Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop

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No. Max Middleton was playing in a band for Linda Lewis. She was the wife of Jim Cregan, who is Rod Stewart’s guitar player. And she started making waves, playing Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. And Max said, ‘She does this song, She’s a Woman and people go crazy.’ They loved her version. And I turned it into a reggae, and that really seemed to make it take off.” Jeff used the Tele-Gib on “Blow by Blow”, and he recorded“Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” on it. It can be seen in the music video for “Secret Policeman’s Ball”. Freeway Jam became one of your signature tunes, one that almost every guitarist learns at some point. Yet it was written by your keyboard player, Max Middleton. This is not the only ES-175 Jeff played. There’s a video of him playing “Matchbox” on a tobacco-burst Gibson ES-175 with The Big Town Playboys. Two Vox AC30s, linked in series and placed on two chairs that were commissioned from whatever sources. So they were at waist level, where I could get to the controls easier and hear the sound better.”

Actually, I hate Freeway Jam! It’s pretty awful. I could care less if people still like it. It felt like a slowed-done Irish reel to me We couldn’t date when exactly Jeff got this guitar, so if you know anything more about that, please post it in the comments. I was looking to George sort of as a parental figure: someone to help me present some of my more outrageous visions in a way that would be acceptable to the general public. And he did it quite well.George is almost like a dad: relaxed, very focused on the sound. George Martin was probably the best producer I’ve had – the guy who could framework what I do without interfering.” Then we found out it was too long to be hogging that much space on an album. So we edited it, and it lost a lot of the frightening immediacy that the original jam had. Maybe some day I’ll release the unedited version. It’s really crazy. A bit wild. Like Mothers of Invention wild.”

On the song Pork-U-Pine it’s amazing how you use the Strat’s vibrato arm to emulate the vibrato trills in Middle Eastern vocals. So I decided to go in and see what I could come up with without any chordal support, without any of that direction, because keyboards tend to determine a direction almost immediately. You hear a chord and you’ve got one foot in a certain direction. And I thought, There he goes – there’s a genius reinventing himself. And the thought that I’d be standing next to him in the studio one day was way beyond my dreams. But right out of the blue, after having raved about that record, it must have reached somebody at Epic. And they said, ‘Stevie would be interested in having you go over.’ Yet he still had that forward-thinking Billy Cobham–type feel. But once again, we had more power than we needed but not enough of a story line, so to speak. Not enough good songs; great actors but no storyline. Although that seems to sell millions of dollars worth of films nowadays.”

Jeff Beck’s Guitar Strings:

Actually, I hate that tune! It’s pretty awful. I could care less if people still like it. It felt like a slowed-done Irish reel to me.” Were things like the incredible guitar solo in Shapes of Things rehearsed or pretty much done off the cuff? The only full-sized acoustic guitar that Jeff talked about is the red Gretsch Rancher. Jeff was influenced to buy the Gretsch by Paul Peek of Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps who played in the classic 1956 movie “The Girl Can’t Help it”.

When you’re in the studio playing all this amazing stuff on guitar, are you totally blasé about it? Or do you surprise yourself as much as you surprise the rest of us?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.’ And we sent the Indian man on his way. But the riff wasn’t there before. It wasn’t written like that. I could be wrong, but I just don’t remember that that had already been written.” No. It was my melody over his rhythm. He came up with the bolero rhythm on the 12-string. But it’s my riff in the middle. I’d decided that the Yardbirds’ trademark was to stop in the middle of the song and come into a completely different rhythmic thing, like they did on For Your Love. He used this guitar for a couple of months until it was stolen in the late sixties, probably 1969. The guitar’s serial number is 9_1864. Not too much leaning to one side or the other. Eric suggested a couple of [ jazz tenor saxophonist] Eddie Harris songs, which I thought sounded really great. Compared to What was one of them. We also did a couple of Muddy Waters songs. And we ended up with Sly Stone’s I Wanna Take You Higher, which I thought was really great. That was my idea. Eric was most accommodating and very nice to work with.”

The thing is, I don’t surprise myself enough. Which is why on the song My Thing, for example, half of the solo was done live in the studio with about 30 people in the control room, falling over drunk. I like to go berserk, but with other people around. Because they actually do make me play slightly more energetically and frantically.”While working in the studio Jeff was approached by a guy willing to give him his 1954 Stratocaster as a present. Jeff, of course, accepted it, but as a kind gesture, he left it in a studio for a couple of days to see if the guy will change his mind since this guitar is one of the most expensive and sought-out Stratocasters out there.