Original subtitles

MUSIC: Beck's

This programme Contains some strong language.

I was taken there by a girlfriend as a tourist about 1966.

She took me in and i wandered in onto the stage, and it just

struck me, "This is the most famous place in Hollywood, isn't it?"

And I just thought, "We'll never play here."

And 50 years later, I had my own show there.

He's a maverick,

a maverick guitar player who doesn't like to repeat himself, who takes

big risks all the time, has done so all the way through his Career.

The guitar player who builds hot rods.

I mean the two go very well together.

There's been a lot of wake-up calls for me watching Jeff

and listening to Jeff play and working with Jeff.

It's always intriguing, you know? And he's a great musician.

He has so much to offer that...

..you know, he's been able to carve his own path.

Music draws people together, and somebody lights a touchpaper

and it goes bang and that's it. He makes you feel, like, impoetant,

like what you have to offer's a beautiful thing.

Most guitar fans just play guitar, and Jeff can make it sing.

Jeff has got effects up the ying-yang when he"s recorded,

but live he brings it to a different level.

Part of Jeff's mystique is that he likes being mysterious.

He's a bit of an unsung hero to the masses.

Part of that is due to

many albums not having vocals.

I told him that he was the Pablo Picasso of electric guitar and

he said back to me,

"I would think i was more the Jackson Poliock."

And I was like, "Touche!"

It"s so instinctive and it's so exciting to be around,

because you just don"t know what's going to happen next.

This is not paint by numbers, this is the muse,

and the muse is going to say what it"s going to say.

And he lets it happen, and, "Next!"

He's such a forward thinker and an innovator.

He's just always reaching for a new thing.

Jeff is an incredible artist, and i always have an affinity

for male artists who can find fantastic

female artists to accompany them.

Jeff is the guy who took the instrument of guitar to the

furthest reaches of guitar universe.

And nobody even come close.

Everybody respects Jeff. He's an extraordinary musician,

and he's developed a technique which is so complex it's just

a beauty to behoId and to hear and to feel his playing.

He's having a conversation with you when he"s playing,

it's just he's not singing.

He gets sounds that no other guitar player gets.

He bends notes like no other guitar player. You know?

He was - and is still - the most original guitar player ever.

My mum played the piano so, being in close proximity to her,

music was always around.

She was either playing the piano or sticking me in the living room

with the radio, so there'd be whatever was on at the time.

She had very strict ideas and hopes of what she wanted me to be.

I would love to play the piano, but it"s already done.

And after i heard Art Tatum, there was

a good enough reason never to ever sit in front of a piano again!

I just thought, "There's no place for another pianist."

I didn't feel that was my destiny, whereas guitar,

I didn't have to think about it.

I wouldn't have cared if it had been the worst waste of my life,

I still wanted to be alone with it

and just pour my feelings into it. It responds so readily to touch.

The radio was never off. I think my mum put it there just to shut me up.

# Somewhere there's music How faint the tune

# Somewhere there's heaven How high the moon

# There is no moon above When love is far away, too

# Till it comes true... #

And the Les Paul influence was

because some programme or other had How High The Moon, and every time it

Came onto the radio, I would run to the kitchen

and say, "Mum, what's this?"

She said, 'i've read about that guy. He's just a box of tricks.

""He's a phoney." i went... "This is interesting!""

Electric guitar, phoney - you know, to a kid, it"s intriguing.

She said, "Well, it was revealed that he can't play that fast,

"it's all sped up."

And I said, "Well, I like the sound he's making.

"It doesn't matter if it's sped up."

I was interested in the guitar solos

on the records my sister was playing.

Hound Dog for example. Rock Around The Clock. This was heaven!

And I staeted to analyse sound in great detail.

Eddie Cochran had a slap echo. Cliff Gallup had a slap echo.

It was just too good. Those records still sound astonishingly good.

Once i got to know Jeff and talked to him about his influences,

he liked that guy that was with Gene Vincent a lot, you know,

Cliff Gallup.

My sister went to the Sutton Granada and saw this film,

and she said "You have to see it.

"It"s just the most amazing TechniColor film of everything

"you like, everything we like."

And I went with some friends to see VinCent and the Blue Caps in colour.

It was life-changing. That is the best rock and roll film ever made.

Everything that I loved seemed to be coming from America -

the cars, the music. I couldn't see any way of ever getting there.

I'm talking about no money at all.

My sister came in one day from school

and threw this piece of paper with a phone number on it.

"Here's the number of a geek at school who"s got

"a weird-looking guitar like yours."

And she agreed to take this bus ride over to Epsom where we

knocked on the door and this fresh-faced little kid

answered the door, and he invited us in.

Well, he came round to my house.

I was living at home, of course, with my parents.

And Jeff came in and he had a home-made guitar,

and i also had a home-made guitar there as well.

And we just soet of Clicked immediately.

It was like two brothers, you know, almost.

It was just a joyous thing, to find

somebody else who had this Common interest.

He'd come round and we"d soet of hang out

and i'd play records to him.

He had equipment. He had a tape recorder and all the goodies

and a great reCord collection, mouthwatering collection.

I had such an electric mix of recordsI even as a teenager.

It was a great adventure,

finding other people who might know a different chord to you or

finding a record shop where they were importing, say,

Vee-jay records - this is a Chicago movement of the fifties,

a blues movement - as opposed to all the Chess catalogue.

And there was lots of pilgrimages involved.

And all of those guitarists from that point,

we aIl learnt from records.

So we used to sit there listening and go baCk over the solo.

Never mind the song, never mind the singer!

"What the hell"s THAT going on?" You know?

"How is this sounding like a ricochet effect?

"And why does it sound so exciting?"

You wanted to see if you Could play what was on them.

It was quite an acComplishment to hear something that was really,

really amazing to you and really moved you but then really,

actually, work towards being able to play it.

You"ve got a paetner in crime,

you've got somebody to hammer out ideas.

When you've learnt something that sounds reasonably impressive,

you want somebody to see what they think of it.

We were really, really keen on exactly the same things,

with the Gene Vincent records and Ricky Nelson records.

There were always fine guitar solos by James Burton,

and one of the things that we would ask of each other was,

"What's your version of My Babe?"

"OK, yeah. What's your version?"

That seemed to be a soet of communal ground between most guitarists

around that time, to see how well other guys could cut this solo.

MUSIC: My Babe by Ricky Nelson

I used to Iove going over there.

To have something that was so close to my heaet and to my ears,

as well it hit all the jackpots.

It seemed like everybody was Coming out of aet school in the 'SOs,

when rock and roll first staeted to reach out from America to here.

It was a great way of escaping any form of work, I think

any form of day job!

I did love it. i did love the fact that there was a place you could go

and draw and learn the basics of art.

I had two years of great fun there.

But the music took over, because midweek there was a gig in a town

not far from where I lived and that kept me going, just that one gig.

