From Steve Farris of Mr Mister
Saying Jeff Beck was one of the greatest guitarists ever, is a sort of anemic comment in my view. Equivalent of saying,
“The Atom Bomb dropped in WW11 was one of the largest explosions”, or “Mike Tyson was a pretty good puncher”. Hell
,we can do better than that! For me, Jeff Beck was probably the single biggest guitar influence on my guitar playing.
There was another who died on September 18, 1970 when I was in junior high. But since his death, no guitar player has
“done it’ for me the way Jeff could. And it sounds silly to even say, but as far as influence, I was clearly not alone.
Stories? I was incredibly fortunate enough to have someone contact me to bring over guitars for Jeff to use when he and
Rod Stewart apparently laid down their past feuding and spontaneously were recording “People Get Ready” at the Record
Plant in LA. I had just finished a session for our first Mr. Mister Record and got to go over and sit to hear him lay down
about 7 solos on the record. But before that, I had shown up with a couple guitars, pulled them out. He sat on a chair in
front of me and noodled on my Valley Arts Strat and stopped to look up at me and said, “It's a bit of a Rolls Royce, init”.
And to this day, though having played on a lot of recordings in the 80s and 90s, my favorite credit is that Jeff Beck played
my guitar. Having heard his compliment of it, made it truly unbelievable for a kid from Nebraska who learned everything
on his instrument from records like “the Jeff Beck Group” with “Ice Cream Cakes”, “Goin Down, etc.,
And I sat in on jam sessions all my life, with famous and not so famous musicians to often play my choice, “Freeway Jam”
which would rock the house… yet with an instrumental! But perhaps my favorite of all, is a song I’ve played for all my life
that helped me be, or emulate, the guitarist, or just simply the musician I wanted to be. That song is “Cause We Ended as
Lovers”. It was written by Stevie Wonder but performed by Jeff on the “Blow by Blow” album. Incidentally that is one of
the two albums that I have always told budding guitarists to get, and to learn everything off of. The other was Jimi
Hendrix, “Are you Experienced”. But if you nail those, you might be somebody. And I have played it at the reception of
my first wedding, on a boat when hired by the Church of Scientology, and a million other occasion where I wanted people
to go away and say, “That guy is fucking great!” Because all I was ever trying to do is come even close to the sensitive
dialog that Jeff could, and always did… that song being one for all times. In fact, Beatles producer George Martin had
produced that album for Jeff. And as oddities would have it, while I was playing at the Vina Del Mar festival in Chile with
Mr. Mister, 1988, George was a judge because other than international headliners like us at the time, the festival was
more or less a big battle of the bands for South American Artists. So, we had a song in our set that somehow I always
weaved a bit of “Freeway Jam” into it… (another song from “Blow by Blow”). And George had produced it. So, at the
point of playing the passage, it dawned on me who I was about to perform it in front of. So I walked straight up in front of
George, who was seated in the front row of judges and played the Bit of Freeway Jam” while smiling and looking at him in
the eye while I did. I’ll never forget Sir George Martin, with his head resting on his hand held up from crossed arms,
fingers in front of his mouth, nodding up and down in a sort of approval, smile somewhat hidden, but not entirely.
To describe who he was to guitar, is to examine when going to the LA Colosseum at his concert and look down the front
row of the audience to see every famous guitar player from the LA area… Eddie Van Halen, to Steve Lukather, to all you
can think of… because Mofos… let me tell you, School was fucking on!!! And maybe unlike your day-dreaming in class,
this time, you’d be best to pay attention! Because being a guitarist myself, I can hear all kinds of things being played by
other guitarists and maybe I can’t, or never learned to, do them, I always know what they are doing. But to the day he
died, Jeff was the one guy that could still play something, and I’d pause to say, “Hold on, what the hell was that?” The
innovator! And he was a guy that could play one note, and you could immediately say, “That’s Jeff Beck”. And he also
had the uncanny ability to play with all the aggression and incredible fire that was coined in the 60s and morphed and
evolved to heavy metal, etc., but still the soul of Ry Cooder on a slide… just with more balls!
And I’m name dropping one more time, but I had done a photo shoot for Yamaha guitars along with Steve Lukather back
in the 80s, and we ended up over at his house after, watching videos of a concert he had just done in Japan with Carlos
Santana and Jeff Beck. We watched Steve’s set in which he was himself, great, fast and furious, lots of effects and
interesting processing on his guitar. Then Carlos did his set sounding like he does, soulful etc, and “Carlos” all the way.
But then Jeff comes on with a banana-colored strat and a simple Fender amp (probably a Twin). He plays about 3 or 4
notes and Lukather’s face sort of droops as he says to me, “Look at him… he comes out and plays 4 notes and they’re
better than my last 50.” I said, “I know”. What the fuck else could I say? It wasn’t an insult or anything else. It’s just you
gotta say it. Jeff was the king… fucking period!
Miss him is again to undersell the feeling. Stupidly or whatever, I feel a real loss. Because I got some success, some
small amount fame, and I met or worked with, or for, many celebrities and famous people. But he was one of the only that
I ever met, that I couldn’t really converse with. My tongue was “all thumbs”. I was, am, and will always be, in awe of Jeff
Beck! Thank you Jeff for being one of my greatest teachers on the six string, particularly the vibrato (wang) bar. It was
you that made me do it. You could sing like no other, And no matter how good I ever got, it was always good to know if I
needed to get knocked down a notch or 75 of them, all I had to do is watch a video of you. You were very much more
than a bit of a Rolls Royce!!!s
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