records. But we were more into solos rather than a rhythm thing.

“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,” Page went on. “That was all right for the areas of improvisation, but there were other parts where it just did not work.”

Page was quick to clarify that the occasional musical disharmony came not from any deficiency of character on anyone's part, but different six-string evolutions from shared musical roots.

“You've got to understand that Beck and I came from the same sort of roots,” Page told GP in the same interview. “If you've got things you enjoy, then you want to do them – to the horrifying point where we'd done our first LP [Led Zeppelin] with You Shook Me, and then I heard he'd done You Shook Me [on Truth]. I was terrified because I thought they'd be the same. But I hadn't even known he'd done it, and he hadn't known that we had.”

Though Beck had left the Yardbirds by the end of 1966, Page stuck with the ever-evolving band until their dissolution in 1968, and was even left with their name. With vocalist Robert Plant, bass guitar ace John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, Page formed a band initially christened “The New Yardbirds.” The New Yardbirds, of course, would then become a little band called Led Zeppelin...

Gibson has released a new 1959 Les Paul replica to commemorate the late Jeff Beck’s time in The Yardbirds, but only 130 will be made. 

Today, Jeff Beck is remembered as a formidable and highly influential electric guitar player, predominantly as a solo artist, but it was his time in The Yardbirds that helped launch his career. 

The band had a matchless production line of next-best-thing musicians, with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page also cutting their teeth in the band.   

As such, the company's latest history-honoring release focuses on those early days of Beck’s career, with the ‘59 ‘Yardburst’ a faithful recreation of the guitar he plied his trade with in the Yardbirds. 

Mirroring the specs of its progenitor, it offers a one-piece lightweight mahogany body with its Murphy Lab-aged tops and Dark Cherry Sunburst finish aiming to replicate the appearance of the original as closely as possible.  

There’s also a '50s rounded C-profile mahogany neck, 22-fret Indian Rosewood fingerboard, Custombucker pickups complete with white bobbins – a key feature of Beck's guitar – and a black three-ply pickguard. 

Each of the 130 models in this limited run are handcrafted by the artisans at the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville, Tennessee, offering a unique way for fans to celebrate Beck’s potent legacy.  

Though its release comes 18 months after Beck’s passing at 78, his wife Sandra Beck has explained that he was involved with the project’s early steps. 

“Jeff was enormously proud to have owned the original of this guitar,” she says. “He was aware and fully supportive of the amazing job and love that Gibson Custom provided to create this instrument and would have hoped that this guitar would give hours of pleasure to those who play it.”

Each instrument ships in a specially aged Lifton hardshell case, with memorabilia celebrating Beck’s Yardbirds legacy and illustrious solo career.  

Beck would continue to play his beloved ‘59 Les Paul after parting ways with The Yardbirds in 1966. It played a key role in the early Jeff Beck Group albums before he transitioned to an Olympic White Fender Stratocaster. 

His 2014 Custom Shop Strat has recently been seen in the hands of John Mayer, playing it during Dead & Company’s ongoing Las Vegas residency at The Sphere. 

The Gibson Custom Jeff Beck ‘YardBurst’ 1959 Les Paul Standard is available now for $9,999.

Head to Gibson for more information. 

For a brief period in 1966, the Yardbirds had not only one of the most formidable electric guitar tandems of their day, but what to this day remains one of the most formidable two-guitar attacks in rock history. 

Amidst a series of personnel shuffles, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck would serve as the band's two guitar players, touring together with the group and recording the seminal single, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.

Though the two budding virtuosos had plenty of mutual respect for one another – indeed, their friendship would extend far, far beyond their time together in the Yardbirds – it perhaps isn't a huge surprise that their respective styles occasionally clashed in the band. 

“Sometimes it worked really great, and sometimes it didn't,” Page said of his musical interaction with Beck during that time in a 1977 interview with Guitar Player. “There were a lot of harmonies that I don't think anyone else had really done, not like we did. The Stones were the only ones who got into two guitars going at the same time, like on old Muddy Waters records. But we were more into solos rather than a rhythm thing.

“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,” Page went on. “That was all right for the areas of improvisation, but there were other parts where it just did not work.”

Page was quick to clarify that the occasional musical disharmony came not from any deficiency of character on anyone's part, but different six-string evolutions from shared musical roots.  

“You've got to understand that Beck and I came from the same sort of roots,” Page told GP in the same interview. “If you've got things you enjoy, then you want to do them – to the horrifying point where we'd done our first LP [Led Zeppelin] with You Shook Me, and then I heard he'd done You Shook Me [on Truth]. I was terrified because I thought they'd be the same. But I hadn't even known he'd done it, and he hadn't known that we had.”

Though Beck had left the Yardbirds by the end of 1966, Page stuck with the ever-evolving band until their dissolution in 1968, and was even left with their name. With vocalist Robert Plant, bass guitar ace John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, Page formed a band initially christened “The New Yardbirds.” The New Yardbirds, of course, would then become a little band called Led Zeppelin...

This article originally appeared in the June 1967 issue of Guitar Player.

Cream is just that – three jazz veterans skimmed off the top of British rock. Since their U.S. arrival a year ago, they have continued to groove growing audiences with one of the best avant-garde sounds in the electric scene.

Their sound has firm roots in the extemporaneous beat of 20-year-old drummer, Ginger Baker. But what has made Cream rise to the top is the mindbending styles of guitarists Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. 22-year-old Eric, whose lead guitar unwinds on top of the staging provided by Jack and Ginger, has been called one of the best artists of his kind in the world – by such guitarists as Mike Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia.

Eric Clapton is a veteran of the original and much-lauded Yardbirds, and has worked with blues artist John Mayall.

“I was 19 when I left the Yardbirds. I intended to give up then. But John Mayall offered me a job and I took it because I needed the bread, and I needed some kind of identity too, because I was very down.“

Eric played with Mayall for a year and a half and picked up the double cutaway Gibson he still uses today. He worked lead as well – as setting-up most of the group’s new arrangements. Finishing that gig, he left for Greece.

“I was about 20 or 21 and I took some musicians with me. We had this big thing about working our way around the world as a band. We got to Greece and broke up.“

Then, there was the time in Greece that Clapton had to escape from a club...

“I couldn’t get my amp out of the club because they would have cut my hands off, so I just managed to get away with my guitar.“

After that, Eric returned to the States and joined up again with Mayall, remaining with him until Cream was formed. Eric had started playing the guitar at 16, a Kay electric with an old Vox amp his parents had bought for him. He claims his “hanging-around“ with guitarists was the reason for his dismissal from the art school near London that he was attending. He began by teaching himself to play folk-blues.

“I found out all I could about the different Delta styles – people like Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton. The musical thought which was going through the whole thing interested me, and it still does. I find it incredibly fascinating because there ware a lot of things which just can’t be explained – like the inventiveness going around at that time.“

Blues echoes throughout Eric’s work, whether he is trying to play blues or not – but it is a different style of blues, Eric’s own style.

“Everything I play is structurally blues,“ he says. “If you ask me to play baroque or Indian music, or something except blues, I wouldn’t be able to. Whether or not I’m playing pure blues isn’t the point, but whether or not I’m playing it good or bad is.“ 

Since he began playing in Cream almost two years ago, Eric feels he has grown – that he has learned to expand on his sense of timing. As we have seen, he admits his sound is not strictly blues because Cream is unique, a mixture of the different styles each of the trio brought with him to the group.

“Our music cannot be categorized, because a lot of the material we play is not blues – it’s another thing completely, probably brand new.“

Jack Bruce is a quiet Scotsman who came to Cream from Manfred Mann. He plays bass and writes and sings most of the vocals, but he does not claim to be a “lyric writer or poet.“ 

“When I write words for songs they are very simple thoughts that could come to anyone’s mind – that normally occur to people.“

When he was 13, Jack had studied both the bass and the cello, but circumstances allowed the cello to win out during his earlier years.

“There happened to be a bass in school which I played because it was there. It was a big bass and I was only about four feet tall, so I tried standing on chairs and things but it really didn’t work. 

“This teacher there was an old-time bass player and he was really great. He told me to go away and come back when I was big enough, so in the meantime I played cello. I started playing bass again after I left school and I picked it up in two days. It was a natural thing.“

Charlie Mingus was one of the first musicians to influence Jack. “He was doing the same things I was, only he was doing them better,“ he says. 

Jack played with several groups and found he would be better off with an electric, because as the music grew louder, his string bass was coming on weaker and weaker.

“I didn’t know anything about amplification, so I just got these amplifiers and tied bits of wire from one to another in this big, huge pile. It was a fantastic sound, but it blew me up, so I decided I had to go and buy some real stuff.“

This led Jack to get a Fender six-string bass and a Vox amp. Cream has two albums out on Atco labels, Fresh Cream, and more recently, Disraeli Gears. Jack claims things simply happened during their recording sessions.

“We don’t really know what songs we’re going to do when we go into the studio. I read an article in a magazine lately about how the Beatles recorded Baby You’re A Rich Man, and the way they did it is almost exactly the same way we record. We get a good sound track and then fool around with it.“ 

The group recorded Disraeli Gears in four days as sort of an “impromptu thing.“ Eric calls the album “kind of a cross between what we are like in the studio and what we’re like on stage.“

Both Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton record through the board, instead of using an open mic. 