And then two gigs a week Came in, and so on.

And, unfoetunately, i had to bail before the end of the course.

Music was our hobby, and then we ended up being professionals.

When the Yardbirds came about, Eric was the force to be reckoned with.

They had Eric, so why did they want me? I don't understand that.

They were looking for hit records,

and we weren't making any music of that nature.

His name was used as a replacement. They were telling me,

in a way I wasn't that vital to the organisation. So i went to see him -

he was with the Tridents -

because I wanted to see, was he really as good as they made out?

And he had all these sound effects going on, and i thought, "My God!

"I'm gone. i'm Iong gone."

I actually thought about retiring then

because I thought, "i'm in the wrong business."" You know?

But seeing jeff, i thought, "Well, they're on to a good thing!"

SCREAMiNG

# Sick at heart and lonely... #

I liked the Yardbirds a lot. I liked that Heart Full Of Soul and the...

..sitar-like playing of Jeff's. He's such a distinctive player.

He didn't follow anyone else, really,

just Completely out there on his own.

They had a sitar player in the studio,

and he was thinking in sort of 1 3-and-a-quarter time signature!

And they said, "No, it's 4/4." HE iMITATES THE MELODY

And I said, "It's soet of like this."

And I got the octave, the G octave, and then played...

And I said, "Why the hell have we got him here? I can play that!"

I think he was a hard-rock pioneer from day one.

He was doing stuff that didn't exist except for him.

When i first heard the Yardbirds, when i heard jeff's playing,

it was noticeably different, even then, to my young ears.

There was a sound to his guitar that kind of stood out

and was different from the usual pop stuff. There was something about it,

the notes he was playing, I mean, that was more lyrical to me.

And within a month, we were flying over to America!

Not only had i been to America,

but i'd recorded at the famous Sun Studios AND Chess Records.

MUSIC: Shapes Of Things by the Yardbirds

# Shapes of things before my eyes

# Just teach me to despise

# Will time make man more wise?... #

Shapes Of Things, amazing. I remember that distinctly.

"How is it we've had to come this far to get the sound we want?"

In England, the studios didn't get it.

The engineers back in England were all pure,

they didn't like anything that rattled or squeaked.

I wentI "Bring on the squeaks! We don"t care about that!"

Instantly, you hear the playback,

we were all looking at each other going, "This is the stuff."

Jeff would come round and he'd play me the sort of first

Cuts of the reCords, and I remember him playing Shapes Of Things.

And when it came to the solo, i thought,

"This is the most extraordinary solo."

Ravi Shankar was playing quite a big paet in the Beatles and stuff,

and i used to sit over at Page's house iistening to ragas

and Vilayat Khan and Ravi Shankar and just marvelling.

How could this be adopted in the guitar, this bending of the

string to such an extent that you Could play a melody with one bend?

The work that Jeff did in the Yardbirds was of paramount

impoetance to guitar-based groups

because he had an incredible ear and he set an amazing standard,

and also that his technique was extraordinary, as well.

And I must say, when i heard that,

I really understood what Jeff was really capabie of.

The Yardbirds had a crazy manager, and i remember Giorgio freaking.

Steam was coming out of his ears when i played that song.

"This is exactly why you"re in this band.

"You are opening up surreal avenues, like avant-garde avenues,

"for the guitar in this band."

Giorgio was great but i think

there was some skulduggery going on with the money.

I don't know. All i know is I never made any of it.

I think i must have threatened to leave unless they got rid of him.

Then Simon Napier-Bell appeared and agreed to take over.

Within five minutes, jimmy Page is in the band

and we were on the set of Blow-Up.

And nobody knew what it was going to be like, as most movies,

they don"t really tell you.

But I was just told that Antonioni was a great director

and surreal, and itjust seemed like a cool thing.

And the cheque for 3,000 was amazing.

And I don't think any of the band

had ever seen that kind of money in one lump.

They all went out and invested sensibly in fruit-and-veg shops.

Shops. Business.

And I invested in a "63 split-window Corvette,

which was the only sensible thing for a person like me to deal with!

ENGINES ROAR

I had a girlfriend in LA, and it was a Comfoetable place,

the weather was amazing.

And I left all that to go on this tour with the Yardbirds.

I'd never played in America before.

It was a shock, it was really surreal

from everything that I thought that it was going to be.

The Dick Clark Caravan of Stars was a conglomeration of acts that

would all get on stage and do two or three songs.

They would tour in buses.

You know, you had to be a real trouper.

I mean they would go out on the road and do 60 dates in 60 days.

And that was very, very odd, because it was a colleCtion

of teenybop stars, teenyboppers for a very young audience.

..in a bus that stank,

and it was crammed with people that didn"t really like us.

We didn't get on with the rest of the cast.

And there was a toilet that got busted and that didn"t work,

and people had to sleep in the luggage racks.

But Jeff missed all that, because he left pretty early,

after just a few dates.

After two gigs, I thought, ""I"ve just nearly killed myself to

"do nearly 15 minutes on stage," the two hits plus one other song.

That's it. It was a quick turnaround.

Jerry Lewis's son was on the tour Gary Lewis and the Playboys,

and i thought, "This is so Middle America.

"We're telling people that we're paet of this. We're not."

The Yardbirds were completely on the road to forging a unique

Career, you know?

And they threw it into this ridiculous mixing box.

And I Called Jim to my room. I said, "Jim, I've just had the horrors.

"Here's my guitar. You take lead tomorrow.

"I'm not even going to take the guitar." That was the end of me.

No girlfriend, no Yardbirds no nothing.

But I had my Corvette parked in my mothet's sideway,

so i was free to dream again.

MUSIC: Shapes Of Things by the Jeff Beck Group

# Shapes of things before my eyes

# just help me to despise

# Will time make men more wise?... #

Jeff and I met up at the Sheffield Mojo, when I was doing

the circuit up and down the motorway in my first group, the Birds.

We got on really well,

and he was telling me about this gig with the Yardbirds

and kind of spoke, well, "If we ever are not in the set-up

"we're in now, one day we"ll work together."

One of the good things about the Yardbirds times was that we'd

Come back from a tour, maybe up north, and even at two

o'clock in the morning, we'd stop off at the Cromwellian Club.

And after the Yardbirds, i thought,

"There's nothing to stop me from going back there on my own."

And the guy on the door went "Jeff! Nice to see you back."

That night, there was not much going on.

There were Motown records playing, and i'm thinking, "This is sad.

"I'm sitting alone with a beer."

And there was one other guy in the corner, and it was Rod Stewart!

We talked a little bit, and he said he was forming a band,

he'd left the Yardbirds.

I was out of work, and I think I may have mentioned Woody and said,

"He's out of work as well."

So it was like three out-of-work musicians, and we formed a band.

His collaboration with Rod Stewaet was kind of legendary,

I mean one of the best things that Rod ever did as well as jeff

on that Truth album.

