Jeff Beck

Jeff Beck was not a great composer, having only sporadically put his name to his own songs, nor a great producer, never having directed any of his classic albums himself. He was, however, such a revolutionary instrumentalist that it hardly mattered who got the writing credits.

To be clear, throughout his career he surrounded himself with songwriters of recognized prestige, but he was equally capable of elevating their material, adapting his own style to theirs without ever losing himself in the process. This is something often said of great vocal interpreters, but much less often of instrumentalists: it's no coincidence that one of the aspects of Beck most beloved by fellow musicians and listeners alike is precisely his lyricism, the impression that his guitar was singing.

People often point, in support of this idea, to his instrumental reworkings of rock classics, with his solos standing in as perfect substitutes for vocal lines, but that's not really a convincing argument: similar things had been happening since the days of the Shadows. Jeff Beck's lyricism, if anything, stems from the way he executed extremely complex parts that not only lost none of their accessibility despite their difficulty, but to the average listener's ear also managed to conceal just how technically demanding they were. In the popular imagination, after all, the difficulty of virtuosity is tied to speed, specifically the speed of fingers racing along the fretboard: by his own admission, Beck was never a guitarist blessed with the kind of speed some of his peers possessed (his reverence for John McLaughlin is particularly well known).

His most interesting work came through his use of the tremolo arm, harmonics, bends used to mimic other instruments (from harmonica to sitar), volume swells, and the sudden insertion of dissonance and pauses. Few virtuosos of the instrument are able to shift their timbre on the fly and make it feel organic, just as guitarists renowned for their sonic exploration are rarely among the most technically gifted: Beck was the perfect meeting point between two attitudes that rock lore has long painted as opposites, though there's no reason they should be. It was an approach free of ideology, and one of the most curious to emerge from British rock in the Sixties — so much so that it was never overtaken by time. Precisely because of his ability to move in step with the evolution of the instrument and of sound-processing techniques, the Beck of 2000 had a different style from the Beck of the Sixties, whereas Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page — to name just the two fellow musicians who, like him, served time in the Yardbirds — once they reached a certain stylistic maturity, never really progressed further.

This shape-shifting attitude toward the instrument was also reflected in the style of his records: from the mid-Sixties to the present day, Beck moved through beat music, psychedelia, blues, hard rock, funk, jazz-rock and electronic experimentation.

The album under discussion here is the second from his jazz-rock — or jazz fusion, depending on how you want to look at it — phase (the line is a blurry one, and while Beck is a rock musician, the band backing him on this particular record actually comes out of jazz).

Heavily influenced by the Mahavishnu Orchestra of the aforementioned John McLaughlin, Beck brought his brief stint with Tim Bogert (bass) and Carmine Appice (drums) to a close, and abandoned the blues rock that had defined his solo career up to that point: his new horizon was precisely the hybridization of rock and electric jazz.

He then released two twin albums in quick succession: "Blow By Blow" (1975) and "Wired" (1976), both entirely instrumental and produced by George Martin (the Beatles' mentor was anything but out of place in this context, having produced the Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Apocalypse" around that very same time).

The better known of the two is "Blow By Blow", which unexpectedly reached number 4 on the US charts at the time, but there are several reasons to consider "Wired" the more important record for the artist's development: first, it doesn't resort to the saccharine orchestral parts found on the previous album; second, while each album features one cover apiece, "Wired" is otherwise made up entirely of tracks written by the members of the band backing Beck during the sessions, whereas "Blow By Blow" draws on as many as four externally written pieces (including a couple by Stevie Wonder, a close friend of Beck's) — whatever value judgment one wants to make about the songs themselves, "Wired" is undoubtedly a more personal work with less creative interference from outside the studio; third, "Wired" brought in two crucial musicians, both, tellingly, former members of the Mahavishnu Orchestra: keyboardist Jan Hammer and drummer Narada Michael Walden.

Alongside the two just mentioned, Beck was backed by top-tier session players such as Wilbur Bascomb (one of the most sought-after bassists in rhythm 'n' blues), Max Middleton (Clavinet and electric piano, already a key figure on "Blow By Blow") and Richard Bailey (drums on a couple of tracks, standing in for Walden).

"Led Boots", written by Middleton, opens the album with a distorted jazz-rock driven by a funky rhythm, alternating a classic 4/4 feel with a section in 7/8 where the ride cymbal nonetheless keeps marking quarter notes. The solos go first to Beck's guitar, then to Hammer's Minimoog.

"Come Dancing", Walden's first contribution, rests on a drum shuffle and a slapped bass line. The first guitar solo is marked by the effect of the Octaver (a pedal that makes a single note sound doubled, here set to the lower octave). It's an effect usually used to beef up the sound, boosting the power and grit of the guitar's low notes (not by chance, it would be put to similar use two decades later in the stoner rock scene), but Beck handles it with remarkable cleanness, fitting it into an arrangement built on clear, polished tones. The most interesting passage comes at 3'10": the guitar plays a phrase in A major (up to that point the track had been in D minor), after which it runs through a series of chords that, moving in semitones, returns to the starting key.

"Head For Backstage Pass" is a brief jazz-funk number written by Bascomb, with the bass leading the way, first with a solo and then with a riff that sounds like a steroid-pumped version of classic Motown grooves. Beck delivers one of his fastest solos, while Middleton's syncopated electric piano chases after the guitar. Hammer contributes "Blue Wind", a jam of technological blues rock built on a particularly catchy riff. The solo, which makes exaggerated use of the tremolo arm, peaks at 3'03", when a rapid sixteenth-note run appears. Passages like this are usually played with alternate picking, but Beck plays it effortlessly without a pick (fingerpicking has always been his preferred style, ever since, as a very young man, he tried to imitate the legendary country guitarist Chet Atkins).

The final trio of tracks is written entirely by Walden. "Sophie" opens with an atmospheric 7/8 landscape for blues guitar and arpeggiated electric piano, thick with harmonic tension, before shifting into a 4/4 jam (the bass nonetheless plays an ascending scale that gives the impression of still being in odd time, before adding one last note to make the meter line up).

The album closes with the funky midtempo of "Play With Me" — built on a Clavinet groove and marked by a futuristic Minimoog solo in which Hammer seems to anticipate video-game music of a later era — and the romantic, semi-acoustic watercolor of "Love Is Green", with Walden on piano: although stylistically far removed from the rest of the tracklist (it might feel more at home on records released around that time by the German jazz label ECM), it's so brief and delicate that it never feels out of place. It seals the album almost as if the musicians were catching their breath after a long ride.

Released in May 1976, "Wired" reached number 16 on the Billboard chart on August 7, staying on the charts for 25 weeks and selling a million copies in the US alone. Beck wouldn't return with another studio album for four more years, with "There & Back" - proof of a volatile character little inclined to compromise: in the Seventies, such long gaps between records were rather unusual.

It was precisely this radical attitude, however, that kept his explorer's flame burning bright, letting him weather the passage of time unscathed: just think of albums like "Who Else?" (1999) and "You Had It Coming" (2000), which even flaunted breakbeat and industrial influences. Not exactly the most predictable sounds for a guitarist who emerged from Sixties blues rock.

Jeff Beck died almost suddenly, on January 10, 2023, from acute bacterial meningitis. As this article goes to press across various media, tributes and praise from the many musicians he influenced are still pouring in.

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15/01/2023