“I’ve been forced to go through the board,“ says Jack. “In England, they heard my sound and it was so unlike any bass sound that they thought it was wrong, and would take my amp away.“

When recording they use only one amplifier apiece, a Marshall. But on stage they build a different sound, using two separate 100-watt amps, each amp running through two large cabinets, with each cabinet holding four twelve-inch speakers. They don’t rely on feedback for intensity. Eric is opposed to feedback because he admits he has never been able to really control it.

“You see,“ he says. “our sound is like an old blues sound, but heavily amplified. The sound I’ve always wanted and like is the sound that all those people used on the very early records of Muddy Waters, you get it? It’s that sound, only much louder. I think a lot of people are getting hung-up about getting mechanical sound. They’re trying to invent ways of doing it to hide the fact they can’t do it with their fingers.“

So Cream makes music, their own kind of music. Blues, rock, jazz, call it what you want. Even they have difficulty defining it.

As Jack says, “You can talk about the things that happen when you’re making music, but you can’t talk about the music itself because it’s a sound. It doesn’t translate the same way words do.“

From 1968 to 2010, Jeff Beck appeared in Guitar Player more than any other guitar magazine.

Speaking with the guitarist about his 2003 album, Jeff, associate editor Barry Cleveland took a moment to discuss nearly every interviewer’s favorite Beck-related subject: Jimi Hendrix.

The following interview extracts appeared in the September 2003 issue of Guitar Player...

Jimi acknowledged being inspired by your playing and your performance style during your Yardbirds days.

That’s amazing.

And what he did with the Experience was, in some ways, an intensification and extension of Beck’s Yardbirds. How did that affect you at the time?

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. 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?”

I was having trouble with relationships and getting by on a little money. It was rough all the time. I knew when I was beat, and I sat back for a year asking myself if I had anything left in me. I had a car tape player as soon as they were available, and I used to cruise around in a Corvette just listening and trying to focus on stuff – trying to figure out what I should do next to stay in the business.

I wanted to be friends with Jimi on a less flippant level, which was difficult to do. We had the perfect opportunity while driving to a jam in upstate New York. The real Jimi was coming out as he was driving, and I thought, This is probably the greatest moment of my life. And then – lo and behold – just as I had become friends with him, the guy went and died.

You were talking about how it was hard seeing others succeed when you weren’t making much money. Several times you have gotten to the edge of greater success, and then, for some reason, not gone ahead. Do you fear success?

Probably. The biggest incident of that type was not playing Woodstock [with the Jeff Beck Group]. We were still breaking ground and doing our homework in bars and small venues, and even without the bad vibes in the band, I didn’t think we could have pulled it off…

I just had to follow my instinct and say, “Right, well, I ain’t doing that.” And obviously Ronnie and Rod had got some scheme up their sleeves in case I buggered off, and in hindsight they did the right thing.

If Jeff Beck was aimless after the Yardbirds, there was one man who was willing to point him in a particular direction.

Mickie Most was a producer and manager who, by the dawn of 1967, had scored hits with the Animals (“House of the Rising Sun”), Herman’s Hermits (“I’m Into Something Good”) and Donovan (“Sunshine Superman”).

Beck’s impact on the Yardbirds hadn’t gone unnoticed by Most, and he quickly set about signing the guitarist with an eye toward turning him into a pop star. It was in this guise that Beck released his first solo records “Hi Ho Silver Lining” and “Tallyman,” which reached number 14 and 30, respectively, in the U.K. mid-year.

He followed them up with an instrumental version of “Love Is Blue,” a song that had been an entry in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest before going on to become one of the biggest hit singles of the year for Vicky Leandros. Released on February 16, 1968, Beck’s version scored a respectable 23 on the charts.

But the guitarist had little stomach for becoming a pop star. Eric Clapton, his predecessor in the Yardbirds, was turning rock on its head with Cream, while his successor, Jimmy Page, was revving up the Yardbirds into a hard rock act that would soon become Led Zeppelin.

Meanwhile, no one could touch Jimi Hendrix.

Even as he recorded “Love Is Blue,” Beck had begun putting together a group of his own. He’d already found his lead vocalist, Rod Stewart, who’d performed with Long John Baldry and keyboardist Brian Auger in Steampacket, a British blues band put together by Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky.

Stewart had contributed backing vocals to “Tallyman” and sang lead on its flipside, “Rock My Plimsoul.” Beck recalled his decisive meeting with Rod the Mod to Total Guitar in 2016. “Let’s not beat around the bush, I was pretty down at the time,” he said. “I’d lost my girl, Hendrix had come and smeared everybody across the floor… it wasn’t looking too rosy.

“I’d fallen out with the Yardbirds – whatever happened, I was out, and I’m facing a Monday morning just outside London thinking, What’s the point? It’s all gone against me. So I went to the Cromwell Inn, which was my last hope of preventing anything silly happening.”

Taking his seat, he noticed “a bloke in the corner” slumped over his beer. It was Rod. After leaving Steampacket, he’d joined Shotgun Express in 1966, a blues outfit formed by Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood, but it failed to have any measure of success.

With Beck, however, Stewart would finally get the notice he deserved.

Beck also signed up Ron Wood as second guitarist, and former Brian Auger bassist Dave Ambrose. “Jeff couldn’t take him, though, so he asked me, ‘Would you mind switching to bass?’” Wood explained to Guitar World in March 1985. “And I said, ‘Nothing could suit me better because I’m so stagnant on guitar at the moment that I’ve really run out of direction.’”

After working with a number of drummers, including Clem Cattini and Aynsley Dunbar, Beck settled on Micky Waller, a pal of Stewart’s from Steampacket.

It was this lineup that toured the U.S. in early 1968 at the recommendation of future Zeppelin manager Peter Grant. The group went over so well that Grant was able to secure them a contract with Epic Records, which released the Jeff Beck Group’s debut, Truth, that July.The album was an instant hit, reaching number 15 on the U.S. charts.

They took a heavier direction on their next album, 1969’s Beck-Ola, which saw Waller replaced by Tony Newman. Like its predecessor, Beck-Ola went to number 15 after its release that June, but already, the Jeff Beck Group was breaking up. Beck had fired Wood for complaining too much. Stewart, who’d grown close to Wood, no longer found touring fun without him.

In July, Stewart, Wood and Waller regrouped in the studio to record the singer’s debut album, An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down.

The Jeff Beck Group was scheduled to perform at Woodstock, but Beck pulled the plug. “I didn’t think we could have pulled it off,” he told Guitar Player in 2003. “I just didn’t think we were big-stage material, and I couldn’t bear to be preserved on film playing out of my depth, and having Rod hating the sight of me on screen. Screw that!”

Stewart had his own reasons. “It was a great band to sing with,” he would say of the Jeff Beck Group, “but I couldn’t take all the aggravation and unfriendliness that developed.”

The guitarist re-assembled a new Jeff Beck Group for his next effort. Released in October 1971, Rough and Ready featured Beck with singer/rhythm guitarist Bobby Tench, bassist Clive Chaman, keyboardist Max Middleton and drummer Cozy Powell.

While critics lauded Beck’s guitar work, the songs and Tench’s vocals were considered weak. The band’s self-titled follow-up fared no better despite the involvement of Steve Cropper, one of Beck’s influences, as producer.

It was here that fate presented Beck with a second chance.

In July 1969, while the first incarnation of the Jeff Beck Group was dissolving, he was planning to replace his bandmates with bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, founding members of Vanilla Fudge, whom he’d met in 1967.

It all came to an end on November 12, when Beck crashed his car, suffering a skull fracture that took him out of commission for a year. By the time he recovered, Bogert and Appice had formed the hard rock group Cactus.

But with the original Cactus breaking up in 1972, Beck saw his opportunity to reconnect with Bogert and Appice.

The result was one of rock’s great supergroups, Beck, Bogert & Appice. The guitarist saw the power trio as a way to take his music to a new level. “I was trying to play subtle rock and roll,” he told NME of his earlier music. “That stuff was more suitable for clubs, not big stages. This new group will play much heavier music.”

The trio’s sole, self-titled album, released in 1973, drew more from the funk and fusion world than Beck’s previous recordings, particularly on tracks like “Jizz Whizz” and a version of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” It rose to number 12 on the Billboard charts, an auspicious beginning.

But as with the Yardbirds, touring took a toll on Beck’s relations with the band. “When the album came out, we started to tour, and the band turned into factions,” Bogert told Classic Rock. “It wasn’t the fun I hoped it was going to be. The thrill of it all had been so wonderful in the beginning, but then there were personality conflicts, and things went downhill quickly.”

It ended backstage before a gig at the Rainbow in London, in January 1974. Beck got in Bogert’s face, and the bassist threw a punch.

The sessions for a new album were abandoned. By May, the group was officially no more.

“Rod Stewart had told me long ago, regarding Jeff: ‘Don’t do it. You’ll do an album or two and then it’ll be over,’” Appice told Classic Rock. “But we didn’t listen to that advice. But that’s what happened. It ended up a mess at the end.”

Nels Cline follows two distinct tracks in his guitar playing, alternating the avant-jazz arc he explores solo along with the psychedelic-punk-freakout textures he brings to Wilco.

Here are the five riffs that changed his life, and inspired his own fearless fretting...

1. “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds

“I had to listen carefully to see what was going on here,” says Cline. “I learned later in life that I have this great love – as does much of western culture – with the major ninth.

