The 1960's produced a great trio of guitarists, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. I would personally argue against the inclusion of the first and in favour of including Ritchie Blackmore, but we won't go into that can of worms right now. As a guitarist, people often ask me what I think of Clapton, to which my stock reply is, 'Yeah. He's a great singer.' Enough said methinks. What I would certainly not dispute is the inclusion of Jeff Beck as one of England's finest.
Beck is a one off, a true diamond of a player. In the late 70's Steve Morse and Eddie Van Halen started a new style of technical rock guitar playing that stressed proficiency and used fretboard 'trickery' and squealing harmonics to dazzle the listener. It was all very clever stuff. Joe Satriani and Steve Vai out in California made it their own. Beck was conspicuous by his absence from the album making process. Then, at the end of the decade in 1989 he released 'Guitar Shop'. It was sublime, and in effect said to Van Halen, Satriani, Vai etc, 'This is how it's really done.' The element that Beck had brought back to rock guitar playing was style.
Always expect the unexpected. That's a good motto for approaching the work of Beck. 1975's 'Blow by Blow' was the greatest surprise when a totally instrumental album hit the top of the charts in America. Produced by the Beatles' mentor George Martin it was a wonderful Jazz-Rock circus of fun with the wonderful Max Middleton adding keyboard colours for Beck to play over. It's the kind of album that when you play it people always seem to want to know who it is by. Beck followed it up with 'Wired' and 'There & Back' that brought us much of the same but with Jan Hammer increasingly occupying the keyboard's seat. These were not quite so successful but still outstanding examples of how to record instrumental albums and get away with it.
There have been low points in Beck's career of course. Beck Bogart and Appice was not a success and frankly the album is awful although it contains his version of the song Stevie Wonder wrote for him, Superstition. The Jeff Beck Group too was not going to win any major awards and it seems that he will largely be remembered for his role in the Yardbirds and the three aforementioned 1970's instrumental albums. But they are enough and no guitarist should be without them. It is there that Beck shows how to make something out of thin air as it were, and how to build into fast passages to give them maximum impact. Then there are the moody slow tracks showing that he can make a guitar cry like the best of them. What is astonishing is that Beck plays finger style rather than using a plectrum which is very unusual in a rock player, especially when there is such a turn of speed and dexterity in his playing. Now, if only we could persuade him to tour some more rather than staying at home a fiddling with motor cars!