In memoriam, Jeff Beck

 If you know any guitarists, and wonder why they have donned black, well, that's because they are guitarists.  But today there is a reason.  If you conduct a poll and ask the masses about the "greatest" guitarists, you know whose name will top every survey.  These surveys are silly, and the overlap between their results and the lists that would be created by aficionados of the instrument tend to be low.  Many of the instrumentalists I would name owe a great deal to that gentleman, who was a brilliant innovator, and a virtuoso who pushed the instrument forward, yet the instrument has moved forward, and that is the story of today.

The story goes that when he traveled to England early in his all-too-brief career, the big guitarists of the day (who were a bunch of young Englishmen) went to hear him play at a club, and shat enough bricks to turn Hadrian's Wall into the Great Wall of China.  Their collective response was, well, fuck!  What do we do now?!  We can't do that!

Nobody ever lost a job for their inability to play like him, but the various British guitarists each responded in their own way.  Jimmy Page found new and creative ways to plagiarize.  Clapton made a career out of clean tone, a nice vibrato, and humbly surrounding himself with guitarists he knew outclassed him, like Duane Allman, Albert Lee, and many others, until founding a tour to showcase the greatest rising guitarists.  Same deal.  Townsend was the best rhythm guitarist in rock history anyway, backing Entwhistle, and writing cool songs behind and overwrought singer and sloppy drummer.

And then there was... [hushed silence]... Jeff Beck.

Jeff Beck heard Hendrix, and took those sounds as a lifelong challenge.  If I'm being honest, 2000's Jeff Beck was better than Hendrix.

There, I said it.

He wouldn't have done it without Hendrix.  He wouldn't have done it without the challenge, the inspiration, the fire under him, but damnit, he did it.  Beck was the one who did it.

By the 1970s, Jeff Beck was making jazz-fusion albums as cool as John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola.  I'd put Blow By Blow and Wired up there with Mahavishnu Orchestra's The Inner Mounting Flame, and Di Meola's Elegant Gypsy.

He didn't stop.  He never stopped innovating on guitar.  Consider "Where Were You," from Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop, released in 1989.  He played the piece using mostly harmonics and the wammy bar.  This is fucking nuts, and from a technical perspective, beyond Hendrix.  This is why guitarists worship Jeff Beck.

And the guy just kept going, and kept advancing his playing.  That's the thing that made Jeff Beck different.  He never stopped striving, or pushing himself to develop.  He never rested on his laurels, and while those laurels were never Hendrix-ian in terms of mass popularity, guitarists have been worshipping him as god for half a century.  But he always wanted to do something newer and better.

And to showcase rising artists, like Tal Wilkenfeld.  Tal is a jazz bass virtuoso who then migrated into a sort of jazz/folk-rock thing, but she got her start because Jeff heard this kid and said, hey, you're my new bassist.

Two pieces, to honor Jeff.  First, Jeff and Tal, doing my favorite cut from my favorite Jeff album, "Cause We've Ended As Lovers," from 1975's Blow By Blow.  And then, a live version of "Where Were You," from 1989's Guitar Shop.  Jeff Beck.