slightly OT: Jeff Beck

[goddard.duncan@mtvne.com]

Title: slightly OT: Jeff Beck

I had the great pleasure of seeing jeff beck at the royal festival hall a few years ago. it was the middle one of three nights, each with different guest bands with whom he would do a short joint-set, besides letting them do their thing & he his own.

this night it was with white stripes [sigh]..... & so there came a point in the evening where jeff was trading licks with jack while meg was trying to keep up with terry bozzio & another proper drummer whose names eludes me now.

she was /rubbish/. I mean, I like the lo-fi & faux-naif stylings of jon spencer, say, or jonathan richman.... but you get the feeling that they could play hard stuff if they wanted to. meg.... sorry. the emperor is nekkid.

 
but anyway, jeff. he looked like he was in his mid-30s, not pushing 60 as he must've been. he used the same ghastly yellow strat all night, through a selection of non-boutique amps. I couldn't see any pedals- if he was using any, there must've been a tech operating them for him, because he was bouncing around all over the stage.

but the sound...... natural harmonics that we probably all know where to find them under laboratory conditions with new strings seemed to be.... well.... natural to him. in the same way that a great cartoonist can conjure a familiar face using a handful of simple lines, beck is able to create sonic resonances with just a few simple-looking gestures at the fender. when he really concentrates, though..... I had absolutely no idea that so many of the noises on his jan hammer collaborations came from the guitar, unaided by midi or extreme processing.

it was a real eye-opener. & he looks just like nigel tufnel.

d.

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