“I think that sound, which has to do with the idiomatic aspects of open strings on a guitar, is what created the term ‘jingle jangle’– not just the timbre of a 12-string, but the sound of ringing, open strings. 

"That sound is irresistible.”

2. “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” by the Yardbirds

“This is one of the most marvelous and exciting and colorful recorded performances of a song.

“If you think about audio engineering at that time – which was a 4-track deck, I’m sure – I don’t even know how they did it.

“There are so many crazy things going on with the guitar. It’s sort of like satellite Sputnik psychedelia. 

"It still gives me a rush.”

3. “Manic Depression” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

“This is the song that convinced me I was going to play guitar. 

"When you hear the intro riff, and all the other stuff he does in the solo, he goes completely mad.

“I was sold. There was no way I was not going to do music for life after that. It was like being jolted with electricity – like flying – and it still feels like that every time I hear it.”

4. “Marquee Moon” by Television

“‘Marquee Moon’ is a veritable feast of memorable and influential guitar riffs.

“Tom Verlaine’s long guitar solo ends in one of the most memorable examples of a mixolydian scale in its most rudimentary form, and it sounds like absolute poetry.

“Then, there’s this beautiful, John Cipollina-influenced thing he plays with his finger, but I do it with the bar.

“That’s where I get my penchant for the ‘wiggle’ – which I use all over songs like Wilco’s ‘Impossible Germany.’”

5. “West Germany” by Minutemen

“The Minutemen had an incredibly diverse, poetic vision. I played on a double bill at McCabe’s Guitar Shop with them in the ’80s with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra.

“I found D. Boon’s note choices and phrasing to be almost spooky. His presence, charisma, power, and commitment was galvanizing.”

Would psychedelic rock have happened at all were it not for Jeff Beck?

As Eric Clapton’s replacement in the Yardbirds, Beck kicked off his 20-month tenure with ingenuity at his first recording session with the group, in April 1965, for “Heart Full of Soul.”

Though he soon moved on to blues rock and jazz fusion, Beck established a template for psychedelia – as well as heavy metal – during his time with the Yardbirds that would be followed by countless future guitarists.

Here are five game-changing tracks from the electric guitar innovator’s mid-'60s psychedelic era…

1. “Heart Full of Soul”

Ground zero for psychedelic guitar, “Heart Full of Soul” shows how ready, willing and able Beck was to cut a new facet in the British Invasion’s rock gem by emulating a sitar with his Fender Esquire through a Sola Sound Tone Bender, with the D string droning beneath his fuzz-toned Indian-tinged riff.

It was the launch of a new exotic era for rock.

2. “Shapes of Things”

Beck upped the psychedelic ante by layering two guitar solos on this 1966 follow-up to “Heart Full of Soul.”

Beneath his slithery fuzz-toned lines, he demonstrates his creative use of controlled feedback and string bending to produce demonic howls that reportedly influenced the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s “East-West” and Jimi Hendrix’s sonic experiments.

“I started finding the resonant points on the neck where it came in best,” Beck said. “I loved it because it was a most peculiar sound that contrasted wildly with a plucked string, this round trombone-like noise coming from nowhere.”

3. “Over Under Sideways Down”

After creating this cut’s infectious rockabilly bass line, Beck strapped on his guitar and came up with the tune’s topsy-turvy lead line.

"We needed an intro, and Jeff peeled one out, an instantly recognizable peal that completely took us by surprise,” drummer Jim McCarty recalled.

Once again, he serves up a fuzz-toned lead line that melds classic rock and roll rhythms with Eastern exoticism.

4. “Jeff’s Boogie”

This souped-up take on Chuck Berry’s “Guitar Boogie” shows not only Beck’s guitar virtuosity but also the diversity of his range through its incorporation of rock, jazz and blues licks.

Combining hammer-ons, pull-offs, double-stops, false harmonics and more, Beck is a speed demon who could very well have claimed to be the godfather of shred.

5. “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”

“We were on the threshold of this new thing,” Beck would say. “The Yardbirds were the first psychedelic band.”

No song demonstrates that better than this cut, one of just two that featured the Beck-Page guitar tandem.

Whereas Beck had previously relied on fuzz and exotic scales to produce his lysergic vibes, here he uses everything at his disposal to whip up a maelstrom of police sirens, revving motorcycle engines and squealing licks that send shivers up the spine. 

It’s the aural equivalent of a bad trip.

The Surrey Delta scene was home to many blues artists in the post-war period, but three stand apart, if not for their guitar prowess then for the coincidences that tie them together forever.

Born within 15 months of each other in 1944 and 1945, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton are not only the best-known exponents of the British blues explosion – they also grew up within 20 miles of one another in Surrey.

What’s more, each went on to perform in the Yardbirds and to enjoy long and successful careers as the most celebrated guitarists of the classic rock era.

Not all was harmonious, however.

While Beck and Page became great friends in their teens after being introduced by Beck’s sister, Annetta, Beck said he and Clapton didn’t cross paths until years after he took Slowhand’s place in the Yardbirds, and that they spent many years nursing an “uncomfortable rivalry.”

“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, so that was the end of that.”

Beck and Clapton would share stages over the years, one of the most notable being at The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball in 1981, to benefit Amnesty International, where they performed a blues set along with Beck’s Stevie Wonder-penned hit, “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers.”

They would meet up again two years later at the ARMS Charity Concerts to benefit multiple sclerosis research.

Despite these and other encounters, Beck was genuinely surprised when Clapton contributed an interview to the 2018 documentary film Still on the Run: The Jeff Beck Story.

“I must admit there was a tear, especially with Eric,” Beck told Rolling Stone. “I never expected him to bother to be in it. I studied his face over and over, just to make sure there wasn’t something else going on,” he added with a laugh.

Beck went on to offer that the source of friction most likely resided within his own head.

“It’s funny how Eric’s character was emblazoned in my brain as being a real ‘bovver boy’ – like, a force to be reckoned with, someone who’s moody, maybe punchy.”

In other words, perhaps a little bit like Beck himself.

Order Still on the Run: The Jeff Beck Story here.

I grew up with Jeff Beck as a primary guitar hero, along with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Frank Zappa and Johnny Winter. 

They all represented my bridge into jazz, making it somewhat easier to absorb the more advanced expressions of John McLaughlin, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Pat Martino and others who came later in my musical appreciation.

Beck's 1968 debut as a leader, Truth, was the second album I bought with my own money. 

His psychedelic, wah-wah/echo-inflected renditions of Howlin’ Wolf’s “I Ain’t Superstitious” and Willie Dixon’s “You Shook Me” on that landmark recording blew my 14-year-old mind (though I had already been primed the year before by Hendrix’s Are You Experienced, the first album I ever bought with my own money).

Of course, I had actually heard Beck before buying Truth, though I didn’t realize it. 

AM radio was saturated with the Yardbirds’ hit single “Over Under Sideways Down” during the summer of 1966, when I was a precocious 12-year-old still under the spell of the Beatles.

And the snaky, Middle Eastern guitar line on that catchy song always stood out to me, even though I didn't know the player’s name at the time.

I also remember hearing “Shapes of Things,” the Yardbirds’ hit single that had come out earlier the same year, but it didn't register with me the same way "Over Under Sideways Down" had.

I regarded "Shapes" as catchy but no more adventurous than Paul Revere & the Raiders fare like “Just Like Me,” “Kicks” or “Good Thing," which had all come out around the same time.

Nothing in the Yardbirds’ discography had prepared me for Beck's radically reimagined, totally psychedelicized rendition of “Shapes of Things” that appeared on Truth when it was released in July 1968.

When Brian May, who called Beck’s loss “incalculable,” weighed in with this eulogy, I knew precisely what he felt: “Jeff was completely and utterly unique. And I was absolutely in awe of him. He was doing things which I kind of dreamed of doing. He brought an amazing voice to rock music which will never, ever be emulated or equaled. 

"He was wild, he was unquantifiable and extraordinarily difficult to understand, but one of the greatest guitar geniuses the world has ever seen and will ever see.”

That sentiment was evident from the outset with Truth, was reaffirmed with 1975’s Blow by Blow – his headfirst dive into the fusion pool – and remained crystal clear to me with the 1989 release of Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop, a power trio outing with keyboardist Tony Hymas and former Zappa drummer Terry Bozzio.

Guitar Shop ranges from blistering blues-rock performances like the hard-hitting title track and the throbbing “Big Block,” to the masterful harmonics showcase “Two Rivers” and the sublimely lyrical “Where Were You,” which ranks right alongside Hendrix’s “Little Wing” for sheer ethereal beauty.

But it was Truth that lit the fuse of my fascination with this British guitar god who would later ditch the pick in favor of attaining independence with his five right hand fingers on the strings.

Flesh on steel, he was able to realize richer chord voicings, more fluid phrasing and otherworldly tones.

Playing a ’59 Gibson Les Paul Standard through a Vox AC30 amplifier (love that tone!) and most definitely utilizing a pick, Beck opens Truth with the earthshattering “Shapes of Things.” 

He then moves into the heavy metal blues “Let Me Love You,” showcasing Rod Stewart’s classic raunch and roll vocals and a tight call-and-response toward the end featuring Beck’s urgent bent-string proclamations.

“Morning Dew,” a contemporary folk song by Canadian singer-songwriter Bonnie Dobson, reprises the nasty, wah-and-echo-drenched radical panning that Beck introduced on the opener, “Shapes of Things.”

