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Geoffrey Arnold ("Jeff") Beck (born June 24 , 1944 to Arnold and Ethel Beck in Wallington , Greater London ) is an English rock guitarist. He was one of three guitarists -- the others being Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page -- to have recorded with the band The Yardbirds . Beck has never attained the sustained commercial success of his fellow Yardbirds guitarists (he is the only one who hasn't been inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame individually or with another band). Much of his output has been instrumental, and his releases have spanned genres, ranging from Blues Rock , Heavy Metal , Jazz Fusion and (currently) a blend of guitar-rock and Electronica . This versatility has made it difficult for Beck to establish and maintain a broad following. Beck's commercial releases have been sporadic since 1977. Stories about his temper, erratic behavior and tour-related incidents (even from musicians who are unabashed fans) have built his persona as a somewhat mad genius. Nevertheless, Beck has gained wide critical acclaim for his work as a guitarist. Top ten guitar players He has won many Grammy awards in the category for best rock instrumental and played on some of the most influential releases in music history. BIOGRAPHY Early career with The Yardbirds Like many rock musicians in the early 1960s, he began his career working as a session guitarist. In 1965, following a gig with the Tridents, Beck was recruited to join The Yardbirds (after Eric Clapton had left the group for John Mayall's Bluesbreakers ). It was during his tenure with the Yardbirds that they recorded most of their Hits . Stories about Beck's volatile temper began to circulate early. His perfectionism, coupled with the faulty equipment often in use during the 1960s, led to many stories about his willingness to take out frustrations on his equipment, though not in the form of smashing a guitar. The 1966 movie '' Blow-up '' contains a scene where the Yardbirds perform, and Beck becomes so enraged by equipment problems that he smashes his guitar. This scene was staged for the movie, as it was a re-creation of an actual event that director Michelangelo Antonioni witnessed at a concert of The Who . Anyway Anyhow Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of The Who In 1966, he shared the dual-lead guitar role with Jimmy Page . His time with The Yardbirds was short, allowing Beck only one full album, '' Roger The Engineer '' (1966); Beck left after 18 months, partly for health reasons. While on the surface Beck seems to have departed the group because of his health, Jimmy Page, who had been invited into the band in 1966 by Beck himself, tells a different story: Jeff Beck Group The following year, after recording the one-off song " Beck's Bolero " (with Jimmy Page , John Paul Jones , Nicky Hopkins , and Keith Moon ), Beck formed a new band called The Jeff Beck Group , which featured him on lead guitar, Rod Stewart on vocals, Ron Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Micky Waller on drums. The group produced two albums, '' Truth '' (August, 1968) and '' Beck-Ola '' (June, 1969). Both albums are highly acclaimed, and considered by many critics to have inspired the Heavy Metal genre. ''Truth'', released five months before the first Led Zeppelin album, features a cover of " You Shook Me ", a song first recorded by Willie Dixon which was also covered on the Led Zeppelin debut. While it sold well (reaching #15 on the ''Billboard'' charts) and received great critical praise, ''Truth'' did not equal the impact of the release by Page's new band. ''Beck-Ola'' while well-received, was less successful both commercially and critically. Resentment, coupled with touring-related incidents, led the group to dissolve. After the breakup, Beck decided to continue working with Stewart, and team up with bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice , the rhythm section of the Vanilla Fudge . This project was sidelined when Beck suffered head injuries in a car crash, and left the music scene for over a year. Rod Stewart left to team up with Ron Wood and the Small Faces; and Bogert and Appice formed Cactus instead. When Beck regained his health, he reformed a band with entirely new members. The new ensemble -- Bob Tench on vocals and guitar, Max Middleton on piano and keyboards, Clive Chaman on bass and Cozy Powell on drums -- although still known as the "Jeff Beck Group" featured a substantially different sound from the first lineup. For the album Rough And Ready (1971), Beck wrote or co-wrote six of the album's seven tracks (the exception written by pianist Middleton). The album included elements of Soul, Rhythm and Blues and Jazz, foreshadowing the direction Beck's music would take later in the decade. The follow-up, Jeff