JEFF BECK
BECKOLOGY
YEAR - 1991
LABEL - EPIC/LEGACY
Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
While he was as innovative as Jimmy Page, as tasteful as Eric Clapton, and nearly as visionary as Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck never achieved the same commercial success as any of his contemporaries, primarily because of the haphazard way he approached his career. After Rod Stewart left the Jeff Beck Group in 1971, Beck never worked with a charismatic lead singer who could have helped sell his music to a wide audience. Furthermore, he was simply too idiosyncratic, moving from heavy metal to jazz fusion within a blink of an eye. As his career progressed, he became more fascinated by automobiles than guitars, releasing only one album during the course of the '90s. All the while, Beck retained the respect of fellow guitarists, who found his reclusiveness all the more alluring.
Beck began his musical career following a short stint at London's Wimbledon Art College. He earned a reputation by supporting Lord Sutch, which helped him land the job as the Yardbirds' lead guitarist following the departure of Eric Clapton. Beck stayed with the Yardbirds for nearly two years, leaving in late in 1966 with the pretense that he was retiring from music. He returned several months later with "Love Is Blue," a single he played poorly because he detested the song. Later in 1967, he formed the Jeff Beck Group with vocalist Rod Stewart, bassist Ron Wood, and drummer Aynsley Dunbar, who was quickly replaced by Mickey Waller; keyboardist Nicky Hopkins joined in early 1968. With their crushingly loud reworkings of blues songs and vocal and guitar interplay, the Jeff Beck Group established the template for heavy metal. Neither of the band's records, Truth (1968) or Beck-Ola (a 1969 album that was recorded with new drummer Tony Newman), was particularly successful, and the band tended to fight regularly, especially on their frequent tours of the U.S. In 1970, Stewart and Wood left to join the Faces, and Beck broke up the group.
Beck had intended to form a power trio with Vanilla Fudge members Carmine Appice (drums) and Tim Bogert (bass), but those plans were derailed when he suffered a serious car crash in 1970. By the time he recuperated in 1971, Bogart and Appice were playing in Cactus, so the guitarist formed a new version of the Jeff Beck Group. Featuring keyboardist Max Middleton, drummer Cozy Powell, bassist Clive Chaman, and vocalist Bobby Tench, the new band recorded Rough and Ready (1971) and Jeff Beck Group (1972). Neither album attracted much attention. Cactus dissolved in late 1972, and Beck, Bogert, and Appice formed a power trio the following year. The group's lone studio album — a live record was released in Japan but never in the U.K. or U.S. — was widely panned due to its plodding arrangements and weak vocals, and the group disbanded the following year.
For about 18 months, Beck remained quiet, re-emerging in 1975 with Blow by Blow. Produced by George Martin, Blow by Blow was an all-instrumental jazz fusion album that received strong reviews. Beck collaborated with Jan Hammer, a former keyboardist for Mahavishnu Orchestra, for 1976's Wired, and supported the album with a co-headlining tour with Hammer's band. The tour was documented on the 1977 album Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group — Live.
After the Hammer tour, Beck retired to his estate outside of London and remained quiet for three years. He returned in 1980 with There and Back, which featured contributions from Hammer. Following the tour for There and Back, Beck retired again, returning five years later with the slick, Nile Rodgers-produced Flash. A pop/rock album recorded with a variety of vocalists, Flash featured Beck's only hit single, the Stewart-sung "People Get Ready," and also boasted "Escape," which won the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental. During 1987, he played lead guitar on Mick Jagger's second solo album, Primitive Cool. There was another long wait between Flash and 1989's Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop with Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas. Though the album sold only moderately well, Guitar Shop received uniformly strong reviews and won the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental. Beck supported the album with a tour, this time co-headlining with guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. Again, Beck entered semi-retirement upon the completion of the tour.
In 1992, Beck played lead guitar on Roger Waters' comeback album, Amused to Death. A year later, he released Crazy Legs, a tribute to Gene Vincent and his lead guitarist, Cliff Gallup, which was recorded with Big Town Playboys. Beck remained quiet after the album's release prior to resurfacing in 1999 with Who Else! You Had It Coming followed in 2001 and his 14th release, Jeff, was issued on Epic two years later. An excellent live set, Performing This Week: Live at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, was released in 2008 by Eagle Records.