“You Shook Me,” a Willie Dixon number previously recorded by Mississippi-born Chicago blues guitarist J.B. Lenoir, features some old school roadhouse piano pounding by Nicky Hopkins.

In his synopses of the songs on the back cover of Truth, Beck wrote of this rendition: “Probably the rudest sounds ever recorded, intended for listening to whilst angry or stoned. Last note of song is my guitar being sick. Well, so would you be if I smashed your guts for 2:28.”

His rendition of “Ol’ Man River,” the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II-penned tune from the Broadway musical Showboat, always struck me as a bit corny (particularly Keith Moon’s use of tympani) but it features some rare and noteworthy use of slide guitar by Beck.

His reverent, solo acoustic reading of the traditional “Greensleeves,” which kicks off side two of the vinyl, is nice but nothing to write home about.

“Rock My Plimsoul” is another excursion into blues-soaked proto-heavy metal, with Stewart delivering a classic gravelly-voiced performance. 

Beck’s solo here is at once nasty and tasty, and his call-and-response with Stewart toward the end of the tune is a veritable masterclass of six-string vocal expression.

The album’s instrumental single, “Beck’s Bolero,” penned by his Yardbirds bandmate Jimmy Page, was revelatory in 1968. 

Epic in scope and positively anthemic in retrospect, this adrenalized number features Page strumming on a Fender XII 12-string electric guitar while Beck wails with thick tones courtesy of his fuzzed-up Les Paul.

His answer to Ravel’s “Bolero,” “Beck’s Bolero” would become a staple in the guitarist‘s concerts for years to come. 

And with bassist John Paul Jones joining Page and Moon on this track, it was essentially the first attempt at what became Led Zeppelin, which formed later that year.

Beck’s use of slide guitar to emulate a pedal steel on this track was also incredibly forward-thinking. (In 1970, Joe Walsh adapted the slide guitar section of “Beck's Bolero” for a James Gang song, “The Bomber,” on the band’s James Gang Rides Again album).

Truth continues with the slow blues “Blues Deluxe,” featuring another earthy vocal performance by Stewart, some nice piano tinkling by Hopkins, and some decidedly down-home string bending and edgy speed licks by Beck.

This groundbreaking 1968 album concludes with a futuristic take on Willie Dixon’s “I Ain’t Superstitious” that includes some audacious wah-wah rivaled only at the time by Hendrix.

In the era of the ‘60s Rock Guitar Hero, Beck threw down the gauntlet with Truth.

Order Jeff Beck's groundbreaking 1968 debut album, Truth, here.

Jeff Beck's genius touched every guitarist. 

A true master of his instrument, Beck introduced the world to sounds and styles of electric guitar playing that defined the mid-‘60s era and laid the groundwork for the psychedelic rock revolution.

After replacing Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds in 1965 (at the suggestion of Jimmy Page) Beck recorded the fuzz box-pioneering “Heart Full of Soul” single, landing the group a top ten smash on both sides of the pond.

Proving himself the star of the show, the young guitarist started to branch out on a solo career, beginning with the 1966 recording “Beck’s Bolero.” The track was released in 1967 as the B-side to Beck's hit single, “Hi Ho Silver Lining.”

Featuring a mostly uncredited all-star cast that includes Page, John Paul Jones, Nicky Hopkins and Keith Moon, “Beck’s Bolero” also made an appearance on Beck's 1968 debut album, Truth.

From the earliest days of his decades-long solo career, Beck has commanded the respect of his peers.

“[Jimi Hendrix]” was fascinated by Jeff Beck’s playing,” said Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. “I have vivid recollections of tip-toeing into Hendrix’s hotel room, and he always had a record player, a giant piece of furniture, in his room. 

"He said: ‘Man, how do you think Jeff Beck is doing this?’ And I said: ‘Well, I can probably imagine Jeff Beck is scratching his head wondering the same about you.’”

In the mid-'70s, Page revealed to Guitar Player that he thought the Yardbirds were at their best when Beck was with them.

"Giorgio Gomelsky [the Yardbird's manager and producer] was good for him because he got him thinking and attempting new things," said the New Yardbirds/Led Zeppelin founder. 

"That's when they started all sorts of departures."

Rod Stewart, who performed in the Jeff Beck Group alongside Ronnie Wood during the late '60s, told Howard Stern in a 2015 broadcast that he thought Beck was "an entrepreneur of the guitar."

Stewart remembers Beck as "the greatest."

Speaking to the BBC's Bob Harris about his tenure in the Jeff Beck Group as a bass player, Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood said, "I had a few years that I would never change of playing bass. 

"It gave me a fantastic angle when I went back on the guitar again."

"I think he is the most unique guitar player – and the most devoted, really," Clapton told an interviewer in the late '80s. 

"From what I know of Jeff, he's either fixing his cars or playing guitar – there's no in-between for him.”

Clapton’s Twitter post was short and sweet...

Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley was hired as a session guitarist by Beck in the early '90s and appeared on his Cliff Gallup tribute album Crazy Legs. 

“Back in the early '90s when we were making the first Portishead record [Dummy] I was playing with Jeff Beck – a massive hero," Utley told Guitarist.

"It was amazing playing with Jeff – his dynamic and power. He was really kind to me and was very into what I was doing." 

Confirmation of Beck's passing arrived yesterday in the form of an official statement from his PR firm:

"On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck’s passing. After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss."

Our deepest sympathies go out to his loved ones and fans.

Jeff Beck (June 24, 1944 – January 10, 2023) 

It was with great sorrow we learned of Jeff Beck’s passing yesterday. He was 78 years old.

The official message from his PR reads, “On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck’s passing. After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss.”

While our deepest sympathies go out to loved ones and fans, we would like to fondly remember one of the greatest and most influential electric guitar players there ever was with an interview from our archive.

Originally published back in 1968, here Beck talks about his early days as a guitarist and “rags to riches” success with the Yardbirds.

During his chat with Guitar Player, Beck shares his unique perspective on a period of rock history that he considers to be “at its all-time high” with respect to guitar playing.

The following appeared in the October 1968 issue of Guitar Player...

Will you give us a little background on your early years?

I was born in 1944, and educated in a private school in England until I was 11 years old. Then, I went on to a junior art school.

It seems that a lot of English guitarists started in art school. Is this the thing to do now?

It wasn’t normal to go to art school when I went, but since Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton went, everyone is becoming an instant art student. I used to go there because they had good meals, and then I dropped out at 18, and took up the guitar, earning about $9 a night.

Did you have any musical training?

Yes, I did have some. My mother used to force me to play piano about two hours a day, but that was good, because it made me realize that I was musically sound, and that I was playing material not my own.

My other training consisted of stretching rubber bands over tobacco cans and making horrible noises.

Who do you think influenced your guitar playing the most?

I think the biggest influence was rock and roll records.

How did you happen to join up with the Yardbirds?

Well, George Gomolski appeared on the scene when I was playing at a club, and, after the set, we talked about a job he had for me with a new group. I said, “No, go away you nasty little man.” 

After that, I joined the group, and George became my manager. The group turned out to be the Yardbirds. I thought, “Well, this is interesting,” because I had heard so much about them. I did my first job with them at the Marquee Club, and about blew the place apart. 

I decided to stay on, and about two weeks later, we had a number one record. But that first night with them was something else. I had four days to learn their tunes. They gave me their album. After that, it was like rags to riches.

What were your feelings about the Yardbirds?

Well, when I joined the Yardbirds, I got the impression they just wanted my playing to enhance their group as much as possible. Right, so I just worked on the whole act until we got it down so great that we started bringing in bits of destruction to illustrate a point. Like an action painting – we all sort of threw our guitars at it.

How long were you with the Yardbirds?

I stayed with them about two years.

As one of the first to ever use feedback, fuzz and the destruction routine, what do you think will be the next thing for you?

I think I contributed my fair share to the business, right? So move on and make way for Eric, Jimi, and the rest. The next album is going to be much further ahead, but not too far, because the Yardbirds were too far ahead of their times. 

Like now, groups all over the country are playing like the Yardbirds were playing. Maybe a bit better, more articulate and musically more sound, but it is still the same formula.

In general, how do you think groups are going – like the Mothers of Invention, for instance?

People are hip to material and general construction of the group and the whole thing. Then, it was just, Wow, there’s a rock and roll group on stage – he is doing this, and he is doing that. It was all dazzling. But now, people have gotten hip to everybody, and they just enjoy the music.

What do you think about a group like the Mothers?

They are all right. There are so many different things you can get from their concerts. If you are a musician, you can sit and ignore all the rest of it. If you are a freak, you can dig the appearance. But I think they are putting down the American way too much.

What do you think is happening musically?

I think the quality of music is going up constantly. Guitar playing is at its all-time high.

What kind of instruments do you have, and what do you think of them?

I’ve got a Telecaster and I like it. I use super-light gauge Ernie Ball strings and a 200-watt Marshall amp with four cabinets. But this instrument thing is out of hand. If Eric Clapton sold his guitar and bought a $10 guitar, the kids would do the same.

Do you feel the number of people in your group is right?

Yes, I have a lead guitarist - myself - a bass, a drummer and a lead singer – four in all – and it works out fine.

What do you think of the classical thing?

I actually studied it, but I wouldn’t dare interfere with it now, because it would louse up my own style at the moment.