Beck Group , (1972) was recorded in Memphis, at the studio used by Booker T. & The M.G.'s ; their guitarist, Steve Cropper , produced the album. The album, unsurprisingly, displayed a strong Soul influence. Five of the nine tracks were covers of American artists; one ("I Got To Have A Song") was the first of Beck's four covers of compositions written by Stevie Wonder . Shortly after this release, Cactus broke up, leaving Bogert and Appice available. Beck dissolved the band in order to achieve his ambition to work with them, forming Beck, Bogert & Appice . Beck, Bogert & Appice The long-awaited lineup worked together for less than two years and released only one US album '' Beck, Bogert & Appice ''. While critics acknowledged the band's instrumental prowess, the album was not well received, except for its cover of Wonder's Superstition . Beck left the group during recording sessions for the second album. (A double-album ('' Beck, Bogert & Appice Live In Japan )'' was eventually released in Japan.) Beck, Bogert & Appice were, to some degree, victims of forces beyond their control. The lineup (a Power Trio featuring a superstar guitarist) prompted critics to compare the band to the Jimi Hendrix Experience Clapton's Cream and Page's Led Zeppelin . Since Beck and his bandmates were less gifted singers and composers than their counterparts, comparisons were unflattering. Beck's auto accident -- and resulting delay in forming the group -- also shaped critical response. Had ''Beck, Bogert & Appice'' been released in 1970, its similarity in style and content to ''Beck-Ola'' would have been expected. Coming in 1973 -- after Beck had released two albums covering more diverse territory -- led many critics to believe the guitarist had taken a step backward. However, Beck's dismissive public comments about the album, coupled with his next career move, suggest that he also had grown bored with the band's limitations and the blues-rock genre. Solo Albums In October 1974, Beck began recording instrumentals at AIR Studios with pianist Max Middleton (from the second Jeff Beck Group), bassist Phil Chen and drummer Richard Bailey and George Martin producing and providing string arrangements. The resulting album, Blow By Blow (1975), displayed Beck's technical prowess in a jazz-rock format. The album reached #4 on the charts (Beck's most successful release) and most critics also regard it as his best work. Wired , which followed a year later, paired Beck with drummer-composer Narada Michael Walden and keyboardist Jan Hammer . A more straightforward work jazz-rock fusion (sounding similar to the work of his two collaborators), ''Wired'' sold slightly less well, and also received less ecstatic reviews. A live album with Hammer was even less successful, with critics complaining that Hammer had eradicated the subtleties of ''Blow By Blow'' 1980s There And Back , featuring three compositions from Hammer and five with keyboadist Tony Hymas , sold less, but received better reviews. Hymas's compositions, which sounded to some like space-age jazz, gave the guitarist a more open framework for his pyrotechnics. Later career In 1981 he made a series of historic, joint live appearances with his Yardbirds predecessor Eric Clapton at the Amnesty International '' The Secret Policeman's Other Ball '' benefit shows. He appeared with Clapton on ''Crossroads'', ''Further On Up The Road'' and his own arrangement of Stevie Wonder 's ''Cause We've Ended As Lovers''. Beck also featured prominently in the all-star band finale performance of ''I Shall Be Released'' with Clapton, Sting , Phil Collins , Donovan and Bob Geldof . Beck's contributions were seen and heard in the resulting album and film, both of which achieved worldwide success in 1982. Another benefit show called the ARMS Concert for Multiple Sclerosis featured a jam with Jeff, Eric and Jimmy Page performing "Living on Tulsa Time" and "Layla". This is the only time all of the 1963-1968 Yardbirds lead guitarists appeared on stage together. During the 1980s and 1990s, Jeff Beck recorded sporadically (due largely to a long battle with noise-induced '' in 1993. Jeff Beck won his third Grammy Award , this one for 'Best Rock Instrumental Performance' for the track "Dirty Mind" from ''You Had It Coming''. The 2003 release of '' Jeff '' showed that the new electro-guitar style he used for the two earlier albums would continue to dominate. This style has been lauded by critics; Beck has skillfully fused an electronica influence with his blues/jazz past, with a sound mix which seems heavily influenced by the "brown" tone of subsequent guitarists like Van Halen and Joe Satriani . The song "Plan B" from this release earned him his fourth Grammy Award, again, for 'Best Rock Instrumental Performance'. Arguably the world's most famous record producer, if only for his