It was the huskiness that was

rare to have in a white singer. I loved it.

# Let me love you, baby

# You're driving my poor heart crazy

# Let me love you, baby

# You're driving my poor heaet crazy... #

The band, with Micky Waller, myself on bass

and jeff on the guitar,

the holes and the spaces that it left

for Rod's voice in its rawness...

jeff used to really treasure Rod"s voice, you know,

and treasure all the things that could happen in those spaces.

# Oh, yes, you do, darling Every time I see you

# Oh, baby, when you walk, you know what?

# You shake just like a willow tree

# No, i know, i know, I know... #

He believed in me, he really did.

He wanted a proper singer in his band.

He had a voice that was so...

..the vital instrument within the band

that you didn"t need a rhythm guitar.

Jeff's virtuoso performances tied up with Rod's blues-type

vocals on that album. That was absolutely a seminal album.

Truth has Rock My Plimsoul on it, it's got I Ain't Superstitious.

It's really my favourite Jeff Beck, stylistically, you know?

It's more sort of in-your-face rock and roll.

Jeff didn't just want to play

what Muddy Waters had played and Howlin' Wolf.

He wanted to take it more Chicago-ish and more electric

and just take it out of that basic idiom that it's in, you know,

and electrify it, make it more arrangements.

Even though the songs are 1 2-bar biues,

we arranged the songs to sound more interesting.

Right, let's go. I don"t want to sing it in unison,

I want to sing it in harmony.

Well, however you want. I'll try something on this first few chords.

If it sounds sus, stop me, right?

Make the voice nearly in the baCkground.

Mickie Most, he didn't want to know about Rod at all.

He said, "You"re the artist. Your name is on the label."

I said, "No, no. I'm not interested in that,

"I"m interested in being part of a great rock band, or a blues band."

Mickie just believed in the old dollar, make it as quiCk as you can,

and really wanted us to be a pop band, you know, much to our dismay,

because that"s not what we'd want to do.

He didn't see any point in having me, really. He wanted Jeff to sing.

# You're everywhere and nowhere, baby

# That's where you're at

# Going down a bumpy hillside

# In your hippie hat... #

Why was he such a reluctant pop star?

I guess that just wasn't really what he ever wanted to do.

I don't know how that song came about.

Some soet of pressure, if you like, from Mickie Most,

to try and come up with a hit. But I think he very, very quickly

realised that wasn't ever going to be what he wanted to do.

Absolutely his prerogative.

But it's given lots of other peopIe an enormous amount of pleasure!

MuCh more pleasure than it ever gave him.

It"s like being asked to wear a pink frock

and walk on top of a bus down Oxford Street!

HE LAUGHS

It was framing me with this embarrassing pop song that

wasn't me. But over the years I've become warmed to it,

because it makes people feel happy.

Jeff, I believe, asked Mickie if I could sing Hi-Ho Silver Lining,

but Mickie said no.

But you can hear me yodelling in the baCkground on the chorus.

# And it's hi-ho, silver lining

# Anywhere you go, now, baby

# I see your sun is shining

# But I won't make a fuss

# Though it's obvious... #

just when you think you're getting there,

you realise you're about six months away!

I kicked off in Mickie Most"s office,

and on this paeticular argument,

Peter Grant was there, and he was smiling at me. i was going...

It was as though the smile was saying, "Give him some stick,

"he needs to be put in his place," meaning Mickie.

Shoetly after that, he must have had a word with Mickie and said,

"Look, Jeff was in the Yardbirds, he already opened

""the door in America for himself to go baCk with the band.

"And there's an underground scene over there."

Steppenwolf was happening, FM radio was happening.

There were venues and there was press and there was radio stations

and, you know, you could build an act by coming and touring.

So, this was mind-boggling, I remember, when Woody and i drove

across the Brooklyn Bridge in the back of a limo with Peter Grant,

the manager. I mean, it was just heaven. "Here we are!"

But it was a five-month tour. it was hard work, but it was great fun.

When we went to America we opened at Fillmore East.

Talk aboutjump in the deep end!

And that's the famous night when Rod wouldn"t come on stage. He hid.

That was the night i hid behind the amps - absolutely true story -

because I thought, "I"m in America, New York,

"I'm trying to sound like a black singer, and there's going to

"be loads of black people out there and they"ll throw things at me."

"Phoney! Fake!" But lo and behold,

I came out and there was all loads of hippies, you know?

And it was the staet of a wonderful, wonderful career.

We stormed the place. We blew the Dead off the stage.

HE LAUGHS

Robert Shelton from the New York Times gave us a write-up.

Peter Grant rang me at seven in the morning and said

"Have you read the review?" I went "i don't want to."

He said, "No, it's amazing."

He read it to me, about the Pinter play, the interaction of...

H E CH UCKLES

And I soet of read it and i thought, "Right, what do we do now?"

We had it reproduced and sent ahead,

we had it sent to all the places on the way to the West Coast,

so by the time we got to the Fillmore West, we'd already broken

the ground, broken into the American scene, which was fantastic!

We all decided to try and write songs,

and Ronnie and i sat around his mum's CounCil flat for hours

and hours with a blank piece of paper

until we got a bottle of wine out and we finished that.

Then we were able to write a song called Plynth.

# I've woken up on mornings such as this

# And thought exactly the same as i'm thinking now

# Every night for a year, I've slept alone

# My cold, damp room looks worse than me

# I got a fear of death that creeps on every night

# I know I won't die soon, but then again, i might

# Just like water down the drain, I'm wasting away

# And, oh doctors Can't help the ghost of a man that's me... #

Plynth i'm very proud of,

Cos that was one of my compositions where I wrote the words.

"Moisture from the ocean fills the sky

"Falls back down to the ground as time goes by."

# Like moisture from the ocean fills the sky

# Comes on down the ground as time goes by... #

I was very proud of my bass sound and the whole thing with the drums

and the guitar

and Rod's soulful singing and Nicky"s piano playing.

It was a magic combination.

And it was an honour to be in the band, to be quite honest with you,

along with Micky Waller and Nicky Hopkins and Ronnie Wood.

It was a great band.

If you think about how long ago that was and what an impact

they must have had at the time, he's so unique and original.

Truth and Beck-Ola really stood out,

sort of benchmark rock and roll records.

Definitely big statements for the time.

The sounds of those records are definitely...

I still use them as touchstones for even what i do today,

because nothing sounds like those records.

And I was lucky enough to see them live two or three times,

and it was really exciting.

And you never knew if he was going to show up or not.

I meanI some of the stories about quitting in the middle

of a tourI that's, you know, pretty heavy.

You know? But that's Jeff.

There was a rift between me and Rod at that time.

I don't know how it came about.

It Cast a bit of doubt, like I didn't want to bank too

much on the next tour in case it didn't happen.

I saw this big festival looming up on the Calendar.

And I was nervous about it. I thought, ""We're not ready for that.