How are your records coming along?

Well, the first album was the most difficult stumbling block for the group. In that one, we decided not to use the fuzz tone so much. But this second album will be the one to show the excellence of the group.

Do you record loud, through the board, or what?

We record as naturally as possible. You can only be as good as the engineer that is doing it. We recorded this last album in three days with EMI in England. We had a good engineer, and I feel we got the sound we wanted.

Do you listen to other guitar players?

I listen to them all. I like to hear all I can, but [John Lee] Hooker is my favorite. He plays so fast you think he is playing with his fingers. He is really unbelievable.

With your own playing, what do you feel will be your greatest change?

Well, I’ve been in a stage of stagnation waiting to see what direction guitarists are going to take. Eric has made a name for himself in England, and so has Jimi Hendrix, so my addition only seems to make things worse. 

I sort of stayed at a level – this semi-blues bit. Now, I know exactly what this thing is, and I am about ready to develop my new thing.

Jeff Beck (June 24, 1944 – January 10, 2023) 

With Jeff Beck’s departure from the Yardbirds in 1966, Jimmy Page took over lead guitar duties and assumed a more directorial role.

Although this marked the Yardbirds’ most commercially unsuccessful period, it also produced some of their most overtly psychedelic rock.

On 1967’s Little Games, Page played his guitar with a bow on the middle break of “Tinker Tailor,” used DADGAD tuning on the acoustic guitar jam “White Summer,” employed audio loops on “Glimpses,” and combined distortion and wah on the October 1967 single “Ten Little Indians.”

As the Yardbirds transitioned to Led Zeppelin, Page’s psychedelic efforts continued to a lesser extent but with decidedly more skill.

The solo break on “Dazed and Confused” shows him merging psychedelic rock into hard rock, while the trippy “Whole Lotta Love” finds him conjuring atonal guitar swells and sirens sounds.

While the first psychedelic rock era had died out by 1970, Page continued to explore elements of it in songs like “Friends,” “Achilles Last Stand” and “Kashmir,” the latter two of which aren’t so far removed from the dirge-like incantations of Yardbirds cuts like “Still I’m Sad” and “Glimpses.”

Taking those signature sounds with him from the epicenter of ‘60s psychedelia, Page greatly expanded the sonic palette of ‘70s hard rock, though his taste for the exotic goes back a long way.

Speaking to Guitar Player in this exclusive interview, the guitarist revealed how after going to great lengths to source a sitar, he was finally shown how to tune the instrument by none other than Ravi Shankar.

“I’d listened to Indian music,” said the Led Zep legend. “I’d accessed that on the radio, and this was way in advance of the Beatles. My father worked in a factory near Heathrow where they made wire and cables. Not guitar cables – big industrial stuff.

“He was the personnel manager, and there were a lot of Asians working there, and I said, ‘Dad, would you ask around and see if anyone there knows anything about sitars? See if anyone can access one from over there.’

“There was a guy who said he’s going to get one sent over, and it arrived in this makeshift plywood box… I took out the sitar, and there was this beautiful thing. I had absolutely no idea how to play it. There are all these sympathetic strings on a sitar, so as I plucked one string, the whole thing started to resonate and I thought, Oh my God!

“Sonically, all my learning was from listening to things and making my own interpretations of what I heard, but this was something else! Of course, later I got to meet Ravi Shankar at a concert in London. My friend and I were the only two young people there, and he gave me the tuning for the sitar.”

Browse the Led Zeppelin catalog here.

Reportedly, it was Elevators guitarist Stacy Sutherland who coined the term psychedelic rock, leading the Austin, Texas, group to title its 1966 debut The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.

Sutherland’s co-architect in the group’s intergalactic electric guitar tones was lead singer Roky Erickson.

Running their Gibson ES-330s through Fender blackface Twin Reverbs, Fender Reverb units and Gibson Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tones, they kicked up a gnarly echo-and-reverb-laden sound that served as a template for many other psychedelic groups to come.

As Erickson revealed in this 1980 interview clip, the Elevators assumed they had an exclusive on the style until they heard the Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things.”

“That really bothered us, ’cause we had some stuff that we’d already recorded and hadn’t been released,” he said.

Speaking of their pioneering days during the mid-‘60s, Erickson recalled it was, “Real strange for the Elevators to be the only ones doing this feedback and standing on your amplifier and banging your guitar and hear groups like the Who and the Yardbirds who were doing that too.

“Like when we heard ‘Shapes of Things,’ we said, ‘My God! We’d better get our stuff out, man!’ …These cats are in on it!”

Soon after, the group’s 1966 debut single, “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” reached 55 on the Billboard Hot 100.

They remained a cult act to the end, but in their brief tenure the 13th Floor Elevators helped launch psychedelic rock from obscurity to the record charts.

Browse the 13th Floor Elevators catalog here.

It was the 1960s, and everything was groovy. Musicians pushed the boundaries of sonic expression and experimentation, with guitarists boldly leading the way.

The hallucinogenic effects of mind-altering drugs, most notably LSD, are credited to have contributed to the creation of a new “psychedelic” sound, with guitarists developing a unique and colorful palette of fuzzed-out – and sometimes just plain weird – tones, inspiring generations of players to come.

While we don’t encourage you to indulge in hallucinogenics, we do suggest you grab your guitar, as we begin our adventure into psychedelic guitar playing.

One simply cannot revisit the 1960s without paying tribute to the Beatles, who began as a mop-topped pop quartet, but soon morphed into a psychedelic songwriting juggernaut with multiple iconic album releases spanning 1966 and 1967, including Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour.

On 1966’s Revolver, George Harrison can be heard going into full bizarre mode, adding time-warped backward guitar (lead guitar lines that are recorded and then played backwards during the song) on “I’m Only Sleeping.”

In addition, Indian music’s heavy influence on Harrison and the psychedelic sound in general can be heard in his sitar-like motifs from “She Said She Said,” also from Revolver.

See Ex. 1 for a riff inspired by this song, and pick near your guitar’s bridge to emulate the sitar’s timbre.

Along with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones ventured into this brave new world with album releases like 1967’s Their Satanic Majesties Request, featuring the track “2,000 Light Years from Home.”

After a 40-second intro of some rather terrifying processed atonal piano musings, Keith Richards enters with a palm-muted single-note guitar riff, which sounds as if it could be the persistent ticking of a clock from an imaginary episode of the bizarre 1960s TV series The Twilight Zone. (In fact, a similar guitar line, albeit less rhythmical, appears in the show’s actual theme music.)

No fuzzy tones here – Richards simply goes with an understated clean electric guitar sound, allowing the staccato jabs of his palm-muted notes to do the talking.

See Ex. 2 for a line inspired by this same track.

Try moving it around the neck in various keys and octaves to experience different shades of mystery. 

March 1965 was a monumental month for the up-and-coming British guitarist Jeff Beck. Upon Jimmy Page’s recommendation, Beck was asked to join the Yardbirds, famously replacing Eric Clapton.

Those were big shoes to fill, but Beck did not lack confidence or imagination. And while his stint with the band lasted just 20 months, his influence from this period, as well as his solo career that followed, would be felt by scores of guitarists.

A great example of Beck pushing sonic boundaries can be heard in the Yardbirds’ 1966 single “Over Under Sideways Down.”

Here the guitarist adds a wildly strange melodic motif, which, while initially met with some skepticism by his bandmates, came to be widely regarded as the song’s signature hook.

Beck combines some deft single-string playing with a gnarly tone. See Ex. 3 for a similar line, inspired by this song. 

The next stop on our magical musical tour brings us to the legendary Jimi Hendrix. His trippy songwriting combined R&B-influenced rhythm playing with soaring guitar solos, steeped in blues and drenched in fuzz.

Jimi somehow managed to control, at will, the beast that is amplifier feedback, creating new tripped-out sonic journeys for his audience.

Hendrix regularly summoned, as if by magic, all manner of new sounds from his guitar. With the song “Fire,” from the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut 1967 album, Are You Experienced, he introduced himself with a guitar solo consisting of a veritable onslaught of stinging string bends and vibratos.

Ex. 4 brings to mind this face-melter. Note that I’ve added an octave-up doubling effect to further capture Jimi’s sound, as this is something he employed frequently via his Octavia pedal.

This pedal, designed specifically for Jimi by his sound technician, Roger Mayer, doubled every note one octave higher, while adding fuzz. It often sounded as if Jimi’s guitar was tearing apart at the seams.

While discussing Jimi, let’s give a nod to another great guitarist from a later generation who was influenced by Hendrix’s psychedelic sound, namely Prince, whose musical legacy continues to live on despite his untimely death in 2016.

An iconoclast, Prince often fused his R&B/funk/soul foundation with elements of pop, rock, jazz or whatever suited him in the moment.

One of his 19 top-10 hits, the single “When Doves Cry,” off of 1984’s smash album, Purple Rain, went to number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, where it stayed for five weeks.

Prince notably played every instrument on the track. The song bursts through the speakers with a virtuosic unaccompanied electric guitar line, which seems to answer the question “What would Jimi Hendrix sound like if he were still alive today – after having taken a trip to Mars?”

Prince tips his hat to the master more directly with his choice of tone, as he employs Hendrix’s signature combination of fuzz and octave doubler.

The entire intro solo is masterfully played, darting around in fits and starts, and Ex. 5 is inspired by Prince’s wicked opening statement.