achievements with The Beatles , is George Martin , who was deservedly Knighted in 1996. But even a man of his great wisdom was thrown into confusion when, in 1975, he produced Jeff Beck's powerfully adventurous, jazz-tinged album Blow By Blow at AIR Studios in London's Oxford Street. Jeff was fastidious about over-dubs but never seemed to be happy with his solos. A few days after a recording, when he'd had time to digest his own performance, he would telephone George and say "I think I could do a better one on this track", and they would return to AIR to try again. Jeff would play over and over until he was satisfied that he had performed his best. A couple of months went by and George received another phone call from Jeff: "I want to do this solo again." Bemused, George said: "I'm sorry, Jeff, but the record is in the shops!" Foster, Mo: Seventeen Watts?: The Birth of British Rock Guitar, Sanctuary, 1997 In the past few years, Jeff Beck has performed on new albums by Les Paul , Cyndi Lauper , and Roger Waters . Beck also is featured on one track on Queen guitarist Brian May 's last solo album, '' Another World ''. He also appears on ZZ Top 's album '' XXX ''. Beck made a cameo appearance in the movie '' Twins '' starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito . Jeff Beck continues to perform shows on a regular basis, including opening for B.B. King in the summer of 2003, backed by Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas. Beck's most recent tours in 2005 and 2006 have included Jason Rebello on keyboards, Vinnie Colaiuta on drums and Pino Palladino on bass (replaced by Randy Hope-Taylor due to Palladino's prior commitment to The Who ). An ''Official Bootleg USA'06 '' from the tour has been released through Beck's site. Jeff Beck also accompanied Kelly Clarkson as the guitarist for her cover of Patty Griffin 's song, " Up To The Mountain ", during the 2007 Idol Gives Back episode of '' American Idol '', receiving a standing ovation from the audience. INFLUENCE Beck was one of the first electric guitarists in the 1960s to experiment with electronic distortion (most notably in The Yardbirds ' 1966 album, '' Roger The Engineer '') and helped to redefine the sound and role of the electric guitar in rock music. Beck's work with The Yardbirds and The Jeff Beck Group 's 1968 album Truth were seminal influences on Heavy Metal Music , which emerged in full force in the early 1970s. Jeff Beck is still highly influential with many modern guitarists, who cite him as a major influence on their playing. Examples include Jimi Hendrix, Brian May (who calls him "The Guv'ner"), the late Mick Ronson (who said Beck was his guitar idol), Slash, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn. TECHNIQUE AND EQUIPMENT Unlike some guitarists, Jeff Beck does not rely heavily on electronic effects. He produces a wide variety of sounds by using his fingers and the vibrato bar on his signature Fender Stratocaster , although he frequently uses a wah wah pedal both live and in the studio. Along with Fender Stratocaster s, Beck occasionally plays Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul models as well. His amplifiers are primarily Fender s and Marshall s. In his earlier days with the Yardbirds, Beck also used a Fender Esquire guitar through Vox AC30's. On the "Truth" and "Beck-Ola" albums there is also extensive use of the wah pedal, of which Beck is often cited as being a pioneer. He has also played through a variety of fuzz pedals and echo-units along with this set-up. He most famously used the Pro Co RAT Distortion Pedal. Recently, Fender created a Custom Shop Tribute series version of his beat-up Esquire as well as his Artist Signature series Stratocaster, which emerged in 1991 with features such as a massive neck shape (deep '50s) and Fender Gold Lace Sensor pickups. This guitar was based on the Strat Plus, except for the addition of a Gold Lace Sensor Dually pickup, which resembles a humbucker in the bridge position with a coil-split push button. Other features included a roller nut, locking tuners and a 2-point pivot tremolo bridge. 2001 saw major changes to the guitar, reflecting Beck's requirements. The Lace Sensors were replaced with Fender's dual-coil ceramic Vintage Noiseless pickups while a thinner neck with a smooth contoured heel took the place of the previous deep U-shaped neck. Custom Shop versions of the artist's personal instrument debuted in 2004. The guitar features a rosewood fingerboard and is available in Olympic White and Surf Green. Although most people are not aware of it, he had an ox blood (dark red) Gibson Les Paul/Custom he used for about 10 years ie 1968-1978. DISCOGRAPHY As the Jeff Beck Group:
As Beck, Bogert & Appice
Solo:
With Big Town Playboys :
Compilation:
Appeared on
TRIVIA
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