Review by Bruce Eder
This triple-CD set — obviously modeled after the four-CD Eric Clapton Crossroads box — was the first attempt to survey Jeff Beck's entire career. In actual fact, that would be a hopeless task, given the amount of anonymous session work that the guitarist did circa 1964-1966, but Beckology still manages to touch a few unexpected bases, even as it strings together all of the obvious and most of the important sides in Beck's output. Disc one opens with the most alluring part of the entire set, three demo tracks left behind by Beck's 1963-1965 group, the Tridents; the first official releases by this band are of far more than academic interest, presenting a first-rate blues/R&B outfit supercharged by Beck's guitar and Ray Cook's drumming, doing killer Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley material, and even showing off Beck's prowess as a singer. The next 15 tracks represent the core of the Yardbirds' output during Beck's tenure, which lasted from March of 1965 through the summer of 1966 — anything here could justify a place on a Yardbirds best-of set; the makers have rounded this disc out with four live cuts by the band from the BBC archives, including Beck's extraordinary homage to Elmore James' guitar playing on "The Sun Is Shining" and the unheralded group original "Love Me Like I Love You", and finish the platter with Beck's first three solo single sides, two of which, "Hi Ho Silver Lining" and "Tally Man," comprise the guitarist's brief, achingly beautiful virtuoso digression into trippy psychedelic pop, before he broke through to the more fertile field of what came to be known as heavy metal. Disc two is all of that, made up of the core of his output with the Jeff Beck Group and Beck Bogert & Appice, the latter filled out with a pair of previously unissued tracks: a live version of "Blues Deluxe/BBA Boogie" and "Jizz Whizz." Disc three skips across Beck's instrumental sides off of Blow by Blow, Wired, and There and Back and his tour with the Jan Hammer Group from the later 1970s, and wraps up with ten songs from Flash and Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop, sandwiching some key odd singles and Beck's contributions to the soundtracks of the movies Twins and Porky's Revenge. There are flaws in this set, to be sure; originally conceived as a four-disc retrospective, it was reduced to three, over Beck's wishes that some proposed cuts be omitted and Sony Music's timidity over the sales prospect of the four-CD set. But it is a good package within those boundaries, with fairly thorough annotation accompanied by great photos and a Pete Frame family tree, and, above all, excellent tape research — not only were the right masters (i.e., the mono masters) used on "Hot House of Omagarashid" and "Lost Woman," but this is also the only CD package to combine the Yardbirds' 1965 catalog material with their 1966 tracks (owned by separate parties who will not get together). The mastering of it all is so clean that it put most of the older versions of this material to shame at the time.
Tracklist:
Disc 1
1. Trouble In Mind (Previously Unreleased) - The Tridents - 2:19
2. Nursery Rhyme (Live/ Previously Unreleased) - The Tridents - 5:50
3. Wandering Man Blues (Perviously Unreleased) - The Tridents - 3:27
4. Steeled Blues - The Yardbirds - 2:37
5. Heart Full Of Soul - The Yardbirds - 2:31
6. I'm Not Talking - The Yardbirds - 2:32
7. I Ain't Done Wrong - The Yardbirds - 3:38
8. The Train Kept A Rollin' - The Yardbirds - 3:26
9. I'm A Man The Yardbirds - 2:36
10. Shapes Of Things - Jeff Beck Group - 2:26
11. Over Under Sideways Down The Yardbirds - 2:22
12. Happenings Ten Years Time Ago - The Yardbirds - 2:55
13. Hot House Of Omagarashid - The Yardbirds - 2:40
14. Lost Women - The Yardbirds - 3:08
15. Rack My Mind - The Yardbirds - 3:13
16. The Nazz Are Blue - The Yardbirds - 3:02
17. Psycho Daisies - The Yardbirds - 1:48
18. Jeff's Boogie - The Yardbirds - 2:23
19. Too Much Monkey Business (Live) - The Yardbirds - 2:29
20. The Sun Is Shining (Live) - The Yardbirds - 2:44
21. You'Re A Better Man Than I (Live) - The Yardbirds - 3:56
22. Love Me Like I Love You (Live) - The Yardbirds - 2:50
23. Hi Ho Silver - Jeff Beck - 2:54
24. Tally Man - Jeff Beck - 2:43
25. Beck's Bolero - Jeff Beck - 2:54
Disc 2
1. Shapes Of Things - Jeff Beck - 3:20
2. I Ain't Superstitious - Jeff Beck Group - 4:54 3. Rock My Plimsoul - Jeff Beck Group - 3:40
4. Jailhouse Rock - Jeff Beck Group - 3:12
5. Plynth (Water Down The Drain) - Jeff Beck Group - 3:066. Drinking Again - Jeff Beck Group - 3:18
7. Definitely Maybe - Jeff Beck Group - 5:04
8. New ways Train Train - Jeff Beck Group - 5:519. Going Down - Jeff Beck Group - 6:50
10. I Can't Give Back The Love I Feel For You - Jeff Beck Group - 2:42
11. Superstition - Beck, Bogert, Appice - 4:18
12. Black Cat Moan (Live) - Jeff Beck;Tim Bogert;Carmine Appice - 9:16
13. Blues Deluxe/BBA Boogie (Live/ Previously Unreleased) - Beck, Bogert, Appice - 16:42
14. Jizz Whizz (Previously Unreleased) - Beck, Bogert, Appice - 4:26
Disc 3
1. Cause We've Ended As Lovers - Jeff Beck - 5:44
2. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat - Jeff Beck - 5:27
3. Love Is Green - Jeff Beck - 2:29
4. Diamond Dust - Jeff Beck - 8:22
5. Freeway Jam (Live) - Jeff Beck With The Jan Hammer Group - 7:23
6. The Pump - Jeff Beck - 5:48
7. People Get Ready - Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart - 4:55
8. Escape - Jeff Beck - 4:39
9. Gets Us All In The End - Jeff Beck - 6:05
10. Back On The Street - Jeff Beck - 3:41
11. Wild Thing - Jeff Beck - 4:14
12. The Train Kept A Rollin' - Jeff Beck - 3:57
13. Sleep Walk - Jeff Beck - 2:19
14. The Stumble - Jeff Beck - 3:02
15. Big Block - Jeff Beck with Terry Bozzio & Tony Hymas - 4:07
16. Where Were You - Jeff Beck with Terry Bozzio & Tony Hymas - 3:19
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