We return to the 1960s with another purveyor of the psychedelic movement: the San Francisco–based band Jefferson Airplane.

In the classic song “White Rabbit,” from their seminal 1967 release, Surrealistic Pillow, songwriter Grace Slick’s lyrics evoke 1960s drug culture while guitarist Jorma Kaukonen weaves sinewy lines over a brooding rhythm.

Kaukonen accomplishes this by deftly employing an exotic scale, another element of the psychedelic sound. While the song is broadly in the key of A major, the intro and verses center around a chord progression of F# to G, which is technically out of key.

Kaukonen navigates these chords using the 5th mode of harmonic minor, commonly referred to as Phrygian-dominant.

Harmonic minor (1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6, #7) is nearly identical to natural minor (1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6, b7), the only difference being its raised 7th scale degree. Note how this creates an unusual augmented 2nd interval (one and one half steps) between the 6th and 7th degrees.

The term “5th mode” simply means that Phrygian-dominant’s root is the 5th degree of the harmonic minor scale. This is the note that will sound like “home.” 

In “White Rabbit,” Kaukonen employs F# Phrygian-dominant (F#, G, A#, B, C#, D, E), the 5th mode of B harmonic minor (B, C#, D, E, F#, G, A#). But you can take off your thinking cap and mellow out to Ex. 6, a trippy line inspired by this song.

Note the aforementioned augmented 2nd interval between the G and A# in the last bar.

Many critics consider the release of the Byrds' 1966 single “Eight Miles High” to be the dawn of the psychedelic era.

Influenced by the music of sitarist Ravi Shankar and jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, it is led by the twang of Roger McGuinn’s signature 12-string Rickenbacker electric.

The song as a whole juxtaposes droning instrumental sections with hauntingly beautiful vocal harmonies in much the same way that McGuinn’s playing ebbs and flows between sitar-like melodies and fiery bursts of single notes.

Ex. 7 is reminiscent of his alternately melodic and frenzied playing throughout the song.

Note that you can use an octaver, set to double an octave higher, to approximate the sound of McGuinn’s 12-string, as I have done here. 

In 1966, along with his brother Sly, guitarist Freddie Stone co-founded the dynamic psychedelic funk ensemble Sly & the Family Stone. 

The band drew inspiration from a myriad of styles – R&B, rock, church music and beyond – and Freddie’s nuanced playing was an integral part of their rhythmic foundation.

But rather than in-your-face raucousness, he preferred to pick his spots, his guitar often peeking out from inside the band to add subtle textures.

For example, in their 1968 hit single “Everyday People,” a cry for racial harmony which still resonates today, Stone interjects just a few fuzzed-out bass notes here and there. They never fully grab the spotlight, but they make an important sonic contribution nonetheless, adding a touch of psychedelia.

In 1969’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” the guitarist fires up his wah pedal and alternates between funky strummed 9th chords and staccato single-note phrases.

Ex. 8 is not unlike his approach throughout the song. A master of understatement, Stone could convey so much, often with just a few notes. 

Spanning decades, with some original band members still going strong as Dead and Company, the Grateful Dead’s music inspired an intense devotion from their Deadhead fans, who faithfully followed the band from show to show as they crisscrossed the country.

The band’s songs, often crafted to be long jams when played live, left plenty of room for late master improviser Jerry Garcia to work his magic.

While many of the players above utilized varied and often strange tones, Garcia often chose a simple clean tone for his electric musings, allowing his colorful note choices and imaginative rhythmic sense to hypnotize audiences. 

Ex. 9 is inspired by Garcia’s effortlessly fantastic playing throughout “Dark Star,” the Grateful Dead’s 1968 single, and showcases one rhythm – the quarter-note triplet – throughout the four-bar phrase, with only occasional respites.

Tension is certainly created by the sheer repetition, but more subtly, it is the way its lilting rhythm sits atop and “rubs” against the song’s straight-eighths feel that grabs our attention and keeps us hooked for the duration.

It’s the sort of magic Jerry Garcia could seemingly conjure on demand, night after night.

The 1960s psychedelic movement, spearheaded by a wave of innovative guitarists unafraid to break down traditional norms of playing and tone, directly reflected the tumultuous political and social times they inhabited.

Many more recent iconic bands, such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, My Morning Jacket and the Flaming Lips, owe a debt of gratitude to the risks these players took as they created music that often seemed to be the stuff of dreamscapes.

Have a question or comment about this month’s lesson? Feel free to reach out to Jeff Jacobson on Twitter @jjmusicmentor or at jeffjacobson.net.

Jeff offers private guitar and songwriting lessons virtually.

Would psychedelic rock have happened at all were it not for Jeff Beck’s attempt to emulate a sitar with his Fender Esquire and Sola Sound Tone Bender fuzz?

As Eric Clapton’s replacement in the Yardbirds, Beck kicked off his 20-month tenure with ingenuity at his first recording session with the group, in April 1965, for “Heart Full of Soul.”

Songwriter Graham Gould’s exotic hook suggested a sitar line, but the musician hired for the job couldn’t perform it to anyone’s satisfaction.

“What he was doing was totally magical, but it just didn’t have any groove to it,” Beck revealed. “And I showed him on guitar what I thought would be a good idea, which was that minor riff with the D string droning an octave below. And everyone said, ‘That sounds great. Let’s just leave that.’” 

With one line, Beck introduced an evocatively exotic sound and musical scale to rock and roll.

“When I heard Jeff’s playing, it was noticeably different, even then to my young ears,” Aerosmith’s Joe Perry recalled. “There was a sound to his guitar that kind of stood out and was different from the usual pop stuff. The notes he was playing. It was more lyrical, to me.”

What was different about Beck’s playing was certainly his talent for bends, which he developed by listening to Indian ragas by Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilayat Khan. He marveled at their fluid string bending.

“How could this be adopted into the guitar?” he recalled wondering, “this bending of the string, to such an extent that you can play a melody with one bend?”

He came close on the Yardbirds’ next single, 1966’s “Shapes of Things,” widely considered the first psychedelic rock release.

He continued to push the emerging genre forward with the group’s next release, the fuzz guitar-drenched “Over Under Sideways Down.”

But it was with “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” that Beck, playing alongside new band member Jimmy Page, blew young guitarists’ minds by combining his Indian-tinged lead work with incendiary solos in which he conjured a maelstrom of sirens and revving engines.

Though he soon moved on to blues rock and jazz fusion, Beck established a template for psychedelia – as well as heavy metal – that would be followed by countless future guitarists.

Don’t miss our December 2022 issue where we examine 50 psychedelic guitarists from the past 60 years of rock!

Once described as, “an oasis of chaos in a desert of suburban calm,” Eel Pie Island in the River Thames at Twickenham in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames was a musical hotbed of the '60s and a mecca for the most talented blues-rock guitarists of the era.

Started by promotor Arthur Chisnall in the mid-‘50s, by the following decade the club had become one of the most important venues in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.

Known for its weekend jazz nights, the Eel Pie Island Hotel was also famous for hosting concerts by American blues guitar players including Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker – all of which were attended by a young Jeff Beck.

Other guitar heroes of the British blues boom such as Peter Green and Eric Clapton are also known to have frequented Eel Pie Island, as did the Rolling Stones who were offered a residency there in the early ‘60s.

“There was a bit of a scene in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s in Richmond,” said British space rock veteran and Hawkwind founder Dave Brock. “That’s where I met Eric [Clapton] and a load of other people who used to hang out in the L’Auberge coffee bar. We always used to hang out there before going over to Eel Pie Island. That was where it all happened in our era.

“I loved going over there and listening to jazz. Later on, they had blues artists playing there… Arthur Chisnall, was an innovator because he’d book all these different blues artists in. Arthur Chisnall got so many people into blues and jazz – Eric Clapton, the Yardbirds and Jeff Beck.”

“The dressing room at Eel Pie was behind the stage, up one flight of stairs,” recalled the late Terry Clemson of British blues rockers Downliners Sect. “The walls were covered in graffiti, mainly written by the Rolling Stones. That wall would be worth thousands of pounds if it existed today!”

While American blues-influenced bands like the Rolling Stones and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers trod the notoriously rickety boards of Eel Pie Island early on, by the mid-‘60s, the British Isles – let alone Eel Pie Island – could not contain the blues boom it had so lovingly nurtured.

And as this wave of new music swept beyond U.K. shores towards the U.S., the British Invasion began to kick off, ultimately bringing blues back to its land of origin.

By the mid-1960s, Jimmy Page had made his name as a formidable electric guitar player with a list of session credits too long even for him to remember. (Hey, it was the ‘60s!)

Another phase of his professional career kicked off when he joined the Yardbirds in 1966. Though he had already turned down previous offers, it was after a particularly rowdy gig in Oxford, U.K., that he was inspired to join the British rockers on bass.

“I went to a Yardbirds concert in Oxford,” Page told Guitar Player in a 1977 interview, “and they were all walking around in their penguin suits. [Singer] Keith Relf got really drunk and was saying, ‘Fuck you’ right into the mic and falling into the drums. I thought it was a great anarchistic night.

“I went back into the dressing room and said, ‘What a brilliant show!’ There was this great argument going on; [bassist] Paul Samwell-Smith saying, ‘Well, I'm leaving the group, and if I was you, Keith, I'd do the very same thing.’

“So, he left the group, and Keith didn't. But they were stuck, you see, because they had commitments and dates, so I said, ‘I'll play the bass if you like.’”