"We're not ready to go up against Sly and the Family Stone."

The Woodstock festival was two weeks away

when the Beck Group kind of Collapsed, and i thought,

"It's a shameI because there"s a big gig Coming up in a Couple of weeks."

Woodstock!

He disappeared. In the middle of the night. Next morning, he was gone.

And we get a phone call. "jeff"s gone home."

When i saw the film, ijust thought, "Thank God for my integrity,

"thank God that the little birdie whispered, "Don't do it,'"

because I would have been up there, dated and frozen with that image,

you know, with the music not being quite right. I did the right thing.

He could have explained it to us, and that would have made sense.

But I do agree, I'm glad we didn't do it.

Once again, i'm baCk to my mum's house again!

He's not paeticularly wrapped up in his success.

He'd just as soon not discuss music and the guitar.

He'd rather talk about the movies that he likes and, you know,

Certainly his cars.

My gran used to take me to the cinema, and she took me to see

a posh film, but the supporting film was Hot Rod Gang.

She just freaked out and said, "Oh, this is not suitable,"

because the word "gang"" was in it, and she said "Right, we're leaving.

"Let's go out of the cinema and come back when the main feature staets."

I clung on to the seat.

The opening sequence shows these two hot rods racing one

another on opposite sides of the street. Totally cool.

And I was hit, smitten right away.

For a B movie, I mean, it was pretty nonsensical.

I still watch it from time to time, as it was suCh a massive impact.

Come on, Johny, let's go!

Hot rods has always been his passion, from when he was really,

really young. And then he staeted building them.

The way that he puts it most of the time, musiC and guitar

is his job, and that's his pastime, for when he gets baCk home off tour.

He's always kind of tinkered with his Cars as long as I've

known him, you know?

I think the first time that i went to his house, the hood

of his Corvette was open and he might have been under the hood!

The fact that Jeff builds those cars and the fact that he does it

so well he's kind of a man of two passions, i think, guitar and cars.

Your senses are sharpened, because you built it.

And even if you had a professionally built car,

you're still driving an early Car, maybe a Ford or a Chevy,

'305, and they don't handle the same as a late-model car.

And I'm going over this hill - no top of the car, you know -

just 30 mph over this little, gentle incline, get to the

top of it and the car starts to go straight on to the oncoming traffic

without me touching the wheel.

And I turned the wheel on the opposite lock, and it still

kept going and hit this poor chap in this Morris Traveller head-on.

Broke his legs, broke my face up. BaCk injury, ieg injury.

I got taken into Maidstone General, who were amazing, just incredible.

We had a cheerful Chappie that used to come round and shave you

and bring you tea. I was recovering,

and then this guy decided to bring me in a music paper.

And he was Scouse, and he went...

SCOUSE ACCENT: .."Your mate's gone and joined the Faces.""

I went, "Oh, terrific."

You didn't need to hear that right at that particular time.

I think the biggest problem for Jeff is finding somebody to front

the band that really fit what he was doing.

He had the, y"know, arguably one of the best

singers at the time in his band,

and how long did that band last? A couple of years.

Rod Stewart was great, but, you know, more often than not...

And I think one of the reasons why he ended up being

an instrumentalist is just it was hard to find anybody that

really interpreted the music correctly or just had

the right energy or whatever it was.

I got to Epic in mid-'72,

and the Orange Album had come out a few months before that.

The name of the album is Jeff Beck Group,

but we all always refer to it as the Orange Album

because there was the photo of the orange on the Cover.

I staeted looking round for players that could really...

..like, drummers that Could... I was always foCused on drummers.

They are the life of the band they are the driving force.

You get your drummer right, you"re pretty muCh set for life!

We obviously lost a lot of regular contact,

but when i did see Jeff, he'd always be keen on his latest line-up.

He'd always rave about different drummers.

He'd say, "i've got this guy Called Cozy Powell.

"Listen to what i'm doing!"

I loved Cozy. i piCked him out of a line-up of 20-odd drummers.

Mickie Most"s secretary organised this whole audition, and she said,

"Jeff, I know you're late, but you don't need to look at anybody else.

"There's your brother over there!"

Looking the same - same hair, you know. "All right, jeff, I"m Cozy."

I went, "All right?" And he started playing.

And you saw people putting their Cymbals back in the cases!

HE LAUGHS

They were packing their drums ready. They knew that that was it.

And then Max Middleton came up with the idea of a simple melody

a bluesy thing, with a bottleneck.

And he said, ""Why don't we write three melodies?""

And there are three melodies in there.

One plays the countermelody,

and then there's a third descant on top of that.

And I remember thinking, "This is a cacophony of noise."

MUSIC: Definitely Maybe

Steve Cropper came down. He said, "Man, this is really amazing,"

because I was doing these parts individually and dubbing on.

And I wasn"t hearing the blend, I was only doing them individually

because if I'd heard guitar number one,

I would not have been able to play against it.

And when i went up and heard all three put together, y'know,

it was, "Let's buy Max a round of drinks for that one."

I think there's no question that Definitely Maybe led the way

to Blow By Blow...

..with a detour. With Jeff, there's always a detour.

# Looking for another pure love

# In my life... #

Well, i've always liked playing on other people's records

and not being named.

I mean that thing where Stevie caIls out, "jeff!"...

..on Looking For Another Pure Love.

GUiTAR SOLO

Hit it, jeff.

And it is actually great when it happens,

but i think I like Jeff playing on records where we're just

kind of the mystery agent, and i like the idea of someone being

able to identify me by what i'm playing.

Stevie's record company needed him to do something.

And I wasn't doing anything.

And Epic said, "What if we got you in the studio with Stevie?"

Couldn't wait for this to happen.

So, the deal was i was to play a Couple of tracks on Stevie's

album Talking Book and then he'd write me a couple of traCks,

one of which was Superstition.

He said, "What about we get a song with superstitions

"that you know about that the Americans maybe not know about?"

And I said, ""Well, we don"t walk under ladders for bad luck."

And I said, "If you dropped a mirror,

"that would be seven years" bad luck.""

I staeted playing the drums in a break. He'd gone out for lunch,

and he'd come back and he was Clapping along to my bit, my rhythm.

I said, "Steve, it's not... I'm not a drummer."

He goes, "Yeah you are now. Don't stop."

And he just grabbed the clavinet and staeted playing that vamp.

And I"m thinking, "Christ, I"m playing drums to Stevie Wonder!"

It was pretty cool, just a simple thing that I could play.

And then he went, "OK, I"ll lay the track down,"

because I was messing up with the fills and stuff.

And he came and sat at the same kit and played exactly what

I was playing. But better.

And he made space for a five-chord turnaround

all right away, and then he went straight in and put a bassline on.

That was it.

When that bassline came on, the whole studio turned upside down.

Then he went and put the lyrics on, rough lyrics,

and that was how that song was made.

# Seven years of bad luck

# The good things in your past

# When you believe in things that you don"t understand

# Then you suffer

# Superstition ain't the way

# Hey-hey, hey... #

Just do your thing, son!

But then, when the demo went back to Motown and Berry Gordy heard it,

he said, "This is the best thing you"ve ever written."

So out comes Stevie's single, and it's a smash, number one.

And it still is the biggest seller, I think of all time of his singles.

And it worked out OK, because it was a much better version

than the one we did, i think. We did a heavy metal version.

I don't think he Cared for it too much.

When i heard Stevie Wonder's version of that song,

that's the definitive version of that song, you know,

nobody should ever Cover it, just leave it alone,

otherwise it'lljust sound like a bar band butchering it.

Not so with Jeff Beck. Not so.

And when Beck, Bogert & Appice recorded it,

it stood on its own, like another entity again. And they were great.

I mean they were just incredibly exciting to play with.

I'd seen the Fudge threeI four times, and they blew me away.

It"s pretty powerful.

MUSIC: Superstition by Beck, Bogert & Appice

# Very superstitious

# Writings on the wall... #

Unknowing that maybe Stevie had written the ultimate power

trio song, because the double bass drum that Carmine used was perfect.

Timmy"s busy bass playing, you know, with that riff. What more could...?

They sang, as well, so we'd got two singers, bass player and a drummer.

Good morning! it's over.

# ..you'll get along

# Going out the door!

# Things you don't understand

# You suffer

# Hey, hey... #

I meanI there's a certain amount of "fuck you"-ness

to everything jeff does.

And I think there's a big dose of that in that song.

But, unfortunately, we couldn't match any song to that level,

that quality. So there was never really a proper album.

We toured, and we were knocking people out the park. it was great.

We played Crystal PalaCe, and there were girls swimming across this

pond to get to the front of the stage. It was great!

I thought, "We"re on our way."

And we were getting a ridiculously good response.

And then along Comes the mental writers" blocks.

We weren't writing very good songs.

They were making a second album, and itjust kind of petered out.

The managersI they had to get together and affeCt a divorce.

The record company didn't have a whole lot to do with it.

We were observers, speCtators.

It just exploded, you know? Sadly, it did.

He"s not as wrapped up in being a rock star, that whole thing.

He can be true to his aet and still...

And then he leaves it there and then he goes home,

works on his cars, lives out in the country,

and so i think he's found a really good balance between the two.

I was working on the wrecked rod of a "69 accident,

and i had a transistor radio playing.

I was lying on the ground doing something to this back axle

or whatever, rainwater was streaming past me,

and i thought, "'I'm in the gutter. I've ended up baCk in the gutter!"

And it almost washed the radio away.

And it was McLaughlin playing on jack johnson, that amazing album.

Miles. i mean, please, it"s a wonderful thing.

And then you hear McLaughlin going in there.

And it was a moment where i just stopped work, went in there

made a Cup of tea... Continued listening.

And that was it. ijust thought, "There's a door open now.

"This is what I want to do."

It's more foCused on guitar only

and it negates the necessity for a vocalist.

There's no point in going round the world

trying to find another Rod Stewart.

What a great line-up of musicians -

the brilliant Max Middleton playing keyboards...

Richard Bailey and Phil Chenn on drums and bass.

..and produced by George Martin at Air Studios!

GEORGE MARTIN: i came to the album title, Blow By Blow,

because the word "blow"" means many things.

But I was using it in the sense of a jazz thing.

When you do an extempore bit, you are giving it a blow.

To look at the joy on George's face

when he discovered that we were going to have fun...

jeff and I met up, and he invited me to the studio,

and he was telling me how George was really just letting him

play and stretch, and he was recording all the things

and then making the finished version.

It was somebody who would reaily understand

the precision of Jeff"s playing

and just how different and how separate it was from anybody else's.

George Martin really understood that Jeff was a serious musician.

He wasn't a producer with a singular vision of how

he thought it would be that he would want to impose.

And I don"t suppose anyone would have much luck

imposing their vision on Jeff.

GEORGE MARTIN: Well, jeff Could be temperamental

but never a big problem.

I mean if he felt frustrated

because he wouldn't be getting what he wanted,

sometimes he would get very upset, and in faCt

he did fling his guitar right across the studio at one point.

But, you know, people are temperamental.

That's all right, they can blow off steam.

So long as they don't throw it at me, i'm all right.

We didn't have any problems. We got on very well.

He loves exploring the guitar, and when he does hear

something that catches his ear or gives him a new idea,

he gets deeply into it.

John McLaughlin was kicking my butt at the time.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra, that played a big paet.

jeff's always said the Mahavishnu Orchestra is like his one -

he still holds it as like a Holy Grail.

"This is what inspired me to staet pushing things to the next level."

One tune that has some of that Mahavishnu feei is Scatterbrain.

It staeted as a schizophrenic run that i did

when i was nervous in a dressing room.

Two seconds before going on, I went...

And Max being the calculating SOB that he is, he said,

"You know that annoying scale you play?

"I've written some chords underneath it."

He said, "If you move it up a semitone,

"I Can make a track out of it."

And before we knew it we had this song.

Yeah, it's... That's a really... It's a Chop buster, that song.

He really was getting away from the straight rock stuff that he

was doing, and he wanted to open it up to a more melodic

and a little softer and jazzier angle.

George loved it and staeted putting the string arrangements to it,

just bare-bones creativity on the spot.

STUDiO VERSION OF TRACK PLAYS

When i suggested to him that we use an orchestra with it,

he was a little bit taken aback, i think.

And, for me, it was a fairly risky thing,

because Jeff had never done this before,

and i wondered whether the audience would accept the fact that

Jeff Beck was working with a string sound.

George was open to anything

and the most encouraging and most kindest person.

And, boy, did he get a great sound.

Cause We've Ended As Lovers is the standout track of ali time, for me.

I mean I just think that is jeff at his most beautiful, lyrical.

It's a Stevie Wonder song, of course, which must be pointed out.

When i heard that album, I just thought, "Oh, wow."

Her voice was like a Crystal stream flowing.

And I staeted playing Cause We Ended As Lovers,

playing the melody that Syreeta sang.

Max Middleton said, "That's beautiful. What is it?"

And I played him the Syreeta version.

He went, "Why don't we do that as an instrumental?"

GEORGE MARTIN: jeff's an amazing person,

because he Can get the most incredible sounds

out of an electric guitar.

Even after he's flung it across the studio,

he will still pick it up, wiggle it a bit and make great sounds.

And he uses the guitar as his voice. He sings with his guitar.

And I don't know any other guitar player like him.

Blow By Blow was an instantaneous success upon release.

I mean it really took off like a rocket. it shot up the Charts.

It turns out that lots of jeff Beck fans out there were just

waiting for an album in which they Could hear him play maximum guitar.