Page’s stint as bassist in the Yardbirds was short-lived, however. Having swapped roles with the group’s co-founder and guitarist Chris Dreja to play alongside his pal Jeff Beck, the Yardbirds boasted one of the most formidable electric guitar duos in the history of rock.

“It worked out that we did the dual guitar thing as soon as Chris Dreja could get it together with the bass,” recalled Page.

Interestingly, Page later suggested Dreja take up the position of bassist in his new band, but having decided a career in photography was the way forward for him Dreja declined the offer. 

In 1969, Dreja's photograph of Page’s ‘new band’ – originally billed as the New Yardbirds – famously appeared on the reverse of Led Zeppelin’s eponymous debut album cover.

In this historical clip of the Yardbirds filmed just weeks after Page joined the band in 1966 he is seen playing alongside a ‘Burst-toting Beck while Dreja plays a Gibson ES-335 semi-hollowbody electric. 

Though Page must have been itching to grab a six-string and let rip, his performance as a bass player here is exemplary.

Browse Jimmy Page's eclectic catalog here.

"I still pinch myself from time to time," Jennifer Batten told Guitar Player back in 1999 when this amazing footage of her performing the track “What Mama Said” with Jeff Beck aired on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Two-handed tapper and former Guitar Player columnist Batten had co-written and recorded the number with Beck for the guitarist’s seventh studio album Who Else!

"He hasn't played with another guitar player since the Yardbirds. It's way beyond my wildest dreams," remarked Batten on her new gig as a member of Beck's band.

Batten, who first met Beck in '92 when she was on Michael Jackson's Dangerous tour, went on to say, “At first, I was intimidated because he's the guy I've been looking up to for the last 25 years.

“Everybody looks up to him – whether it's Steve Morse, Steve Vai, or Eric Johnson – because he has this magic thing that nobody else has.

“Luckily, his personality is down-to-earth and friendly enough that I feel comfortable working with him. Actually, I feel a lot more comfortable when I'm onstage with him, rather than if he was out in the audience watching me."

Of all the gear on Beck's stage, nothing rivaled Batten's gargantuan "rack of doom," which housed two completely different systems for electric guitar and keyboard sounds, including two separate foot controllers, three volume pedals, and a DigiTech Whammy.

During a typical show, she was switching between 60 patches: 30 guitar sounds and 30 keyboard sounds. "It's pretty intense," remarked the guitarist. "Sometimes I have a different sound assigned to every string."

At the time, Batten played Washburn Maverick guitars loaded with Seymour Duncan pickups (two with JB Jrs. in the bridge and Hot Stacks in the neck and middle positions, and two with JB Jrs. in the bridge and Duckbuckers in the neck and middle), Roland GK-2A guitar-synth pickups, and Floyd Rose tremolos.

All guitars were set up with the Buzz Feiten Tuning System and strung with Dean Markley .010-.046 gauge strings for increased tension, as Beck tuned down a half-step. 

Her choice of pick was the Fender Jazz heavy.

Batten's guitar system included a Peavey 5150 head and two Peavey 5150 4x12 cabinets. She ran through a DigiTech GSP2101 for clean sounds, and a Boss Acoustic Simulator to cop acoustic guitar tones.

For synth sounds, she used a Roland GR-10 MIDI converter, Akai samplers, and a Roland JV-1080 sound module – all played through Peavey power amps and keyboard cabinets.

“Jeff is always reinventing himself – he's like the Miles Davis of rock guitar," said Batten, a graduate of Hollywood's G.I.T. 

"You never know what to expect from him and he always sets the pace for others to follow."

Browse the Jeff Beck catalog here.

Countless guitarists have lifted Chuck Berry’s electric guitar licks and riffs, which seems only fair, considering that Berry stole some of them himself. 

But when did it cross the line? Apparently whenever Chuck said so. 

Here are five blatant thefts from the Berry patch...

1) The Beach Boys | “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (1963)

This Beach Boys hit is essentially Chuck’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” with new lyrics penned by Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson and singer Mike Love, who was uncredited.

Wilson liked how Berry’s lyrics named key places in the U.S. and thought a song that gave a shout out to California’s top surf spots could be a hit.

“I just took ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and rewrote it into something of our own,” Wilson told The Los Angeles Times in 2015.

While the Leonard Chess biopic Cadillac Records depicts Berry (played by Mos Def) as being angry about Wilson’s appropriation of his music, in reality the guitarist liked “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and reportedly even complimented the Beach Boys.

“We ran into Chuck Berry in Copenhagen and he told us he loves ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’,” guitarist Carl Wilson recalled.

But that didn’t stop him from demanding his cut.

Beach Boys manager Murray Wilson (the father of Brian and his brothers) gave the song to Berry’s publisher, Arc Music, and for a while the song was credited solely to Berry, although in later years it has been shared by Berry and Wilson.

2) The Beach Boys | “Fun, Fun, Fun” (1964)

These guys again! You’d be forgiven for hearing Carl Wilson’s opening guitar solo to this early Beach Boys hit and thinking it was a cover of “Johnny B. Goode” – it’s nearly identical to Berry’s timeless intro to his 1958 classic track.

But Berry didn’t sue, and he likely couldn’t have, considering that he had himself copped the lines from Carl Hogan’s intro to the Louis Jordan’s 1946 tune “Ain’t That Just Like a Woman (They’ll Do It Every Time).”

Citing his influences, Berry said, “The main guy was Louis Jordan. I wanted to sing like Nat Cole, with lyrics like Louis Jordan, with the swing of Bennie Goodman with Charlie Christian on guitar, playing Carl Hogan’s riffs, with the soul of Muddy Waters.”

3) The Beatles | “I Saw Her Standing There” (1963)

“From the first minute we heard the great guitar intro to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’ we became fans of the great Chuck Berry,” Paul McCartney wrote upon Berry’s passing. “We learnt so many things from him which led us into a dream world of rock ’n’ roll music.”

Like his Beatle bandmate John Lennon, who was famously known to pinch Berry (see below), the bassist appropriated the bass line to this early Beatles cut from Berry’s catalog, specifically the track “I’m Talking About You,” which the Beatles performed on the BBC in 1963.

“I played exactly the same notes as he did and it fitted our number perfectly,” McCartney revealed in his autobiography, Many Years From Now. “Even now, when I tell people, I find few of them believe me; therefore, I maintain that a bass riff hasn’t got to be original.”

4) The Beatles | “Come Together” (1969)

John Lennon’s opening composition from Abbey Road begins by lifting a pair of lines from the second verse of Berry’s 1956 cut “You Can’t Catch Me,” with a minor alteration: Lennon sings “Here come ol’ flattop, he come groovin’ up slowly,” while Berry’s original was, “Here come a flattop, he was movin’ up with me.”

Originally played at a faster tempo than it appears on Abbey Road, “Come Together” was too close to Berry’s tune for McCartney, who suggested the Beatles give the song a different groove to help disguise the obvious similarities in the lyrics and melody.

“I said, ‘Let’s slow it down with a swampy bass-and-drums vibe.’ I came up with a bass line and it all flowed from there.”

That didn’t stop Berry’s publisher Big Seven Music from filing a claim of copyright infringement. 

The case was settled out of court after Lennon agreed to record three songs from Big Seven’s catalog.

5) The Yardbirds | “Jeff’s Boogie” (1966)

This hyperspeed instrumental showcase is a highlight of Roger the Engineer, the Yardbirds’ psychedelic rock effort featuring Jeff Beck, who takes his cues here from Berry’s 1958 romp “Guitar Boogie.”

Berry’s version may be his own take on Arthur Smith’s 1948 12-bar Western swing track that bears the same name, which makes sense when you consider that Berry’s music was a fusion of R&B and country.

Beck’s version became a staple of his live shows, and he performed it with Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1984 (see the Live in Honolulu DVD) and during their 1989 tour.

Browse the Chuck Berry catalog here.

Otherwise known as Led Zeppelin, the band comprising Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham were introduced at their very first show together as "The New Yardbirds.” 

While Jimmy Page initially set out to recruit members for a new Yardbirds line-up, Led Zeppelin would prove to be far more than The Yardbirds version 2.0 as they went on to dominate the hard rock world at the tail end of the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s.

Though it was their first gig – on this day in 1968 – the band received rave reviews. “Their performance and their music were absolutely flawless,” wrote one attendee following their debut show at the Teen Club in Gladsaxe, Denmark.

“The music continued to ring nicely in the ears for some time after the curtains were drawn after their show. We can therefore conclude that the new Yardbirds are at least as good as the old ones were.”

By October 1968, the so-called New Yardbirds began appearing under the now legendary Led Zeppelin moniker (rock lore has it the name Led Zeppelin comes from the British phrase ‘going down like a lead balloon’ and was first suggested by The Who’s John Entwistle.)

Recounting the formation of Led Zeppelin in a recent interview, Page told a journalist, “I was looking for new [Yardbirds] members and I found Robert Plant first. I was recommended to go and see this guy up in the Midlands. I went up to see him and I listened to him sing and I thought, ‘Well, let’s give him a try. He’s certainly got an interesting range.’

“Robert recommended John Bonham and so then we got a drummer. And then John Paul Jones calls me up and says, “I hear you might be putting a band together. Can I join?” So we have a rehearsal in London and then I get them to my house to rehearse everything that we’re going to need for a set, and everything that we’re going to need for Led Zeppelin I.”