Max and George the two of them just were like two peas in a pod

because of their musicianship, the keyboard.

Max would come up with these twisted Chords.

Pork Pie Hat, you know, with the Charlie Mingus stuff.

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, written by Charles Mingus, is an ode,

really, to the great sax player Lester Young.

It really stands out as being something very special

and different, something unexpected from jeff.

And after we finished, there was dead silence. I went, "Oh."

And George went... You could hear the button go.

He said, "jeff, that was very tasteful."

ALBUM VERSiON

To this day, i tell people, "Boy, if you want to learn guitar,

"there's all the scales and arpeggios and all this,

"but you need to learn two solos,

"and they're both relatively easy to learn, beCause they"re slow -

"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat on Wired and Cause We Ended As Lovers."

Cos that's... that's where the feel is!

TRACK CONTIN U ES

I got a letter from Charlie Mingus, and it said,

"Dear Jeff, i was so knocked out with your version of Pork Pie Hat."

And that's when we had the world at our feet you know?

We could do anything we wanted.

Jeff is like a roCk and roll musician who understands jazz.

So, that's a very rare animal.

We went to see Mahavishnu OrChestra in Zurich.

And we were playing in the same week,

so we ended up being at a paety in the same hotel.

We had the greatest time, you know?

I got to know the Mahavishnu Orchestra - McLaughIin,

Jan Hammer, BilIy Cobham, Jerry Goodman - and it was just amazing.

And I ended up, you know, really, really getting a great contaCt

and talking, because we really had very much in common.

And Jan knew me. He said, "Course I know you! Out of the Yardbirds.

"I know all the stuff."

So this was the great bonding session that took place.

This was before Wired. He was pretty much finished, i think.

He had some rough mixes. The album was virtually done but not finished.

George Martin had to leave. He was committed to do an album by America.

George left without

the finishing touches being applied to the album.

There were still some overdubs, Certainly some mixing.

So i had to say goodbye to George.

jan was interested, in that I would fly over there

and watch this magician do his stuff on this record.

And I just did quick mixes of this,

and basically all those mixes ended up being the masters for the album!

So more than half of the album was mixed here.

And then also we did one tune from scratch, which was called Blue Wind.

And he said, "Play this riff."

The two notes. HE HUMS THE MELODY

I said, "Oh, come on, Jan. This kiddie stuff." He went, "'Trust me."

And I didn't like it at all.

It was a very simple riff and a combination of things,

and by the time i added drums to it and my keyboard synthesisers...

And he got these Auratones and stuck them on his mantelpiece

and cranked it, and the speakers were shaking!

I went, "OK. i get it now!"

It gave a great platform for solos.

And it was all about, you know, embellishing

and showing off and taking flight with your solos.

It just turned out to be a great, great tune that soet of

has been living on decades now!

It was incredible to play with Jan Hammer

with jeff Beck at the Hollywood Bowl.

Jeff had always talked about Jan before.

Jeff loves Jan. And vice versa. They have a great relationship.

I'm sitting there and i'm looking at both of them

and watching them interaCting.

You can see the years of friendship and mutual respect

and adoration that they have for one another.

Star Cycle was interesting, because, again,

what I did was I recorded the whole track here...

..in the old studio, again with the sequencer, and I played drums.

And then i took the tape to Ramport, the Who's studio, in London,

and we added all the lead parts on top of it.

That song has a very paeticular melody.

And, again, the whole thing is about the trade-off between Jan and Jeff.

How their minds work together is incredible.

They can really bounce off of each other,

and it's just... It"s like fireworks.

He"s just inspired, you know, by whatever the dynamic is

that's on the stage. That's what he"s looking for.

He's looking for inspiration, you know,

a reason to strike that string and pull, make that next sound.

That's the reason I love playing with him,

because it's going to be so fresh and he's going to pull

something out of his sleeve that you say, ""How did you do that?"

You think that guitar is so limited,

and people sometimes even demonstrate how limited guitar

is by playing basiCally a couple of riffs and that"s the whole career.

jeff is opening it up to so many,

many areas that it's really hard to keep up.

I came back to Epic in 1 980, after the There And Back album during

which time I failed to convince jeff to do even one aIbum for EpiC.

Years had gone by, and i didn't want to go along with that,

the "80s push-button music and all that.

I certainly visited jeff at his home.

He was a most gracious host, showed me his cars in the garage,

which he was spending a signifiCant

amount of his time working on, very happily.

There was no place for me, so I just buried myseif in my workshop.

And it got to the point

where I think they forgot I was even on the Epic label!

And I ended up driving to different sessions.

Any aetist would be thrilled to have Jeff contribute to their work,

so the fact that over the years he"s guested on albums from suCh

a diverse array of acts, from Stevie Wonder to Stanley Clarke to

Diana Ross to Mick Jagger to Tina Turner, on and on and on...

And I loved guesting with them. I loved every minute of that.

He has kinda guided his career the way he wanted,

and there's something to be said for taking time off

and regrouping rather than having a record company

breathing down your neck for a new record every year.

Epic Records thought it would be a great idea to get an aetist

to drop me a broad hint by painting this surreai garage with

a guitar up on the ramp instead of a car.

I loved it. i love that cover.

It was me. i mean, that was it. They Couldn't have hit it... Bull's-eye.

You know? That was me!

Without a doubt, Guitar Shop, I think was a real return to form.

And that was their job, you know?

I put my back into the album with Tony Hymas and Terry Bozzio.

The results were really ground-breaking, in a way,

for a three-piece to put out so much power.

You know, it was a power trio with keyboards instead of bass.

His approach is super, super rhythmic, so in order for that

to work you have to have a back line that gets it.

I think Terry Bozzio had a lot to do with that.

He"s worked with amazingly great drummers, you know?

So, I mean, I've stood in some tall company.

When you hear the song, it lives up to its name of Big Block,

which obviously refers to a large-size engine in an automobile.

His playing is amazing. That Big Block riff is fucking awesome!

The heavy kind of sexy riff in the middle, that was all my stuff.

Big Block, it's great. What a classic. What a classiC.

Powerhouse tune.

That"s a pure example, I think of a lot of power

and energy that's in Jeff's show.

It"s full of aggression and spirit.

It"s got a nasty, nasty oveetone to it.

There's this underlying reoccurring riff that"s happening

the whole time the main riff on the bass that"s low enough to

give space for the guitar to do absolutely anything.

So he just goes mental!

The sounds he gets out of that instrument still shocks me.

It"s so definite,

and he so definitely sounds like he knows where he's going

and exactly what he wants to do, and he's going to execute it perfeCtly.

It's always got melody,

but it's also got great attaCk and sort of aggressive fire to it.

Brilliant.

TRACK CONTIN U ES

Jeff not using a piCk, I learned a lot from that.

So i actually alternate between using a pick and not using a pick,

because you're just that much more connected

and there's an emotional thing that happens when you do it that way

that sings and soars above and beyond using a guitar pick.

The early days in the Yardbirds, he was still playing with a pick,

but then he developed playing without a pick.

And then he soet of concentrated more on the Stratocaster,

and he had the guitar

so fine-tuned to every nuance

and the tonality of it, the tension of it, that he

developed a style that was totally unique.

And that"s pretty magical.

Where Were You basically is impossible.

It's just an impossible tune!

That song, where he plays the melody with harmonics, he's got such

a sensitive ear to know exactly when things are in pitch.

The way he has his Strat set up

for whammy-bar stuff is quite extraordinary.

He"s playing whole melodies on harmoniCs

which are pulled through two or three tones

in perfect pitch all the time.

And believe me, i've tried it. It's... He makes it sound easy.

He was invited to come along and play it at a memorial

service for Richard Wright after he died. I mean, Rick loved that track.

Rick often said that he was his favourite guitar player,

much to my chagrin. He came and played it live,

and it was just like the record and perfect.

just to know that that piece, which I wrote reached people,

that was very satisfying.

And Elton told me that he

and Freddie Mercury used to sit and listen to it.

I went, "Oh, right!" HE LAUGHS

It"s amazing, isn't it, that some idea ends up on a record

and then people's lives are affeCted in some way?

Jeff's always tried to, you know, challenge what

the stereotype of guitar playing is or the stereotype of music or just

find new ways of, you know,

expressing his take on what's happening on music right now,

whether it's collaborating with different people or finding

new sounds.

He's always got something in his mind that he wants to do and change.

He will listen to EVERYTHiNG!

I mean he will intake anything from Ornette Coleman to the Spice Girls

and anything in-between and is able to filter it into something usabIe.

Me and Jennifer got on quite well doing this crazy stuff.

I"ve always got a big sound system in the car, and Nadia started up.

# Nadia, bair bhai

# Nadia... #

This is the most amazing thing I"ve ever heard.

And I played it again and again on the way to the studio.

And I said, ""Listen to this. I'm going to mimiC that singer.""

And, man, it was the most difficult thing I"ve ever done.

Those indian singers, they twist and turn,

and it's almost like beyond belief what they can do,

leaping from note to note and the scales that they sing.

The Indian vocals are very hard to emulate.

There are such subtle nuances and little tiny bends.

I actually made him loops of eaCh little Chunk of melody

and looped it maybe ten or fifteen times so he could

focus on just that, which I don't think he ever did before,

to break it down so sCientifically like that.

But, of course, he's going to make it his own.

It's a perfect example of expanding the instrument beyond anybody's

imagination, you know, that it took his hands

and his brain to be able to take it that far.

When i talk to other guitar players about him, there's no question.

I mean there's everybody else and then there's Jeff BeCk.

I don't even know how he's doing it half the time.

He's combining the tremolo arm with bending and with volume.

There's so much going on between his left hand and his right hand

and what the right hand is doing, all the independence that it has.

It's all about making that voice.

Playing five nights at Ronnie SCott's, I think

jeff always wanted to play at Ronnie's, you know?

The faCt that we pulled that off was pretty amazing,

because it's just a little jazz club.

Everybody's been there - you know, Rollins...

I saw Art Blakey there, i saw Elvin Jones. These people belong in there.

And there's Jeff Beck up there. No, no, no.

How wrong was I? Amazing.

CHEERiNG AND APPLAUSE I can't believe this.

You know, you people.

But on top of this, i'd like to welcome to the stage somebody

who knows their way around a Stratocaster.

It was an honour, you know, I mean, to get up with him in that venue.

And the fact that he asked me to play, i mean, tremendously

touching that he would want me to get up and play with him, you know?

Mr Eric Clapton is here tonight.

LOUD CHEERING

I may as well fuck off home, then!

They were trying to figure out what to play, and Clapton said,

"Well, why don't we play You Need Love?""

# Baby, you look so sweet and kind

# Baby, way down inside

# Baby, you need love

# Oh, you need love... #

We had basically all of Led Zeppelin there,

all the surviving members, and it was funny playing You Need Love,

because it was where they got Whole Lotta Love from.

That was their influence for writing that song.

jeff and I, we go back to really early teens.

And let me tell you, that was a long while ago.

HE LAUGHS

But we must have been about 1 3, 1 4, when we first met,

and we stayed friends all the way through...

That was a surprise, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,

to have jimmy go up there and call me up to present me with the award.

I was really flattered. And what he said really brought me to tears.

You'd soet of listen to Jeff along the way, and you'd go,

"Wow, it's getting really, really good, jeff."

And you'd hear him a few years later,

and he'd just keep getting better and better and better,

and he still has, all the way through.

And he Ieaves us mere moetals, believe me, you know,

just wondering and having so much respect for him.

And I tell you, i'm really honoured to be here to induct

Jeff into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,

because he's done so much for rock and roll and he always will.

The plan was at sound check that we play Beck's Bolero.

And I thought, "Oh, yeah, OK, I'll bring over the original guitar that

"I played it on," whiCh is a Fender 12-string, eleCtric 12-string.

And so I took it over there, and we had a rehearsal.

Somehow, I think me and Tal called up Jeff.

And I said, "Y'know, it"s really a shame

"that we're not playing a Zeppelin song.

"I mean, we're going to play with Jimmy Page."

And I got a phone call just before we were due to go, and he said,

"I've been having a chat with the band,

"and they thought it might be a good idea

"if we, instead of just doing Bolero, if we did Immigrant Song."

And I said, "Oh, yeah? Well, this is really going to be interesting,

"because we haven't had a rehearsal."

Right here, Jimmy Page!

The tech behind the stage apparently were freaking out.

The sound guys, the light... Nobody knows what"s going on.

But the audience went berserk!

I mean he was just soloing over it,

and he'd throw the vocal lead in just to show, you know,

just to show everybody just how on top of it he was.

I still get goose bumps when i think about that right now.

The band are having great fun doing this riff,

and then we segue through into Bolero, and it"s absolutely amazing!

These people that came out of that same year with the same

influences, and look at the voices that emerged.

Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck.

And then there was Clapton and Hendrix.

I mean these guys all took that same raw material

and did that - just distinct, different branches.

Every time I think of it, it's mind-numbing,

and Jeff really is just totally a voiCe like no other.

I love his big, vast swing, you know? He'll go from something

so rocking and so aggressive

down to something so tender and so sweet and everything in-between,

and it really is a perfect mirror on all the emotions

of being a human being and being alive.

It just kinda covers the gamut of human emotion.

You can recognise Gilmour and Hendrix the same way you

Could recognise jeff within a phrase, a note.

They wouldn't be icons of guitar playing

if they didn"t have their stamp.

And that's what I think, every aspiring guitarist,

including myself, wants to achieve one day.

So i think they're all unique,

but jeff's is a little bit more out there.

He was doing his set, and then I had to go on after Nessun Dorma!