Premiering at the Venice Film Festival just days ago, the new documentary – Becoming Led Zeppelin – chronicles the story of all four members throughout their formative years as musicians during the ‘60s, leading up to the rehearsal that would effectively change the course of popular music forever as Led Zeppelin begin to snowball into the world-dominating rock titans we know and love.

Produced by Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty, Becoming Led Zeppelin features never-seen-before interviews with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and the late, great John Bonham.

The Yardbirds were something of an academy for UK guitar heroes, with Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton all graduating at one time or another. While Beck and his good friend Page were in the band together, they explored some of the hippest new sounds available, introducing the world to the joys of psychedelic rock via the Sola Sound Tone Bender fuzz and various other custom made stompboxes, courtesy of guitar effects pioneer Roger Mayer.

In this clip from the 1966 film Blowup featuring The Yardbirds’ Page/Beck dual guitar line-up, the band are depicted in a London club performing the fuzz-drenched rock ‘n’ roll banger “Stroll On”. During the performance, a persistent crackling sound coming from Beck's Vox amplifier angers him so much that he begins smashing his guitar – a sunburst Hofner Senator – into it. He then slams the unfortunate archtop into the stage floor, carefully lines it up, and sticks his foot through the top.

Job done!

Meanwhile, Page continues playing the 1959 ‘Dragon’ Fender Telecaster gifted to him in 1966 by Jeff Beck, looking on in amusement as his friend completely detaches the Hofner’s neck and throws it into the baying mob of an audience.

Shortly afterwards, Beck can be seen reaching for a ‘proper’ hard rock guitar: his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard ‘Burst.

Get the original Blowup movie here

Sometime around 1966, my mother turned me on to the Yardbirds. After hearing them on the radio, she bought an LP on her way home from work and played it on our family console stereo. 

As the music bled into my bedroom, I knew this wasn’t from the typical Campilongo family playlist of Andy Williams, John Gary, and Herb Alpert. I heard a sound that called my name. I liked the band name, too. I was eight years old. 

Having a Rave Up With the Yardbirds was released on the Epic label in 1965. It’s an underrated record and well worth revisiting or discovering. The Yardbirds are rarely mentioned in the template of musical discussions concerning rock history, and then only for the Mount Rushmore guitar chair of Clapton, Beck, and Page.  

To my ears, it’s amazing how sophisticated this young group sounded and how original they were. In 1965, most groups couldn’t help but be influenced by the Beatles, but the Yardbirds had their own thing, in particular, long, dynamic one-chord vamps that could build an audience to a frenzy.

On Rave Up, these tracks are paired with catchy pop songs that sound cinematic and – certainly – ambitious. Side one is a studio record with Jeff Beck on guitar, Keith Relf on vocals and harmonica, Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass, and Jim McCarty on drums.

Side two contains all live tracks, with Eric Clapton replacing Jeff Beck in the guitar chair. Interestingly, the album has “I’m a Man” represented twice – side one with Jeff Beck, and side two with Clapton. 

Side one opens with “You’re a Better Man Than I.” It’s hooky and nice enough, but not necessarily my favorite song on the LP. “Evil Hearted You” follows with a memorable melody and some wonderful thrashing guitar work by Beck.

The record really gets in gear on “I’m a Man.” Recorded in 1965 at Chess Studios in Chicago, this track exhibits the Yardbirds’ one-chord-vamp excursions that combine a driving gospel aesthetic, along with 21-year-old Beck’s aggressive psychedelia.

Beck was always great, and to my ears he just keeps getting better. This kind of dynamic performance had to be developed organically, in the community of late-night teen erotica, in a nightclub with a crowd manipulated by band dynamics.

The track is super-eventful, too, with ascending progressions, guitar mania, and jarring, but successful, tempo changes. It’s followed by the album’s only original band composition, “Still I’m Sad,” a unique recording that combines Gregorian chant-style backing vocals, an Ennio Morricone–like musical arrangement, and a terrific lead-vocal performance.

Side two has my favorite track, “Smokestack Lightning,” where the Yardbirds again play a hypnotic, frenzy-inducing vamp. I’m very familiar with Clapton’s history, but this track is particularly impressive.

Clapton is totally in the pocket, and bends and grinds the theme lick for all it’s worth. He makes this vamp as addictive as potato chips, and every two bars this listener wants more. Despite being a bit musically schizophrenic, Having a Rave Up With the Yardbirds has many high points. Sure, the music alternates between radio hits and blues explorations, and yet it all hangs together.

Yin and yang seemed to be more accepted back in the day, with groups like Cream, Zappa, the Beatles, and others presenting dual personalities, and with no explanation needed. That said, Having a Rave Up With the Yardbirds never feels herky-jerky.

Realizing how young these guys were at the time, I’m impressed by how evolved the Yardbirds sounded. I would bet these performances against the 1966 Rolling Stones and many blues groups of that era, because the Yardbirds rose above reverence and mimicry and explored their own thing. Thanks, Mom!

• Jim Campilongo and Luca Benedetti’s new release, Two Guitars, is out now via City Hall Records on CD and vinyl

The following is an archival interview with Jeff Beck, taken from the October 1968 issue of Guitar Player.

Will you give us a little background on your early years?

I was born in 1944, and educated in a private school in England until I was 11 years old. Then, I went on to a junior art school.

It seems that a lot of English guitarists started in art school. Is this the thing to do now?

It wasn’t normal to go to art school when I went, but since Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton went, everyone is becoming an instant art student. I used to go there because they had good meals, and then I dropped out at 18, and took up the guitar, earning about $9 a night.

Did you have any musical training?

Yes, I did have some. My mother used to force me to play piano about two hours a day, but that was good, because it made me realize that I was musically sound, and that I was playing material not my own. My other training consisted of stretching rubber bands over tobacco cans and making horrible noises.

Who do you think influenced your guitar playing the most?

I think the biggest influence was rock and roll records.

How did you happen to join up with the Yardbirds?

Well, George Gomolski appeared on the scene when I was playing at a club, and, after the set, we talked about a job he had for me with a new group. I said, “No, go away you nasty little man.” 

After that, I joined the group, and George became my manager. The group turned out to be the Yardbirds. I thought, “Well, this is interesting,” because I had heard so much about them. I did my first job with them at the Marquee Club, and about blew the place apart. 

I decided to stay on, and about two weeks later, we had a number one record. But that first night with them was something else. I had four days to learn their tunes. They gave me their album. After that, it was like rags to riches.

What were your feelings about the Yardbirds?

Well, when I joined the Yardbirds, I got the impression they just wanted my playing to enhance their group as much as possible. Right, so I just worked on the whole act until we got it down so great that we started bringing in bits of destruction to illustrate a point. Like an action painting - we all sort of threw our guitars at it.

How long were you with the Yardbirds?

I stayed with them about two years.

As one of the first to ever use feedback, fuzz and the destruction routine, what do you think will be the next thing for you?

I think I contributed my fair share to the business, right? So move on and make way for Eric, Jimi, and the rest. The next album is going to be much further ahead, but not too far, because the Yardbirds were too far ahead of their times. 

Like now, groups all over the country are playing like the Yardbirds were playing. Maybe a bit better, more articulate and musically more sound, but it is still the same formula.

In general, how do you think groups are going - like the Mothers of Invention, for instance?

People are hip to material and general construction of the group and the whole thing. Then, it was just, wow, there’s a rock and roll group on stage - he is doing this, and he is doing that. It was all dazzling. But now, people have gotten hip to everybody, and they just enjoy the music.

What do you think about a group like the Mothers?

They are all right. There are so many different things you can get from their concerts. If you are a musician, you can sit and ignore all the rest of it. If you are a freak, you can dig the appearance. But I think they are putting down the American way too much.

What do you think is happening musically?

I think the quality of music is going up constantly. Guitar playing is at its all-time high.

What kind of instruments do you have, and what do you think of them?

I’ve got a Telecaster and I like it. I use super-light gauge Ernie Ball strings and a 200-watt Marshall amp with four cabinets. But this instrument thing is out of hand. If Eric Clapton sold his guitar and bought a $10 guitar, the kids would do the same.

Do you feel the number of people in your group is right?

Yes, I have a lead guitarist - myself - a bass, a drummer and a lead singer - four in all - and it works out fine.

What do you think of the classical thing?

I actually studied it, but I wouldn’t dare interfere with it now, because it would louse up my own style at the moment.

How are your records coming along?

Well, the first album was the most difficult stumbling block for the group. In that one, we decided not to use the fuzz tone so much. But this second album will be the one to show the excellence of the group.

Do you record loud, through the board, or what?

We record as naturally as possible. You can only be as good as the engineer that is doing it. We recorded this last album in three days with EMI in England. We had a good engineer, and I feel we got the sound we wanted.

Do you listen to other guitar players?

I listen to them all. I like to hear all I can, but [John Lee] Hooker is my favorite. He plays so fast you think he is playing with his fingers. He is really unbelievable.

With your own playing, what do you feel will be your greatest change?

Well, I’ve been in a stage of stagnation waiting to see what direction guitarists are going to take. Eric has made a name for himself in England, and so has Jimi Hendrix, so my addition only seems to make things worse. 

I sort of stayed at a level - this semi-blues bit. Now, I know exactly what this thing is, and I am about ready to develop my new thing.