It was like, "You must be kidding, man! This is it.

"This is a show stopper. I can't follow that."

There's not too many musicians who can do that.

That's a vocal tune for a reason.

It's really about just his soet of two hands and a piece of wood

and with the things that he"s able to do with it,

but he does it with a lot of emotion and a lot of soul and expression.

All those years ago, you had a band that featured

Rod Stewaet as your voCalist.

It"s always seemed somewhat self-defeating to me

to attempt to replace Rod with another male vocalist.

Jeff has a really cool knaCk for piCking female singers

with his Choices like imelda May, Joss Stone and Beth Hart.

There's a perfect example of three absolutely amazing females

that go with his style

and the type of energy that he wants to portray and

the type of energy that he wants his band to poetray at that

paeticular time, the type of fire that he wants to have.

# Something told me

# That it was over

# Baby, yeah... #

I had an opportunity to go write with Jeff.

We wrote a couple of beautiful songs together.

And I thought that was it.

And then he called me and asked me if I would be his singer.

That was incredible. I didn't get to sing a lot of songs,

but i did get to sit on the side of the stage and watCh him play

and understand why he's the most innovative guitarist of ali time.

# ..in my soul said, ""Gone"... #

Jeff really appreciates singers.

You know, he's always listening to singers

and the way that they articulate.

Beth Hart is somebody I"ve actually worked with before,

and she's great, and she's very soulful.

As a singer, he knows what is the kind of song that wili best

be for you. And he turned me on to that song, and i loved it.

# I'd rather, baby

# Be blind

# Yeah

# Than to see you

# Walk away, walk away from me

# Baby, don't leave me... #

Here he is, 50 years later, after his girlfriend takes him

out on that stage and he looks out and he says, ""God, I want

"to play here so bad," and 50 years later, he plays there, sold out.

Gorgeous. Kills it. It's just wonderful.

MUSIC: The Revolution Will Be Televised

One of my favourite records that he's done is Loud Hailer,

and that"s...

I mean it"s incredibly modern,

and having a singer like that to work off of, he"s chosen well.

# The revolution will be televised

# You can watch it in HD

# You can talk like a weekend warrior

# From the safety of your settee... #

There's a lot of pressure opening jeff's show.

This is, like, The 50 Years Of Jeff Beck.

Rosie stomping around the Hollywood Bowl,

and all these top-of-the-heap kind of rich guys down the front...

..not knowing what's going on.

He always decides to do something which no-one would expect him

to do - working with us, this unknown band from Camden.

Jeff's always suppoeted young aetists and especially women.

He"s had a history of having really great female musicians with him -

female singers, guitar players, bass players.

And not only the point of just the criteria of someone being

a female, but somebody being female and very talented

and that get along great with him - and his wife.

What time do you call this? SHE LAUGHS

I met Jeff at Roger Taylor's birthday party.

It was a friendly encounter, because it was like Roger said,

"Here, come and meet Jeff."

And then i turned around and realised who i was talking to, and I

think the first thing I said to him was, "Oh, fuck, you're jeff Beck."

I've installed the engine in your absence, so that bit"s now done.

"Who do you like?" She said, "Oh, Albeet Collins." Ding!

Light went on, and I thought, "That's unusual,

"to have a female young guitarist that likes Albert Collins.""

So then she said, "Well, if you want to see me play, my band,

"I'm playing in this pub." So we go up there. Totally blown away.

He's always trying something new. The most recent album Loud Hailer,

is not like any album he"s done before.

He's collaborating with people who are, like himself,

venturing forward into new musical territory.

That'li keep you young. The whole point is that Jeff's

still, at his age, trying to pioneer things and do things differently,

not just playing the same stuff that he always plays.

He"s pushing it a bit, getting excited about new people

and making new music.

Looking back on it, it feels like fairy land.

"How the hell did that happen?" Just sitting around a fireplace,

drinking Prosecco and writing music with a legend.

There was a lot of chatting about things that were interesting him

in the world, and then after that

everything kind of Came quite easily.

It was done under this roof, and it was a beautiful,

very natural experience.

# Billy skipped school again Looking like a fool again

# What a little waste For a taste of a big boy's life

# I'm scared for the children... #

That was Carmen"s Chord sequence, i think,

and then I came up with the little fills and stuff.

I wasn't expecting that, the depth of that song.

I love the sentiment behind Scared For The Children.

It's something that we all felt quite close to.

# This is the end of the age of the innocent

# One more game before they go... #

I play the least amount of notes that actually mean

something, I suppose.

If there was any game plan, that would be it, really.

I mean the chords are so niCe.

Just to sit on the chord and do it, that"s what i do.

jeff's solo on Scared For The Children,

suave at first and then explodes in the second half,

that hint of Jimi Hendrix kind of, like, quote.

The best time is on a really nice-sounding stage, live.

You can really pour it on.

Jeff is probably one of the most

influential guitar players alive today.

And whenever i get to play with him, it"s an experience that affects

my drumming and my musicianship. He makes me play better.

Every time I see him, his averages are so high,

but every performance is one place where he just transcends it

and i go, "Oh. OK. You know?

"Better go home and pick that guitar up again."

He's just naturally interested in making music,

and he has enough faith in his music to know that all that

stuff about the business just doesn't matter.

To have the attitude that he has where he's always

ready for something new and he doesn't know it all -

even though he does! - I think that's magical.

There's a differenCe between playing music and being music,

and that's how he is set apart, Cos he IS music.

jeff seems to embody the sound that he produces, and I've watChed him

take someone else's guitar who was just playing a moment before,

pick it up with no effects, no nothing, and staet playing,

and the sound of that same instrument

is just Completely different.

This unique talent, this unique musical sensibility,

vocabulary, inspiration and willingness to take risks,

jumping off cliffs, y'know, and that aIl shows up in his music.

People do need to...

..up their awareness about him. I mean where have they been?

There is no-one else that has been as consistently good

exciting, out there, Looking for new things, adventurous, maveriCk,

since he staeted in the "605.

He just loves music. I think...

..if you stop wanting to play, if you're not inspired by what

you hear, then you might as well sit at home by the fire and watch TV.

But obviously he's still got something left to say.

I haven't given up hope, Jeff, y'know. THE voiCe, THE guitar.

The good thing about guitarists

is that everyone's got their own character playing.

That"s something which we all do understand.

But we could all be talking for hours and hours

and years and years, decades and decades,

but the most impoetant thing, the thing that you can't actually

put into words, is what you actually hear in that music.

And that is the key to all of this, of Jeff's playing

and why Jeff is so brilliant,

because it's what he manages to convey with his guitar.

And that has to be heard to be believed.

I always keep a guitar in nearly every place in the house to

remind me that I should be doing that.

HE LAUGHS

And the guitar is always a Constant challenge.

Every time I pick it up, i pretend that i've just started playing.

And it seems to work.